Posted by
Joe Marshall on Monday, April 20, 2009 9:30:31 PM
At the risk of joining the many other American Patriots now being ‘Profiled’ by the Obama Administration’s Dept. of Homeland Security, and being placed prominently on their ‘Right Wing Extremist’ Potential Domestic Terrorist Watch List, I would like to thank Mr. K. Henderson for his common sense response to Mr. Weiskopf’s latest plug for the Brady Campaign’s assault on our Constitution on 4/16. Attacks on our Constitutional Rights must be getting a little slower than the Post would otherwise have it, as both of Weiskopf’s published letters on 2/8 and 4/14 are substantially identical. It’s good to see you guys working so nicely together.
How is it that, from the time of our Founding, that we have come to have so many among “The People”, who have come to so fear their own freedoms? To argue point counter point against those who would have America, relinquish her liberty, though easy enough, is to attempt to reason with the unreasonable. In any regard, the only true argument for our Arms and their direct relation to our Liberty is in our history, Our Revolution, The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and the context in which they were forged. And not the least of which lies with those who fought, sacrificed, and died for the “Miracle” that is The Constitution of our Republic..
Pre-Revolutionary Americans traced what they saw as not only their Right, but their Duty, to Keep and Bear Arms as far back as the Act of 1645 in Massachusetts. This law required “That all inhabitants… are to have arms in their houses fit for service”. As English subjects certain: “true, ancient and indubitable rights”,allowed “That the Subjects which are Protestants, may have Arms for their Defense suitable to their Condition, and are allowed by Law”. (Founders Second Amendment, 11)
On word the King intended to disarm Americans, it was announced by the anonymous Patriot “ABC” in the Boston Gazette on September 26, 1768, that there were, “Three Things in Command from the Ministry, more grievous to The People than anything hitherto made known. It is conjectured 1st that the inhabitants be disarmed...” (FSA, 8)
Samuel Adams would quote William Blackstone to prove the colonists had, “the right of having and using arms for self- preservation and defense… personal security, personal liberty and privet property and when… the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression”. ( FSA, 20). Whig philosophy had it that “The instant a King violates his part of the contract…a Whig thinks that the legislative power of course returns to the People, and they are at their full Liberty to take Arms, and drive the tyrant from the throne.”(Founder’s Second Amendment, 67)
The British (not unlike Mr. Weisenkopf), saw the armed populous or, Militia, as treasonous, but the Patriots (not unlike gun owners today), saw them selves as law abiding and well within the rights. In February 1769 Samuel Adams published an editorial regarding Boston saying, “that the inhabitants had been ordered to bring in their arms”. The People were promised that if they complied their arms would be returned at a later time, and they would be allowed to leave Boston. It was a lie. After surrendering 1,778 firearms, 634 pistols, 273 bayonets and 38 blunderbusses (shotguns), they were held there imprisoned for months. (FSA, 11-13)
On April 18, 1775 General Gage (British) was ordered to “seize and destroy” all the ammo and arms in Concord. That night Gage’s own wife hung two lanterns in the church steeple. Paul Revere, knowing the British were coming to disarm “The People”, made his famous ride and call to arms, just hours before the “Shot Heard Round The World” was fired at Lexington. The Essex Gazette ran a piece on 4/25 that read, “The Militia of Lexington & Concord consisted of all able bodied men 16 to 60 be it gentlemen, yeomen, laborers, and apprentices…All providing their own arms, except a few poor who had to borrow them”. Captain John Parker was the Commander of the Militia at Lexington. His musket still hangs today in the Massachusetts Senate Chamber as an “Icon of American Freedom”. It was bound by a trigger lock mandated by the Massachusetts Gun Control Act of 1998. (FSA)
British soldier David Ramsay said of The Bunker Hill Battle, “None of the provinces in this engagement are riflemen, but they were all good marksmen. The whole of their previous military knowledge had been derived from hunting, and the ordinary amusements of sportsman. The dexterity which by long habit they had acquired in hitting beasts, birds, and marks was fatally applied to the destruction of the British Officers.” (FSA, 97).
One Virginia Gentleman wrote, “We are all in arms, exercising and training old and young to the use of a gun. No person goes abroad without his sword, or gun, or pistols…every plain is full of armed men, who all wear a hunting shirt, on the left breast of which are sewed, in very legible letters, “Liberty or Death”. (FSA, 107))
General Howe (British) sent a letter Governor Gage that read “to prevent the Abettors of Rebellion in their dangerous designs of leading forth the People, in the four New England Governments, to appose in Arms the Restoration of the Public Tranquility & Constitutional Authority of Governments…all cannons and small arms.. be seized and destroyed”. (FSA) Hmmmm, so to disarm “The People”, is to restore public tranquility and the authority of government? Sound familiar?
On July 4, 1776, Our Founding Fathers, some with prices on their heads, at great risk to themselves and their families, accused of High Treason under penalty of death by hanging, signed the ‘Declaration Of Independence’, “When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to…assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…..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, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness. - That to secure these rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,-that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it…”. Here-in lies the secret those who argue for stronger more controlling government don’t want you to realize. We The (Individual) People are born naturally with all of our Rights and Liberties as endowed to us naturally, by our Creator. The government was, and still is, instituted by us only to protect those rights, not limit or take them.
. Alexander Hamilton pointed this out in the Federalist Letters, as reiterated in the Constitution itself, “We The People...in Order to…secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”. All you have to do is read the words to understand that the Constitution was establish specifically to do what it says, secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity; in perpetuity, as there is no expiration date. And it was reaffirmed yet again in the “Bill of Rights”, Amendments I through X. A couple notes worth mentioning: although many things were debated before the final words written were chosen, no arguments are documented against the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms,… not one. And nowhere does it say that government had the power to choose when and where the Constitution would or would not apply. Gun Free Zones are Constitution Free Zones.
Government, be it State or Federal, has no rights, only powers, and then only those powers specifically delegated to it by the Constitution. Any Power not specifically delegated is reserved to The People. And last but not least, “We The People” have surrendered none of our Rights, or Powers to any government, we have always retained them. The down side for some is that, with all these Rights, Powers, Freedom and Liberty, comes responsibility. There in lies the chink in armor of our Republic, as there will always be those who are eager for the opportunity to be rid of the burden of responsibility for the lure of redistributed leisure, without it.
In 1790 Roger Sherman commented, “[E]very Power still remained in the People and the state governments, except what had been given up to the United States by the new Constitution. The House was not about to relinquish to the state governments any part of it’s power;… or the right of declaring who should bear arms(?) He conceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights when invaded.” (FSA)
On the 2nd Amendment, Justice Joseph Story, in his ‘Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States’ (1833) noted, “The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defense of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
I humbly yield my time to argue tit for tat against the current assault on our Constitution, to those who were there, at the time of our Revolution, to secure our Liberty from Tyranny. For those who conspire to disarm “The People”, the ‘True Militia’ and ‘Protector of Liberty’, conspire against the Constitution itself, as they conspire against the blood of Patriots, every drop, that was spilled for the Freedoms they seek to take from us.
Please allow me to credit Stephen Halbrook and his writings, specifically ‘The Founders’ Second Amendment, origins of the right to bear arms’, for it is the source of the great majority of the quotes above. It’s a wonderful book. Thank You.
Joe Marshall / Free American
“Do not separate text from historical background. If you do you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted bastardized form of illegitimate government.” - James Madison, primary author of the Constitution and US President.
“On every question of construction of the Constitution, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be sqeezed out of text, or inveneted against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” – Thomas Jefferson
“If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animated contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your council of arms, crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may your posterity forget that you were ever our countrymen.” - Samuel Adams
“Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance, they are the peoples liberty teeth” - George Washington
“The great object is that every man be armed… Everyone who is able might have a gun” - Patric Henry
“Government is not reason, it not eloquence, it is force; like fire a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action” - George Washington
“I ask sir, what is the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feard we shall turn our arms each man to his own bosom? Congress have no power to disarm the militia”
- Tench Coxe
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole of the people are armed.”
- Noah Webster
“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness, you have to catch it yourself.” -Benjamin Franklin
“I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole of the people. To disarm the people is the best way to enslave them.” - George Mason
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain government, lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” Patrick Henry
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Benjamin Franklin