The enduring principle of Heller

With the National Rifle Association’s convention coming to Indianapolis next Friday, I believe it would be in the best interest of this publication for me to preemptively air my thoughts on the matter.

As the inventors of gunpowder, the Chinese were the first to figure out that a projectile propelled by the explosion could do serious harm to one’s enemies. Though the first guns that made their way to Western Europe lacked many of the accoutrements of today’s modern assault rifles, it was only a matter of time before they became indispensable weapons of war.

To the European colonists in America, a musket was essential to living.
The prevalence of civilian militias during the Revolutionary War further cemented
the idea that guns were part of a citizen’s rights.

George Washington’s Continental Army could not be everywhere at once, and a large deal of the colonial forces were indeed militia members called upon at a minute’s notice to fight against the British. This was the principle of self-defense that continues to inform judicial opinions to this day.

After the war, the Founding Fathers believed so strongly in the right to self-defense it was included in the Bill of Rights.

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” the Second Amendment to the Constitution states.

This eventuality is provided for in the case United States v. Miller, where Justice McReynolds cited state statues dating from the early days of the United States requiring able-bodied male citizens to procure weapons and
ammunition for the explicit purpose of self-defense.

This principle of self-defense still carries today, and is indeed one of the primary arguments toward looser gun regulations.

The recent court case Heller v. District of Columbia is proof that the ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., violates this principle.

“The inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right,” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued in the majority opinion.
“(Washington D.C.’s) handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of ‘arms’ that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family and property is most acute.”

This hinges on the fact  that handguns are still among the most popular weapons registered in the U.S. Illinois’ introduction of a “concealed carry” law last year is evidence of this growing trend among states.

Before we immediately turn our noses up at the goings-on in Indianapolis in a weeks’ time, I ask the students of this campus to remember there are legitimate reasons for the NRA’s actions despite its current unpopularity.

Ad hominem attacks against the organization do nothing to change its stance or force it to shut down.

mjsu@indiana.edu