The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is an ABSOLUTE right no questions ASKED!
Well here we go again…and who among us can possible say, “I’m surprised!” as the Democrat gun-grabbers, under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder, begin their assault on our Right to Keep and Bear Arms once more.
This time they’re not going to do it “for our own good,” they’re going to attempt it for the good of Mexico. Mexico?!?!! Yep, Mexico.
Now I know what you are going to say, “Since when is the Attorney General of the United States of America supposed to be working for the good of the citizens of the United States of Mexico?”
You simpleton, didn’t you know, it’s in the Constitution…somewhere…at least it must be…after all, he’s doing it and he wouldn’t do anything that is not within the purview of his office…would he?
Unfortunately the answer to that simple, if somewhat sarcastic, question is a resounding “Damn right he would.” Democrats and especially Liberal Democrats, of which there are at least a few, or so I am told, believe our Constitution is an impediment. Most certainly our newly elected President believes that and said so way back in 2001 when he was just a simple corrupt Illinois State Senator talking on Chicago’s public radio station In that interview, our Lord High Empty Suit in Chief, bemoans:
“…as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted it in the same way that, generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties — says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted.”
For any who believe in the Constitution as originally written, that entire comment is frightening. For him to say that the Warren Court “wasn’t that radical” is, to say the least, a unique understanding of the most activist court in American history. He then complains that they (the Warren Court) failed to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.”
Sorry Mr. President, I love those essential constraints. I want them to be respected, just as I want the Constitution to be respected…as it was written, not as you wish it was written. Those essential constraints were placed in our Constitution to protect the citizens from people like you.
So anyway, as I was saying our new Attorney General, the man whose job is to ensure that the Constitution is protected, has suggested that a new, even more draconian version of President Clinton’s so-called “Assault Weapons Ban” known as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 should be reinstated. He has also suggested that Congress pursue another Liberal red-herring, the so-called “gun show loop hole,” a chimera that Liberals continually claim to have seen, but have never proven to exist.
Here are the facts. The Assault Weapons Ban had no effect on crime in the United States. It did not reduce violent deaths due to firearms or “ugly gun’s” in any appreciable or measureable way. When it was allowed to sunset in 1994 after ten years, there was no appreciable effect. Since the law was allowed to lapse, the murder rate has hit a 43 year low…I am not claiming that this has any relationship to the lapse of the gun ban, I merely point it out the absurdity of the claims made by those who seek to reinstate the law. Obviously if the ban had any positive effect, we should have seen an uptick in violent deaths after the sunset date…we did not.
Let me once more explain what the Second Amendment of the Constitution is and is not.
The Second Amendment does not grant Americans the right to keep and bear arms…it forbids the government from “infringing” on that pre-existing, natural right which every law abiding American citizen has. In this sense, President Obama was right in his lament, if not in his sentiment. The Constitution is a charter of liberties which the government is expressly forbidden from infringing. The Amendments don’t grant us rights, they proscribe the government from limiting those rights.
America is unique among all other free nations in that our rights don’t come from the government, they come from God. They are inherent rights which pre-existed the constitution or any government. Our Founding Fathers recognized this fact and thus codified the concept in both the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…”
Thus we know from the Declaration, that our rights come from our “Creator.” Our Founding Fathers recognized that any rights which are granted by men or their governments may be taken away by those same men or governments. Rights which come from God however, may never legally be taken away by men or the governments of men. They are “unalienable” rights. They can never legally be severed from their possessors. They are absolute.
Now as to the purpose of having the right to keep and bear arms, that too seemed intuitively obvious to our forefathers. They believed that the ownership of property was the ultimate inherent, unalienable right and that all other rights sprang from that right. Thus, if the ownership of property is a right, then a man must be capable of protecting that property against any and all who would attempt to dispossess him of it. Therefore the possession of a weapon capable of allowing a citizen to protect his property was an essential and undeniable right.
We can look to the Declaration of Independence once more for guidance. Continuing from the above quote:
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
If it be a man’s right, or rather say the “governed’s” right to abolish any government which “becomes destructive” to our “unalienable rights,” then those “governed” must possess the ability to bring such a change about. This means a modern firearm capable of defending the citizen against any who would oppress him, including his government’s own military.
Many are shocked when I say this. They will scoff and ask, “You mean that your neighbor should have a howitzer?” My answer, according to my understanding of the intent of our Founding Fathers is “Yes, if that neighbor feels that a howitzer is necessary for him to defend himself against an oppressive government.” Radical thinking…not according to the Framers of our Constitution.
Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, and many others wrote expressly about the necessity of the citizen possessing contemporary firearms. Here are a few quotes listed on the GunCite website:
“We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;”
—Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. Memorial Edition 16:45, Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.
“To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.”
—Alexander Hamilton
“[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
—James Madison,The Federalist Papers, No. 46.
“To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.”
—John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States 475 (1787-1788)
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”
—Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).
“Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
—Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.
“[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it.”
—Richard Henry Lee, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined. O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone…Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation…inflicted by those who had no power at all?”
—Patrick Henry to Edmund Pendleton at The Virginia ratifying convention June 2 through June 26, 1788
And never forget the words of Benjamin Franklin:
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
—Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
All of these man believed it to be an absolute necessity for citizens to possess firearms. I don’t believe they were advocating that right for the purpose of hunting.
The assumption that these “arms” of which our forefathers wrote so eloquently must be “modern firearms.” is a simple extension of the purpose for which they advocated possession of those firearms, to defend against tyranny whether it be from the state, or any group of usurpers.
In the 1780′s a large group of men armed with muskets was a match for any army, because the weapons were the same. If it was the intent of our Founding Fathers that we be capable of defending ourselves against the tyranny of the state, then it only follows that we be armed in a similar manner as any military force the state might use against us. The logical extension of our founders words is that every law-abiding citizen who so chooses should have at their disposal according to their capability to afford them any weapon available to our military troops.
This of course means the striking down of the National Firearms Act of 1934, which bans the unlicensed possession of short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, and firearms capable of firing in fully automatic mode. It also mandates the striking down of the Gun Control Act of 1968 which added any weapon with a rifled barrel larger than .50 caliber. It also includes bombs, explosives of certain types and any ammunition that contains more than 1/4 oz of explosive, grenades, etc.
Some, perhaps many would call this an extreme view of our right to keep and bear arms, but according to the words and beliefs of our Founding Fathers as they made them known in their writings, it is the only logical conclusion.
Our Founding Fathers were suspicious of governments and powerful centrally controlled governments most of all. Judging by the actions taken so far by this new President and his appointees that suspicion appears to be justified. In closing I will add this little poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power as they began persecuting and prosecuting those with whom they disagreed:
“In Germany, they came first for the Communists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then…they came for me
…And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”
Can the same thing happen in America? If the people fall asleep, you better believe it can…and will.
Long Live Our American Republic!!!!
