Wednesday, December 26, 2012

About gun control

Across our nation a debate rages about "gun control". This euphemism glosses over the fact that what is being debated is one of the most precious guarantors of liberty, the right to keep and bear arms. At the heart of this debate is not whether the right to keep and bears arms is an individual right or not, but at its core the debate is over the primacy of the individual over the primacy of the government. This debate rages because many, too many, in this country have forgotten, or, worse, have never been educated in, the nature of our rights.
Government and liberty are natural adversaries. The founders of our nation understood this. With that understanding in mind they crafted a Constitution and a Bill of Rights designed to limit the power of government and guarantee the rights of the people. The rights that they intended to protect were those written about in the Declaration of Independence and other un-enumerated rights, e.g. the natural, inalienable rights of man. The arms referred to by the Second Amendment and the founders of this country are the arms necessary for the free people of America to be able to hold their governments unbridled appetite for power in check and to resist invaders when called upon to serve in the militia in defense of our country, state or community. If the arms of the soldiers of this era are automatic rifles, machine guns and sub-machine guns then it is the right, in fact the obligation, for the citizens of this country to possess such arms themselves. It is laughable on its face, as some have stated, that the Second Amendment would grant to us the right to only have flintlocks or muskets, such weapons as were in use at the time of our countries founding, to defend ourselves against an armed force raised by the government to oppress us, or to defend against an invading enemy. This would be the same as saying, concerning the First Amendment, that the press could only use the printing technology that existed at the time of the Revolution while the government could use movies, television, radio, modern printing presses, the Internet and any other means of communications that it desired. A ridiculous thought isn't it? If it's ridiculous for the First Amendment, why is it any less ridiculous for the Second Amendment? Our rights are not "frozen in a moment of time", they are eternal rights and we are free to use our ingenuity to advance the technology to ensure those rights. If anything, we have the rights to limit the governments use of technology, not the other way around.
Surely, our founding fathers meant for us to have arms that would allow us to meaningfully resist, better yet, deter the government from any attempt at tyranny. No doubt this is a shocking position to the ignorant masses that have been lied to by their government, the press and the educational institutions of this country that our Second Amendment right exists only so we can have single shot sporting arms for such purposes as hunting, target shooting, etc., or that the Second Amendment is a right of the states to maintain armed militias.

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