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. Second Amendment,
U.S. Constitution
The Following should be read and understood by
more members of the "gun rights" community. Source: Alan
Keyes on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms -
following from A. Keyes Web Site:
Start -- of Alan Keyes Commentary:
Second Amendment Rights
I am a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment is still in
the Constitution of the United States, contrary to what some elites would like
us to believe.
And the 2nd Amendment was not put into the Constitution by the Founders
merely to allow us to intimidate burglars, or hunt rabbits to our hearts'
content. This is not to say that hunting rabbits and turkeys for the family
dinner, or defending against dangers, were not anticipated uses for firearms,
particularly on the frontier -this is true.
But above all, the Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a
long train of abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon our natural
rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights. That is why
the right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill of Rights.
In fact, if we make the judgment that our rights are being systematically
violated, we have not merely the right, but the duty, to resist and overthrow
the power responsible. That duty requires that we maintain the material capacity
to resist tyranny, if necessary, something that it is very hard to do if the
government has all the weapons. A strong case can be made, therefore, that it is
a fundamental DUTY of the free citizen to keep and bear arms.
In our time there have been many folks who don't like to be reminded of all
this. And they try, in their painful way, to pretend that the word
"people" in the 2nd Amendment means something there that it doesn't
mean in any one of the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights. They say
that, for some odd reason, the Founders had a lapse, and instead of putting in
"states" they put in "people." And so it refers to a right
inherent in the state government.
This position is incoherent, and has been disproved by every piece of
legitimate historical research. For example, at one point in Jefferson's letters
he is talking about the militia, and he writes "militia, every able-bodied
man in the state . . . - (every man capable of carrying arms)." That was
the militia. It had nothing to do with the state government. The words
"well-regulated" had something to do with organizing that militia and
drilling it in the style of the 19th century, but 'militia' itself referred to
the able-bodied citizens of the state or commonwealth - not to the state
government.
It would make no sense whatsoever to restrict the right to keep and bear arms
to state governments, since the principle on which our policy is based, as
stated in the Declaration, recognizes that any government, at any level, can
become oppressive of our rights. And we must be prepared to defend ourselves
against its abuses.
But the movement against 2nd Amendment rights is not just a threat to our
capacity to defend ourselves physically against tyranny. It is also part of the
much more general assault on the very notion that human beings are capable of
moral responsibility. Consider, for example, the phony assertion that certain
weapons should be banned because 'they have no purpose except to kill people.'
This debate is not about certain kinds of weapons that kill people; all kinds of
weapons can kill. It is people that kill people, and they can use countless
kinds of weapons to do so, if killing is in their hearts.
So let's get down to the real issue: are we grownups, or are we children? If
we are grownups, then we have the capacity to control our will even in the face
of passion, and to be responsible for the exercise of our natural rights. If we
are only children, then all the dangerous toys must be controlled by the
government. But this 'solution' implies that we can trust government with a
monopoly on guns, even though we cannot trust ourselves with them. This is not a
'solution' I trust.
Advocates of banning guns substitute things for people, but this approach
won't wash. It is the human moral will that saves us from violence, not the
presence or absence of weapons. We should reject utterly the absurd theory that
weapons are the cause of violence.
Anyone who is serious about controlling violence must recognize that it can
only be done by rooting violence out of the human heart. That's why I don't
understand those who say 'save us from guns,' even while they cling to the
coldly violent doctrine that human life has no worth except what they 'choose'
to assign to it.
If we want to end violence in our land, we must warm the hearts of this
people with a renewed dedication to the God-given equality of all human beings.
We must recapture the noble view of man as capable of moral responsibility, and
self-restraint. Purify the heart and we will not have to worry about the misuse
of weapons.
It is the business of the citizen to preserve justice in his heart, and the
material capacity, including arms, to resist tyranny. These things constitute
our character as a free people, which it is our duty to maintain. If we want to
hold on to our heritage of liberty, we must first and foremost strengthen our
confidence in our own moral capacity, and encourage such confidence in our
fellow citizens. Only a people confident that it can behave like grown-ups will
be justified in asserting its right to keep and bear arms, because it will be a
people responsible to use them only in defense of ourselves and our liberty.
But if we want that to be true, then we shall have to return, as a people, to
that same humble subjection to the authority of true moral principle that
characterized our Founders, and that characterized every generation of
Americans, until now. We must regain control of ourselves.
Most deeply, then, the assertion of 2nd Amendment rights is the assertion
that we intend to control ourselves, and submit to the moral order that God has
decreed must govern our lives. And just as we have no right to shirk our duty to
submit to that moral order, so we have no right to shirk our duty to preserve
unto ourselves the material means to discipline our government, if necessary, so
that it remains a fit instrument for the self-government of a free people.
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