After the tragic Isla Vista shootings at University of California Santa Barbara, the father of one of the slain students has decided to fight back against these episodes of mass shootings by leading a gun control campaign. He has accused politicians to be cowardly, and willing to pay the price of death solely in order to ensure everyone in America is entitled to owning a gun.

The second amendment states, that “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.” The second amendment was the least debated issue among Congress, because most everyone agreed that an established army was the biggest threat to a democratic government. It stipulated that militias were “necessary to the security of a free State”, and so the solution was to allow state/community-organized militias. This was put into place in order to prevent a tyrannical government from forming an army that could be used to oppress citizens.

However, in the 21st century the second amendment has evolved to take on a whole new, controversial meaning: that the “right to keep and bear arms” is a fundamental right of all Americans. This interpretation originated from the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision which stated that it was unconstitutional to have regulations on guns in the Washington D.C. district. The author of the majority opinion is Antony Scalia, an originalist, arguing that “the prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause” indicating that the prefatory clause regarding the militia is only to “clarify” but not change the meaning of the people’s “right to keep and bear arms”. Also, because they have extended amendments such as the first and fourth to modern forms of communication, this means the American people must have this right to keep and bear arms extended to “all instruments that constitute bearable arms”. He believes that this amendment is only written to “[codify] a pre-existing right”. However, the 1939 United States v. Miller decision stated that unless there is evidence that an arm “has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.”
This directly contradicts the ruling of the more current Heller decision, the difference being that the Republican platform began opposing gun registration and the N.R.A began endorsing Republican candidates between 1939 and 2008. The fact that the conservatives of the court now support this is no surprise, and shows a limit of judiciary review. While I acknowledge that it is most definitely important to acknowledge the meaning and aim of the Constitution by understanding each word in the full context and extent of its meaning, times are changing. When thousands die each year due to gun violence, and tragic mass shootings continue to happen, there needs to be more to this interpretation than the definition of “arms” or the fact that the “prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause.” Which is more important, campaign funding from the NRA or the lives of the schoolchildren that went to school that morning at Sandy Hook? As a society, we need to stop allowing the individual’s right to bear arms to eclipse the most basic right of them all: the right to life.