Second Amendment Project Newsletter, June 30, 2000
The Second Amendment Project is based at the Independence
Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado.

http://i2i.org.

Independence Day issue.
No issue next week.
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Table of Contents for this issue

1. The Guns of the Revolution. By Dave Kopel.
2. Justice Thomas quotes Joseph Olson & Bruce Kobayashi.
3. California Justice Brown quotes Halbrook, Kates, Kopel, Olson,
Kobayashi, and extols guns as tools against genocide.
4. London Daily Telegraph says defensive guns reduce burglary.
5. Links of the week.
6. Most Americans Should be Ashamed To Celebrate the Fourth. By
Vin Suprynowicz.

=========================================================
1. The Guns of the Revolution. By Dave Kopel
Forthcoming on the National Review Online website,
for the weekend of July 1-2.
www.nationalreview.com

Shortly after the Constitution was sent to the people for ratification,
anti-federalists warned that the Constitution would make the federal
government too strong in relation to the people. Not so, replied the
Federalists. Tench Coxe-an ally of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, who
would later serve in the Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
administrations-explained:

“The power of the sword, say the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands
of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for THE POWERS OF THE
SWORD ARE IN THE HANDS OF THE YEOMANRY OF AMERICA FROM SIXTEEN TO SIXTY. The
militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms,
when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible.
Who are the militia? are they not ourselves. Is it feared, then, that we
shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power
to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of
the soldier, are the birthright of an American. What clause in the state or
[federal] constitution hath given away that important right. . . . [T]he
unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the foederal or
state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the
hands of the people.”

[A Pennsylvanian, To The People of the United States, Philadelphia Gazette,
Feb. 20, 1788.]

What were those weapons, so recently used in the American Revolution, which
Coxe and rest considered “the birthright of an American”?

At the start of the war, the most common musket, in both Patriot and Redcoat
hands, was the Brown Bess, an iron-barreled musket which fired a .75 caliber
ball. The “Brown” part of the name may have come from the walnut stock, or
from the barrel’s color, once it had been rust-proofed. “Bess” was probably
chosen because it sounded good with “Brown,” and because fighting men have
often given their weapons female nicknames. (Note: this is not the same as
calling your mother-in-law “that old battle-axe.”)

When the French intervened on America’s side in 1778, they brought their
Charleville Muskets-named for the town near Belgium which hosted the Royal
Manufactory of Arms. The French model fired a slightly smaller ball: .70. It
was distributed copiously to the Americans, and later became the pattern for
the federal army’s Springfield Musket of 1795.

Muskets took a while to reload, so army formations typically deployed
musket-men in two or three lines. The first line would fire in unison, then
drop to their knees to reload, while the lines behind them fired.

Muskets were not accurate, and musketmen were not even expected to aim at
particular targets. Rather, the objective was to deliver a mass of
musketballs into the enemy line. The muskets were an ideal weapon for the
kind of fighting man that the British used.

Life in any European standing army was brutal. Soldiers were drilled and
disciplined until they could no longer think. They were expected to obey
unquestioningly, and to move in precise lock-step formations. Only people
who had no other choice joined the army, and the army was composed of “the
dregs of society” rounded up from gin mills and gaols. The British troops
were drilled and drilled until they could perform coolly and automatically
in the heat of combat, and did not question whether orders made sense.
Several volleys of disciplined musket fire, followed by a screaming bayonet
charge (the Brown Bess had a 17 inch bayonet), was often sufficient to carry
the day for the British-as at Lexington, Manhattan or Camden.

Muskets (like today’s shotguns) have smooth barrels. In contrast, rifles
have twisting grooves in the barrel, which give the bullet its spin. This
stabilizing spin helps the rifle bullet travel much further, and more
accurately, than does the musket ball. It was the rifle-which utilized the
American virtue of individual initiative, which would become the
quintessentially American weapon of the Revolution.

America’s first great rifle-makers were Germans who settled in Pennsylvania
(the “Pennsylvania Dutch”). Around 1720, the Germans began adapting their
German rifle designs to American conditions, by lengthening the barrel to
40-45 inches (producing longer-range accuracy), and using maplewood stocks.
The typical caliber was .60.

Like the muskets, all these rifles were flintlocks, meaning that the
gunpowder was ignited by a spark from metal striking flint. All of the guns
used loose gunpowder made from salt-peter (“blackpowder”); modern smokeless
powder did not come until the latter part of the nineteenth century.

During the Revolution, there was neither the time nor the inclination to
decorate the rifles with the kind of engraving that was often seen on later
versions, including today’s replicas.

The Pennsylvania Rifle had a shattering effect against British Redcoats.
The British musketeers could fire and reload three times as fast as the
American rifleman, and knew how to march in disciplined linear formations in
open terrain. Although there were plenty of open-terrain battles during the
war, there were also plenty of guerilla actions, in which Patriots hid
behind rocks and trees and sniped at small enemy patrols.

While muskets were easy to use, the Pennsylvania rifle was effective only in
the hands of a skilled marksman, who could hit a target the size of a man’s
head from 200 yards away. A lucky shot could travel 400 yards. Whether in
open combat or in a guerilla context, the American riflemen specialized in
sniping at the British officers, causing them considerable apprehension, and
distracting them from command.

Some of the gunmakers of the Pennsylvania Rifles eventually moved to Ohio,
Tennessee, and other parts. After the rifles figured prominently in the
great American victory at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, at the end of the
War of 1812, the rifles became universally known as “Kentucky Rifles,” since
the popular song celebrating the great battle was “The Hunters of Kentucky.”
(“For Jackson he was wide-awake, and not afraid of trifles. Full well he
knew the aim we’d take with our Kentucky Rifles.”)

The superior range of the Pennsylvania Rifle had allowed the Americans to
engage the Redcoats beyond musket range during the first part of the War.
But at the battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, the British deployed
a special 100 man company firing a new rifle invented by Scotsman Andrew
Ferguson. The innovative breech-loading design (as opposed to
muzzle-loading, in which the gun is loaded by ramming the bullet down the
muzzle, and through the full length of the barrel) allowed the Ferguson
rifles to fire 4-5 shots per minute, and the gun could even be reloaded
while a soldier marched towards the enemy.

Although the British won at Brandywine, and captured Philadelphia as a
result, Ferguson was wounded, and the British Army foolishly lost interest
in rifles for the rest of the war. Not until 1819 would a nation adopt a
breechloader as its standard military weapon, when the United States
selected the Hall Carbine.

While some people believe that handguns did not exist when the Patriots were
fighting for their right to arms, handguns were actually hundreds of years
old by then. Handguns had grown common enough in the early sixteenth century
so that proposed legislation as early as 1518 (by the Holy Roman Emperor
Maximilian) addressed them. By the latter part of the 1500s, handguns were
standard cavalry weapons. When the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791,
state militia laws requiring most men to supply their own firearms required
officers to supply their own pistols.

The Revolutionary handguns were mostly very large .50 caliber single-shot
pistols, often built by the same gunsmiths who made the Pennsylvania Rifles.
Colonel Samuel Colt’s multiple-shot revolver lay decades in the
future-although there were predecessors available, such as “pepperbox,”
which used revolving barrels, each containing its own bullet.

Today, only two of Ferguson’s breechloading rifles are still in existence,
and the pepperbox proto-revolvers are found only in museums or the homes of
wealthy collectors. But the kinds of muskets and rifles with which the
American Revolution was fought are still in common use. Many hobbyists build
old-fashioned rifles or muskets from kits, and many others buy manufactured
blackpowder arms, to take advantage of the special blackpowder-only hunting
seasons in many states. Some of these guns incorporate new technology (such
as in-line loading), while others are remarkably faithful to the old
designs.

Whether you’re shooting an old-fashioned replica of a Brown Bess, or
high-tech polymer pistol from Glock, you’re exercising the freedoms that
great Patriots such as “the Swamp Fox” Francis Marion helped win for us two
centuries ago. To celebrate Independence Day, why not exercise the right you
still have (and which the Redcoats’ descendants don’t) by taking a niece or
a neighbor to a target range, or by buying your first gun, or by sending an
extra contribution to one of the groups who are continuing humanity’s
long-running battle against tyranny and disarmament.

=========================================================
2. Justice Thomas.
From STENBERG v. CARHART, U.S. Supreme Court.
No. 99-830. June 28, 2000.
Dissenting opinion of Justice Thomas, joined by
Chief Justice Rehnquist.
Opinion available at www.findlaw.com

Footnote 16:

The fact that the statutory term “partial birth abortion” may express a
political or moral judgment, whereas “dilation and extraction” does not, is
irrelevant. It is certainly true that technical terms are frequently empty
of normative content. (Of course, the decision to use a technical term can
itself be normative. See ante, passim (majority opinion)). But, so long as
statutory terms are adequately defined, there is no requirement that
Congress or state legislatures draft statutes using morally agnostic
terminology. See, e.g., 18 U. S. C. ?922(v) (making it unlawful to
“manufacture, transfer, or possess a semiautomatic assault weapon”);
Kobayashi & Olson, et al., In Re 101 California Street: A Legal and Economic
Analysis of Strict Liability For The Manufacture And Sale Of “Assault
Weapons,” 8 Stan. L. & Pol’y Rev. 41, 43 (1997) (“Prior to 1989, the term
`assault weapon’ did not exist in the lexicon of firearms. It is a political
term, developed by anti-gun publicists to expand the category of `assault
rifles’ so as to allow an attack on as many additional firearms as possible
on the basis of undefined `evil’ appearance”). See also Meese, 481 U. S., at
484-485.

=========================================================
3. Majority of California Supreme Court upholds ?assault weapon? ban.

Court majority says:
* the law?s illogic is of no concern, because there is no
important right involved.
* the legislature may delegate law-making
authority (to ban additional guns) to the Attorney General.
* due process does not require that the list of banned guns be
published in a statute book or code of regulations.

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S069522.DOC

Concurring opinion by Brown, excerpted below,
quotes Halbrook, Olson, Kates, Kopel,
argues that the majority is wrong for not treating the right
to arms as a fundamental right, and extols arms possession
as a deterrent to genocide.

CONCURRING OPINION BY BROWN, J.

I
. . .
The dichotomy between the United States Supreme Court?s laissez-faire
treatment of social and economic rights and its hypervigilance with respect
to an expanding array of judicially proclaimed fundamental rights is highly
suspect, incoherent, and constitutionally invalid. ?[T]he outcome in every
case turns on how the court chooses to characterize the classification.
Suspect classifications, such as those based on race or that impact rights
the court deems ?fundamental,? warrant strict (read ?fatal?) scrutiny; other
classifications warrant rational basis (read ?anything goes?) review. (FCC
v. Beach Communications, Inc., supra, 508 U.S. 307, 313-316.) As Justice
Mosk so aptly put it, ?[t]he vice of the binary theory . . . is that it
applies either a standard that is virtually always met (the rational
relationship test) or one that is almost never satisfied (the strict
scrutiny test). [Citation.] Once the test is selected, the result of its
application is foreordained . . . .? (Hays v. Wood (1979) 25 Cal.3d 772,
796 (conc. opn. of Mosk, J.).)? (Warden, supra, 21 Cal.4th at pp. 661-662
(dis. opn. of Brown, J.).) Just so, the result here was foreordained once
we assumed ?the AWCA does not burden a fundamental right under either the
federal or state Constitutions, [and therefore,] the rational basis test
applies. (See Peoples Rights Organization, Inc. v. City of Columbus (6th
Cir. 1998) 152 F.3d 522, 531-533; Coalition of New Jersey Sportsmen, Inc. v.
Whitman (D.N.J. 1999) 44 F.Supp.2d 666, 685; California Rifle [& Pistol
Assn., Inc. v. City of West Hollywood (1998)] 66 Cal.App.4th 1302, 1329;
Suter v. City of Lafayette (1997) 57 Cal.App.4th 1109, 1133; In re Evans
(1996) 49 Cal.App.4th 1263, 1270.)? (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 6.)

This case, however, illustrates the illusory nature of the distinction
between ?fundamental rights? and ?areas of social and economic policy.?
Curiously, in the current dialectic, the right to keep and bear arms ? a
right expressly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights ? is deemed less
fundamental than implicit protections the court purports to find in the
penumbras of other express provisions. (See, e.g., Cruzan v. Director, Mo.
Dept. of Health (1990) 497 U.S. 261, 278-279; Zablocki v. Redhail (1978) 434
U.S. 374, 384-387; Moore v. City of East Cleveland (1977) 431 U.S. 494,
499-500.) But surely, the right to preserve one?s life is at least as
fundamental as the right to preserve one?s privacy.

The founding generation certainly viewed bearing arms as an individual right
based upon both English common law and natural law, a right logically linked
to the natural right of self-defense. Blackstone described self-defense as
the ?primary law of nature,? which could not be taken away by the law of
society. (2 Jones?s Blackstone (1976) p. 4.) ?[T]he peaceable part of
mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and the abandoned, while
they neglect the means of self defense. . . . The supposed quietude of the
good man allures the ruffian;
. . . (but) arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer
in awe, and preserve order in the world. . . . Horrid mischief would ensue
were (the good) deprived of the use of [weapons] . . . the weak will become
a prey to the strong.? (1 Paine, The Writings of Thomas Paine (Conway edit.
1894) p. 56.) Extant political writings of the period repeatedly expressed
a dual concern: facilitating the natural right of self-defense and assuring
an armed citizenry capable of repelling foreign invaders and quelling
tyrannical leaders.

After the Civil War a series of enactments, culminating with the Fourteenth
Amendment, acknowledged the correlation between self-defense, citizenship,
and freedom. Section 14 of the Freedman?s Bureau Act, which the 39th
Congress passed over the President?s veto, provided: ?That in every State
or district where the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has been
interrupted by the rebellion,
. . . the right to . . . have full and equal benefit of all laws and
proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal security, and the
acquisition, enjoyment, and disposition of estate, real and personal,
including the constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and
enjoyed by all the citizens of such State or district without respect to
race or color or previous condition of slavery. . . .? (Freedman?s Bureau
Act (July 16, 1866) 14 Stat. 176, italics added; see Halbrook, Second Class
Citizenship and the Second Amendment in the District of Columbia (1995) 5
Geo. Mason U. Civ. Rts. L.J. 105, 141-150 (Second Class Citizenship).)

Halbrook concludes the Freedman?s Bureau Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1866,
and the Fourteenth Amendment leave no doubt that ? ?the constitutional right
to bear arms? is included among the ?laws and proceedings concerning
personal liberty, personal security,? and property, and that ?the free
enjoyment of such immunities and rights? is to be protected? (Second Class
Citizenship, supra,
5 Geo. Mason U. Civ. Rts. L.J. at p. 150) under the Fourteenth Amendment,
which would confer citizenship on all persons born in the United States and
imbue them with every right of citizenship, including the right to keep and
bear arms. (Ibid.) In more recent times, Congress has continued to
recognize that the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is
guaranteed by the Second and the Fourteenth Amendments. (Pub.L. No. 99-308
(May 19, 1986) 100 Stat. 449.)

The judiciary, too, has consistently acknowledged the interplay between
express provisions and implicit protections. In Poe v. Ullman (1960) 367
U.S. 497, the seminal case in the Supreme Court?s fundamental rights
jurisprudence, Justice Harlan, dissenting, argued the Fourteenth Amendment
due process clause protects privacy. He claimed the due process clause
covered, but was not exclusively limited to, ?the precise terms of the
specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the constitution,? including
?freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms;
the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.? (Id. at p. 549 (dis.
opn. of Harlan, J.).) The court continues to cite Justice Harlan?s
enumeration as part of the full scope of liberty guaranteed by the
Fourteenth Amendment against state infringement. (Planned Parenthood
Southeastern PA v. Casey (1992) 505 U.S. 833, 848-849; Roe v. Wade (1973)
410 U.S. 113, 169 (conc. opn. of Stewart, J.); Griswold v. Connecticut
(1965) 381 U.S. 479, 499 (conc. opn. of Goldberg, J.).)

II
Plaintiffs complain that the ban is irrationally underinclusive.
Admittedly, the Legislature?s findings and declarations seem internally
inconsistent. While declaring that it banned the semiautomatic firearms
listed in Penal Code section 12276 because each weapon ?has such a high rate
of fire and capacity for firepower that its function as a legitimate sports
or recreational firearm is substantially outweighed by the danger that it
can be used to kill and injure human beings,? the Legislature goes on to
declare that it does not intend ?to place restrictions on the use of those
weapons which are primarily designed and intended for hunting, target
practice, or other legitimate sports or recreational activities.? (Pen.
Code, ? 12275.5.) Conspicuous by its absence is any finding that the listed
weapons differ from those not listed with respect to the salient
characteristic, namely, their ?rate of fire and capacity for firepower.?
(Ibid.)

On the other hand, plaintiff?s claim that the ban is irrational because it
will have no effect on violent crime proves too much. The insistence upon a
rational relationship between selected legislative ends and the means chosen
to further them cannot be so exacting. To declare murder a crime will not
prevent murder. Prohibiting the possession of weapons by convicted felons
will not stop criminals from obtaining guns. Assessing ever greater
penalties has not eliminated the scourge of drug abuse. Means scrutiny
assumes the law will have some effect and compares that effect with the
means the Legislature has chosen.

Were courts to overturn every legislative action that is likely to be
ineffective, few laws would survive. As in other spheres of human endeavor,
legislative action is often fated to be more symbolic than real, and the
understandable human desire to do something to address the crisis of the
moment, not to mention the political necessity of being seen to be doing
something, may be the real object of many legislative exercises. (See
Kobayashi & Olson, In re 101 California Street: A Legal and Economic
Analysis of Strict Liability for the Manufacture and Sale of ?Assault
Weapons? (1997) 8 Stan. L. & Pol?y Rev. 41, 43.) And, to be fair, the most
severe problems confronting us ? like the current plague of violence ? are
quite beyond the capacity of government to cure. As Solzhenitsyn observed
half a century ago, ?the line separating good and evil passes not through
states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either ? but
right through every human heart ? and through all human hearts.?
(Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (1992) p. 615.)
…

III
The issue before us may be among the most troubling and intractable of the
last 30 years. Predictably, as cultural disintegration accelerates, the
level of lethal violence escalates. Even cynics, quick to accuse elected
officials of political posturing and empty symbolism, are stunned by the
steadily mounting body count. Like the poet, we are forced to ?put [our]
eyes on a diet? because our ?tears are gaining too much weight.? (Kaufman,
Golden Sardine (1967) ?Heavy Water Blues,? p. 60.) It is impossible not to
grieve for the thousands of young men cut down in their prime; impossible
not to mourn toddlers slaughtered in the midst of innocent play; impossible
to ignore the grim reality of school children whose final moments echo with
screams of terror and the sudden slap of bullets. And worse even than the
slaughter of innocents is the death of innocence. All too often, the
killers are children, too.

Some antigun advocates candidly admit they welcome ? ?[shooting] incidents?
? and hope ? ?more heinous ones with more tragic or important
victims? ? will help move public opinion beyond support for narrow controls
to the desired goal of complete disarmament. (Kates, Gun Control:
Separating Reality From Symbolism (1994) 20 J. Contemp. L. 353, 358, quoting
Ross, Book Review (1992) 98 Am. J. Soc. 661.) Amitai Etzioni, as spokesman
for the Communitarian Network, dismisses the gun control measures that have
been enacted and those currently under discussion as but ? ?vanilla-pale? ?
measures. (Kopel et al., Communitarians, Neorepublicans, and Guns:
Assessing the Case for Firearms Prohibitions (1997) 56
Md. L. Rev. 438, 450, quoting Etzioni et al., The Case for Domestic
Disarmament (1992) The Communitarian Network
<http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/pop_disarm.html
(June 5, 2000).) In Professor Etzioni?s view, the only effective measure to
end gun violence is domestic disarmament. (Ibid.) He has elsewhere argued
that the right of the people to keep and bear arms (if any such right
exists) is outweighed by the right of the public to be safe. (Kopel et al.,
at p. 445, quoting The Communitarian Network, The Responsive Communitarian
Platform: Rights and Responsibilities reprinted in Rights and the Common
Good: The Communitarian Perspective (Etzioni edit. 1995) 11, 19.)

I suspect the freedmen of the Reconstruction Era would vehemently disagree.
So would the Armenians facing the Ottoman Turks in 1915, the embattled Jews
of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, and the victims of Pol Pot’s killing fields.

The media keep the horrific visions of gun violence ever before our eyes.
These acts of individual madness are undeniably tragic and totally
unacceptable in a civilized society. But there are other horrific visions ?
the victims of which number in the millions ? perpetrated by governments
against unarmed populations.

Conclusion

The framers could have had no conception of the massive scale on which
government-sanctioned murder would be committed in the twentieth century,
but they had a keen appreciation of the peril of being defenseless. That
wariness is reflected in the Constitution. Perhaps they would agree with
Thomas Paine?s practical observation in his article Thoughts on Defensive
War (Paine, Thoughts on Defensive War (July 1775) Pennsylvania Magazine
<http://www.scican.net/
~jsnider/thotsdefwar.html> (as of June 13, 2000)): ?I am thus far a Quaker,
that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms,
and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter
ends, and I take up my musket and thank heaven . . . .?
BROWN, J.

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4. London Daily Telegraph, June 29, 2000:

“The main reason for a much lower burglary rate in America
is householders’ propensity to shoot intruders. They do so without
fear of being dragged before courts and jailed for life.”

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5. Links of the Week.

Second Amendment Law Library.
Not only an excellent collection of law review articles,
also now includes a very thorough set of state and federal
court cases.

http://2ndlawlib.org

The Gun Zone. Features an essay by Jeffrey Snyder
on the New York City police.

http://communities.prodigy.net/sportsrec/gz-nypdblue.html

Boulder Council Debates Civil Arms. by Ari Armstrong.
June 27, 2000. Colorado Freedom Report.
A good insight into the ignorance, irrationality, and extremism of the
anti-gun movement.
Browse the rest of the CFR for many other fine articles.

http://www.co-freedom.com/2000/06/boulder.html

We don’t need no steenking 2nd Amendment
by John Silveira.
Backwoods Home Magazine.

http://backwoodshome.com/articles/silveira58.html

We must be in the age of the Digital Economy, when
Backwoods Home Magazine is available on the Internet!

5th-graders vote for guns in school.
Mock trial’s unanimous verdict: Kids safer with armed teachers
David M. Bresnahan
June 28, 2000. WorldNetDaily

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_bresnahan/20000628_xnbre_5th_grader.shtml

Deceit is central to the gun control movement.
Nice citizen website by Bruce Tiemann, of Boulder, Colorado.

http://spot.colorado.edu/~tiemann/guns.html

Citizens Opposing Racism and Discrimination.
Gun policy page of anti-racist group.

http://www.coradpress.com/gun_control.htm

California Gun Bills for 2000
Legislative updates.

http://www.gunsandcrime.org/bills.html

===========================================================
6. Most Americans should be ashamed to celebrate the Fourth.
By Vin Suprynowicz. JULY 4, 2000

Mountain Media Editor’s note: The following essay, which was originally
published on July 3, 1997, is excerpted from Vin Suprynowicz’s book,
“Send in the Waco Killers.”

# # #

What an inconvenient holiday the Fourth of July has become.

So long as we stick to grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, hauling the kids
to the lake or the mountains, and winding up the day watching the fireworks
as the Boston Pops plays the “1812″ — written by a subject of the czar to
celebrate the defeat of our vital ally the French — we can usually manage
to convince ourselves we still cling to the same values that made July 4,
1776, a date that continues to ring in history.

Great Britain taxed the colonists at far lower rates than Americans
tolerate today — and never dreamed of granting government agents the power
to search our private bank records to locate “unreported income,” nor to
haul away our children to some mandatory, government-run propaganda camp,
swamping their immune systems with dozens of mandatory vaccinations and
doping up the more spirited young lads on Luvox or Ritalin against our
will.

Nor did the king’s ministers ever attempt to stack our juries by
disqualifying any juror who refused to swear in advance to leave his or her
conscience outside and enforce the law as the judge explained it to them.

The king’s ministers insisted the colonists were represented by Members
of Parliament who had never set foot on these shores. Today, of course, our
interests are “represented” by one of two millionaire lawyers — both
members of the incumbent Republicrat Party — between whom we were
privileged to “choose” last election day, men who for the most part have
lived in mansions and sent their kids to private schools in the wealthy
suburbs of the imperial capital for decades.

Yet the colonists did rebel. It’s hard to imagine, today, the faith and
courage of a few hundred frozen musketmen, setting off across the darkened
Delaware, gambling their lives and farms on the chance they could engage
and defeat the greatest land army in the history of the known world, armed
with only two palpable assets: one irreplaceable man to lead them, and some
flimsy newspaper reprints of a parchment declaring: “We hold these Truths
to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights,
Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just Powers from the
Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive to these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or
abolish it. …”

Do we believe that, still?

Recently, President Clinton’s then-Drug Czar, Lee Brown, told me the role
of government is to protect people from dangers, such as drugs. I corrected
him, saying, “No, the role of government is to protect our liberties.”

“We’ll just have to disagree on that,” the president’s appointee said.

The War for American Independence began over unregistered untaxed guns,
when British forces attempted to seize arsenals of rifles, powder, and ball
from the hands of ill-organized Patriot militias in Lexington and Concord.
American civilians shot and killed scores of those government agents as
they marched back to Boston. Are those Minutemen still our heroes? Or do we
now consider them “dangerous terrorists” and “depraved government-haters”?

In Phoenix last week, an air-conditioner repairman and former military
policeman named Chuck Knight was convicted by jurors — some tearful –
who said they had no choice under the judge’s instructions, on a single
federal conspiracy count of associating with others who owned automatic
rifles on which they had failed to pay the $200 transfer tax. This was
after a trial in which defense attorney Ivan Abrams says he was forbidden
to bring up the Second Amendment as a defense.

In The Federalist No. 29, James Madison sought to assuage the fears of
anti-federalists who worried the proposed new government might someday take
away our freedoms:

“If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an
army of any magnitude,” he wrote, “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 rights and those of their fellow citizens.”

Any such encroachments by government would “provoke plans of resistance,”
Mr. Madison continued in The Federalist No. 46, and “an appeal to a trial
of force,” made possible by “the advantage of being armed, which the
Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”

Were Arizona’s Viper Militia readying plans of resistance, as recommended
by Mr. Madison? Would the Constitution ever have been ratified at all had
Mr. Madison and his fellow federalists warned the citizens that such
non-violent preparations would get their weapons seized and land them in
jail for decades?

Happy Fourth of July.

———————————-
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal. His book, “Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom
Movement, 1993-1998,” is available at $21.95 plus $3 shipping through web
site

http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html

or by dialing 1-800-244-2224.

===========================================================
As always, the Independence Institute website contains
extensive information on:

Criminal Justice and the Second Amendment:

http://i2i.org/crimjust.htm

The Columbine High School murders:
http://i2i.org/suptdocs/crime/columbine.htm and
The Waco murders: http://i2i.org/Waco.htm
The Independence Institute’s on-line bookstore. Start your
browsing at the Second Amendment section:

http://i2i.org/book.htm#Second