by Jim Beers
THE BILL OF RIGHTS
At the birthing of the United States, upon defeat of the English army by the United Army of the 13 Colonies and associated militias, there emerged two points of view about incorporating guarantees of basic human rights into our Founding Document, The US Constitution.
Federalists desired a strong central government and generally thought including prohibitions against government infringement of basic human rights was unnecessary.
No less a Federalist than Alexander Hamilton argued that a Bill of Rights would “have no application to constitutions, professedly founded upon the power of the people and executed by their immediate representatives and servants”. He went on in No. 84 of the Federalist papers to state the following regarding a Bill of Rights, “why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?”
Anti-Federalists wanted a central government, but they also wanted more power to be guaranteed to remain locally controlled. They were generally concerned that a faraway and too-powerful central government would not care about their local needs and would eventually oppress them like the English Parliament and King had done.
Anti-Federalists were likewise concerned about explicitly protecting their natural rights such as their freedom of speech, freedom of religion, their right to petition the government, their right to trial by jury and many other such basic human rights. They had seen government abuses of these things throughout English and colonial history such as Charles II’s laws against possessing arms by all but the wealthy and the Colonial tax and law enforcement abuses of the Parliament and King George III.
Even before the Revolution, widespread colonial concern about growing English abuses of individual rights had led to initial efforts to create Bills of Rights. A Bill of Rights is a document that describes certain individual rights that are retained by the people and with which the government has no right to interfere. The argument finally subsided when it was agreed that if the new federal government had no such powers to deny the human rights named in the proposed Bill of Rights to begin with, how could their overt, written adoption do anything but set the citizens’ minds at ease and strengthen national unity?
The US Bill of Rights, or first 10 Amendments, was ratified and incorporated into the US Constitution by the States on 15 December 1791 just two short years after the ratification of the Constitution. These Amendments were added to the Constitution to assure support of all Americans for the new government by a forthright and binding statement protecting and guaranteeing the basic human rights belonging to all Americans - rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment from any future oppressive or tyrannical government.
THE SECOND AMENDMENT
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Why is the 2nd Amendment (after 1. no state religion, 2. freedom of the press, and 3. the right to assemble and seek redress of grievances were all addressed in the 1st Amendment) an affirmation of a citizen’s right (i.e. free from government infringement) to “keep and bear Arms”? Are the next 8 Amendments (from a right to a trial by jury to affirming that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”) of lesser importance than “keeping and bearing Arms”?
WHY A SECOND AMENDMENT?
It is often said we are (were?) a Judeo-Christian Nation. Regardless of the denomination of our Founding Fathers, it is safe to say they all recognized The Ten Commandments as the moral basis for all human conduct. Let us consider two of these Commandments or prohibitions in light of a natural or basic human right to “bear Arms”.
Thou shalt not kill. –
If you have no right to kill me or someone else; do I not have a right to protect the life of myself or my family or my neighbor or the lives of all those that live in my community or my country from those that would kill us?
Thou shalt not steal. –
If you cannot steal, does that not mean that I have a right to protect my or others’ property from being taken without cause? Whether the King and his Parliament, or thugs, or burglars or any other force attempt to steal my property; I have a right to protect my property from being taken from me.
How do we protect the lives of ourselves and others? How do we protect our property or the unjust abuse of others?
- What protects the old person from the young and strong?
- What protects the young from gangs?
- What protects children from the deranged?
- What protects soldiers and police from evil persons?
- What protects the homeowner from the intruder?
- What protects the citizen from the terrorist with a bomb?
- What protects the lady in the dark parking lot from the rapist?
- What protects the wife from the husband with a knife?
- What protects the jogger or dog-walker from the approaching wolf?
- What protects the rancher from the charging grizzly bear?
- What protects the sheep from the attacking cougar or coyote?
- What protects the unfortunate pedestrian or driver from the fleeing felon?
- What protects the witness to a crime from unscrupulous criminals?
- What protects the innocent from the hateful religious zealot?
- What protects individuals or communities from tyranny as in our Revolutionary War?
Consider that “Arms” alone protect the above because only “Arms” trump:
- The “I’m invincible” young thug.
- The gang.
- Rapists.
- Knives.
- Deadly and dangerous predators.
- Colored “belt” fighters.
- Clubs.
- Other guns.
- Home invaders, terrorists, carjackers, rabid dogs, cougars, wolves, etc.
- Evil and deranged persons.
- Violent and jealous ex-husbands, boyfriends, etc.
- **
** When my mother was in her late 80’s, she was legally blind and lived alone in a home on a hill overlooking a lake in N Minnesota. One day an inebriated aboriginal American tried to kick in her front door as he yelled for her to “open up old lady”. She called the Sheriff’s Office and they said someone would be there in 30 to 40 minutes. She told them to hurry because he was going around to the back door and “I am sitting here in the kitchen with a loaded shotgun”. The Deputy got there in about 20 minutes as the would-be home invader had caused extensive damage to the back door and was now once more trying to kick in the front door as the Deputy arrived.
Later I asked my Ma, “Do you think you could have killed him?” (Having carried a gun for years, I knew that was the first and only question you really had to answer before you ever take up a gun.)
Her answer was, “Yes Jim, if he ever got in here, HE COULD HAVE KILLED ME WITH THE BACK OF HIS HAND”.
I believe the foregoing only clarifies the common sense understanding of the rationale that underpinned the 2nd Amendment. A women alone in a farmhouse as strangers approach or a camper facing a pack of wolves has no other option today than they had 225 years ago. A lone rider seeing dust from unexpected horses behind a hill or a man alone in a parking lot hearing several threatening voices from the dark has no other option today than he did 225 years ago. An “Armed” man or woman has:
1. Confidence to tell someone or something threatening them to leave them alone.
2. The opportunity to brandish (show but not point toward) a gun to a would-be attacker.
3. The ability to ward off an attacker from a criminal to grizzly bear that would otherwise kill them. Without a gun, none of the above is or would be possible.
Just as “armed” men had banded together to protect their lives, personal welfare and property to found the country, so too would “armed” men ensure the “domestic Tranquility”, “general Welfare”, and “Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”, mentioned as the reasons why “We the People” established “this Constitution for the United States of America.”
When people say “only guns for hunting”, they are simply wrong. The 2nd Amendment guarantee may have been more widely appreciated for hunters to put food on the table 225 years ago. Yet hunting today, while less for subsistence supports conservation agencies and environmental programs of benefit to all citizens as well as providing a wealth of benefits to hunters, their families, their communities, and rural America in general. Whether it is controlling predators and problem animals at no cost to others or simply feeding families with venison or duck dinners, guns for hunting is a valuable American feature envied worldwide.
When people say “no one needs a (fill-in-the-blank)”, they are wrong too. Arguing that The Founding Fathers didn’t anticipate “assault weapons” or that large clips are only used to kill people is specious as well. The Founding Fathers certainly couldn’t anticipate breech-loading guns or revolvers or semi-automatic guns or the military weaponry of today. Does that imply that guns should have been confiscated as of the Civil War when breech-loaders, repeating guns, and revolvers (all the “assault weapons” of their day) replaced the muzzleloaders, and single shot rifles, shotguns, and pistols known at the Founding of our Nation? If the farm family member answering the door to a stranger, or the mother walking the dog and encountering several threatening thugs is denied the right to tell them to depart or to leave them alone as they brandish a modern weapon; what good or use is any other right? If a woman grabbed by a rapist or retreating from a violent male cannot defend herself with deadly force from a modern weapon; the government that has disarmed her is not her protector, it is her enemy. The recent news report from Houston (not covered outside Houston) of a 15 year-old boy using his Dad’s AR-15 to defend himself and his 12 year-old sister from two house invaders in broad daylight is an example of a modern “assault weapon” being the best weapon for a youngster all alone to use to protect himself and a younger sibling from two hulking thugs.
When even the most trivial or inconsequential crime has been committed, very often the perpetrator or perpetrators decide on-the-spot to kill the victim or some unfortunate witness. This very real and very common fact is never mentioned as we are told to “give them whatever they want” or “don’t worry if you have little or just act submissive”, “or a few possessions aren’t worth harming someone for”. This reality is seldom mentioned when a carjacker is shot or a previously convicted purse snatcher is wounded or killed on a dark street one evening. Whether the criminal had a gun or a knife or just “the back of their hand”, the unarmed citizen is truly an innocent victim flirting with disaster when he is disarmed forcibly by government.
Guns are blamed by the Mayors of large American Cities for crime. Large areas of fatherless and ill-educated young men with no futures killing one another at alarming rates may not be mentioned due to political correctness. So the blame is placed on neighboring states for providing guns. Big City Police Chiefs are appointed (and fired) by the very same Mayors that blame their Cities’ crimes on others. Those same Police Chiefs control the American portion of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. So support for confiscating guns by that organization reflects not police opinions or facts; but rather the political appointees’ bosses’ political platforms. Police don’t carry “off-duty” guns simply to be prepared for a call just as retired police don’t have concealed-carry permits or other legal authority to carry a gun just to play cowboys and Indians.
Americans and especially rural Americans need guns today every bit as much as they did in 1791. Rural economies and rural governments (County, town, Township) have lost authority as:
- Federal laws (ESA, Wilderness Declarations, Critical Habitats, UN Treaties and Conventions, Scenic and Historic Declarations, Executive Orders, Marine Mammals, Wild Horses, Coastal Zone Management, and regulatory overreach on everything from private property rights to authority over “all” waters of the US, etc.) assume more and more authority from State jurisdictions as proscribed in the US Constitution.
- State political authorities and bureaucracies have become more and more federal “partners” and enablers in return for grants, support, and future career opportunities. This shift is directly proportional to the abandonment of state responsibilities to defend and nurture local communities in everything except for commonly-held rights and freedoms guaranteed to all Americans.
- Federal regulations and policies on private property (taking private property and property rights without compensation; blocking energy development; dictating impractical use and care of domestic animals; dictating what wild animals will and will not be imposed locally or eliminated nationally; allowing import and establishment of Injurious and dangerous animals such as pythons, constrictors and Asian carp species; and forcing deadly and destructive predators like wolves and grizzly bears on vehemently opposed rural communities; easements on millions of acres that restrict all manner of legal and productive uses “in perpetuity”; etc.) that reduce rural economic health and opportunity as well as human “Welfare” and “Tranquility”.
- Federal land - Acquisition, Road Closures, Timber Management and Harvest elimination, Grazing Allotment closures, Wilderness, Use and USE Permit elimination, Fish and Wildlife Management abandonment, etc. – policies that have eliminated Revenue Sharing with Local Governments as the US Congress has abandoned Payments-in-Lieu-of-Taxes to Local governments.
The result of all of the above: less Local funding for law enforcement and other government services. This leads to greater Response Times when crimes are occurring or deadly predators threaten family members and fewer available police resources are available when crime, wolves (et al) and criminals increase. Add in the loss of rural populations due to no jobs and lower real estate values as fewer people look to relocate to rural environs and the rural resident becomes more aware of the danger of everything from meth labs, wolf sightings and weird kids to returning criminals and gathering places for thugs and ex-criminals. No matter the warblings of the NY Mayor Bloomberg or the blame games of Chicago Mayor Emanuel about guns: all those folks living in that vast red area on the national voting maps know full well what is at stake as these Mayors and their fellow Party members in the US Senate and the White House concoct all manner of infringements of the American citizen’s right to bear Arms. While Mayor Bloomberg puts more and more money into law enforcement for NYPD to “stop and frisk” who they will; rural Midwest Counties losing population band together to provide police services and nighttime response times to a crime get longer and longer as County revenues dwindle and Deputy spacing increases.
Current Threats to the 2nd Amendment
Urban and rural cultures have long differed on the role and necessity of guns in the home and on the person. Settlers, travelers, farmers, ranchers, small town residents, and isolated families and workers recognize the utility of gun possession where any help for someone in trouble is far away. Conversely, American urban dwellers have steadily come to believe that guns create problems that are not offset by their benefits as they have come to rely on police response to emergencies (too often after-the-fact) and the chatter of their Mayors (and increasingly national politicians) that guns are responsible for crime and that private citizens that would protect themselves or others are bad people to be disregarded and marginalized.
This trend to obviate the 2nd Amendment entirely has become increasingly apparent in the period since the 1960’s when anti-war, drugs, “free” love, environmentalism, animal rights, abortion/euthanasia (Life cheapened), growth of federal government authority and size, an explosion of fatherless children, and anti-religious/secular confrontations began to burgeon. It is a simple, undeniable and true fact that the current President, Vice-President, Attorney General, Secretary of State, most Presidential appointees, leading Democrat Senators and Representatives, and political operatives of the Democrat party are on record as strongly opposing the 2nd Amendment and calling for its repeal. The Republican Party, while giving lip service to support of the 2nd Amendment has nowhere near the fervid enthusiasm for outspoken defense of the right to bear Arms as do those ardently advocating the elimination of that right.
Federal agencies recently have secretly run guns to Mexican drug cartel members as Mexican violence surrounding drugs has reached epic proportions. The Secretary of State has bemoaned the violence as clandestine negotiations with UN bureaucrats and sympathetic (to guns only in possession of governments) foreign delegates concerning wording for a UN Small Arms Treaty to give all signatory nations total control over all guns within their borders were being conducted by US bureaucrats. While such a Treaty would supersede the 2nd Amendment (“all Treaties…. shall be the supreme Law of the Land” per Article VI of the Constitution)) full disclosure of Treaty negotiations as with particulars about the gun sales to Mexican criminals (“Americans guns are supplying Mexican mass murders by drug lords!”) are both denied and kept from the US Congress and the American public by the President and his Administration.
Enter the recent phenomenon of mentally deranged people killing large numbers of school children, theatre-goers, college students, and political rally attendees in publicly-proclaimed “gun-free” zones. Strangely, such incidents have been occurring in such gun controlled countries as Scotland, China and Russia as well. Those committing such senseless crimes are frequently shown to have been social misfits that were being recognized by others as on the verge of unpredictable and possibly violent behavior. Those that did not commit suicide are handled by government for long periods and, unlike the Oklahoma City bomber of recent infamy, neither tried in a timely fashion nor executed shortly thereafter.
Enter the recent phenomenon of Moslem terrorism. While the fellow on the plane over Detroit tried to explode his underpants and the New York City would-be bomber tried to explode a vehicle; the US Army Major, shouting Ali whatever, killed 13 and wounded 29 in the “gun-free” business area of the Fort Hood Army Base. This terrorist/acolyte of the American Moslem terrorist executed by a US drone in Yemen is nevertheless identified as a perpetrator of “workplace violence” and 4 years later still goes untried as government employees argue over whether his jail-sprouted beard should be cut before he is tried. Like the Norwegian xenophobe that recently slaughtered dozens of (in his view) Norwegian immigration-supporters with a gun in that strictly gun-controlled country and then received a 21-year sentence in a cell complete with a desk after capture by police: mass murders with guns happen nearly always in gun-free zones and perpetrators that are captured by police are seldom punished in any way intelligible to others with similar tendencies.
The current political leadership in the US is capitalizing on American “mass murders”; Mexican “gun-running”; “workplace violence”; and public sympathy for killers who, if guns were not available would no doubt be Peace Corps volunteers. The President has appointed the Vice-President to chair a Committee to “come up with recommendations” quickly. These men, like their close associate Mayor Emanuel of Murder City USA (“gun-free” Chicago, in practically “gun-free” Illinois), can be counted on to completely ignore the books and reams of recent statistics from researchers like John Lott and recommend that the USA be made like Chicago, Washington DC and New York by getting rid of the 2nd Amendment and putting all gun authority under the control of the President and his appointees. Recommendations like putting armed guards in schools, or allowing trained teachers to carry guns in schools, or requiring that any public space or publicly-used space declared “gun-free” must have armed security whenever open to the public will be ridiculed as dangerous (the opposite is true); expensive (this from an Administration taking us further, Trillions upon Trillions, into national debt every day for everything from nationalized health care and auto manufacturing to windmills and thousand-acre mirror sites); and simply silly to the wise among us like them that are convinced “no one needs a gun”.
THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
The future of the 2nd Amendment is stalked by yet another phenomenon of modern America, The Slippery Slope. Consider your “right to bear Arms” in light of the recent history of abortion in the US. In 1973, in a 7-2 Decision in the case of Roe v Wade, the US Supreme Court exercised “raw judicial power” to declare a woman’s “right to privacy” that creates a right to abortion. The judges were all over the place stating such things as “viability” of a fetus indicating “life”, that there would never be “abortion on demand” and that the point at which a fetus is a “person” was likely at 3 months. As I write this 40 years later, abortion is:
- Legal at any age of the fetus “on demand”.
- Funded wholly or in part throughout the US by federal tax dollars.
- Available in government health programs such as active duty military clinics.
- Funded by US tax dollars internationally through Planned Parenthood and the UN.
- Being proposed for expansion by proponents to be applicable to 6-month-olds whose “quality of life” is “judged” to be not worth living.
To say that the high-sounding words of our Declaration of Independence,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life…”
were simply denied to what everyone understands is the growing child of a mother and father in the womb is simply a fact. That this has been and is cascading into; 1) a definite cheapening of and disregard for the sanctity of a human life and its right to exist, and 2) a god-like power for government that was never intended for any government envisioned by our Founding Documents and Authorities cannot be denied.
Like abortion, everyone denies there is any gun litmus test for new Supreme Court Justices. That is not true. Presidents, US Senators, and every citizen above the age of 10(?) knows that every Democrat appointee supports unfettered abortion and absolute gun control while most Republican appointees probably look for a “middle ground” (?) on abortion and support “some reasonable” limits on the 2nd Amendment while often siding with the Democrat appointees in a surprise fit of whatever on these matters.
The Supreme Court “ruling” on a case; the State Department “implementing” a UN Small Arms Treaty; the Homeland Security Secretary writing a regulation to save us from international religious workplace violence; the Attorney General prosecuting or refusing to prosecute a case; and the Vice President and his Speedy Gonzalez Task Force on Gun Control for the President: any of these or even things not mentioned could roll the 2nd Amendment over to The Slippery Slope. Just like the child in your wife’s womb lost legal protections first at 3 months, then 6 months, then 9 months and possibly up to 6 months-old soon: so too is the “right to bear Arms” subject to the same decay.
If government can deny certain weapons; they can deny all “Arms”.
If government can restrict magazines; they can restrict the calibers and the number of guns.
If government can force registration of guns; they can confiscate all “Arms” the next time a “gun free” cafeteria is shot up or a violent workplace employee is disgruntled or hateful of other religions.
If government can force reporting of all gun sales (the vaunted “Gun Show Loophole” is merely code for private sales between individuals as in my selling a Winchester pump shotgun to a hunting buddy for $100 and 2 dozen goose decoys); they can charge taxes on it, audit your records, enter your home without a warrant, in general make your life H-E- double hockey sticks.
If Government can do any or all of these things: what meaning or guarantee is left in the words “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” (my caps)?
Certainly, reasonable State government requirements to carry a concealed weapon, or safety requirements before being issued a hunting license are examples of just requirements in US communities. Federal requirements should be limited to import inspections and interstate activities such as commerce and standard air passenger safety, especially as they are potentially affected or used by terrorists or workplace violence-prone religious fanatics.
CONTROL & RIGHTS
If government can infringe on or (as one US Senator recently blurted out) eliminate any and all guns ostensibly because of misuse of guns by the deranged or religious haters instead of identifying, preventing, and punishing those that would or have used a gun to kill or threaten others, no Right is either safe or guaranteed.
Do we still have freedom of religion if we force religious persons to finance abortion or birth control that they see as serious sins?
Do we still have freedom of speech if we can fire or prosecute persons for using proscribed words or incarcerate persons for making video lampoons or drawing cartoons about religious leaders?
Do we still have a right to peaceably assemble when opposing politicians of the President’s Party walk through such peaceful assemblages in Washington trying to evoke remarks from public protests of their policies?
Do we still have a right against unreasonable searches when City Police can stop anyone at any time to frisk and interrogate them?
Do we still have a right against unreasonable seizures when federal enforcers time arrests (with or without warrants) to seize property like homes, boats, vehicles, etc. in order to auction them off and keep the proceeds in their Departments and (without Congressional approval) buy prisons and other items that Congress either did not know about or had refused to fund such as the Illinois prison for (workplace violence-prone fanatics??)?
Do we still have a right to a public trial when a US Senator can be tried in secret for a homicide and then return to his high office for years?
Do we still have a right to an impartial jury when we recognize and accept by our silence jury “nullification” wherein women can find guilty women innocent or minorities can exonerate guilty minorities because of their race or sex?
Do we still have a right to a speedy trial when federal/military prosecutors under the Attorney General/Secretary of Defense under the President can hold a murderous Moslem terrorist for a “Workplace Violence” killing of 13 innocents and the wounding of 29 for years as they wonder about trying him bearded or clean-shaven?
Do we still have a right to keep our private property safe from being taken for public use without just compensation when federal laws, federal declarations, federal property closures, and federal actions increasingly take private property without compensation under Endangered Species Findings, Roadless Area closures, Wilderness area Declarations restricting other access, etc.?
Do we still have powers not delegated to the federal government “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” when the federal government:
- Nationalizes auto manufacture?
- Subsidizes windmills?
- Dictates what wild animals will be located where?
- Sets domestic animal care rules?
- Owns over 40% of the nation and still buys and eases more?
- Finances home purchases and college tuitions?
- Pays or ignores local governments for all federal lands taken off Local tax roles at its leisure?
When any of these Rights are used for evil, like pornographers reaching into homes or to children or some religious fanatic giving people poison; do we hear cries to do away with the freedom of speech or the freedom of religion? Of course not, we try to avoid it happening in the future as we maintain our Rights. Do we cry out to do away with a public trial or juries of peers because of the perfidy of the rich or the privileges being accorded minorities? No. There is evil in the world and there always will be. It is up to good men and free men to minimize it by building strong families, protecting Life, protecting property, and limiting all government to the few items like defense and equal protection that WE FOUNDED THEM TO DO!
Clearly, the 2nd Amendment is not the only freedom guaranteed in The Bill of Rights that is under attack. It is not hypothetical to describe these recent and ongoing assaults on the rule of law and the disdain for Constitutional liberties that we have assumed for centuries now were “unalienable” and given by our “Creator” and NOT government. There are many good reasons for the 2nd Amendment and those should not be dismissed or denied as attempts are made to destroy it.
“Limiting” a freedom is like pruning a wild tree that cannot bear pruning and dies. Often, the uneducated pruner likes the immediate result, before the tree dies, and proceeds to prune others nearby. When he returns later and finds all the trees dying or dead, it is too late to replant the trees because weeds and undesirable plants have invaded the dead area and begun to take over. When that is the case, nothing short of a hot fire or applying a broad spectrum herbicide can have any hope of making the area once more hospitable to cultivating the desired trees. Experience and history have shown this over and over again. Just as someone owns the desired tree and wishes to maintain it, so too does the American citizen prize his enumerated and unalienable rights that come from our Creator. Like the wild tree, you either protect it or you lose it: there is no such thing as a limited right.
Jim Beers
2 January 2013
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Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.
Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting. You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net