WILLIAM BEZDEK: Hobbes, Locke and private gun ownership in the US
News item: A disgruntled employee opened fire on co-workers at a cement plant near Cupertino on Oct. 5, killing three people and wounding six others. Shareef Allman, 47, described as a devoted single father of two and a longtime community volunteer, had been angered by criticism about his performance at work.
News item: Shanice Kiel, 19, was one of the three young people shot and killed in the early hours of Oct. 2 by unidentified gunmen who remain on the loose. San Leandro police said a total of six people were shot after a party at a warehouse that was reportedly advertised on Facebook. Shanice, a student at San Francisco State, "was very smart, very articulate," her father said.
News item: Eduardo Sencion, 32, used an illegally modified assault rifle to kill four people and injure 11 others at a Carson City, Nev., IHOP restaurant on Sept. 6. Investigators said the gun was sold by a private party in California to an unknown buyer more than five years ago, but they had been unable to locate any record of the gun since then. Three of Sencion's victims were members of the Nevada National Guard.
Guns don't kill people, people do. But would these killers, be they gang members, mentally unstable loners or angry community volunteers, have been this brutally effective without firearms? Might they have settled their scores, whatever they might have been, less lethally had guns not been so easily available, legally or not?
Those questions are all but moot today in our society, where most believe the Second Amendment gives them the inalienable right to pack -- and, largely as a result, the U.S. is the most heavily armed nation on earth, with a gun-death rate to match. Is this what the Founding Fathers had in mind?
***
The Second Amendment states: "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."
For most of the time since the founding of the United States, this has been interpreted to guarantee the right of a state to form and arm a militia. That is, the central government of the United States could not prevent the individual states from forming and maintaining their own armies -- currently referred to as the National Guard. Beginning in the 1970s, the propagandists for the National Rifle Association promulgated and heavily campaigned to change this interpretation to mean that the individual citizen has a constitutionally given right to own and carry arms. Members of the more paranoid faction went further and claimed that they have a duty to carry weapons so as to be able to protect themselves from criminals and to prevent the central government from taking away their liberty.
The Second and Third amendments were passed in order to balance the power of the central government to raise and maintain armed military forces and reassure the states that these forces would not be used against any individual state. The Second Amendment ensured the right of the state to maintain a militia and the Third Amendment protected the owners of homes so that the government could not quarter troops in their homes without their expressed consent.
The gun lobby would have better standing if it based its arguments on the 10th Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The Founding Fathers were all acquainted with the political philosophers Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704), who based their evolution of a political society on the concept of "natural law." The first principle of natural law is that of self-preservation. Hobbes taught that natural law was derived from men's passions and that there being equality among men then every man had an equal ability to kill another. This ability creates a fear of violent death, which, in natural law, becomes the most powerful passion.
John Locke wrote: "It is the unjust use of force then that puts a man into the state of war with another." He further held that civil society arises in order to control violence and war; and that natural law "teaches all mankind who will consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions."
The passion for avoiding violent death; the realization of each man's equal ability to do harm to one another; and the desire to avoid the injustice of denying life, liberty or possessions to others compel mankind to develop laws and enforcement methods that we call political society.
The Founding Fathers, having lived through the early development of the frontier and several Indian wars, would have considered it their right to defend themselves and their families. The 10th Amendment means that a right not surrendered to the federal government is reserved to the states or to the people. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 84, when referring to the need for a bill of rights, states: "Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing; and as they retain everything they have no need of particular reservations." He further postulates: "but a minute detail of particular rights is certainly far less applicable to a Constitution like that under consideration, which is merely intended to regulate the general political interest of the nation, then to a constitution which has the regulation of every species of personal and private concerns."
It is very doubtful that the Founding Fathers would have ever considered enshrining an individual right to own guns in any legal document as they would have considered it already to be in existence. The only reason they might have had to include it in the Constitution would be to limit it to citizens and restrict gun ownership for Indians and slaves, as this would be more in keeping with their prejudice about civil society at their time. It should be noted that in our time, we are no longer fearful about violent death from Indian wars or slave revolts. Our present anxiety deals more with crazy individuals shooting up schools or political meetings, innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of gang violence or a depressed loved one blowing his brains out with the gun he bought to protect himself and his family.
In the Constitution, there is no historical basis for the right of an individual to own guns. There was a basis in the common philosophical understanding of the Founding Fathers that there was a right to self-preservation and that this right extended to the right of a "citizen" to own firearms. These rights were self-evident, the people retained these rights and there was no need to surrender these rights to the federal government. Therefore, there was no need to enshrine these rights in the Constitution. Further, the Founding Fathers would have understood that local circumstances limited gun ownership to free men and gun ownership could and was denied to Indians and slaves -- that is, the right to own a gun could be justly limited to preserve a civil society. Times have changed and currently the risk of violent death is more from crazy individuals, gang members or depressed love ones, not Indian wars or slave rebellions. The gun lobby preys on unrealistic uncertainties and insecurities in order to prevent reasonable regulation of any kind.
In order to form a more perfect union, it is time to have a rational debate about gun regulation and control so as to lessen our passion about violent death and to better be able to protect life, liberty and property.
Dr. William D. Bezdek has practiced cardiology in Bakersfield for more than 35 years. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and a fellow of the American College of Cardiology.
