Posted on 01/02/2013 5:38:20 AM PST by Kaslin
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, said: "The British are not coming. ... We don't need all these guns to kill people." Lewis' vision, shared by many, represents a gross ignorance of why the framers of the Constitution gave us the Second Amendment. How about a few quotes from the period and you decide whether our Founding Fathers harbored a fear of foreign tyrants.
Alexander Hamilton: "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed," adding later, "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government." By the way, Hamilton is referring to what institution when he says "the representatives of the people"?
James Madison: "(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
Thomas Jefferson: "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."
George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which inspired our Constitution's Bill of Rights, said, "To disarm the people -- that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
Rep. John Lewis and like-minded people might dismiss these thoughts by saying the founders were racist anyway. Here's a more recent quote from a card-carrying liberal, the late Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey: "Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. ... The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible." I have many other Second Amendment references at http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/quotes.html.
How about a couple of quotations with which Rep. Lewis and others might agree? "Armas para que?" (translated: "Guns, for what?") by Fidel Castro. There's a more famous one: "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing." That was Adolf Hitler.
Here's the gun grabbers' slippery-slope agenda, laid out by Nelson T. Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc.: "We're going to have to take this one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily -- given the political realities -- going to be very modest. ... Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal -- total control of handguns in the United States -- is going to take time. ... The final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition -- except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs and licensed gun collectors -- totally illegal" (The New Yorker, July 1976).
There have been people who've ridiculed the protections afforded by the Second Amendment, asking what chance would citizens have against the military might of the U.S. government. Military might isn't always the deciding factor. Our 1776 War of Independence was against the mightiest nation on the face of the earth -- Great Britain. In Syria, the rebels are making life uncomfortable for the much-better-equipped Syrian regime. Today's Americans are vastly better-armed than our founders, Warsaw Ghetto Jews and Syrian rebels.
There are about 300 million privately held firearms owned by Americans. That's nothing to sneeze at. And notice that the people who support gun control are the very people who want to control and dictate our lives.
That’s a very good point about military might not necessarily being paramount in determining the outcome of a conflict. The VietCong certainly did not possess an advantage in military firepower over US troops. The mujahadeen (sp?) rebels in Afghanistan facing the Red Army were certainly outgunned. Even the insurgents in Iraq prior to the surge were outgunned by our troops. It didn’t really matter in any of those cases.
Further, I think that the distinction between civilian arms and military ones is even less relevant in the US. The military does not take an oath to be loyal to any individual, but rather an oath to preserve, protect and defend the US Constitution. If a government were to blatantly usurp the Constitution, I think you would have a large contingent of the US military opposing the usurper, so military arms would likely be available to the resistance.
Last evening while driving, I just happened to hear a short portion of Schmidt on the radio. He spoke extensively on how the Democrats passed gun laws to keep them from blacks. And how the Dred Scott case included arguments that “if blacks were citizens, then they would get 2nd Amendment rights.
I’m looking for articles on this topic. Any links would be appreciated.
I’ve always found that the best way to argue for your own point is to show that it was also your opponents argument!
Instead of “British”, read “our government”, which the British were at the time. Clearly, “our government” meant us no good in the 18th century and “our government” means us no good in the 21st.
Will look up “ignorance” in the dictionary later today to see if an illustration of Rep. John Lewis, D-GA is included.
On the other hand, I might look up Guam . . .
No John, the British are not coming - you are, and people like you that want to control every aspect of our lives, determine and limit what we can and cannot have based on what you think we “need.” Gee, that sounds an awful lot like communism - from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Only you want to be the more equal ones determining need. NFW. So yes, we absolutely need not only our weapons and ammunition, we undeniably need the freedom to own them. As soon as we start letting little national socialists like you limit us, we are no longer free.
Representative Lewis, the British may not be coming, but the Obamunists are. They are the reason for the Second Amendment.
"The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible."
Isn't this in fact an argument for legalizing heavy weapons?
To Rep. John Lewis:
The British may not be coming, but what they represented, oppressive government that will not countenance opposition, most surely is. The very things that drove the colonists of what was to become the “United States of America” into rebellion against King George, are operating yet today, with the Federal governmental oligarchy now substituting themselves to impress the kind of intimidation and oppression the King once visited upon the colonial people.
“No Taxation without Representation” was the cry then, but even with representation, unjust and inequitable taxes are still being laid upon us, seemingly without a maximum limit. What the Federal government is spending, so far outstrips our ability to raise through taxation, as to eventually leave the nation vulnerable to its creditors. As one of the biggest creditors is the entity created supposedly as a partner to the Federal government, the Federal Reserve system, we are at their mercy. In essence, we are handing over our sovereignty to the creditors (of which, some of the other major investors are foreign countries).
Theoretically, the Federal Reserve COULD call for fiscal discipline of the Federal government, but as the governors of that board are subject to political pressure, the argument is completely circular. If political pressure is such that no such discipline shall be applied, it won’t happen.
The colonists seceded from the British Empire, and in doing so, created a whole new vision of just what government was and ought to be. “Of the people, by the people, and for the people”, despite the brave words of Abraham Lincoln, is in very real danger of perishing from the earth, as the oligarchy in Washington, DC grows ever more imperial.
That entity known as “the United States of America” is fractionating even as we discuss the point, and a new secession seems to be in order, to free ourselves from the imperialism that reigns in our nation’s capital. One of the strangest empires the world has ever seen, this oligarchy exerts great pressure to “reconstruct” all that the ideals of America once stood for, seemingly unable to refrain from meddling in the most minute of affairs. The systemic war on families, children and women, for the greater aggrandization of ruthless politicians who have used the doctrines and power of nefarious plutocrats to inveigle and flatter their way into positions of influence and invulnerability, has been continuous and unrelenting.
Divide that entity known as “the United States of America” in separate republics, one group of which may set up whatever kind of cockamamie rules they believe shall best represent THEIR interests, while the vast majority of the territory, represented on the electoral maps as “red” country, and which is virtually contiguous, as the inheritors of the vision of what was once America. The Constitution still applies there, and the words of the Declaration of Independence are reaffirmed.
We can do this. And someday, we shall have to. That day cannot come any too soon.
They are coming after your guns today. They will come for YOU tomorrow.
Remember Germany’s national socialists.
Yes, but the a$$clowns are. And that's enough.
Government never means good to any citizenry. It has to be guarded agains’t and controlled constantly. Sadly ours is out of control.
You think like dictators, forcing your ideology upon us from light bulbs, to our kids lunch, to global warming, to every aspect of our health care including death panels. You want to manage every aspect of our lives and thoughts. You restrict travel more and more. You set up VIPR checkpoints on highways to harrass us. You impede our ability to carry large amount of money. You demand foreign banks like the swiss to reveal everything about our accounts that have historically been private.
As a government, you lie to us almost constantly, and about everything. We can see it easily. It’s a joke, and a theme is most movies. Today only an idiot assumes the government leaders are honest.
Bearing all of this in mind, now you say you want to remove our guns from us? No, you seem like a dictator, so especially YOU may not have them. Go make love to yourself.
Didn’t know about VIPR— guess they snuck that one past a lot of us.
How do the elites know that their house keeper Maria, didn't just have a favorite uncle on her mother's side killed in a raid ordered by said elite and now she is about to serve the morning orange juice with a little arsenic?
Unless the elites can shut the whole country down and kill everyone, they can't win. Retribution will be very ugly.
It's not about protecting against the military might of the United States. It's about protecting against those who govern who decide that they would rather rule instead.
It's to deter the madman from trying to turn that military might against his own people, like Hussein in Iraq, or Assad in Syria, or Khaddafy in Libya.
The fact that it hasn't happened here at all is the true testament to the effectiveness of the 2nd amendment.
By the way, here is a post of mine that I post from time to time that has the Hamilton quote in its proper context.
-PJ
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