Your Right to Bear Arms, an American Original

With the Supreme Court set to hear arguments in District of Columbia v. Heller that will hopefully address the divisive issue of gun control versus the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, it is important to keep in mind some history, and to consider the intent of the founding fathers.

Our Second Amendment: The Founders’ Intent
December 6, 2007
Stephen P. Halbrook



Soon the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether the District of Columbia’s bans on possession of handguns, even in the home, and on having long guns functional for self defense violate the Constitution. As the Court sees it in D.C. v. Heller, the issue is whether those bans “violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes.” The federal appeals court for D.C. held that it did.

So, even in their own home. This is the argument used for gay rights - they can do anything they want in their own home. Apparently, except that is own a gun.

After ignoring the Amendment since its ambiguous U.S. v. Miller decision in 1939, the Court will decide whether the phrase “the right of the people” in the Second Amendment refers to the same “people” as in the First and Fourth Amendments, or only to government-selected militiamen. It will also consider whether a “right” in the Bill of Rights refers to a real liberty or is only rhetoric. Is the right to keep and bear arms on a par with the rights peaceably to assemble or against unreasonable search and seizure? Or is it void where prohibited by law?

The founders were smart men who eliminated the use of unnecessary words, I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant as rhetoric.

For America’s Founders, the answer was obvious. In 1768, when Redcoats landed to occupy the town, the Boston Gazette warned of British plans “more grievous” than anything before: “the Inhabitants of this Province are to be disarmed”; martial law would be declared; and patriots would be “seized and sent to Great-Britain.” Through the periods of the Boston Massacre and the Tea Party the screws were tightened, until finally British attempts to seize colonists’ arms at Lexington and Concord in 1775 led to the shot heard ‘round the world.

Just after the American victory, General Gage, commander of the King’s troops, ordered the inhabitants of Boston to surrender their firearms, supposedly for temporary safekeeping. It is recorded that Gage confiscated “1,778 fire-arms [long guns], 634 pistols, 973 bayonets, and 38 blunderbusses.” The Continental Congress cited this act of perfidy in its Declaration of Causes of Taking Up Arms.

One of the first actions of an occupying force or conquering force is to remove the weapons from the hands of the people.

After Independence was won, delegates from the states in 1787 framed our Constitution. Antifederalists protested that it included no declaration of rights and would allow deprivation of rights like free speech and keeping arms. James Madison responded in The Federalist that a declaration was unnecessary, in part because of “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation,” in contrast with the European monarchies, where “the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

A great compromise was reached: the Constitution would be ratified and then a bill of rights would be debated. When the first Congress met in 1789, Madison proposed what became the Bill of Rights. Federalist writer Tench Coxe explained the Second Amendment thus: “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow-citizens, the people are confirmed...in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”

The Amendment reads: “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.” For almost two centuries, the understanding was that law-abiding individuals had a right to possess rifles, pistols, and shotguns. This would promote a militia of all able-bodied citizens, which, unlike a standing army, was seen as securing a free country.

Clearly the founders meant for people to be able to have their own firearms, for protection from criminals, for protection against the government, to use for hunting and feeding their families, for a plethora of reasons.

The agenda to pass firearms prohibitions led to the invention of the “collective rights” view by the 1960s. Under this view, the Amendment protects only the power of states to have militias. A variation asserts that it guarantees a right to bear arms in the militia, nothing more. These attempts to deconstruct ignore that “the people” means you and me, not the states, and that no “right” exists to do anything in a military force—a militiaman does what is commanded.

In 1976, the District of Columbia banned pistols. It also required registered rifles and shotguns to be rendered non-functional when kept at home (but not at a business). D.C. residents were thereby rendered into second-class citizens—they had no Second Amendment rights and were not trusted to defend themselves in their own homes. The crime rate only continued to rise in what became the Murder Capital of the U.S.

The validity of the D.C. ban is now before the Supreme Court. Besides arguing that no one has any rights under the Second Amendment, D.C. alternatively contends that it can ban handguns as long as it does not ban all rifles and shotguns. One can imagine what the Bostonians who surrendered all of their firearms to the Crown in 1775 would have thought of such an argument. Hopefully the Justices will be mindful of the Founders’ intent and will recognize that the Second Amendment is every bit a part of the Bill of Rights as is the First.

Consider too the quotes from Sam Adams

The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

And significantly, this quote by Thomas Jefferson

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

The right to bear arms has always been seen as one of the inalienable rights afforded all men, except by a minority of Americans. These people view the gun as evil, rather than the criminal. They enable the criminals by providing them with excuses, by blaming the US government for allowing gun sales and private ownership, by blaming the manufacturers for creating guns, and by blaming violence in media for warping the criminals mind. These people forget the responsibility that comes with the liberties afforded citizens of the United States of America. Just as you can be held responsible if you yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater or "BOMB" in an airport because it is irresponsible and dangerous, you have to be heldresponsible for your own actions with a firearm.