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Title: Why the Second Amendment? If You Want a Really, Really, 'STUPID' Answer, Just Ask Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga, or LibertyFlames 'Mininggold'
Source:
The New America
URL Source: http://thenewamerican.com/reviews/o ... 14074-why-the-second-amendment
Published: Jul 15, 2013
Author: Walter E. Williams
Post Date: 2013-07-15 15:07:29 by Murron
Keywords: None
Views: 1009
Comments: 4
Why the Second Amendment? If You Want a Really, Really, 'STUPID' Answer, Just Ask Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga, or LibertyFlames 'Mininggold' A K A Stone: "Truthfully it was put in place in case someone with your point of view came to power. So we could shoot someone like you if you were the leader." mininggold: "The 2nd amendment was put in the constitution as a bone to the slaves states, who would not have supported it otherwise." ************************************** Why the Second Amendment? If You Want a Really, Really, 'STUPID' Answer, Just Ask Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga, or LibertyFlames 'Mininggold' Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, said: "The British are not coming.... We don't need all these guns to kill people." Lewis' vision, shared by many, represents a gross ignorance of why the framers of the Constitution gave us the Second Amendment. How about a few quotes from the period and you decide whether our Founding Fathers harbored a fear of foreign tyrants. Alexander Hamilton: "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed," adding later, "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government." By the way, Hamilton is referring to what institution when he says "the representatives of the people"? James Madison: "(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." Thomas Jefferson: "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which inspired our Constitution's Bill of Rights, said, "To disarm the people — that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." Rep. John Lewis and like-minded people might dismiss these thoughts by saying the founders were racist anyway. Here's a more recent quote from a card-carrying liberal, the late Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey: "Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms.... The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible." I have many other Second Amendment references at http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/quotes.html. How about a couple of quotations with which Rep. Lewis and others might agree? "Armas para que?" (translated: "Guns, for what?") by Fidel Castro. There's a more famous one: "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing." That was Adolf Hitler. Here's the gun grabbers' slippery-slope agenda, laid out by Nelson T. Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc.: "We're going to have to take this one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest.... Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. ... The final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition — except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs and licensed gun collectors — totally illegal" (The New Yorker, July 1976). There have been people who've ridiculed the protections afforded by the Second Amendment, asking what chance would citizens have against the military might of the U.S. government. Military might isn't always the deciding factor. Our 1776 War of Independence was against the mightiest nation on the face of the earth — Great Britain. In Syria, the rebels are making life uncomfortable for the much-better-equipped Syrian regime. Today's Americans are vastly better-armed than our founders, Warsaw Ghetto Jews and Syrian rebels. There are about 300 million privately held firearms owned by Americans. That's nothing to sneeze at. And notice that the people who support gun control are the very people who want to control and dictate our lives. Walter E. Williams (above) is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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#1. To: Murron, *Yukon neo-Progressive Vermin* (#0)
The "Syrian rebel" terrorists are far better armed, being supplied by the US, NATO, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Other than that bit of neocon terrorist propaganda, the article is spot on.
Other than that bit of neocon terrorist propaganda, the article is spot on. Absolutely! And this is why we (well, most of us anyway) will fight, and die to keep our weapons.
(Thomas Jefferson: "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.")
The Constitution was ratified in 1789. The first ten Amendments were ratified in 1791. The slave states, and the non-slave states, had already ratified the Constitution before the 2nd Amendment was proposed. Madison spoke to the issue of an armed citizenry in Federalist 46. As with each and every numbered Federalist paper, it was addressed "To the People of the State of New York." Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the numberable to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear,the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it. Washington was inaugurated April 30, 1789. There were only 11 States in the union, two (NC/RI) having refused to ratify the Constitution. North Carolina ratified on November 21, 1789. Rhode Island held out for more than a year but ratified on May 29, 1790. In 1777, Vermont declared independence from the New Hampshire Grants, from Britain, and from New York. Vermont was admitted as the fourteenth state in 1791. As for the militia, that is not the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. It is defined in law. Currently effective 10 U.S.C. § 311 states: The Militia Act of May 8, 1792 states, The 2nd Amendment did not give any right to the people but recognized a pre-existing right of the people to keep and bear arms, and it restrained the Federal government by stating that the said pre-existing right "shall not be infringed." Love the 2nd Amendment or hate it, but to change it should require a constitutional amendment, even if one thinks the amendment, as phrased, is anachronistic.
Madison spoke to the issue of an armed citizenry in Federalist 46. As with each and every numbered Federalist paper, it was addressed "To the People of the State of New York." The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, untilit should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. Extravagant as the suppositionis, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the numberable to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear,the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it. Washington was inaugurated April 30, 1789. There were only 11 States in the union, two (NC/RI) having refused to ratify the Constitution. North Carolina ratified on November 21, 1789. Rhode Island held out for more than a year but ratified on May 29, 1790. In 1777, Vermont declared independence from the New Hampshire Grants, from Britain, and from New York. Vermont was admitted as the fourteenth state in 1791. As for the militia, that is not the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. It is defined in law. Currently effective 10 U.S.C. § 311 states: The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard. The Militia Act of May 8, 1792 states, That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia The 2nd Amendment did not give any right to the people but recognized a pre-existing right of the people to keep and bear arms, and it restrained the Federal government by stating that the said pre-existing right "shall not be infringed." Love the 2nd Amendment or hate it, but to change it should require a constitutional amendment, even if one thinks the amendment, as phrased, is anachronistic. Worth repeating.... Thank you, nolu chan, for this very informative post!
(Thomas Jefferson: "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.")
Today's Americans are vastly better-armed than our founders, Warsaw Ghetto Jews and Syrian rebels
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
#2. To: hondo68 (#1)
The "Syrian rebel" terrorists are far better armed, being supplied by the US, NATO, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.
#3. To: Murron, A K A Stone, mininggold (#0)
mininggold: "The 2nd amendment was put in the constitution as a bone to the slaves states, who would not have supported it otherwise."
The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, untilit should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. Extravagant as the suppositionis, let it however be made.
The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia
#4. To: nolu chan, A K A Stone, mininggold (#3)
The Constitution was ratified in 1789. The first ten Amendments were ratified in 1791. The slave states, and the non-slave states, had already ratified the Constitution before the 2nd Amendment was proposed.
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