Why does the NRA—and, for that matter, most other self-styled advocates of the Second Amendment—obstinately continue to fight the battle against “gun control” on the ground most advantageous to “gun controllers”?
November 28, 2014
Last Updated on January 19, 2021 by Constitutional Militia
Cognitive dissonance” denotes the state of psychological stress which affects an individual who simultaneously entertains two mutually contradictory beliefs, or who comes upon information which conflicts with his beliefs. (Cognitive dissonance differs from “doublethink”, as imagined by George Orwell in his novel 1984, because “doublethink” describes an individual’s ability to hold two mutually contradictory beliefs in his mind at the same time, believing both of them to be true, even and especially if neither of them has any relationship whatsoever to truth.)
Cognitive dissonance is relevant to various self-styled champions of the Second Amendment because most of them should suffer from it in a form both acute and obvious. The Second Amendment provides 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 exponents of the Amendment to whom I refer volubly promote its last fourteen words, without saying much of anything about the first thirteen. Indeed, they often try to distance themselves from anything with even a tangential connection to any conception of “militia”. Even as they profess their belief in the Second Amendment, they consign half of it to oblivion. Apparently they imagine that the first thirteen words, on the one hand, and the remaining fourteen words, on the other, somehow stand in mutual opposition, notwithstanding that they appear in the selfsame sentence. Or they believe that each set of words is irrelevant to the other, again although they are contained in the very same sentence. Or both. In order to overcome the psychological discomfort that must arise out of their dissecting this single sentence and discarding half of it, these advocates of the Second Amendment supply the rationalization that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is an individual right, whereas “[a] well regulated Militia” is a collective undertaking—and therefore they can dismiss the Amendment’s first thirteen words as not having any controlling legal, logical, or even linguistic influence on the following fourteen.
Now, if cognitive dissonance is the state of psychological angst which affects an individual who simultaneously attempts to entertain two mutually contradictory beliefs, were the Founders of this country victims of that disorder when they adopted the Second Amendment (and, for that matter, the Militia Clauses of the original Constitution in Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16, and Article II, Section 2, Clause 1)? Certainly not. They understood —and relied upon—the principle that, “‘[i]n expounding the Constitution of the United States, every word must have its due force, and appropriate meaning; for it is evident from the whole instrument, that no word was unnecessarily used, or needlessly added. * * * Every word appears to have been weighed with the utmost deliberation, and its force and effect to have been fully understood’”. Williams v. United States, 289 U.S. 553, 572-573 (1933). So, with respect to the clause “[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”, “[i]t cannot be supposed that the framers of the Constitution did not use this expression with deliberation or failed to appreciate its plain significance”. Wright v. United States, 302 U.S. 583, 587-588 (1938). Obviously, the Framers both of the original Constitution and of the Second Amendment were fully aware of the relationship between individual and collective rights (and duties, for that matter) with respect to “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms”, because they conjoined those rights (and duties, too) in the Militia. The Framers well knew that a collective institution such as “[a] well regulated Militia” could be—indeed, would have to be—the protector of each individual member’s rights. The “well regulated Militia” to which the Second Amendment refers consist of citizens each of whom obviously must enjoy an indefeasible “right * * * to keep and bear” the particular “Arms” necessary for his own Militia service. For that reason, the Militia themselves are the ultimate guarantors of the right (and, as well, of the duty) of each individual eligible for Militia service “to keep and bear Arms”. And, by personally possessing suitable “Arms”, each individual reciprocally contributes to the effectiveness of the Militia, and thereby to “the security of a free State”. In short, the Second Amendment cannot be construed so as to set up a distinction, let alone a conflict, between an “individual” and a “collective” “right of the people to keep and bear Arms”. The “individual” and the “collective” right are two sides of the very same coin. “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is necessary to the existence of the Militia; and the existence of the Militia guarantees, as nothing else can, “the right of the people”. (As I have dealt with this subject at great length in my CD-ROM book The Sword and Sovereignty, I leave it to the reader interested in an extended treatment to consult that work.)
