-
- * James Madison: Americans have "the advantage of
being armed" -- unlike the citizens of other countries where "the
governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
-
- * Patrick Henry: "The great objective is that every
man be armed. . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun."
-
- * George Mason: "To disarm the people [is] the best
and most effectual way to enslave them."
-
- * Samuel Adams: "The Constitution shall never be
construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable
citizens from keeping their own arms."
-
- * Alexander Hamilton: "The best we can hope for
concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
-
- * Richard Henry Lee: "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."
-
-
- The chief reason America has remained a free country
is the widespread private ownership of firearms. Individual ownership of
guns made the American Revolution possible. The principal purpose of the
Second Amendment was to maintain our freedom from government. It is an
insult to our heritage to imply that the Founding Fathers wrote the Second
Amendment just to protect deer hunters.
-
- My good friend, the late Reverend Stephen Dunker, C.M.,
was a missionary in China who was imprisoned by the Communists during the
early 1950s. I heard him tell of his experiences many times. When the Communists
first took over the area where he lived, they appeared to be good rulers.
They established law and order and cleaned up the traffic in drugs and
prostitutes. Then one day the Communist bosses announced, "You can
see that we have established a good society and you have no need for your
guns. Everyone must come in the night and dump all guns in the town square."
The people believed and obeyed. The next day, the reign of terror began,
with public executions and cruel imprisonments. Everyone accused of being
a "landlord" was dragged through the streets and executed; a
"landlord" was anyone who farmed his little plot of ground with
two water buffalo instead of one.
-
- Gun confiscation leads to a loss of freedom, increased
crime, and the government moving to the left. This has already happened
in England and Australia. After Great Britain banned most guns in 1997,
making armed self-defense punishable as murder, violence skyrocketed because
criminals know that law abiding citizens have been disarmed. Armed crime
rose 10% in 1998. The Sunday Times of London reported on the new black
market in guns: "Up to 3 million illegal guns are in circulation in
Britain, leading to a rise in drive-by shootings and gangland-style execution."
There has been such a heavy increase in the use of knives for violent attacks
that new laws have been passed giving police the power to search anyone
for knives in designated areas.
-
- In 1996 Australia banned 60% of all firearms and required
registration of all guns and the licensing of gun owners. Police confiscated
640,381 firearms, going door to door without search warrants. Two years
later, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that all crime had
risen and armed robberies were up 44%.
-
- Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D., described his first-hand experience
in Cuba. Before 1958, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had all citizens
register their firearms. After the revolution, Raul and Fidel Castro had
their Communist thugs go door to door and, using the registration lists,
confiscate all firearms. As soon as the Cubans were disarmed, that was
the end of their freedom.
-
- Tyrannical governments kill far more people than private
criminals. The Nazis conducted a massive search-and-seizure operation in
1933 to disarm their political opponents, in 1938 to disarm the Jews, and
when they occupied Europe in 1939-41 they proclaimed the death penalty
for anyone who failed to surrender all guns within 24 hours.
-
- The first line of safety has to be an ability to defend
yourself. In some areas, a woman who is being stalked by her ex-husband
must wait 10 days to buy a gun, even if her life has been threatened. Some
cities criminalize carrying guns for self-defense but make exceptions for
people carrying money or jewels. Are money and jewels more important to
protect than people's lives?
-
- History teaches us that registration leads to the confiscation
of guns and that is the goal of many gun control advocates. Pete Shields,
founder of Handgun Control Inc., told The New Yorker: "The first problem
is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this
country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. The final problem
is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition -- except
for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs,
and licensed gun collectors -- totally illegal."
-
- Atlanta public-safety commissioner George Napper told
U.S News, "If I had my druthers, the only people who would have guns
would be those who enforce the law." Like those who "enforced
the law" at Waco? or at Ruby Ridge? or invading a Miami home to grab
Elián Gonzalez?
-
- The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
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." Polls show that up to 80% of the public believe citizens
have a constitutional right to own guns.
-
- If the First Amendment read "A free press being
necessary to the security of a free state, Congress shall make no law respecting
. . . the freedom of speech, or of the press," nobody would argue
that free speech belongs only to newspapers. Likewise, they should not
argue that the right to keep and bear arms belongs only to government agents.
-
- Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the majority
in U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez (1990), stated that the term "the people"
has the same meaning in the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
All those five amendments in the Bill of Rights use the term "the
people" to guarantee a right for individual citizens, not just some
collective right of the state as a whole. There is no reason to believe
that the Second Amendment uses the term "the people" differently
from the other four amendments.
-
- The claim that "militia" just refers to the
National Guard is ridiculous. The same Congress that passed the Second
Amendment also passed the Militia Act of 1792 which defined militia as
"each and every able-bodied male citizen" from age 18 to 45 (with
some exceptions) and stated that each one shall "provide himself"
with a gun, ammunition, and a bayonet.
-
- The currently effective Militia Act substantially keeps
the same language ("all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age
and . . . under 45"), and further defines militia as: "(1) the
organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia;
and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia
who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia." (10
U.S.C. 311)
-
- In recent years, a scholarly consensus has emerged across
the political spectrum that the Second Amendment protects an individual
right. Between 1980 and 1995, of 39 law review articles, 35 noted the Supreme
Court's prior acknowledgement of the individual right of the Second Amendment
and only four claimed the right is a collective right of the states (and
3 of those 4 were authored or co-authored by persons connected with the
gun-control lobby).
-
- The Founding Fathers on the Right to Own Guns:
-
- * James Madison: Americans have "the advantage of
being armed" -- unlike the citizens of other countries where "the
governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
-
- * Patrick Henry: "The great objective is that every
man be armed. . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun."
-
-
-
- * George Mason: "To disarm the people [is] the best
and most effectual way to enslave them."
-
-
-
- * Samuel Adams: "The Constitution shall never be
construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable
citizens from keeping their own arms."
-
-
-
- * Alexander Hamilton: "The best we can hope for
concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
-
-
-
- * Richard Henry Lee: "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."
-
- _____
-
-
- For more information: John Lott Jr., More Guns, Less
Crime (2nd edition, 2000). Miguel A. Faria Jr., M.D., articles on England
and Australia in the Medical Sentinel, May/June 2000, and letter on Cuba
to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, December 28, 1999. Professor
Sanford Levinson, "The Embarrassing Second Amendment," Yale Law
Journal, 1989. Professor James D. Wright, "Second Thoughts about Gun
Control," The Public Interest, Spring 1988. Stephen P. Halbrook, That
Every Man Be Armed, Independent Institute, 1994, and the Wall Street Journal,
June 4, 1999. Daniel D. Polsby, Firearms and Crime, Independent Institute,
1997. Joyce Lee Malcolm, lecture at the Independent Institute, September
21, 1999, http://www.independent.org/ For law review articles, gun court
cases, and the 1982 Senate report, see http://www.2ndlawlib.org/. >>
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