FOUR OBJECTIONS TO GUN CONTROL by Joseph Sobran

March 1st, 2012

FOUR OBJECTIONS TO GUN CONTROL
by Joseph Sobran

WASHINGTON — In his syndicated column, Professor Garry Wills accuses the gun
lobby of “bad scholarship on the Second Amendment.” Unfortunately, his own
scholarship is open to question. He says the Second Amendment is only “a
militia ordinance,” adding, “In all the ratifying debates on the Constitution
and on the Second Amendment, the right of the individual to possess guns was
not once discussed.”

Mr. Wills seems to have forgotten that the purpose of the Bill of Rights was
to restrain the federal government and to reassure all those who feared that
it might someday usurp as many powers as — well, as folks like Mr. Wills
want it to usurp.

In the first place, a constitutional amendment is not an “ordinance,” but a
principle. The Second Amendment didn’t establish state militias (which
already existed). It mentions militias as “necessary to the security of a
free state.” What did a “free state” need to be secure against? Well,
marauding Indians, other states, and the federal government itself, if it
should fall into the hands of “usurpers.”

Mr. Wills should consult his own edition of The Federalist Papers, No. 28 in
particular, where Alexander Hamilton envisions the state militias mounting
armed resistance to the federal government. Hamilton regards the people’s
“original (i.e., natural) right of self-defense” as “paramount to every
positive form of government,” including republican government.

There are no less than four constitutional arguments against federal gun
control.

First, it isn’t listed among the federal government’s powers, either in the
body of the Constitution or in the later amendments, after the words “The
Congress shall have power to” do such-and-such. It used to be understood that
the powers of Congress could be increased only by amending the Constitution,
and it has never been amended to enable the federal government to limit the
right to keep and bear arms. Notice that this is explicitly called a “right,”
with no implication that the people may keep and bear arms only by government
permission.

Second, the Second Amendment, whatever else it means, clearly forbids the
federal government to “infringe” that right. Such a positive prohibition
against such a power is much stronger than a tacit presumption against it.

Third, the Ninth Amendment says that the people have “retained” other rights
besides those enumerated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. What
were these unlisted rights? Well, that “original right of self-defense” would
surely be among them. If you have a right to life, liberty and property, you
have a right to defend them against violence.

Fourth, the 10th Amendment underlines the principle that all powers not
“delegated” to the federal government are “reserved” to the states and the
people. So the failure of the Constitution to delegate gun-control power to
Congress should suffice to prove that Congress has no such power.

In fact, each of these four reasons, by itself, proves as much. Nevertheless,
the Second Amendment was added so that even liberals would get the point. It
obviously didn’t work.

As Madison said in another issue of The Federalist Papers (No. 45), the
powers of the federal government were to be “few and defined.” The supposed
federal power to regulate guns is anything but “defined”; it’s explicitly
denied.

The plain purpose of the Bill of Rights was to limit federal power. Pursuant
to this aim, the Second Amendment ensures that the federal government will
never get a monopoly of weaponry, just as the First Amendment ensures that it
will never monopolize religion or the press. The framers agreed that liberty
depends on popular “jealousy” of government, which has a natural tendency to
aggrandize itself.

Liberals usually invoke Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce to
cover anything they want to regulate. But if this is what the Constitution
meant, slavery and alcohol consumption — both of which involved interstate
commerce — could have been banned by simple acts of Congress. But everyone
agreed that constitutional amendments were required in order to outlaw them.

Liberals also argue that the 14th Amendment requires the states to respect
the same rights the federal government may not violate. But they make an
exception, in flagrant bad faith, for the right to keep and bear arms.