The Second Amendment: Setting the Record Straight

http://www.queencityforum.com/FritschArchive08.html

By Steve Fritsch
November 15, 2003

“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.” These 27 words, written by our Founding Fathers over 200 years ago as a basic individual right, are plenty familiar with controversy. Whether it is fraudulent anti-gun books being celebrated with awards they do not deserve (Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture by Michael A. Bellesiles), “fictitious” television documentaries (Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine), or politicians trying to take away our basic right (virtually all Democrats), the Constitution’s Second Amendment is always under attack. In fact, the political “left” in this country take great pride and effort in attacking it. The liberal media never misses a chance to report biased information about guns. Hollywood actors routinely bad-mouth Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Association. City governments try to sue gun manufacturers for being the cause of their crime problems. None of this is new to those who are fervently passionate about defending the “right to bear arms.” But to the many Americans who do not follow this important issue, it is vital that the truth and the necessity behind the Second Amendment be given to them.
First, we must begin with the term “militia” and define it accurately. Many gun control advocates believe the term implies only to a collective group, a “state militia,” meaning only the armed forces, the National Guard, and police departments have the right to keep and bear arms. They do not believe the individual, according to their interpretation of the Second Amendment, has the same right. Fortunately, they could not be more wrong. And it only takes a plain reading of the Constitution and the writings of the Founding Fathers to prove them so.
Here are some of the Founding Fathers, in their own words, that support the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Samuel Adams

“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property, together with right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are the evident branches of, rather then deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.”

Patrick Henry

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.”

Thomas Jefferson

“No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

“And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. … The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Richard Henry Lee

“To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”

James Madison

“The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed with Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” – Federalist Paper No. 46

George Mason

“Who are the militia? They consist of the whole people, except a few public officers.”

“To disarm the people (is) the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

George Washington

“It has been a spectacle displaying the highest advantage of republican government to behold the most and the least wealthy of our citizens standing in the same ranks as private soldiers, preeminently distinguished by being the army of the Constitution.”

“Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence.”

A close look at the Constitution and past Supreme Court decisions also prove gun control advocates wrong. The Fourteenth Amendment, which makes part of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, reflects a broad agreement that the right to bear arms is a ‘privilege’ of every citizen. In addition, with their stunning new book, Supreme Court Gun Cases: Two Centuries of Gun Rights Revealed, authors and Constitutional scholars Stephen Halbrook, David Kopel, and Alan Korwin spent six exhaustive years uncovering evidence of Supreme Court decisions that support the Standard Model of the Second Amendment (the view of most legal scholars that the Second Amendment protects an individual right).