“...’Well regulated’ is in fact, the initial criterion of the amendment itself. ...” - Gun writer Dick Metcalf, from his December 2013 magazine column, in reference to Amendment 2 of the Constitution of the United States
“... Metcalf said nothing wrong in his article. He pointed out, correctly, that all constitutional rights are regulated—he might have said “limited,” but there’s no meaningful difference. ...
“... Metcalf’s firing is nothing more than a lynching. A crowd of dummies got together and started spouting off. ...” - author/attorney William Lafferty, in his blog defending Mr Metcalf’s writing
Neither Mr Metcalf nor Mr Lafferty are displaying any measurable degree of historical understanding. Their ignorance, of then and of now, comes across as jarring.
The word “regulated” as understood in the late 18th century had nothing in common with the meanings given it today. The Founders would have found it preposterous, that by the late 20th century anti-gun groups were misusing their word to assert that gun ownership ought to be permitted or denied at the whim of a bureaucratic regime built up by well-intentioned meddlesome do-gooder busybody Left/Progressive Caring Persons.
Several posters have come close, in equating “well-regulated” with well-trained or properly experienced. But there were several purely military meanings that are vital:
1. Logistic/technical. Forum members must remind themselves that in the 1780s, Industrial-Age parts interchange was not even so much as a fevered dream in the craziest fantasy of the most visionary forward-thinkers; footsoldiers could not swap parts around between their issue firelocks (common term for musket then, used in many drill manuals) and have any hope that any would still function. Gunmakers, supply organizations, and regimental armorers struggled to render everything as uniformly sized as they could, conforming to published standards for length, weight, bore diameter, etc: any group of firelocks complying with the “regulation” was thus termed “well-regulated.”
2. Artillery fire control. The construction, deployment, employment, and maintenance of “guns” was more of a science than any other military endeavor in 1780, but we’d look on it as something of a dark art today. “Regulation” of artillery fire was a goal; books and manuals on the topic often referred to “well-regulated” gunfire (no military man desiring to hold onto his reputation would dare call a footsoldier’s firelock a “gun”) achieving objectives in minimal time with the least expenditure of powder and shot.
Interested readers ought to track down a copy of Potter’s _Compendium of Military Drill and Tactics_. Other words might be found there, that we might perhaps not be so all-fire sure about, in our post-post-modern hubris.
One might concoct any number of objections to Mr Lafferty’s defense of Mr Metcalf, but I am less than satisfied with his choice of the word “lynching.” One could hope that an attorney (Mr Lafferty plainly expects we the lesser mortals to defer to his lawyerly status) might lean toward greater precision, if only after a legalistic fashion.
That is absurd. Nobody has perpetrated anything remotely like the violence attending a real lynching on Mr Metcalf’s person; to the best of my knowledge, he is still alive despite the recent surge in uncertainty regarding future employment. Rhetorical excesses of this sort more commonly emerge from the pens (keyboards today) of propagandists. Attorneys ought to know better, or at least exercise greater self-control, but the sad reality of current times is that they do not.
I spent 29 years in uniform. Several tours of duty in operational testing, and as a scientific analyst at the Joint level, did drive home a few truisms. The first is that lawyers and analysts rarely agree. The second is that people who spend their days fussing with words are always in peril of falling off their exalted perch and vanishing into the abyss. And what is that abyss? Confusing words with reality. And nearly all of them - attorneys, bureaucrats, policy wonks, diplomats, legislators, political appointees - insist on compounding the error, in deeming words more important than reality.
I gather that what got people exercised about Metcalf’s column was his idea that training should be required before a CCW is issued. Apparently we need to parse this simple idea out in order to understand why Metcalf’s statement was not anti-Second Amendment.
It can hardly be doubted that all Constitutional rights are subject to regulation. For those who do doubt this, Metcalf quotes Justice Alito to the effect that use of a firearm for self defense is subject to “reasonable regulation.” That is hardly new law. It has been the case for 200 years.
Who makes this regulation? The courts. Again, for 200 years it has been the courts. If you have another suggestion, convene a constitutional convention.
So when Metcalf says that he favors training before a CCW can be issued, he is only saying that in his mind, that would be a reasonable regulation.
Reasonable minds can disagree on what is reasonable. Saying that training should be required may be something you may disagree with, and it may be something a court will disagree with, but it is not an anti-Second Amendment statement. It is merely the informed opinion of what is “reasonable” made by someone experienced with guns.
Personally, I disagree with Metcalf because I am not confident that the training will be meaningful. I have walked out of too many training classes to think otherwise. But I would not fire Metcalf because I disagree with him. And I would not fire Metcalf because he has undermined the Second Amendment. He has not.
Schurmann thinks it is absurd to call Metcalf’s firing a lynching. Really? My experience has been there is more than one way to kill a man. Schurmann claims he spent 29 years in uniform. What if, in the 28th year, someone demanded his job because he said something some group disagreed with. And what if his employer fired him? I doubt that any readers out there think getting fired from a long-term employment is a trivial matter. I have seen strong men broken when they lose a job, then a family, then a reputation.
Schurmann hates lawyers. Okay. So do I. But lawyers are the experts where law is concerned, and Constitutional interpretation is law. You don’t go to the grocer to get your plumbing fixed or the optometrist to get a heart bypass, but people seem to think they can go to a guy down the street to get an understanding of the Constitution.
What happened to Metcalf is something we all should be ashamed of. It’s easy to write something on the internet that seem innocuous, like “I cancelled my subscription” or “it’s a commie rag,” but ending the career of someone who was our friend – a friend we disagreed with – is something we will live to regret.