Ensuring Domestic Tranquility

Eight-year-old Cooper Roberts was shot in the Highland Park, Illinois July 4th celebration by a sniper.  His life hung in the balance for weeks and will be tragically changed forever as he is paralyzed from the waist down.  His mother and brother also suffered gunshot wounds.  That is not supposed to happen in a nation whose Constitution pledges to “insure domestic Tranquility.” 

That phrase has a long history as well as being a still unmet promise.  In 1786, Western Massachusetts farmers organized an armed force to prevent the state from collecting taxes they could not afford to pay.  Their effort to overthrow the state government in early 1787 failed, but Shays Rebellion was a driving force in the call for a stronger national government, which couldn’t even find funds for troops to put down that rebellion.  The Constitution which emerged from the Federal Convention that followed that same year promised as Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist #9, “A firm union [that] will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the States as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection.” 

The Preamble to the Constitution, a statement of the ends of the new government it established, thus cites as one goal to “insure domestic Tranquility.”  That phrase was not just rhetorical flourish in the first century under the Constitution.  In 1794, President Washington used overwhelming national force to quash the Whiskey Rebellion, a revolt of Western Pennsylvania farmers angered at a federal tax on distilled spirits.  The Civil War, of course, stands as the most historic example of using force against domestic insurrection.   

There have been other instances: suppressing the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War, managing protests against the Vietnam War and ensuring civil rights laws were upheld, for example.  Yet “insure domestic Tranquility” is not a phrase that rolls of the lips of most Americans.  Still, what that phrase requires is now a critical question.   

·       The January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol demonstrated the impact of Americans willing to use violence to alter a national election.

·       Ongoing physical threats against government officials – from judges to school officials, federal, state and local officials and poll workers and their families - are unforgivably routine.

·       A national poll in December 2021 revealed that 34 percent of Americans think that violence against the government is sometimes justified, up from 10 percent in the 1990s.

·       Another December 2021 poll found that 62 percent of Americans expect the losing side in a future presidential election to react violently.

The need to “insure domestic Tranquility” applies to more than political violence:

·       The August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia demonstrated the ability of white nationalists to bring shocking violence to a city.

·       Protests against the deaths of African Americans at the hands of police sparked massive protests which sometimes led to violence and looting.

·       The Southern Poverty Law Center identified 733 hate groups in America in 2021, encompassing a wide range of “justifications” for hateful and sometimes violent behavior, from racism to anti-LGBTQ to anti-immigrant to anti-government beliefs.

·       Mass shootings have increased in recent years, more evidence of the failure to “insure domestic Tranquility.”  Research by the National Institute of Justice covering 1966-2019 found than 20 percent of mass shootings took place in just the last five years of that period.  In the first six months of 2022 there were 306 mass shootings (defined as including at least four injuries and/or deaths).

·       Four in ten Americans either own a gun or live in a household with someone who does.  There are 120 guns in private hands for every 100 Americans, more than double the per capita gun ownership of the next highest country. Annual firearm sales have increased 300 percent since 2004, with more than 40 million now purchased every year. The preponderant reason given by gun buyers is self-defense, suggesting gun owners feel they cannot count on the government to protect them or that they may need to protect themselves against the government.

While there are laws to deal with violence against domestic tranquility, they don’t sufficiently prevent it.  While there is a definition of domestic terrorism in law, there is no law making it – or material support for it - a federal crime, as there is for foreign (e.g. Jihadist) terrorism.  (Civil rights groups and others are understandably worried about how such laws might be used to suppress and punish Constitutionally-protected dissent.)

Nor is this just an issue of “gun control.” That’s too narrow a definition of the problem for the kinds of issues highlighted here.

The United States is a very “un-tranquil” society.  Yet no consensus exists or seems to even be sought on what the meaning of “insure domestic Tranquility” is today or the steps needed to achieve it.  The Constitution promises a life that we are failing to deliver for millions of citizens.  It’s time we resurrect that phrase, in our conversation and action.    

Photo Credit: https://www.gofundme.comfkxwjn-the-roberts-family-fundraiser