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06/10/2022 Gun Reform: The Case for Change The situation in the United States (US) is increasingly revealing an aspect of American law and culture that contradicts with the pillars of a free and democratic society. Gun violence and its prevalence in the US is steadily reaching new heights and with it a reinvigoration of public and political discourse on the issue that is gun reform. Upon honing into this trend of violence and the efforts to understand and deliberate this multifaceted issue, a broader theme of inequality and polarization also begins to surface. As gun violence in the United States continues to worsen, and in many instances produce terror, the time has arrived to make a constitutional amendment to the second amendment and ban the ownership of privately owned firearms. Together from the improper and nefarious lobbying from special interest groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) culminating in the misrepresentation of the will of the American people to the lack of adequate vetting in firearm access, the ownership of firearms has become unnecessary and contradictory to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Amending the 2nd amendment towards this cause would drastically decrease the prevalence of gun violence and immensely enhance the resilience and the domestic security and peace of the US. The second amendment is arguably becoming one of the most controversial constitutional amendments in contemporary American politics and has historically had some varying interpretations from the courts. This amendment is relatively short and seemingly straightforward, stating, “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” (US Const., amend. II). What makes this constitutional amendment so controversial is the nebulous language that is used particularly towards the end and whether it protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms or

if it only applies to the right of the states to have a militia. As one linguistics expert from the University of Queensland Australia, Dr. Kari Sullivan, explains in an article published by the Duke Center for Firearms Law, an academic research program from Duke University School of Law, the main issue with the amendment is its syntax (Sullivan). The author discusses how language changes and evolves through time and how the syntax or grouping of words or phrases can change their context and overall meaning and therefore their interpretations. It’s important to note that the way words are used or grouped with other words or phrases changes through time so deciphering what older writings mean to say or communicate can be challenging due to these evolutions in syntax. At the time when this amendment was drafted in the 18 th century with the intentions of establishing a new government, the states wanted to have greater autonomy, a lessen learned from British rule, and create a balance between state autonomy and central government. Clearly, at that time, one major concern for the founders of the US was the ability of the states to protect themselves from threats, particularly foreign threats. As Dr. Sullivan outlined in her article, the English that is used in the second amendment is likely best understood and interpreted through a temporal/external causal interpretation (a type of linguistics analysis) which looks at the first clause about militia which is the temporal clause and the second clause about the right of the people to bear arms as the causal. She compares the use of the being-clause in the second amendment with how it was used and structured in English writings from other literature from that time. Through this analysis the right of the people to keep and bear arms is for the purpose of a well regulated militia. So, in essence, states having a militia is what is meant by the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Of course, this is through a linguistic lens, so a legal and social analysis is necessary in further examining this law. The overlap between race and gun control is also another aspect of the history of gun rights in the US. A local

governmental website from Sedgwick County, Kansas explores this motif through a document they published that categorically outlines US gun laws that particularly targeted black people dating as early as the colonies. Reviewing this list of laws organized and published by the official website of Sedgwick county, Kansas, it is worth noting that even after the abolition of slavery in 1865, laws completely restricting the possession and purchase of firearms by black people were still being enacted by many states especially in the south. Laws like the New York Sullivan Act of 1911 which required police permission via a permit issued at their discretion to own a handgun which the publication notes that the majority of people obtaining a license were wealthy and few in number, and since minorities were disproportionately more impoverished than white counterparts they were routinely denied access (Ekwall). This document also outlined more recent rules and initiatives targeting minorities such as when the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the Chicago Police Department (CPD) enacted and enforced a policy in 1988 that constituted warrantless searches and the confiscation of firearms from any housing units under the jurisdiction of the CHA and consequently leading up to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filing a lawsuit on December 16, 1988 in Rose Summeries, et al. v. Chicago Housing Authority, et al. where a year later a consent decree was entered and whereby the CHA and CPD agreed to limit their ”emergency housing inspections”. In 1990, a US district court in Virginia Upheld a ban imposed by the Richmond Housing Authority on the possession of any firearms, operable or not, in their housing units ( Richmond Tenants Org. v. Richmond Dev. & Hous. Auth. ). Even after the end of racial segregation in the US, the notion of equal under the law, particularly under the second amendment, remains preferential and prejudiced. Looking at the plethora of state laws targeting the accessibility of firearms by people of color either from blatantly racist language in the legislation such as from the “Black Codes” from the 19 th century to the more

subdued and hidden racist elements of laws such as from the New York Sullivan Act of 1911 where police were coincidentally only handing out firearm permits to wealthy white people, namely men, showcases a lack of principle around how the second amendment has historically been implemented. In 2017, a prominent political science scholar of firearm policy, Dr. Robert J. Spitzer, wrote in his papers, Gun Law History in the United States and Second Amendment Rights , about gun regulations being as old as the US, that they have numbered in the thousands, and more importantly that they have “spanned every conceivable category of regulation, from gun acquisition, sale, possession, transport, and use, including deprivation of use through outright confiscation…” (Spitzer). He goes on to talk about how during the 1910s and 1920s at least 7 states had banned semi-automatic weapons entirely. Spitzer states that the gun debate has, only in recent decades, become more politicized and more ideological. This amendment is and has historically not been applied equally and is being more and more misconstrued. Data from the OpenSecrets website, a nonprofit organization that tracks campaign finance and lobbying, shows how much in campaign finance and contributions the National Rifle Association (NRA) makes to legislators in congress with some such as Senator Mitt Romney having made over one million dollars in contributions from the NRA throughout his political career while also disclosing a startling statistic that in 2021 and 2022, 5 out of 14 NRA lobbyists have previously held government jobs (National). This cannot be an acceptable norm in a democratic society. How can a society entrust their representatives in government to legislate and rule on issues they may have a conflict of interest in? How can the contemporary raging dispute over gun regulation be seen as anything but disingenuous? In the 2008 Supreme Court ruling District of Columbia v. Heller the court ruled that average citizens have a constitutional right to possess handguns for personal self-protection in the home. However, the court also made clear that handguns could

still be subject to legal restrictions such as in the prohibition in the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill among other restrictions. This ruling seems to go against some of the precedents from the 20 th century US where total and complete bans on certain handguns used to be law in many states and outrage over restrictions was not as common as it is today. Many gun rights proponents argue that outlawing guns will not stop gun violence from happening. In an article published in 2021 by the NRA, the special interest group discusses the widely repeated talking point by gun rights proponents that cities with gun restrictions still have widespread gun violence, such as in the case of Chicago; however, they do not cognize that firearms from other states with very relaxed gun regulations can be transported between state borders quite easily (Why Gun Control). Their article also has several claims without any footnotes or citations to back them up, such as making a claim in bold print that even if criminals did submit to background checks that those checks are not effective at stopping them from using guns to commit crimes, offering zero evidence, research, studies, or data to back up this claim. Moreover, a 2016 research study conducted in three US cities by two economists from the University of Central Oklahoma found that policies aimed at reducing localized income inequality helps reduce violent crime rates including property crimes (Metz). From reconstruction to the turbulence of the civil rights movements, the classic US north/south dynamics still continues to be a prevalent theme in American society. Analyzing how the US can build on its social unity and address the sociopolitical divisions will require scrutiny over the role race has been playing in shaping and influencing American culture and society. A statistical map published by the US Census Bureau depicting the median household incomes by state between 2015 and 2019 shows that the US south has the lowest income rates out of any other US region, in fact the US south has historically found itself more economically disadvantaged from the

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