Saul Cornell: The Constitution's gun-control pledge

SOURCE: Editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (9-23-06)

First, a calming caveat: Saul Cornell doesn't want to take away your
guns. He's neither antigun nor progun. He really isn't a gun guy at all.
His thing is history.

Cornell, a professor at Ohio State University, passed through town the
other day with much to say about regulating guns. Yet his aim isn't to
take sides in the modern gun-control debate -- a squabble he thinks has
strayed rather off-topic. It's far more interesting, he thinks, to look
back to learn what this country's founders actually thought about gun
regulation.

They couldn't imagine life without it, says Cornell. That's the point of
his new book, "A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the
Origins of Gun Control in America." In it, Cornell excavates the
foundations of the Second Amendment and offers some startling
conclusions.

"As long as we've had guns in America," says Cornell, "we've had gun
regulation." In fact, the Second Amendment's chief purpose is to assure
such regulation. Without it, the founders feared, anarchy might take
hold.

The amendment was born of the founders' desire for "a well-regulated
militia." Having opted against a standing army, the Constitution's
cobblers determined that every able-bodied man would serve as a member
of a local militia -- prepared to respond in unison against invasion.

"It would have been impossible to muster the militia without a scheme of
regulation," says Cornell -- and the early Americans had one. "Muster
rolls" kept track of militia members and their firearms. And every
hamlet in the land had its own de facto gun registrar: the local
gunsmith, who knew every gun and gun-owner in town.

There's one right the Second Amendment wasn't written to confer: an
entitlement to take up arms against the government. "The founding
fathers drew a distinction between a well-regulated militia, which
operates under the authority of the state, and an armed mob," says
Cornell. History couldn't be clearer about this point: "Once you have
constitutional government," Cornell points out, "you have no right of
revolution anymore."

Indeed, "All these things that the gun-rights community has championed
in the name of the founding fathers -- opposition to registration,
promotion of concealed-carry and stand-your-ground laws, the notion that
individuals have a right to take up arms against their government -- are
antithetical to the original understanding of the Second Amendment."

They also contradict today's legal understanding of the amendment. "The
reason the high court hasn't heard a case regarding the meaning of the
Second Amendment in so long," says Cornell, "is that it's considered one
of the most settled issues in American law." In other words, laws meant
to curb gun violence are usually ruled constitutional.