CSotD: Intentions vs. experience
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Matt Wuerker brings up an interesting — which is to say, potentially troublesome — issue in editorial cartooning.
When you are a witness at a trial, it's important that you only answer the question that was asked, lest you inadvertantly raise another question you didn't want to be asked.
Same rule applies in cartooning: Tread carefully.
I'm in favor of regulation of weapons, and I'm also in favor of the First Amendment. (Does that give you a clue as to where this rant is headed?)
When the architects of the Constitution proposed the Second Amendment, they did so in a world in which muzzle-loading guns fired one shot at a time and cannons did likewise.
And so those who keep asking "What did the Founders have in mind?" need to kind of pussyfoot around those implications, if they are in favor of unrestricted gun rights.
But not everyone is in favor of unrestricted gun rights, and, the Second Amendment notwithstanding, we have federal bans on automatic weapons and certain types of ammunition clips, as well as things which, though perhaps part of a "well-regulated militia," are not, strictly speaking, guns, like hand grenades and artillery pieces.
These laws require that legislators, and, later, the courts, look back at the intentions of the Founding Fathers and interpret what they meant. Literal interpretation is, as Wuerker's cartoon suggests, not an approach the NRA should really want to apply, since it leads to the above implication.
On the other hand.
On the other hand, it's good that Matt is simply spoofing the approach and not sincerely trying to apply it himself.
There are people who say the Founders had flintlocks in mind when they wrote the Second Amendment, but they tend to fall strangely silent on the question of what the same men were thinking when they wrote the First Amendment and, in particular, the part about Freedom of the Press.
Today, the term "press" is a metaphor, but it was more of a plain old noun in the 18th century. True, a person could sit down and hand-write a few letters and post them around the neighborhood, but mass communication on any practical scale involved an actual printing press as well as paper and ink.
The people who want the Second Amendment to only be about flintlocks are very rarely the same people who want the First Amendment to only be about posters, newspapers and books, and the people who claim the Founders did not anticipate television and the Internet are rarely the same ones who claim they didn't anticipate semiautomatic rifles.
Questioning the Founders' intentions on either Amendment in terms of technology might lead some places you don't want to go.
But there's rich ore in exploring their intentions and expectations concerning the theory that "a well-regulated Militia" was "necessary to the security of a free State."
I've just finished writing a kids' story for the Bicentennial of the War of 1812, centering on the (second) Battle of Sackets Harbor, in which American forces repulsed a British/Canadian attempt to seize a critical staging area on the Great Lakes.
A Canadian website about the war does a nice job of summarizing much of what I discovered about the conflict: “Although there was considerable incompetence demonstrated on both sides, it was not … a war without significant consequences.”
One of those consequences was that several leaders who had theretofore been firm believers that a well-regulated Militia was necessary to the security of a free State became firm believers that "well-regulated Militia" is an oxymoron and that a free State was not likely to be made secure by handing out guns to Goober, Beavis and Butthead, though, with a lot of patient training from Sgt. Carter, Gomer might be allowed to assist.
Madison, the architect of the Bill of Rights, was one of the leaders who reversed his opinion about maintaining a standing army, perhaps in part because the burning of his White House was greatly enabled by the easy access to Washington in the aftermath of a battle pitting 4500 British regulars against 450 American regulars and 6500 militia.
Despite numerical superiority, the actions of that bold militia led to the coining of the nickname "The Bladensburg Races" for the battle that ensued.
It also led Madison, according to this source, to write: "“I could never have believed that so great a difference existed between regular troops and a militia force, if I had not witnessed the scenes of this day.”
Earlier, in Sackets Harbor, Gen. Jacob Brown had placed a numerically superior company of militia in a well-protected position to defend a narrow ford connecting the British landing spot on Horse Island with the mainland, and they did a splendid job with their first volley as the redcoats attempted to come across.
Then they all stood up, ran into the woods and disappeared, leaving the remaining defense to a smaller group primarily made up of regulars. The regulars held out, pulling back in the face of the advancing enemy, until Brown tried a strategem of sending a half dozen dragoons charging up and down at the edge of the battlefield, joyously shouting about the great American victory and the British retreat, neither of which had yet occurred.
But their merry celebration drew forth 300 of the wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous, well-regulated militia from their hidey-holes in the woods, and Brown immediately lined them up, informed them that they would be shot if they ran again and marched them towards the British whose commander, assuming they were fresh troops and, suffering from that aforementioned considerable incompetence himself, ordered his troops to their boats for a hasty departure.
After the war, the army was reorganized, and President Monroe appointed Gen. Brown as its head, the intentions of the Founders having been altered by the subsequent experience of the Founders.
We'll wait until another day to talk about how Jefferson (who, yes, I know, took little part in writing the Constitution) felt about Freedom of the Press before, and after, he became President.
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