A friend sent me this missive concerning the Second Amendment by John M. DeMaggio (USN-retired):
The argument over the Second Amendment routinely centers on guns. But our Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms” has just as much to do with casting off the stratification of the social class system and buttressing religious freedom. …
One cannot discuss the Bill of Rights independently but must consider it within a broader discussion encompassing two other pillars of our system of government: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Today people immediately consider “arms” to be guns. But in the long run-up to American independence — in medieval, pre-colonial and colonial times — arms for “bearing” were usually edged weapons, especially swords.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art tells us that in medieval times “generally speaking only noblemen were allowed to carry a sword in public.”
Plinio Correa de Oliveira writes in “What is the Symbol of Nobility and Power? And Why?” that “The people of the Middle Ages regarded the sword with a certain profundity, esteeming it as a symbol of man’s God-given nobility.”
French nobility prerogatives after 1440 included the right to “wear a sword.” The sword was used during the noble “dubbing ceremony,” still practiced by today’s British Crown. [The Hill]
Here’s the problem with his discussion – he insists on contextualizing the Bill of Rights, which is great, but then he proceeds to ignore an important part of the Second Amendment itself – the entirety of the text, which is
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.
DeMaggio makes no mention of a well regulated militia, which makes his entire argument difficult to take seriously. If context matters, the entire Amendment, especially one so terse, should be addressed. Surely the clause considering a well-regulated militia needs a mention.
Worse yet, he engages in a bit of Fight-or-flight sleight of hand with his concluding paragraph:
I wonder if opposition to the Second Amendment’s right of people to “bear arms” might also be — at some level — a rejection of the “equal station” of all people, a reaffirmation of a sort of “Nobility,” a sense of privilege by an established “professional political class?”
This is a big red flag that this is not a serious essay, at least for me. The historical aspect has some mild interest to it, but as a serious defense of an absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment, the contextual omission, the superfluous bit of rhetoric, and, additionally, the omission of any treatment of the differences between the weapons of today and the weapons of two, three, or four hundred years ago, really renders this piece as little more than a curiosity.
