Does Your Workplace Have a “Well Regulated Militia”? Rethinking Gun Control

There have been at least three mass casualty shootings in American workplaces in the past 24 hours.

Before we grow numb to this routine carnage, let’s take another look at the text of the Second Amendment: “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.”

Read in text and also context, the amendment was enacted to allow citizen soldiers to rise up against a tyrannical government. If you don’t have or need a militia, the Second Amendment doesn’t apply. That’s strict constructionism—the type of judicial analysis favored by right-leaning groups such as the Federal Society.

The debates today focus on the type of weapon and the mental health of the shooter. Neither argument has proved effective. To the contrary, a new and ludicrous counter-argument has taken root. We need more guns in all possible locations where a mass shooting can occur.

A new approach should be founded on a pillar of our Constitution. The Fifth Amendment provides that the U.S. government cannot take “life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The Fourteenth Amendment says that same thing. It applies to states and their local governments.

So, why not enact federal and laws titled “The Gun-Free Private Workplace Act”? The law would make clear that the Second Amendment could not be interpreted so broadly as to override a private property owner’s right to regulate the workplace by prohibiting guns.

Courts have already established this right, many times over, in cases where, for example, employees have been fired for bringing guns to work or even the parking lot of a workplace.

No, the law would not magically end gun violence.

It would, however, amount to a major defeat of the NRA’s unbounded premise that everyone has a right to carry a gun anywhere they wish.

Republicans would have to choose between voting for property rights of business owners—a natural for Republicans—or for gun rights—also a natural for Republicans. Make a choice.

Finally, it would create an opportunity for some private employers to do more than make up a rule. They might start to screen people coming into the workplace. Places such as Rite-Aid— the site of today’s fatal shooting— would be challenged to screen everyone who comes in to a large workplace.