The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is in jeopardy these days -- dangerously so. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure that we will remain an armed people, able to defend our liberty. In our defense of firearm rights, we must emphasize this fundamental purpose of the amendment. If we leave the impression that we think that the right to keep and bear arms concerns hunting and sports shooting, and making sure Americans have the right to entertain themselves with guns, we will actually contribute to the false view that the Second Amendment is an historical curiosity, hardly deserving the effort it would take to officially remove it from the Constitution.
The right to keep and bear arms derives from our duty to retain the basic means necessary to defend our country and our liberty.
Certainly it is true that the actual defense of our national borders is normally delegated to the professional military. But we must never think that this revocable delegation of responsibility for national defense is a transfer of ultimate responsibility. We, the people, are responsible for the defense of country and liberty, and the Second Amendment is crucial to our performance of that duty.
The presence of the Second Amendment in our Constitution reflects the history of the emergence of self-government in the modern world. One key impediment to the assertion of the political rights of the common man throughout much of history was that military conflict was usually left to a professional elite. Until common people were able to get on battlefields and defend themselves, they left that defense to professional classes of warriors. Inevitably, or at least naturally, such warriors became the rulers of the people whose country they defended.
Our Founders understood that leaving matters of defense entirely in the hands of a professional military class was inconsistent with self-government. The American Founding was a decisive break with the old European order in many ways, but the care our Founders took to ensure an armed citizenry is one of the most striking. Indeed, the formal Constitutional guarantee that the sovereignty of the people would be defended by that people themselves, and with their own weapons, is a kind of condensed summary of the entire doctrine of self-government on which the nation is founded.
For this reason, it is a matter of clear national interest that we make sure that our citizens understand the meaning of their Second Amendment rights -- indeed, their Second Amendment duties. It is difficult to see how any citizen could have a clear understanding of his general civic responsibilities if he does not understand the fundamental duty he bears to join with his fellow citizens at all times in remaining vigilant to any threats to liberty. And it is difficult to see how he could understand this if he is allowed to come of age with a hostile or trivial view of the Second Amendment.
http://www.etherzone.com/keyes.html
The right to keep and bear arms derives from our duty to retain the basic means necessary to defend our country and our liberty.
Certainly it is true that the actual defense of our national borders is normally delegated to the professional military. But we must never think that this revocable delegation of responsibility for national defense is a transfer of ultimate responsibility. We, the people, are responsible for the defense of country and liberty, and the Second Amendment is crucial to our performance of that duty.
The presence of the Second Amendment in our Constitution reflects the history of the emergence of self-government in the modern world. One key impediment to the assertion of the political rights of the common man throughout much of history was that military conflict was usually left to a professional elite. Until common people were able to get on battlefields and defend themselves, they left that defense to professional classes of warriors. Inevitably, or at least naturally, such warriors became the rulers of the people whose country they defended.
Our Founders understood that leaving matters of defense entirely in the hands of a professional military class was inconsistent with self-government. The American Founding was a decisive break with the old European order in many ways, but the care our Founders took to ensure an armed citizenry is one of the most striking. Indeed, the formal Constitutional guarantee that the sovereignty of the people would be defended by that people themselves, and with their own weapons, is a kind of condensed summary of the entire doctrine of self-government on which the nation is founded.
For this reason, it is a matter of clear national interest that we make sure that our citizens understand the meaning of their Second Amendment rights -- indeed, their Second Amendment duties. It is difficult to see how any citizen could have a clear understanding of his general civic responsibilities if he does not understand the fundamental duty he bears to join with his fellow citizens at all times in remaining vigilant to any threats to liberty. And it is difficult to see how he could understand this if he is allowed to come of age with a hostile or trivial view of the Second Amendment.
http://www.etherzone.com/keyes.html
