Even if you toss out the right to bear arms argument, the people empowerment argument and all of that for just a few moments, the attempt to ban certain classes of firearms is strictly against a Constitutional Constructionist view of the second amendment of the founding document of US law.  

As the Constitution of the United States is the founding document upon which all law in this country is written, guided, and formed, it constitutes the final limit of law. We may decide an action or practice is illegal, and we – as a society, through our elected officials and appointed judges – decide to curtail certain criminal activity, but can only do so to a specific point that the Constitution allows the legislature to do so and the legislature is specifically prevented from removing rights guaranteed by that document. The Bill of Rights must stand inviolate in order for the original intentions of the founding fathers to stand legitimate and inviolate as well.

To that end, In effect, allowing such firearms bans to stand unchallenged renders the constitution impotent in that we no longer have to rewrite it, we can simply subvert it or circumvent it. Don’t want guns in the hands of the citizenry but that pesky second amendment is getting in the way? Well, we can’t rewrite the constitution, but we can write all around it. Sort of like the graffiti that obscures the original billboard. Eventually, we will still have a right to bear arms, but that right will be “conditioned” into impotence.

So setting the actual debate over the usefulness or danger of firearm ownership and proliferation aside for the moment, let’s just assume we allow it, and everything works out great. Suddenly, everyone in the country feels safer, crime rates goes down, murder rates plummet, and everyone is infused with a general abhorrence of violence in the absence of the ever-influential firearm. Great. Utopia.  

But wait. The larger picture in this regard – and one often overlooked – is that if the second amendment can be curtailed, circumvented and rendered impotent – even with the best of intentions and the best of results – what about the others? What other rights can be circumvented via legislation that makes an end-run around the constitution?

We, as Americans, can not allow legislators to simply decide the Founding Documents of our country and our government are simply wrong, mistaken, or in need of pruning, trimming, or correction. As a Constitutional Constructionist, I believe that the constitution is written perfectly fine as it is, needs no or little interpretation, and was written to say exactly what it means. I believe the founding fathers meant what they wrote, and I believe they had a vision of this country that reached far into the future. I believe when they wrote the Constitution, they wanted to secure not simply their rights, but the rights of future generation. I may not agree completely with everything therein, but I am willing to accept it all because I accept that it is a good compromise and I believe – more importantly – that violating that document in any way renders the whole as an impotent ideal never really intended for the permanent safeguarding of the people.

Gun control is a hot-button issue and gets a great deal of publicity, but the same argument is used for the fourth amendment right to be freedom from illegal search and seizure, the first amendment right to the freedom of speech, the separation of church and state, the fifth amendment right to be free from self-incrimination and to a defense against charges, etc, etc. The running theme here is freedom. The constitution guarantees us freedoms and those freedoms – not a single one of them – can be curtailed or denied without the entire system being in danger of collapsing under the same precedent. To surrender even a single freedom is to suffer under the oppression of a thousand binding chains.

All liberties are conjoined siblings, the offspring of a general freedom. Suppressing one naturally weakens the others: binding one naturally hobbles the whole. If the people allow even one freedom to be stripped away form them, how can they resist the taking of all the others? To me, therefore, this is as much a constitutional preservation issue as it is a right-to-own-guns issue.