NPR : Morning Edition July 17, 2000

Byline: RICHARD ROSENFELD

COMMENTARY: Americans’ right to bear arms
started in the 18th
century and was considered the best way to keep
control of the
government

BOB EDWARDS, host: As the November election
approaches, Vice
President Al Gore and the Democrats are pushing
for stronger gun
control laws. Texas Governor George W. Bush and
fellow Republicans
tend to support tougher enforcement of existing
laws. Commentator
Richard Rosenfeld reminds us that gun control has
been an issue
since the nation’s first-term-of-the-century
election, though not
in the same way.

RICHARD ROSENFELD:
The control of arms was an important issue in
the election of
1800 because only a year earlier, in the spring
of 1799, the
nation’s second president, John Adams, had
unleashed his brand-new
federal army into the Pennsylvania countryside
purportedly to
enforce new tax laws. But that federal force
invaded the homes of
German-speaking families who had been critical of
John Adams’
administration, tore down symbols of their
political opposition,
terrorized men, women and children alike and
publicly whipped
newspaper editors who reported the army’s
misconduct.

Reaction to the federal government’s misuse
of force in 1799
was akin to recent public concerns about the
possible misuse of
federal force in Waco, Texas. The army’s
misconduct cost John
Adams dearly in his presidential re-election bid
in 1800. In
Adams’ words, `That army was as unpopular as if
it had been a
ferocious wild beast let loose upon the nation to
devour it.’
Americans had been wary about arms in the hands of
the government
from the time of their independence from England
and even before.
They remembered 17th century British kings who
had used government
armies to keep the people in fear and had used
restrictive hunting
laws to keep the people without arms and
therefore powerless
against them.

So while America’s founders built many checks
and balances
against the misuse of power into the new United
States
Constitution, they all agreed that the ultimate
check against
possible government tyranny would be an armed
American population.
Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Adams’ Democratic challenger
in the
presidential election of 1800, was also
distrustful of arms in the
hands of the federal government. He felt that in
a republic, the
government should be in awe of the people, not
the other way
around.

So after he won the presidency from Adams in
1800, Jefferson
substantially reduced the size of the federal
army. And he
continued to champion America’s first federal gun
control
regulation, which is the Second Amendment to the
United States
Constitution, the article of the Bill of Rights
which reminds us
that power starts and stays with the American
people. And that
while requiring gun ownership to be safe and
responsible, the
federal government must not infringe, in the
words of that
amendment, `on the right of the people to keep
and bear arms.’

*
EDWARDS: The comments of Richard Rosenfeld,
whose book
“American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican
Returns,” recounts the
ideological battles of the early American
republic.