Voters will find two constitutional amendments on their Nov. 2 ballots. One will eliminate mental illness as a reason to take away a citizen’s right to vote. Another will give individual Kansans the right under the state constitution to own a gun.
First on the ballot will be the gun clause.
It states: “4. Individual right to bear arms; armies. (This sentence is then stricken from the article: “The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security.”) In its place is the following:
“A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and state, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for any other lawful purpose; but standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty and not be tolerated, and the military shall be in strict subordination to the civil power.”
The purpose of the amendment is to differentiate Kansas rights from the federal Second Amendment, which can be read to apply only to militia. Many legal scholars, however, hold that the Second Amendment applies to individuals as well as organized militia. That has long been the view of the National Rifle Association and its fellow travelers. If they are correct, and the current Supreme Court apparently sides with them, then there is no need for Kansas or any other state to duplicate that stipulation.
On the other hand, passage of the amendment can do no harm — unless the bit on standing armies is some day read to outlaw the Kansas National Guard, which seems highly unlikely since the Guard is a federal creature. (The gratuitous condemnation of the U.S. military as dangerous to the freedom of U.S. citizens, is, however, passing strange.)
But go ahead, vote yes. Passing the amendment will affect no Kansas law or the behavior of Kansans and adds only a few words to our constitution.
QUESTION TWO proposes a needed reform. All it does is take three words out of the constitution by removing “mental illness or” from a paragraph which limits the reasons for denying an otherwise qualified person the right to vote. The pertinent paragraph is titled, “Disqualification to vote.” and reads: “The legislature may, by law, exclude persons from voting because of mental illness or commitment to a jail or penal institution. No person convicted of a felony under the laws of any state or of the United States, unless pardoned or restored to his civil rights, shall be qualified to vote.” The amendment strikes “of mental illness” from the above paragraph.
While it surely is true that some mental illnesses render a person unable to vote intelligently, the reform is needed because the term mental illness covers such a broad range of afflictions that the law cannot be enforced efficiently or equitably. Depression, for example, is one of the more common mental illnesses. Depression, however, does not necessarily rob a person of the ability to reason or come to reasonable conclusions or in any other way impair a person’s ability to function as a citizen.
As the same may be said of many other mental illnesses, the constitution should be amended as proposed in Question No. 2 on the ballot, and mental illness should no longer be a reason to deny a person the right to vote.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
N.B. Gentle reader: please note that I put aside the very strong temptation to observe that it would be entirely unfair to declare that the mentally ill may not vote while allowing the certifiably commitable to run for office. E.L.
