The Right is Intrinsic The Right is Intrinsic By: jfma@ix.netcom.com (James F. Mayer ) Date: 23 Sep 1995 16:47:30 GMT I'm new at this and this is my first posting. I wish to make my feelings about this subject known and to possibly educate some of the misinformed. This is a paper I wrote for my American National Government course at the college that I am attending. I think that it would be informative not only to those who share my views but to those who don't. It may give rise to some to research the subject more fully and become more knowledgeable about the subject and maybe make some converts. TO REMAIN FREE OR BECOME OPPRESSED IS THE SECOND AMENDMENT AN EMBARRASSMENT OR A VITAL GUARANTEE? "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." Imagine this. You're at home sleeping. There comes a pounding on your on your door and a person is yelling "Open the door or we will break it down." After opening the door a group of uniformed officials storm through your home tearing cushions from your couches, going through your cabinets and ripping the mattresses from your beds. They then order all of you to remove all your clothing so that they can strip search you, which is done with none to much gentleness. You and your family are subjected to guffaws and insulting remarks about your physique from the searchers. You are then told to get your clothes back on and you and your wife and children are herded out side. They bring in the dogs. They run them through the whole house, sniffing and pawing through everything you own. By now the once clean home is a shambles. One of the dogs begins to wag his tail briskly and bark. His handler shouts "I think we've found it." Sounds like what might have happened in Nazi Germany or during a modern drug bust, but if the anti-gun folks have their way, this could be right in your or your neighbors home if you are suspected of owning a weapon. They found a single bullet. A banned object and subject to immediate imprisonment of all inhabitants of the dwelling, forfeiture of all property, confiscation of all money on the scene and all bank accounts without trial. The right to self defense is an intrinsic right of all living things. Cats have claws and stink bugs have stink for self defense. Man just happens to be capable of making defensive tools i.e. weapons for his defense. Man has been constructing weapons ever since the first one picked up a branch and flung it at an attacking rival group or a predator as chimpanzees do when threatened. This, one of our most basic rights, is under attack by factions of our own government and other special interest groups. These organizations are bent on disarming law abiding citizens of our country. They are bent on depriving the people of this country of their basic right to individual self defense. Is it that our government is afraid that the general populace may become tired of their confiscation of our property without due process and invasion of our privacy? Are they plotting something that will deprive us of some of our other constitutionally affirmed rights? Is this the precursor of an effort by those who believe in a one world government to make us "manageable" when they attempt to consolidate us into their fold? Is it the first step in the repeal of the other rights to make us "slaves" to their whims? Let us hope not! We had one revolution to gain our freedom from an oppressive government I'd hate to think that we would have to have another to free us again. I am very concerned about this present Executive administration if not even afraid of what liberties they may take with our rights. The President has blatantly violated his oath of office by proposing to congress the enactment of the Brady Law and the Crime Control Law with the "assault weapons" ban and by signing them into law, both of which are clearly unconstitutional. The oath of office states that he will, to the best of his ability, "preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States", but has consistently ignored his obligation to the supreme law of the land. By failing to recognize that the Constitution protects the right to posses weapons he has intentionally weakened the document maybe even setting a precedent that the President is above the supreme law of the land. This is a frightening prospect. There are many government officials who think that they control the country and that the general populace is subject to their beck and call. Some believe that we are subject to their interpretations of the law no matter how far fetched or how they stretch the true meaning to fit their political or social agendas. The present administration propounds that the Democrats that lost their seats in congress did so as martyrs and as heroes to the cause of gun control. In actuality, they lost their seats because they passed gun control and other measures against the will of the people. These same people also say that we need more gun control because the crime rate is still increasing and getting more guns off the street will solve the problem. Criminals will get guns or some other form of weapon one way or the other to do their work. What makes this administration think criminals will follow the law against firearm possession when they don't obey the ones against murder, robbery, burglary or rape in place now. Being criminals they no not follow the law as it is. I believe that the Second Amendment is the most important Amendment to our Constitution. It was made part of the supreme law of the land to affirm that to bear arms was an intrinsic right to self defense of all men. The Second Amendment was designed to put the government subject to the will of the people so that if the government did become tyrannical, the people would have the ability to do their duty, to put it back in its proper place by the use of force if need be. The Second Amendment is an element in the balance of power the people retain to control their government. Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Paper #29 is quoted to reflect the sentiment of the people of the time and to make perfectly clear the meaning of this amendment: "If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist." The founders felt that an armed populace would be able protect themselves from governmental or military tyranny. In a pamphlet by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, among others, it is propounded that "The Second Amendment does not give an individual the right to own a handgun." This is a major deception. As stated earlier this is a right protected by the constitution and most assuredly an individual right not a collective one granted to the states to form their own militia. The militia mentioned in the Second Amendment is the body of the people. All the anti-gun organizations have a similar incremental agenda. They push for some small gain and propound a great success for their cause and continue to their next, more restrictive step even though there is clearly no reduction in the crime they purport to be reducing. This is evident and stated blatantly in a pamphlet by The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence: "The goal of CSGV is the orderly elimination of most handguns and assault weapons from the United States. CSGV seeks to ban handguns and assault weapons from importation, manufacture, sale, transfer, ownership, possession and use by the general American public." They consider the Brady bill a success and tout its effectiveness, but even before Brady was passed, they already had Brady 2 written and ready to be submitted to congress. This bill would impose more restrictive controls on gun ownership than the first. Thus incrementally whittling away at the right to posses weapons until they are essentially all banned. These people believe that once guns are eliminated the killing will stop. This is nonsense. Look at what is going on in Rwanda. People are killing each other wholesale with machetes or any other sharp object they can find. They also purport that: "The Second Amendment was adopted to assure the states that they would have the right to maintain their own militia to protect against federal and foreign encroachment. In contemporary America the National Guard is the militia." The Constitution indeed guarantees the right to bear arms as anindividual right. The historical proof of this lies in the Proposed Amendments of December 18, 1787 by the Pennsylvania Minority, a precursor of the current document. Proposition number seven states: "That the people have the right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and their own state, or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them unless for crimes committed..." This excerpt from Federalist Paper # 29 is also a confirmation as what the framers of the Constitution were thinking at the time during it's ratification process: "Little more can reasonably be aimed at with respect to the people at large than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year." In the Proposed Amendments of the Virginia Convention of June 27, 1788 the seventeenth article of their proposal was: "That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state". Anyone that was disinclined to bear arms would be required "upon payment of an equivalent to employ another to bear arms in his stead." They were serious that the citizenry, the general public, be armed. Furthermore the National Guard can be called into the service of the federal government and can be required to participate in military exercises. This makes them an auxiliary arm of the federal government and a force to be protected against. In order to protect oneself from the possible tyrannical use of the federal military or state militia it would be necessary to be as well as if not superiorly armed. Any weapon that the armed services would posses would be necessary to be possessed by the civilian population at large if we are to protect ourselves from military tyranny. Any weapon equal to or greater than the weapons capability of the military is the right of the people to posses, use, and practice with. At one point in history it was mandatory to show proficiency with weapons or the person could be fined. This weapons practice was to be performed on Sunday. The final four words, "shall not be infringed." was made part of the amendment to guarantee that law makers could not abridge or restrict by law the right to bear arms without violating constitutional law. Confirmation of intent is in the Proposed Amendments of December 18, 1787 by the Pennsylvania Minority. In other words the right to posses weapons was an inalienable right that could not be restricted in any form by the government at any level. The idea that the individual citizens maintain and bear arms has a long tradition. Greek Philosopher Aristotle thought that this right was a necessary part of being a true citizen and an element of participation in the political system. The Romans supported the bearing of arms as a public defense against the tyranny. Cicero, an advocate of Roman Republicanism, supported an armed citizenry in his work "De Offices." In the work "Discourse" by Machiavelli, it was stated that in order to keep rulers in line he advocated an armed populace. Thus the right to bear arms by the citizenry to protect them from tyrannical rulers, government usurpation of power or an out of control military was not a new idea for our constitution. After the Revolutionary War the idea of keeping a standing army was not popular. The military was considered a threat to the liberties that they had fought for so valiantly. To protect the borders from possible insults and encroachment by the armies of the British, French and Spanish that still had territories in the New World, a standing army was deemed necessary to the security of the borders. Thus in order to overcome the threat of possible tyranny from a standing army, it was the duty of every citizen to be armed to resist any that may develop from that source. It was also to keep any government power from becoming too powerful and attempting to overthrow the form of government in place. Thus the Second Amendment is a warning that the people have the right and duty to force the government to conform to the supreme law of the land by force if necessary. "A bad cause seldom fails to betray itself." This excerpt from Federalist Paper number forty one exemplifies the fate of the anti-gun proponents. Once the facts are known their rhetoric becomes impossible to believe. The Federalist Papers along with the Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Debates are their worst nightmare. The anti-gun groups accuse the pro-gunners of misinformation,misconception, deceit and deliberate distortion of the Second Amendment of the Constitution when in fact this is exactly their tactic. They pray on the ignorance of the general public to convince people that their cause does not violate the Constitution when in fact their main aim is to distort what the document really stands for. The Brady Bill bans certain weapons referred to as "assault weapons". They are supposedly higher power and only designed to kill people and higher power than what the police can obtain. This is false. The police SWAT teams have weapons that use the .308 round which is a very high power round and is also used extensively for big game hunting. The rounds used in most "assault weapons" are of a smaller caliber and less powerful. These so called "assault weapons" are specifically the weapons that the constitution protects. This was confirmed in the Supreme court case of U.S. vs. Miller which declared that military weapons were protected by the Second Amendment, but the sawed off shot gun he was arrested for was not. The military was not known by the Supreme Court to use such weapons at that time. In fact the trench guns of World War One were very similar to shotguns. The founding fathers wanted the citizenry to have equal or greater fire power than the military to defend themselves from the military if it should become the instrument of tyranny or become unmanageable. All is not all bad news however. Some states of late have passed less restrictive gun laws than were previously enacted. In Texas they have loosened the requirements to posses and carry weapons. We must demand that our natural right to self defense is not removed, denied or restricted. If we forfeit this right we all will be subjected to more crime and the possibility of oppression by our own government. Incidents of government oppression are apparent even now. The Waco massacre and the Randy Weaver incident are the most prominent. We must ever be vigilant and defend our rights. BIBLIOGRAPHY Rossiter, Clinton The Federalist Papers, New York: Mentor 1961 Ketcham, Ralph The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates, New York: Mentor 1986 Tartaro, Joseph P. The Great Assault Weapon Hoax Washington: Second Amendment Foundation, 1993 Weidman, Steven; Williams, Paul Issues and Answers: An Educational Series Designed to Enhance Your Knowledge of Fire Arms and Social Problems, Washington: The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms 1994 Gotlieb, Allen M. Gun Ownership: A Constitutional Right, Washington: The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms 1994 Hosford, John A. ....An Individual Right A Report by the United States Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Washington: The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms 1982 Information Plus: Gun Control, Wylie, Texas Halbrook, Stephen P. That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, Albuquerque University of New Mexico Press 1984 Peterson, Dan Our Second Amendment Under Fire, The American Legion, January 1994 pg. 24 Kates, Don B. Jr. The Second Amendment and the Ideology of Self Protection, Constitutional Commentary Vol. 9 No. 1 Winter 1992 Coalition to Stop Gun Violence: Pamphlet The Educational Fund to End Handgun Violence: Various Fact Sheets The Educational Fund to End Handgun Violence: Grassroots Manual Printing assistance provided by The Crusaders TV program. Handgun Control Inc., Information packet