Guns & Ammo Editor Fired for Undercutting Second Amendment
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you….
Long-time Guns & Ammo Magazine Technical Editor Dick Metcalf is looking for a new job this morning. The reason? Metcalf defended restrictive gun control laws in a story he wrote in the December issue of Guns & Ammo. This infuriated the magazine’s readers, who raised a storm of protest, flooding the internet with condemnations of Metcalf and the magazine. In damage control mode, Guns & Ammo immediately fired Metcalf and published an apology to its subscribers.
In his article, Metcalf completely misconstrued the language of the Second Amendment of the U.S, Constitution which states: “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.” Seizing on the word “regulated”, Metcalf argued that this means that government regulations which restrict fireams should NOT be considered “infringements” of the right to keep and bear arms.
Metcalf’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is faulty. In the Second Amendment, “regulated” does not refer to gun control — it is an adjective describing the status of the militia. As used in the 18th Century with reference to militias (and army units), “well regulated” meant “trained and organized”. If you read the dispatches from the Revolutionary War, the phrase “well regulated militia” was used to describe units that were trained, had a command structure, and were drilled regularly.* In modern parlance, we might use the phrase “trained and disciplined” in place of “well regulated”.
In any case, Metcalf has been fired from his position as technical Editor of Guns & Ammo. The magazine’s Chief Editor, Jim Bequette, issued this statement, disavowing Metcalf’s words, and announcing that Metcalf’s “association with Guns & Ammo has officially ended”:
To see what gave rise to this controversy, here is a reprint of Dick Metcalf’s December 2013 column, entitled Let’s Talk Limits: Do Certain Firearms Regulations Really Constitute Infringement. (Click Image to load PDF file of this document):
*This is explained in the award-winning history book, Almost A Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence, by John Ferling. In that book, you can read actual military dispatches and orders from the Revolutionary War. Contemporary letters and dispatches often contrasted “well-regulated militias” to untrained units that had no assigned officers and rarely drilled.
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Tags: Dick Metcalf, Guns & Ammo, Protest, Second Amendment, Well Regulated Militia
The problem is that Metcalf’s interpretation of the 2nd amendment is consistent with the Supreme Court’s. The Court says that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms, but that the state has the right to regulate.
California’s restrictions on firearms are Constitutional according to the Court, and new legislation passed in the wake of Sandy Hook, like NY’s 7 round limit will certainly be deemed legal as well.
If you are waiting for the government to give up the right to regulate, you are going to be waiting a long freaking time.
The problem with the Court’s decision is that it leaves the door open to regulation that effectively makes exercising a particular right impossible. For instance, in some states the right to regulate and levy fees is being used to drive abortion clinics out of business in spite of the fact that abortion is constitutionally protected.
I’ll bet a lot of folks belly aching about gun regulation don’t have any problem with regulating abortion clinics out of business, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, eh?
Editor: You raise some valid points regarding how the High Court talked about state-imposed limitations on gun ownership. But that wasn’t the crux of Metcalf’s argument. At the start, Metcalf cites the word “regulated” in the Second Amendment as the basis for his argument. But “regulated”, in this context, does NOT, in fact, refer to “regulatory powers” the Court is talking about. It is clear from historical documents, that “well regulated” (with respect to a militia) was referring to the order and discipline of the militia as a fighting unit. George Washington himself said: “The distinction between a well regulated Army, and a Mob, is the good order and discipline of the first, and the licentious and disorderly behaviour of the latter.” A well-regulated militia, then, is a group of citizen soldiers who are disciplined and not disorderly. Remember how most battles were fought back then — lines of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder loading, aiming, and firing in response to command. That takes “order and discipline”.
The fact that this (Metcalfs) article made it though to print has me wondering who else at G&A thinks like this.
It is unfortunate that this fellow had to loose his job, but when forming an opinion as to what historic documents mean, I think that one needs to do some research so as no to not misconstrue the language. Like many others, he overlooked this important issue. What did the language mean at the time that a document was written? In this case well regulated militia, referred to their level of training, to be able to perform their military function. In modern slang, whether they had their “stuff” together. Evidently Mr. Metcalf did not.
I remember when Tom Gresham made the statement about people not needing to own AR type rifles. They wanted to lynch him too, and rightly so. But I still hate to see someones job and career take a beating over their opinion, even though it is so short sighted.
Ben,
when they classify your hunting rig a “sniper rifle” and come after it you’ll be belly aching too.
Take a breath and read the article.
To be regulated as a civilian would imply being bound by laws and regulations…
To be regulated as a member of a militia would imply the same.
Is the right to bear arms as a civilian not subject to any discipline?
Consider the issue of freedom that the rabid and emotional bring to this debate… does that not extend to those having a considered and logical contribution to the understanding of this issue….?
Or does freedom only extend to those who agree with you?
If we are going to be talking about being short-sighted, don’t only stand half way back when you consider the issues…
Earl, I think your missing the point, in the context of the constitution regulated means trained, not regulated by laws. The second part, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, is pretty darn clear.
If you don’t want to get hot and bothered over the infringement of our freedoms, fine, but they are being eroded every day and it is about time people noticed instead of sitting by.
Metcalf should have known his readership, Guns & Ammo was correct in canning him. If his opinion of the 2nd Amendment is the same as that of liberals, he should go work for the NY Times. He can express his first amendment right there all he wants.
I never figured that Dick Metcalf would falter like this.He is a shooter,hunter ,fisherman,backpacker,pistol shooter,what in the world was he thinking.His mind seemed to me like taking a firearms course was his intent after maligning our constitution like that. If George Washington was alive he would accuse him of being a traitor to the united states period.It is a sad day to see his career end with such shame and ignorance.I think he was mesmorized by the sandy hook syndrome.I think it was set in motion to tear our whole constitution apart for one madman who has affected a huge chunk of our population in a negative way towards gun owners in general.
A feeding frenzy is a nasty thing. It should be unnecessary and unacceptable to howl down and hound out anyone who utters a view you disagree with, regardless of whether they reside within your own ranks or not. Worse, it reeks of extremism and desperation. We pride ourselves on being responsible citizens -self-regulating if you will- and rightly defend our ownership of firearms on the basis of our self-discipline and the ability it gives us to defend ourselves and others. The lynch-mob reaction that has led to Metcalf’s sacking and Bequette’s abject self-abasement belies that identity and as such does our cause no good at all. I am ashamed at it.
Problem is when a gun writer makes statements like Metcalf’s then the anti gun forces take it and run with it saying even gun owners support more restrictions.
Same thing happened with Jim Zumbo and the article he wrote a few years saying that semi auto rifles were the tools of terrorist.
More recently there was an article in Recoil magazine where the author state that a certain type of gun should only be possessed by law enforcement.
In both of these situations there was an immediate, very negative response that resulted in the authors being fired and a significant impact to the publications they wrote for.
Metcalf can have any opinion he wants as is his right. And customers of a publication have the same right to voice their opinions. The fact that customers”vote” with their pocket book means those publications have to make a business decision on how to respond. Odds are if Guns and Ammo hadn’t fired him, they would have lost a lot of advertisement revenue.
Metcalf has contributed a lot in the past to the shooting industry but that certainly doesn’t excuse what he wrote and he has to live with those consequences.
It was an opinion piece, that while contrary to mainstream, was not unreasonable in its construction.
The reaction to it shows a distinct lack of maturity and that is concerning.
No doubt the customers can respond anyway they see fit, and no wonder the other side of the gun issue debate believes we all need regulation.
How can you expect them not to believe that they have to control the immature and unreasonable, particularly if they are armed?
If we cannot dialog about the issues amongst ourselves, we are certainty not equipped to be creditable in the wider context.
Those of us who appreciate that our inalienable rights dont come from man understand that whenever men (or governments) get involved in tweaking those rights (despite their good intentions) our rights get abridged, when it comes to our natural rights there is no compromise that will ever improve them, to us the real extremists are those who would try to separate us from our birthright, fierarms ownership is arlready heavily restricted, it’s an insult to honorable men that the only thing keeping them from becoming criminals is legislation. As for Mr Metcalf, he freely exercised his first amendment right as did the readership of G&A, his termination was the decision of his boss, employment is not a Contitutional right
Metcalf has every right to his ignorant opinion and we have the right to not spend our money supporting him and his ignorance.
That it even showed up in G&A is shocking to all of us who understand what is going on now.
Personally, I’m not going to ever buy another G&A product until they prove that Metcalf was an anomaly.
Those who would be our masters are engaged in destroying ALL of the US constitution and we have no room for any ignorance in our so called “institutions”.
Metcalf and EVERYONE who OKed it should be slapped down hard.
They can always get a job bashing gun “nuts” on one of the alphabet stations.
Which is imo, where they belong.