God and Guns

God and Guns

Do you remember back in April 2008 when the Presidential Candidate, Barack Hussein Obama (BHO) confided to his urbane buddies in California about the small town residents in Pennsylvania? Here is the quote, “It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant, or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations.” I think most people took his remarks as an anti-gun statement as well as confirmation of an elitist attitude. My take on the quote was that it reminded me of an old time aristocratic English explorer sitting comfortably in a massive leather chair within the privileged confines of an exclusive Explorer’s Club, and while sipping gin with the other fellow aristocrats, explained the social workings of a primitive tribe he had discovered while exploring some far-off land. I say that because the quote certainly has an “us and them” quality about it, you know, he did not describe the small town Pennsylvanians as “my fellow Americans”, he instead described “them” in an antiseptic and diagnostic manner. But I digress. Well regardless of my take on the quote, most people took the remark as an anti-gun statement and of course any political statement about guns brings us at once to the Bill of Rights and the second amendment of the Constitution, to wit, “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.” Please indulge me now. I ask you to carefully reread the amendment and do not fixate on the right to keep and bear Arms. My point being that the second amendment is not about the right to keep and bear Arms, it is instead about the right of the free people of this country to form and maintain a Militia. I think the argument about the second amendment has been purposely transformed from one of the people’s right to form and maintain a Militia to one about the right to keep and bear Arms. In other words, how can you have a Militia if the citizens do not have a right to keep and bear Arms? Think about it. A Militia is an ad hoc formation of citizens (not a professional standing army) that relies on the necessity of a citizen to be armed in order for the Militia to be able to viably respond to threats to community or freedom. The political Gun control people are really concerned about the right of the citizens to form and maintain a Militia and if they can criminalize the keeping and bearing of arms, then the people cannot have a viable Militia. And when you think about it, the right to keep and bear Arms must mean Arms equal to that of the Government or again, a Militia cannot be viable. For example, if it was finally decided that citizens could be armed but the authorized weapon could not exceed a 22 caliber single shot pistol, then you have effectively disarmed the Militia. Additionally, arguments about assault rifles, machine guns, etc., is really only another way for the Federal Government to effectively usurp the right to form and maintain a viable citizen Militia by limiting the type of Arms they (the citizens) can keep and bear. Further arguments about the ability to hunt and personal protection, while worthy arguments, are not at all germane to the Militia right. And please, don’t buy into the baloney that the National Guard is the Militia. The National Guard is indeed National and an official and Federal Government funded auxiliary arm of the standing United States Army, not a citizen Militia. My previous piece, “The War of 1787” stated that the anti-federalists insisted on the bill of rights as a protection from a strong central Government’s ability to usurp the individual rights of citizens and the second amendment attests to the importance of the amendment concerning citizen Militias and the maintenance of a free state to ensure those freedoms. Why did the founding fathers attach so much importance to the right of citizens to form and maintain a Militia? As usual, the Federalist Papers is the reference the founding fathers promulgated to explain the language of the Constitution and one can find discussions about Militias in Federalist Papers numbers 24, 26, 28, 29, 47,53, 56 and 69. Of these, Federalist Paper number 47 by Madison is the most illuminating of all. I quote from that paper, “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.” It really never occurred to the founding fathers that a free people could ever be denied the means of procuring and maintaining their freedoms when the laws of the Republic failed to do so because free people have an inherent right as free people to be fully armed in order to form and maintain militias to ensure their freedoms. The second amendment was expressly crafted to ensure the people had the armed means to resist a usurping Federal Government bent on complete authority over the people, to wit, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state.” If anyone feels that armed militias have no place in a modern society, then by all means take your case to the people and obtain the consent of the people to amend the Constitution accordingly.