US-China Relations Updates

Award Winning ESSAY by Jacqueline Zhang，JFK High School，Sacramento，California

It was my first time. It started from the devastatingly deafening alarm. Everyone seemed to understand what was going on, judging from their swift responses. They turned off the classroom lights, let down the window blinds, and barricaded the door with stacks of desks. The alarm never stopped ringing in my ear. My eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden darkness and began showing sparks of colored particles. Minutes became hours while we were in the silent and still room. Some classmates were lying down, bored; some were texting their friends; some were keeping tabs on whether or not this was a drill. While everyone slowly got used to the blaring alarm, I was affected by this sudden sensory overstimulation – the constant pounding of my heartbeat was juxtaposed with the sudden knock on our classroom door.

After a while, the alarm finally came to a halt. Everyone returned to their seats and was expected to go about their day. As a recent immigrant to the US, I was alienated by my unfamiliarity with “Run, Hide, Fight.” That was the first of many times we had lockdown drills, intruder drills, real lockdowns, actual intruders… Eventually, though I had just been here for around three years, I had become accustomed to this regular practice of “what should you do if someone tries to kill you?”

This experience, while common in today’s schools, had not been a regular practice in past decades. The “new” active shooter drills conducted by schools nationwide emerged as a way to fight against the increasing gun violence cases, especially in “sensitive” places such as school grounds. The increase in gun casualty is indirectly tied to D.C. v. Heller and McDonald vs. City of Chicago, the two landmark cases that set a precedent to how gun cases shall be ruled according to the Second Amendment. This Amendment has been twisted and manipulated to fit agendas so much that all its meaning was squeezed out like a dry sponge, so the question that we should explore is: can today’s teens successfully penetrate the 400 years of arm-bearing history in this country?

Dick Heller, a special police officer, was refused his registration certificate for a handgun at home for self defense. He then filed suit in the Federal District Court, but was dismissed. However, the Court of Appeals reversed the case. This led to the 2008 D.C. v. Heller case in 2008. The majority decision, as presented by Justice Scalia, essentially broke down the Second Amendment into two clauses – prefatory and operative. The first clause “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” is an introduction to the second, operative clause, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” By this reasoning, the majority concluded that the Second Amendment not only protects guns used for a militia, it also protects the individual’s rights to bear arms. This case set a precedent on the interpretation of the Second Amendment. District Courts will now look to this case to make any decision related to gun ownership. Similarly, McDonald v. City of Chicago in 2010 explored the incorporation of the Second Amendment in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process clause and Privileges and Immunities Clause. The majority opinion heavily relied on the history of the Second Amendment and ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. The result of these two cases and a number of other similar ones is that gun regulations became harder and harder to propose in Congress.

Another issue demonstrated by these cases is the interpretation of the Second Amendment. Some judges who use textualism, like Scalia, would rigidly follow the plain text of the constitutional law, agreeing that the Second Amendment states that the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed. Other judges might argue that law should be interpreted

according to the current culture and context instead. When even our country’s judges and justices cannot reach a unanimous interpretation of the Second Amendment, is it even a law worth abiding and enforcing? When the Second Amendment was written in 1789, the founding fathers likely did not envision powerful assault weapons or high capacity magazines. The “arms” in the Second Amendment would look like a single-shot rifle in 1789, but an AK15 in 2023. Justice Breyer stated in the dissenting opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), “I fear that history will be an especially inadequate tool when it comes to modern cases presenting modern problems.” Why should we rule modern cases with the mindset of a 1789 founding father, who only prioritized the wants and needs of rich white Americans, who owned slaves and considered African Americans only 3⁄5 of a person, who denied women’s rights for years and years? The chokehold the founding fathers’ doctrine has on Americans led to an inelastic read of the constitution in the Supreme Court – a complete 180° from a living document that the constitution was designed to become.

Under this discourse around the Second Amendment, it is easy to consider the lack of gun regulation a fault of the court or Congress. In reality, it is the fault of the entire culture of our nation. When the founding fathers wrote the Bill of Rights, it was a time after Britain’s monarchy. In hopes of escaping the same destiny of tyranny, Americans had to find a way to protect themselves against the government. As a result, the “prefatory” clause of the Second Amendment was included to ensure that the people will have the right to self-defense in a militia against the government, as well as outside intruders. This deep-rooted distrust in our country’s leaders has made gun regulations all the more difficult. The strongest opposition to gun control includes the National Rifle Association (NRA), and conservative Republicans who frequently use self-defense as their excuse to gun ownership. They believe that instead of reinforcing stricter gun laws, we should make guns more accessible to everyone, so we can all protect ourselves from each other. Why is it that the majority of guns were bought with the purpose of “self-defense”, but the bullets end up in school children’s corpses? This culture of “peace through strength”, a doctrine used in Republican party platforms, is equivalent to an Orwellian read into “war is peace.” In order to feel peaceful and protected, American citizens should all bear life-threatening machinery. The constant war against one another parallels the very reality that Orwell tried to warn democracy against in 1984. Republicans have the same attitude towards military and foreign affairs. Combine this notion with predominantly white and Republican small rural states being overrepresented in the House of Senate, Americans now have inefficient law enforcement and policy making.

The discussion of the desire to bear arms led to my central argument: there is no place for true reform until the culture around violence changes. State regulations do not mean less guns are in the market or in the streets or in people’s homes. It simply means there are less government-registered arms. Even if Congress successfully passed laws to regulate guns, they cannot regulate people’s desire for guns. As long as this desire is present in our culture, there will be ways, legal or illegal, for Americans to get their hands on guns. With the powerful and wealthy NRA lobbying our policymakers, regular citizens, especially teenagers, virtually have no say in gun reform. The people that suffer the most consequences of gun violence are the same people that are ignored and silenced by society.

While time has changed, people’s perception of gun ownership has not. How are we, teenagers, supposed to voice and plead our case to adult lawmakers? My answer to this question is for us to wait. Wait till the new generations become registered voters, legislators, educators, and parents. When we start teaching children not to fear new ideas and changes， when we learn to have empathy, when we fix problems diplomatically instead of violently, when we have Judges and Justices that consider our reality instead of history when we stop dividing by partisan lines… That is when we can change the world.

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More info on Operation Protect and Defend （OPD） Essay background：https://sites.google.com/site/jlcsummerinstitute/operation-protect-and-defend