I wish that it were not possible for me to write this column but I cannot ignore the tragedy in Connecticut. I suspect that there is not one among us who has not agonized over the last few days at the terrible loss felt by families and by the community of Newtown. This painful event has, again, sparked the gun control debate and it highlights just about every idea about politics and government that I have been discussing since I started this column: from ideology to political culture to citizens' responsibility to trust to rights and freedoms.
At the heart of the matter is the Second Amendment which reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bears arms shall not be infringed."
When we discuss the meaning of any constitutional provision, we can take at least two approaches. We can ask about the "original intent." What did the framers mean when they wrote this? What was going on at the time that would have lead to such a provision? The second approach is the 'living constitution" which suggests that constitutions exist in an ever changing context and must be interpreted in light of changing values. In American constitutional law it appears that the "right to bear arms" has been understood to infer an individual right owing to a citizen. Whatever the phrase, "a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state," might mean, it is the second part of the amendment that seems to have gained the most weight constitutionally. The fact is that Americans can own guns.
OK, so let's say that the Constitution does grant this right. The next question we need to ask is, "is the right absolute?' By complete coincidence my last two columns have been about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and in those articles I suggested that Canada has explicitly said that rights and freedoms can be limited. We have a constitutional clause dedicated to that very point. The American constitution does not have such an explicit clause but the Supreme Court has upheld many laws that do restrict absolute freedoms, particularly freedom of speech. So, why is this amendment so carefully guarded against restriction?
In an article that appeared in this space on Wednesday, Gwynne Dyer drew on some research by Steven Pinker which suggested that America democracy had sprung up "too early" before citizens "had been disarmed." The argument is that there was not enough time for trust to develop so the citizens could be assured that the state would protect their property. It is important to remember that the classical liberal ideology adopted in the United States was developed by John Locke. He defined "property" as "life, liberty and estate" and his original idea about government was that it should be limited to the adjudication of property rights. Locke thought that civil society could exist without a state and that we would know, because our reason would tell us, that we should do unto others as they would do unto us. Governments should not exist to control citizens but rather to adjudicate disputes. Without doubt the United States as we know it rose out of revolution and was built on the idea that individuals should consent to being governed. So "distrust" is not just a part of the youth of the democracy but also a sense that the state should not be the primary institution for controlling citizen behaviour.
Yet, here we are, so many years after the original framers' thought of this idea. We now live in a world of high-powered assault weapons. What will it take for the majority of Americans to transfer some of their "trust" to the state? If you listen to the debate, you will see that there is still a sense in some quarters that every individual is responsible for their own behaviour and for their own safety. This is why some Americans would suggest that teachers should be armed in lieu of restricting firearms. This thinking could really only exist in a context where people believe that the state is not to be trusted as an institution of public good that can balance individual rights and freedoms with safety and security for all. The gun control debate can only be had if Americans rethink their idea of role of the state and Americans remain very polarized on this question.