It has always been a source of great amusement for me, that our debates in this nation over the Constitution have tended to center around the concept of what the Founding Fathers meant when they put it all together. After all, they did not frame this document in a vacuum. They debated it vociferously, recorded their debate, argued with one another via written letters, and even took the measure to defend their work and explain it all, in great detail by the way, in a collection of news paper articles. Yet, even with all of that, we still get some down right zany explanations as to how their true intention was to limit personal freedom and build a top down nanny state with an overbearing government in control of even the most mundane daily decisions of everyone who happens to be a citizen of these fruited plains.
While there are certainly many areas of contention, none, in my humble opinion can match the beating over the years, taken by the Second Amendment. This particular safe guard against tyranny is the holy grail for the political left, and they’ve been after it since the very birth of the progressive movement. I want to make something perfectly clear, not all who advocate for gun control deserve ridicule. I do not doubt the sincerity of most of those that I meet and debate with. Most of the people we meet are honest in the way that they debate about any issue, and gun control versus the Second Amendment is no exception to that rule. The vast majority of the debate from the other side is being delivered by people who while they may be wrong, are none the less sincere in their thinking.
That’s important for a number of reasons, the most important of which is centered on how you defeat their ideology. Making it personal will not ever be a winning formula, they were led to where they live via their emotions, and the appeals to those emotions. What will work however, is a complete nonacceptance of their flawed straw man talking points. We need to back the train up, and refute them there, rather than trying to refute each individual piece of Tom Foolery that finds its way to the light of day.
For example, when Governor Cuomo screeches, “you don’t need x number of bullets to kill a deer,” simply remind the world that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting, killing deer, or target shooting. When the next mass shooting, and there will be a next one, takes its place in the never ending news pummeling, point out how it happened, as always, in a gun free zone. When the great Joe Biden gives his brilliantly thought out treatise on how merely firing off a shotgun blindly into the night will be sufficient to scare off any home invader, making any other type of firearm unnecessary for protection, remind him that home protection was not at all the intention of the Second Amendment. When Michael Moore intones his preposterous theory that the Second Amendment means that the Framers of our First National Law intended for citizens to be gifted with permission to carry front loading muskets only, laugh at what is truly, museum grade stupidity.
Here is the truth about the Second Amendment. It was not placed in the Bill of Rights so that people who were in militias could form paramilitary organizations to assist in national defense. It was not put in the Bill of Rights so that the people living in that age would be able to hunt for food. The Founding Fathers were not worried about citizens being able to ward off burglars, or even bandits in a wild and lawless frontier. They were not particularly frightened of the Indian population suddenly and without provocation marauding within the original colonies. They wanted to make certain that the citizens would be every bit a well armed, and even better armed, than any army that a central government would be able to put together.
When the Constitution was presented initially to the Legislatures of the individual states, it was not ratified. The individual state legislatures wanted some additions to the agreement codified into the deal, prior to signing on. One of the Amendments demanded was authored by George Mason of Virginia. It was the Second out of Eight, (the last two Amendments that rounded out the Bill of Rights were authored by James Madison, as a response to the discussion concerning the first Eight.) Of all of the quotes concerning the Second Amendment and what it really means, perhaps the best and most succinct belongs to the fellow who wrote the thing.
Here’s what George Mason had to say about the people’s right to keep and bear arms:
To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them.
If you still have doubts as to what was intended by the Second Amendment, we’ll let the author of the Constitution discuss it, at length. Here is the last paragraph from Federalist number 46, authored by James Madison, with emphasis added after the fact by myself:
Extravagant as the supposition is, 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 number able 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. The argument under the present head may be put into a very concise form, which appears altogether conclusive. Either the mode in which the federal government is to be constructed will render it sufficiently dependent on the people, or it will not. On the first supposition, it will be restrained by that dependence from forming schemes obnoxious to their constituents. On the other supposition, it will not possess the confidence of the people, and its schemes of usurpation will be easily defeated by the State governments, who will be supported by the people. On summing up the considerations stated in this and the last paper, they seem to amount to the most convincing evidence, that the powers proposed to be lodged in the federal government are as little formidable to those reserved to the individual States, as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the purposes of the Union; and that all those alarms which have been sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation of the State governments, must, on the most favorable interpretation, be ascribed to the chimerical fears of the authors of them.
It is clear, or should be to anyone of even a slightly intellectually honest nature, that our founding fathers not only wanted our citizens to be armed to the teeth, but wanted private citizens to be a greater force than any military that our nation could muster. They wanted the private citizens to be able to defeat any military force Washington could send against us. So the short answer to the hyperbolic question, “do you think the Founding Fathers wanted private citizens to have nukes?” is an undeniable and resounding yes. They wanted the citizens to have access to anything our military, or any military has, at any time now, or in the future.
Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.
Tags: 2nd Amendment, Bill of Rights, Guns
