By Selwyn Duke

World Net Daily had a piece yesterday about the Bush administration’s support for a gun-control measure.  WND tells us that  U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement argued,

"Since ‘unrestricted’ private ownership of guns clearly threatens the public safety, the 2nd Amendment can be interpreted to allow a variety of gun restrictions . . . ."

Regardless of one’s position on gun ownership, this should be recognized as a flawed argument.

I want to make clear that this isn’t a matter of whether or not you believe that having some gun-control measures is a good idea.  Rather, the point is that this is essentially the "living document" argument (or a second cousin to it), the very one that has been used to justify all manner and form of judicial activism, of social engineering.

In point of fact, this reasoning could be used to justify most anything.  If you advocate something, it’s obviously because you believe it’s for the betterment of man, increases public safety or is a good idea for some other reason.  And if you are passionate about it, then it’s obviously "clearly" true — at least to you — that your position is correct.  But we’re not supposed to interpret the Constitution using ideas — no matter how good we think they are — as the yardstick; rather, the Constitution is supposed to be the yardstick with which we determine whether or not an idea can be legislated. 

To behave otherwise makes a mockery of the Constitution; in fact, we’re then barely governed by the document at all.  Instead of it constraining those who govern, we are simply saying that if something has popular support or takes the fancy of elites, we can rationalize away any part of the Constitution that might contradict it.  This document, which is the supreme law of the land, then just becomes a speed bump on the road to doing what a legislature and judicial oligarchy feel is best. 

Once the Constitution is rendered quasi-impotent in this fashion, all our rights — even the ones we hold most dear — are in jeopardy.  Let’s just take WND’s characterization of Clement’s argument and apply it to another issue:

Since ‘unrestricted’ rendering of opinion clearly threatens the
public safety, the 1st Amendment can be interpreted to allow a variety
of speech restrictions.

Don’t scoff, because there’s a multitude of statists who would make this very argument; that’s why "hate speech" laws exist in so many parts of the West today. 

This case illustrates well why even many so-called conservatives have only a shallow understanding of governance.  There are other routes you can pursue when advocating gun restrictions; for instance, you can argue that the Founding Fathers never intended for the insane or criminally inclined to have the right to bear arms (of course, this should only be put forth if you believe it’s true).  Or you can propose a Constitutional amendment for the purposes of altering the document so as to make it more perfect or more congruent with the realities of modern society (although, you’d better look before you leap).  This is the legal way — and only legal way — to alter the Constitution.

However, to simply put a spin on the Constitution based on the tenets of an agenda — no matter how noble you may think that agenda is — does violence to our system of government and threatens the republic.  A person who proceeds in this manner belongs nowhere near public office, not because he is evil, but because he is indifferent to or ignorant of that upon which this country was founded. 

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