http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/?id=110001741

Armed and Safe:We have met the militia and it is us.

BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, May 22, 2002 12:01 a.m. EDT
“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.”–U.S. Constitution, Amendment II
“The militia of the United States consists of all able bodied males at
least 17 years of age and . . . under 45 years of age who are . . .
citizens of the United States.”–10 U.S. Code, Section 311
The language of the Second Amendment is straightforward: “The right of
the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” It was
written by James Madison, and its language tracks the language of the
First Amendment–”the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
petition the Government for a redress of grievances”–and the Fourth
Amendment–”the right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures shall not be violated.”
Seems clear enough, doesn’t it? Yet for half a century the consensus
of the political establishment has been that the right to bear arms
must not be construed as an individual right, lest people obtain guns
to protect themselves and take actions beyond the control of
government. And so the Justice Department has traditionally maintained
that the right to bear arms is only a “collective” right, one limited
to the organized militia–that is, the military, the National Guard
and police units.
In 1989 the establishment consensus began to unravel. By 1999 liberal
Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe was saying the right to bear arms
was an individual right, and that “intellectual honesty” required it
be so construed.
Last November the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed in
U.S. v. Emerson that the Second Amendment “protects the right of
individuals . . . to privately possess and bear their own firearms,”
prompting Attorney General John Ashcroft to send a letter to all
federal prosecutors emphasizing the importance of the Second Amendment
as an individual right.

Last week Solicitor General Ted Olson filed on behalf of the federal
government two briefs before the Supreme Court, emphasizing the belief
of the current administration that the right to bear arms was indeed
an individual right. And the pot began to boil.
The voices of the establishment objected on cue. The New York Times
gloomily reported this “ominous reversal on gun rights.” The Brady
Center to Prevent Gun Violence despaired that this “extreme ideology
on guns has now become government policy.” The Washington Post claimed
that “the great weight of judicial precedent holds that there is no
individual right to own a gun.” One supposes that the editors skipped
a reading of the amendment itself, since the great weight of English
comprehension supports the opposite conclusion.
But wait, liberals say, the amendment mentions the militia. Yes, it
does, but there is no way that word can be taken as meaning just the
police or army, for the U.S. Code defines militia as noted above. It
further defines the “organized militia” as members of military units,
and the “unorganized militia” as all other males between 17 and 44.
(Subsequent advances in civil rights would presumably expand the class
to include women and older people.)

But other than constitutional scholars and the establishment press,
does anyone care about this legal argument? In 1999 the National
Center for Policy Analysis considered that question. Its data suggest
the people who use guns to protect themselves 2.5 million times each
year (criminologist Gary Kleck’s estimate) might care. So might women
faced with rape or assault, who statistics show are “2.5 times less
likely to suffer serious injury if they respond with a firearm” than
if they don’t resist.
Even criminals are concerned about the Second Amendment, although from
a different perspective. If a malefactor cannot know in advance who
might have a gun, the risk of committing a crime will increase, so he
will commit fewer crimes. Safer for him, and for us.
The best analysis of the impact of arming law-abiding citizens on the
crime rate is John Lott’s 1998 book “More Guns, Less Crime” (updated
in 2000 to cover crime data through 1996). It reinforces obvious
conclusions about defensive gun use: “Criminals as a group tend to
behave rationally–when crimes become more difficult, less crime is
committed. . . . Carrying concealed handguns appears to make all kinds
of murders less attractive.”
Even more convincing are Mr. Lott’s data on the decline of crime over
time following the enactment of “concealed carry” laws, which make it
easy to get a license to carry a handgun. The longer concealed-carry
laws remain in effect, the more crime declines. The most starling
chart shows the number of violent crimes in concealed-carry states. In
the 10 years before the enactment of a concealed-carry law, violent
crimes averaged a steady 510 per 100,000 people. In the 10 years after
enactment they began to drop–to under 500 after five years and then a
rapid decline to under 300 in year 10. “For each additional year that
the laws were in effect,” Mr. Lott concludes, “murders fell by an
additional 1.5 percent, while rape, robbery, and aggravated assaults
all fell by about 3 percent each year.”
So potential victims of crime–that’s all of us–have a real stake in
taking the Second Amendment at its word. Nor are there any legal or
logical reasons why we should not, for it says what it says:
individuals have a constitutional right to bear arms.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the
Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears
Wednesdays.