Another good one from Keyes. If Bush gets in, surely they can find a place for this man.
The Reason for the Second Amendment
Sen. Bob Smith has succeeded in amending an upcoming appropriations bill to beat back the latest wave of Clinton administration disrespect for two key elements of a free citizenry -- privacy and the right to keep and bear arms. Smith's amendment to the Justice-State-Commerce appropriations bill would foil FBI plans to keep records of private identifying information on law-abiding citizens who buy guns. The amendment also forbids a proposed tax on gun purchases, and authorizes citizens to sue if the FBI doesn't observe these restrictions.
Senator Smith is to be praised for keeping his eye on some balls that might have been lost in the smoke of scandal and misinformation that the Clinton Administration seems endlessly to emit. Actually, few things could make the need for vigorous defense of 2nd Amendment rights clearer than the ongoing spectacle of Clinton contempt for the citizens he is supposed to serve. For the 2nd Amendment is really in the Constitution to give men like Bill Clinton something to think about when their ambition gets particularly over-inflated. 1"> The Second Amendment was not put into the Constitution by the Founders merely to allow us to intimidate burglars, or hunt rabbits to our hearts' content. This is not to say that hunting game for the family dinner, or defending against personal dangers, were not anticipated uses for firearms, particularly on the frontier. But these things are not the real purpose of the Amendment.
The Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a long train of abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon our natural rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights. That is why the right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill of Rights.
In fact, if we make the judgment that our rights are being systematically violated, we have not merely the right, but the duty, to resist and overthrow the power responsible. That duty requires that we always maintain the material capacity to resist tyranny, if necessary, something that it is very hard to do if the government has all the weapons. A strong case can be made, therefore, that it is a fundamental DUTY of the free citizen to keep and bear arms.
In our time there have been many folks who don't like to be reminded of all this. And they try, in their painful way, to pretend that the word "people" in the 2nd Amendment means something there that it doesn't mean in any one of the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights. They say that, for some odd reason, the Founders had a lapse, and instead of putting in "states" they put in "people." And so it refers to a right inherent in the state government.
This position is incoherent, and has been disproved by every piece of legitimate historical evidence. At one point in Jefferson's letters, for example, he is talking about the militia, and he writes, "militia -- every able-bodied man in the state. ..." The militia was every able-bodied man in the state. It had nothing to do with the state government. The words "well-regulated" had to do with organizing that militia and drilling it in the style of the 19th century, but "militia" itself referred to the able-bodied citizens of the state or commonwealth -- not to the state government.
It would make no sense whatsoever to restrict the right to keep and bear arms to state governments, since the principle on which our polity is based, as stated in the Declaration, recognizes that any government, at any level, can become oppressive of our rights. And we must be prepared to defend ourselves against its abuses.
But the movement against 2nd Amendment rights is not just a threat to our capacity to defend ourselves physically against tyranny. It is also part of the much more general assault on the very notion that human beings are capable of moral responsibility. This is a second and deeper reason that the defense of the 2nd Amendment is essential to the defense of liberty.
Advocates of banning guns think we can substitute material things for human self-control, but this approach won't wash. It is the human moral will that saves us from violence, not the presence or absence of weapons. We should reject utterly the absurd theory that weapons are the cause of violence.
Consider, for example, the phony assertion that certain weapons should be banned because "they have no purpose except to kill people." It is people that kill people, and they can use countless kinds of weapons to do so, if killing is in their hearts where love of justice should be. This week a 7-year old boy in Chicago apparently used a pair of underwear to commit murder, because he wanted a bike.
So let's get down to the real issue: are we moral adults, or are we moral children? If we are adults, then we have the capacity to control our will even in the face of passion, and to be responsible for the exercise of our natural rights. If we are only children, then all the particularly dangerous toys must be controlled by the government. But this "solution" implies that we can trust government with a monopoly on guns, even though we cannot trust ourselves with them. This is not a "solution" I trust.
Anyone who is serious about controlling violence must recognize that it can only be done by rooting violence out of the human heart. That's why I don't understand those who say "save us from guns," even while they cling to the coldly violent doctrine that human life has no worth except what they "choose" to assign to it.
If we want to end violence in our land, we must warm the hearts of all Americans with a renewed dedication to the God-given equality of all human beings. We must recapture the noble view of man as capable of moral responsibility and self-restraint -- of assuming responsibility for governing himself. This is the real meaning of the 2nd Amendment, and indeed of the entire American project of ordered liberty.
It is the business of every citizen to preserve justice in his heart, and the material capacity, including arms, to resist tyranny. These things constitute our character as a free people, which it is our duty to maintain. And to fulfill our duty to be such a people we shall have to return to the humble subjection to the authority of true moral principle that characterized our Founders, and that characterized every generation of Americans, until now. We must regain control of ourselves.
Most deeply, then, the assertion of 2nd Amendment rights is the assertion that we intend to control ourselves, and submit to the moral order that God has decreed must govern our lives. And just as we have no right to shirk our duty to submit to that moral order, so we have no right to shirk our duty to preserve unto ourselves the material means to discipline our government, if necessary, so that it remains a fit instrument for the self-government of a free people. The preservation of 2nd Amendment rights, for the right reasons, is a moral and public duty of every citizen.
The Clinton Administration's flirtations with executive tyranny should remind us that we have a duty to remain capable of disciplining our government if necessary. Bill Clinton's comprehensive avoidance of personal responsibility for his own actions, and our revulsion at the kind of character which that avoidance has produced in him, should be a kind of horrific preview of the kind of people we will all become if we continue to let our government treat us as though we were incapable of moral self-control. And Senator Smith's successful effort to defeat several policies that treat us that way is precisely the kind of principled defense of our liberty -- and of the premises of our liberty -- that make him so worthy to be a representative of a free people.
[This message has been edited by Oatka (edited September 15, 2000).]
The Reason for the Second Amendment
Sen. Bob Smith has succeeded in amending an upcoming appropriations bill to beat back the latest wave of Clinton administration disrespect for two key elements of a free citizenry -- privacy and the right to keep and bear arms. Smith's amendment to the Justice-State-Commerce appropriations bill would foil FBI plans to keep records of private identifying information on law-abiding citizens who buy guns. The amendment also forbids a proposed tax on gun purchases, and authorizes citizens to sue if the FBI doesn't observe these restrictions.
Senator Smith is to be praised for keeping his eye on some balls that might have been lost in the smoke of scandal and misinformation that the Clinton Administration seems endlessly to emit. Actually, few things could make the need for vigorous defense of 2nd Amendment rights clearer than the ongoing spectacle of Clinton contempt for the citizens he is supposed to serve. For the 2nd Amendment is really in the Constitution to give men like Bill Clinton something to think about when their ambition gets particularly over-inflated. 1"> The Second Amendment was not put into the Constitution by the Founders merely to allow us to intimidate burglars, or hunt rabbits to our hearts' content. This is not to say that hunting game for the family dinner, or defending against personal dangers, were not anticipated uses for firearms, particularly on the frontier. But these things are not the real purpose of the Amendment.
The Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a long train of abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon our natural rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our rights. That is why the right to keep and bear arms was included in the Bill of Rights.
In fact, if we make the judgment that our rights are being systematically violated, we have not merely the right, but the duty, to resist and overthrow the power responsible. That duty requires that we always maintain the material capacity to resist tyranny, if necessary, something that it is very hard to do if the government has all the weapons. A strong case can be made, therefore, that it is a fundamental DUTY of the free citizen to keep and bear arms.
In our time there have been many folks who don't like to be reminded of all this. And they try, in their painful way, to pretend that the word "people" in the 2nd Amendment means something there that it doesn't mean in any one of the other nine amendments in the Bill of Rights. They say that, for some odd reason, the Founders had a lapse, and instead of putting in "states" they put in "people." And so it refers to a right inherent in the state government.
This position is incoherent, and has been disproved by every piece of legitimate historical evidence. At one point in Jefferson's letters, for example, he is talking about the militia, and he writes, "militia -- every able-bodied man in the state. ..." The militia was every able-bodied man in the state. It had nothing to do with the state government. The words "well-regulated" had to do with organizing that militia and drilling it in the style of the 19th century, but "militia" itself referred to the able-bodied citizens of the state or commonwealth -- not to the state government.
It would make no sense whatsoever to restrict the right to keep and bear arms to state governments, since the principle on which our polity is based, as stated in the Declaration, recognizes that any government, at any level, can become oppressive of our rights. And we must be prepared to defend ourselves against its abuses.
But the movement against 2nd Amendment rights is not just a threat to our capacity to defend ourselves physically against tyranny. It is also part of the much more general assault on the very notion that human beings are capable of moral responsibility. This is a second and deeper reason that the defense of the 2nd Amendment is essential to the defense of liberty.
Advocates of banning guns think we can substitute material things for human self-control, but this approach won't wash. It is the human moral will that saves us from violence, not the presence or absence of weapons. We should reject utterly the absurd theory that weapons are the cause of violence.
Consider, for example, the phony assertion that certain weapons should be banned because "they have no purpose except to kill people." It is people that kill people, and they can use countless kinds of weapons to do so, if killing is in their hearts where love of justice should be. This week a 7-year old boy in Chicago apparently used a pair of underwear to commit murder, because he wanted a bike.
So let's get down to the real issue: are we moral adults, or are we moral children? If we are adults, then we have the capacity to control our will even in the face of passion, and to be responsible for the exercise of our natural rights. If we are only children, then all the particularly dangerous toys must be controlled by the government. But this "solution" implies that we can trust government with a monopoly on guns, even though we cannot trust ourselves with them. This is not a "solution" I trust.
Anyone who is serious about controlling violence must recognize that it can only be done by rooting violence out of the human heart. That's why I don't understand those who say "save us from guns," even while they cling to the coldly violent doctrine that human life has no worth except what they "choose" to assign to it.
If we want to end violence in our land, we must warm the hearts of all Americans with a renewed dedication to the God-given equality of all human beings. We must recapture the noble view of man as capable of moral responsibility and self-restraint -- of assuming responsibility for governing himself. This is the real meaning of the 2nd Amendment, and indeed of the entire American project of ordered liberty.
It is the business of every citizen to preserve justice in his heart, and the material capacity, including arms, to resist tyranny. These things constitute our character as a free people, which it is our duty to maintain. And to fulfill our duty to be such a people we shall have to return to the humble subjection to the authority of true moral principle that characterized our Founders, and that characterized every generation of Americans, until now. We must regain control of ourselves.
Most deeply, then, the assertion of 2nd Amendment rights is the assertion that we intend to control ourselves, and submit to the moral order that God has decreed must govern our lives. And just as we have no right to shirk our duty to submit to that moral order, so we have no right to shirk our duty to preserve unto ourselves the material means to discipline our government, if necessary, so that it remains a fit instrument for the self-government of a free people. The preservation of 2nd Amendment rights, for the right reasons, is a moral and public duty of every citizen.
The Clinton Administration's flirtations with executive tyranny should remind us that we have a duty to remain capable of disciplining our government if necessary. Bill Clinton's comprehensive avoidance of personal responsibility for his own actions, and our revulsion at the kind of character which that avoidance has produced in him, should be a kind of horrific preview of the kind of people we will all become if we continue to let our government treat us as though we were incapable of moral self-control. And Senator Smith's successful effort to defeat several policies that treat us that way is precisely the kind of principled defense of our liberty -- and of the premises of our liberty -- that make him so worthy to be a representative of a free people.
[This message has been edited by Oatka (edited September 15, 2000).]
