I teach English, which means I spend a fair amount of time thinking about and teaching “argument and persuasion.” I do enjoy trying to understand why arguments are persuasive, or effective, or not. I am not a lawyer, or a judge, or a legislator, or a historian. I’m thinking about today’s Voting Rights Act ruling by the Supreme Court majority. It seems to me that the fundamental argument in that ruling was that “things have changed” enough in American society in the last forty years that this legislation is no longer necessary, or valid. I have my own opinions about how much race relations have changed in this country in the past forty years (I’m nearly sixty) but that’s not my point. My point is that the argument that seemed to carry the day was that “things have changed” enough that we can and should nullify the Voting Rights Act. My question is, why doesn’t that argument ever carry the day when it’s applied to the Second Amendment, which guarantees U.S. citizens the “right to bear arms”? It seems to me that by “arms,” our 18th Century Founding Fathers were most likely thinking about muskets and single shot pistols, the “arms” of their day. I doubt even as far-sighted a genius as Benjamin Franklin could have imagined what sort of “arms” private citizens have available to them today. Clearly, “things have changed” with regard to the nature and definition of “arms” in the last 230 years or so. But that fact is never allowed to carry any weight in thinking about the Second Amendment today. My interest here is not in taking away anybody’s arms. I just want to know why the “things have changed” argument seems to persuasively carry the day with one argument, but not the other.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 23:47:57 +0000
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