By Rich Kozlovich
This is an unending issue with the left, and I've written about this before but so much is in the news that obfuscates the truth I felt compelled to write about it again. If we want understanding we must first have clarity, and history is the clarifying agent. On April 4th 2013 Ben Shapiro wrote an article titled, Obama: Constitution 'Constrains' Me.
“In his pursuit of overarching gun control legislation in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre, President Barack Obama has been dogged. He's been relentless. He's been demagogic, too, whether flanking himself with schoolchildren (the implication being that his political opponents don't care about dead kids) or suggesting that if just one life can be saved by his legislation, we ought to buy into it wholeheartedly (a proposition that would justify almost any sort of government overreach).” He continues by saying; “on Wednesday, President Obama took his gun control push a step further: He admitted that only the Constitution stands between him and full gun confiscation”
He further points out that:
“Government is not us. Government is a group of people elected by us, who then use their own judgment”, however he points out, “the founders stated that rights descend not from government — not from "us," as Obama would have it — but from God or nature.” Quite frankly it seems a worthwhile effort, considering the wider ramifications of this kind of thinking, to lay some historical foundation regarding gun ownership rights in America in order to understand this argument properly. First of all; the Second Amendment is what it says, nothing more and nothing less, yet at one point Attorney General Holder claimed "We have no right to possess guns!"………
So what does a person who believes that we shouldn’t “need” guns to do? Well, that depends if that person believes that we shouldn’t “have” guns or not. There is a substantial difference between “having” and “needing”, but in this case the "having" is based on the "needing".
The fact of the matter is we live in a dangerous world, and when the general population is armed the world is substantially less dangerous because crime goes down when gun ownership goes up. Clearly that, at the very least, is the "need" to justify the "having".
Most importantly we really do need to understand that America's founding fathers didn't trust government so the second amendment was deliberately inserted in the Constitution for two reasons. One, to make sure you can defend yourself, your loved ones and your property, and two, to give the citizenry the ability defend the Constitution against a government gone wild and is based on English natural law as codified in the English Bill of Rights.
The English Bill of Rights became law after a politically difficult time (actually it was more religious than political…or if you will…. the religious issues generated the political issues) in English history where the common people overthrew King James and forced he and his successors, William III and Mary II in to accepting the English Bill of Rights. This was done as a result of a fight over the authority or the King to govern without consent of Parliament, and the King’s (who was Catholic) desire to disarm his Protestant subjects and maintain a “permanent standing army”, against the wishes of Parliament; clearly and attempt to keep them in line with no way to defend themselves.
It might be noted that this wasn’t a new right being demanded by Parliament from the ruling authorities. This was merely codifying what was always considered a ‘the natural right’ of all Englishmen, and the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) agreed by saying this regarding the English Bill of Rights "clearly an individual right, having nothing whatsoever to do with service in the militia". Furthermore, this was not a “granting of a new right”, but codifying forevermore a right they held without permission of the King, nor did the King have the right to disarm them.
The Second Amendment says; 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.
So, who does everyone think this "well regulated militia" is made up of? The general population! The term “well regulated” merely defines the difference between legal and criminal behavior. Otherwise they would be a mob bent of murder, mayhem, destruction. When the Constitution was written a militia was not anything but the general population fighting as a civilian army, organized to their own likings and purposes.
And they could go back to their regular lives and take their arms with them because they might be called upon to stand up to defend their community once again. And from where did this right originate? If this is a natural right then it didn’t originate with the King in England and it isn’t a “granting” to be given or to be taken away by the Government of the United States.
This isn’t about gun rights. It is about the definition of rights. This is a foundational issue with ramifications so deep and so profound it is now incumbent upon us to start understanding the foundational thinking that created the most incredible political document in human history. The United States Constitution!
I do wish that more people would read the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, and at the very least read the commentaries regarding the Federalist Papers. These are foundational!
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