The Second Amendment

 All the time, you can say "Second Amendment" and get immediate response from people. Some proud and some angry, of course. But it really has become a major issue in today's voting booth. People protest for and against, people argue and make outrageous statements, and people despise their political opponents on few issues more than on this one.

 It's a big deal. Some people feel threatened by guns. Guns, for some, immediately bring to mind feelings of violence, fear, and danger. To them, guns are things that kill people. Nothing else. Others see guns like others see their old dog. It's been with them for years, right by their side during some of their finest memories. It makes them feel relaxed, safe, and comfortable. With perspectives this different, it's no large wonder that people don't all agree.

 The Second Amendment itself reads "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, may not be infringed." While we argue about whether this applies to the individual person having a right to keep and bear arms (the position of gun-rights advocates) or only to the State Militia aka The National Guard (the position of gun-control advocates), the Supreme Court has just issued a controversial ruling pointing towards the former. I think we should note that there is more here in this Amendment than this, and I think that some time spent remembering the context of this sentence can lend some understanding to us.

 You must remember, first, that owning guns was an everyday reality for virtually everyone at the time the amendment was written. The idea that a hunting rifle could be banned would have been as outrageous as banning cars today. It was some people's means of food and money -- and I don't mean shootists, I mean hunting. In fact, the right of an individual to own a firearm existed before this amendment as part of British common law. The individual's right to keep and bear arms was essentially assumed here (and remember, the Constitution was intended to lay out the bounds of government rights, not the people's rights). 

 Second, you must remember that the idea of a standing federal army was not a reality at the time. Armies held during times of peace was actually one of the complaints in the Declaration of Independence. Standing armies were State militias comprised of state residents, not Federal armies. The Articles of Confederation (the documents that held the 13 original states together as a unit after the Declaration of Independence, but before the Constitution was signed into law) created the Continental Army in order to fight the British for freedom, but this viewed as temporary, and when the Second Amendment was written, whether to maintain this Federal army was the subject of hot debate. The Second Amendment was largely a concession or a compromise toward those who disapproved of a standing Federal army, as a way to guarantee that the Federal army could never take away a state's sovereignty. "The state always had the right to maintain its own standing militia in case it had to hold off the federal government" was the essential message.

 As Patrick Henry said, "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined...." This is the attitude of the Second Amendment. The People have the right to maintain the ability to keep the Federal government in check against tyranny. The right to own weapons privately is assumed in this, as is the right to self-defense (another item already a part of British common law before the Constitution was drafted). Early commentary on the amendment confirms this view. The Boston Journal of the Times printed in 1769, commenting on the British Bill of Rights and the King's attempt to disarm the colonists, that "It is a natural right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the Bill of Rights, to keep arms for their own defence." The right to own a gun was viewed as a NATURAL RIGHT. One of the self-evident, unalienable rights that the people had, and commissioned government to protect. 

The Issue of Abortion (part II)

Like I said in my previous post, this issue needs two different conversations about two very different kinds of abortion. One about early abortions, where the baby is completely undeveloped, and another about later term abortions, past about 15 weeks, where the baby has developed into everything that humans are. Today, I will adress the second of these two issues.
Two things must be conceded at the very beginning of the conversation. One is that regulating the procedures and medical care on someone's body is, indeed, invasive. Imagine how rediculous the idea would be if a baby was not involved. Telling someone, for instance, they may or may not be allowed to have a tooth pulled, or have some particular surgury. We would all be agreeing that this was both an invasion of privacy and an overstepping of enumerated power (remember the limited gov't post). The second thing is that the "right to privacy," the 'implicit right' that Roe vs. Wade was based upon, is NOT a bogus idea. The Constitution doesn't even pretend to spell out our rights. It spells out the government's rights. If you regularly say "Hey, the Constitution doesn't even give a right to privacy in the first place!" then you need to go and read the 9th amendment.
The reason having a conversation about lawful invasion of privacy is appropriate is because other rights are involved here. A living human baby is also part of the abortion question and, because of this, other people's rights are also in question. I understand this is where most of seem to disagree. But go and take a look at an ultrasound of a 20 week baby. Ask an OB-GYN whether a 18 week baby is really a baby. I understand you can make an objection about religion, but this is really only true for a brief time in the first term. Beyond this point, as Roe vs. Wade implied in their decision to NOT mandate 2nd and 3rd term abortions, we have a completely different set of arguments and reasoning. Even the law can recognize this when people are charged with double-murder because they kill a pregnant woman.
Many of the objections about making abortions outright illegal are early-term objections also. "What if a woman gets raped and then gets pregnant?" or "What if a parent is the father?" of even "What if we can't take care of a baby?" All of these objections are first term issues. Not a single one of them has a good reason why a second or third term abortion would be necessary.
You see, even if people are completely deviod of any religious understanding of a soul and have a "reasonable cause" to consider an abortion, even then we can see that waiting until a baby has developed into, indistputably, a human baby is both unnecesarry and cruel. Why is it that those who support the idea of an abortion want an abortion anytime? Why not, abortions in the first, say, 10 weeks and then after that, let's have the mother abandon maternal rights, the state remove the baby as soon as the baby could live on its own, and allow a couple who has been working for years to get pregnant have a chance to adopt the baby while it is still an infant? Why would abortion rights advocates not want something like this?
The reason is because they don't want what's best for the baby, like they say. They want it dead. There is a big difference between saying "we want what's best for both the mother and the baby" and saying "we want to be able to kill the baby and pretend it never happened." This is what 2nd and 3rd term abortions are really about. People want to "not be a mother." But they already ARE mothers. People don't want a baby. But the HAVE a baby. They don't want to not have to take care of it - they want it dead.
This is why this conversation needs to be split up. You may be able to reasonably argue that you want what is best for a child who was raped three days ago when you give her a "morning-after" pill, but to say this about a 26-week mother? This is ridiculous. There no other reason for allowing a 2nd and 3rd term abortion than to prefer a dead baby to an adopted baby. While you may not want a human baby inside of you, at 19 weeks, it is an objective, scientific reality.
While we must mingle religion with law, difficult situations, and discernment in first term abortions, this is not true at all for later term abortions. At that point, it has clearly become human. And at that point, -- "created human" -- it has attained certain unalienable rights. Like the Right to Life. And the government, after all, exists to protect exactly these rights.