On a crisp April morning two hundred
and forty-one years ago, farmers and townsfolk of eastern
Massachusetts assembled under arms and came face to face with British
army regulars at a small bridge outside the town of Concord, firing
the first shots of what came to be known as the American Revolution
and setting into motion the events that would impel the thirteen
colonies to formally announce their independence from Britain one
year and seventy-six days later, an event which we celebrate today by
blowing up little paper cylinders filled with gunpowder.
Why, one may ask, would these thoroughly ordinary people undertake such a compellingly extraordinary task, the task of holding the line and exchanging fire with trained soldiers of the world's most feared and respected military? What danger impelled them to risk their lives in armed combat and their fortunes in open rebellion?
The British regulars were coming to take their guns.
Why, one may ask, would these thoroughly ordinary people undertake such a compellingly extraordinary task, the task of holding the line and exchanging fire with trained soldiers of the world's most feared and respected military? What danger impelled them to risk their lives in armed combat and their fortunes in open rebellion?
The British regulars were coming to take their guns.
Obviously, it would be absurd to claim
that the events of that day were not the the culmination of a decade
of escalating tension between the colonists and the British
government that began with the Stamp Act; but the act which finally
made those “embattled farmers” cross the Rubicon of rebellion and
take up arms against a government they had previously affirmed their
loyalty to was the attempted confiscation of their weapons.
“But, Bruceman,” you may be asking, “what does that have to do with us now in the 21st Century? Isn't the Right to Bear Arms an outdated notion from the 18th Century, written by musket-carrying people who could have never foreseen the weaponry available today? Remember when Homer Simpson said, 'Lisa, if I didn't have this gun the King of England could just come in here and start pushing you around...'? Wasn't that hilarious, and didn't it thoroughly skewer this old-timey notion of gun ownership? Isn't the obsession with weaponry a uniquely American phenomenon that we would do well to be rid of in order to join the rest of the developed world?”
In inverse order, the answers to these questions are: No, Yes it was hilarious, No, and It has plenty to do with life in the 21st Century. But before I address the relevance of the Second Amendment in today's world, let me first address the historical underpinnings of its formulation and dispel some common misconceptions thereof...
The conception of the Right to Bear Arms as a bulwark against tyranny is an idea that goes back at least to ancient Greece. Criticizing the theories of Hippodamus of Miletus, Aristotle wrote in Politics that “the farmers have no arms, the workers have neither land nor arms; this makes them virtually the servants of those who do possess arms. In these circumstances the equal sharing of offices and honours becomes an impossibility.” A leading proponent of the concept of the Golden Mean, Aristotle sought to balance the extremes of oligarchy and democracy, saying (also in Politics ) “the whole constitutional set-up is intended to be neither democracy nor oligarchy but mid-way between the two -- what is sometimes called 'polity,' the members of which are those who bear arms.” For Aristotle, the Right to Bear Arms was an essential feature of a tyranny-free society. The first act of tyrants was usually to deny their subjects the means to defend themselves. He said that oligarchs “mistrust the people; hence they deprive them of arms...”
“But, Bruceman,” you may be asking, “what does that have to do with us now in the 21st Century? Isn't the Right to Bear Arms an outdated notion from the 18th Century, written by musket-carrying people who could have never foreseen the weaponry available today? Remember when Homer Simpson said, 'Lisa, if I didn't have this gun the King of England could just come in here and start pushing you around...'? Wasn't that hilarious, and didn't it thoroughly skewer this old-timey notion of gun ownership? Isn't the obsession with weaponry a uniquely American phenomenon that we would do well to be rid of in order to join the rest of the developed world?”
In inverse order, the answers to these questions are: No, Yes it was hilarious, No, and It has plenty to do with life in the 21st Century. But before I address the relevance of the Second Amendment in today's world, let me first address the historical underpinnings of its formulation and dispel some common misconceptions thereof...
The conception of the Right to Bear Arms as a bulwark against tyranny is an idea that goes back at least to ancient Greece. Criticizing the theories of Hippodamus of Miletus, Aristotle wrote in Politics that “the farmers have no arms, the workers have neither land nor arms; this makes them virtually the servants of those who do possess arms. In these circumstances the equal sharing of offices and honours becomes an impossibility.” A leading proponent of the concept of the Golden Mean, Aristotle sought to balance the extremes of oligarchy and democracy, saying (also in Politics ) “the whole constitutional set-up is intended to be neither democracy nor oligarchy but mid-way between the two -- what is sometimes called 'polity,' the members of which are those who bear arms.” For Aristotle, the Right to Bear Arms was an essential feature of a tyranny-free society. The first act of tyrants was usually to deny their subjects the means to defend themselves. He said that oligarchs “mistrust the people; hence they deprive them of arms...”
The linkage between tyranny and the deprivation of arms, and the corresponding concept of arms-bearing as both a means of personal self-defense and as safeguard against tyrannical government (whether foreign or domestic) were also important ideas in ancient Rome, particularly as it degenerated from Republic into Empire. Cicero, Roman statesman, rhetorician, and famed orator, eloquently formulated the doctrine of the “natural right” to bear arms for self-defense when he said, "And indeed, gentlemen, there exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right. When weapons reduce them to silence, the laws no longer expect one to await their pronouncements. For people who decide to wait for these will have to wait for justice, too -- and meanwhile they must suffer injustice first."
Cicero was part of the last generation of Roman Republicans who attempted to forestall the usurpation of the Roman government by tyrannical dictators and their armies of mercenaries. He urged the people of Rome to take up arms against would-be dictators such as Julius Caesar and Marcus Antonius, saying of the latter, “[he] is an enemy against whom arms have rightly been taken up,” and arguing against his ally Calenus “Do you call slavery peace? Our ancestors indeed took up arms not only to win freedom, but also empire; you think our arms should be thrown away to make us slaves. What juster reason is there for the waging of war than to repel slavery?”
Julius Caesar, on the other hand, recognized the salient fact that an armed population could never be a truly conquered population. In his account of the Gallic War one of Caesar's first acts after defeating a Gallic tribe was usually to strip them of their arms and punish those who had fought, and in his account of the civil war that ensued upon his crossing of the Rubicon he also refers to the seizure of arms.
The importance of an armed citizenry in maintaining liberty was also recognized by the foremost political thinker of the Italian Renaissance, Niccolo Machiavelli, who admired the Swiss system of armed citizen militias and said that “Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.”
The right to arm oneself for defense of one's person and liberty was a tradition that continued into the Enlightenment, being remarked upon by revered thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, whose argument for the right to “life, liberty, and property” was the inspiration for Thomas Jefferson's similar formulation in the document whose signing we celebrate today. Locke wrote that these rights were fundamental to mankind and antedated and transcended any government; that governments existed primarily to safeguard these rights; and any government destructive of these rights was unlawful and could therefore be justly resisted and destroyed by use of arms the same way that one could resist and destroy a criminal who threatened one's life.
“Thanks for the history lesson,
Bruceman, but what does this have to do with anything?” Well, these
thinkers formed the foundation of the Founders' ideas on government
and the Right to Bear Arms!
These were the so-called “elementary books of public right” that Jefferson referred to when explaining the basis and authority of the Declaration of Independence. In his letter to Henry Lee IV (half-brother of Robert), Jefferson wrote “...But with respect to our rights, and the acts of the British government contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. All American whigs thought alike on these subjects. When forced, therefore, to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc....”
This brings me to another important point. What did Jefferson mean by “all American whigs”? For the Founders of Jefferson's generation, there were two main classes of English lawyers and writers on government: Whigs and Tories. Whigs were fundamentally distrustful of government power, particularly the kind of arbitrary power exercised by absolutist monarchs unrestrained by strong parliaments, and sought to restrict it; Tories were generally more pro-government, especially in regards to the monarchy.
Whigs saw the history of English common law and the development of its unwritten Constitution as a fundamental struggle, stretching back to Magna Carta and beyond, between the rights of the English people and the power of the Norman monarchs. To them, as to Locke, rights were not privileges granted to the people by their rulers; rather, they were intrinsic to human nature. Men were born perfectly free, and agreed to give up some measure of their perfect freedom in instituting governments to keep order and settle disputes, all governments thus “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Freedom to the whigs was the right to live under the authority of no legislature except that established by the consent of the nation; and no laws except those passed by said legislature which, crucially, also served the purpose of securing the individual's right to life, liberty, and property. The tyranny of both unrestrained majority rule and arbitrary monarchical dictate were thus restrained by the Rule of Law.
In other words, the Whig philosophy of government is the genesis and foundation of modernity's entire political value system of democracy and human rights.
And what was also revered by these esteemed thinkers as a fundamental human right enshrined in English common law? The Right to Bear Arms!
These were the so-called “elementary books of public right” that Jefferson referred to when explaining the basis and authority of the Declaration of Independence. In his letter to Henry Lee IV (half-brother of Robert), Jefferson wrote “...But with respect to our rights, and the acts of the British government contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. All American whigs thought alike on these subjects. When forced, therefore, to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc....”
This brings me to another important point. What did Jefferson mean by “all American whigs”? For the Founders of Jefferson's generation, there were two main classes of English lawyers and writers on government: Whigs and Tories. Whigs were fundamentally distrustful of government power, particularly the kind of arbitrary power exercised by absolutist monarchs unrestrained by strong parliaments, and sought to restrict it; Tories were generally more pro-government, especially in regards to the monarchy.
Whigs saw the history of English common law and the development of its unwritten Constitution as a fundamental struggle, stretching back to Magna Carta and beyond, between the rights of the English people and the power of the Norman monarchs. To them, as to Locke, rights were not privileges granted to the people by their rulers; rather, they were intrinsic to human nature. Men were born perfectly free, and agreed to give up some measure of their perfect freedom in instituting governments to keep order and settle disputes, all governments thus “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Freedom to the whigs was the right to live under the authority of no legislature except that established by the consent of the nation; and no laws except those passed by said legislature which, crucially, also served the purpose of securing the individual's right to life, liberty, and property. The tyranny of both unrestrained majority rule and arbitrary monarchical dictate were thus restrained by the Rule of Law.
In other words, the Whig philosophy of government is the genesis and foundation of modernity's entire political value system of democracy and human rights.
And what was also revered by these esteemed thinkers as a fundamental human right enshrined in English common law? The Right to Bear Arms!
Since the Middle Ages, the laws of
England had not only recognized the right to keep and carry arms, but
had often regarded it as a duty in order to assure the defense of the
realm. Henry II's “Assize of Arms”
in 1181 prohibited the feudal lords from depriving free citizens of
arms, although the lower classes were disallowed from having more
arms than befitted their estate; in 1285, Edward I's Statute of
Winchester would remove this stipulation.
Although Henry VIII initially tried to limit gun ownership, by 1541 all English citizens could own them. In 1670, Charles II passed an act to deprive all commoners of firearms. The goal of the act was to keep the peasants in economic servitude, by depriving them of a means to provide sustenance through hunting rather than working as serfs for feudal lords, and in political servitude by depriving them of the means for armed resistance. Charles' successor James II went further in disarming the populace, particularly Protestants.
Although Henry VIII initially tried to limit gun ownership, by 1541 all English citizens could own them. In 1670, Charles II passed an act to deprive all commoners of firearms. The goal of the act was to keep the peasants in economic servitude, by depriving them of a means to provide sustenance through hunting rather than working as serfs for feudal lords, and in political servitude by depriving them of the means for armed resistance. Charles' successor James II went further in disarming the populace, particularly Protestants.
When
James abdicated and William of Orange was given the English crown in
1688, an event beloved by Whigs and known as the Glorious Revolution,
one of the primary aims was to restore the people's right to arm
themselves. In 1689, Parliament passed the English Bill of Rights,
which affirmed the rights of the English people to arm themselves.
This right was not dependent upon service in any militia, official or
otherwise; it was recognized as a right of individuals
and was one of only two such rights stipulated therein (the other
being the right to petition the king). Not only was the right to bear
arms not dependent upon service in a militia, but many Whigs viewed
militias as something that should of necessity be independent of the
executive, as they were a defense against tyranny from within as well
as from without. Scottish Whig Andrew Fletcher said that a
“well-regulated” militia was one free from the control of the
king. If that phrase sounds familiar, that is because it is right
there in the text of the Second Amendment, a construction often
invoked by opponents of gun ownership as supposed evidence that the
Founders intended the Right to Bear Arms to be dependent upon
military service.
These
people are wrong. Not only are they ignorant of the history of the
Second Amendment and of the philosophical concepts that went into its
formulation, but they engage in an eerily Orwellian type of thought
process when they suppose that the phrase “the people” means
something completely different in the Second Amendment than it does
in the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth. They know that to
significantly alter the nature of gun ownership in this country they
would need to abolish the Second Amendment; they know that they do
not have the political will to pull this off. Their only recourse is
to mislead and miseducate the people, and to misrepresent and mangle
the text until it becomes unrecognizable. They can only achieve their
goals through lies and falsehood.
We
have the Truth on our side.
The Right to Bear Arms is not a right “granted” by the Constitution. It is an inherent right of all mankind. Furthermore, it is a right of ancient and estimable provenance, enunciated down through the ages, affirmed by the common law tradition that formed the legal education of our nation's founders and informed their philosophies concerning government, and fought for by oppressed peoples the world over. It is the bedrock of liberty, the bulwark of justice, the final line of defense against despotism and tyranny. We surrender it only with our lives.
Or, to quote an ancient Spartan, “Molon labe.”
The Right to Bear Arms is not a right “granted” by the Constitution. It is an inherent right of all mankind. Furthermore, it is a right of ancient and estimable provenance, enunciated down through the ages, affirmed by the common law tradition that formed the legal education of our nation's founders and informed their philosophies concerning government, and fought for by oppressed peoples the world over. It is the bedrock of liberty, the bulwark of justice, the final line of defense against despotism and tyranny. We surrender it only with our lives.
Or, to quote an ancient Spartan, “Molon labe.”
Come
and take them.
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