Boo Yeah..
Posted on 04/03/2008 6:22:53 AM PDT by K-oneTexas
Defining the Right to Keep and Bear Arms By Thomas A. Bowden FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, April 03, 2008
First, the robber hit Willie Lee Hill more than 50 times with a can of soda, knocking him unconscious. Later, the 93-year-old victim awakened, covered with blood, to find his 24-year-old assailant ransacking the bedroom. When Hill pulled out a .38-caliber handgun from near his bed, the robber lunged at him. Hill stopped his attacker with a single bullet to the throat. “I got what I deserved,” the robber told police afterward.
That episode happened in Arkansas last July, but similar acts of self-defense occur by the thousands all across America every year. Overwhelming historical evidence and common sense demonstrate that guns--often called the “great equalizer,” for obvious reasons--are a powerful method of self-defense in the precious minutes before police can arrive.
In the District of Columbia, however, citizens may not lawfully possess a handgun for self-defense, even in the home...at least, not yet. The Supreme Court has heard oral argument in D.C. v. Heller, which is expected to determine whether such a blanket ban violates the Second Amendment. But regardless of how the Court may interpret the Constitution, citizens deserve a legal right to own a handgun for self-defense.
As the Declaration of Independence recognizes, governments are created to protect our individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right of self-defense is included and implied in the right to life. In forming a government, citizens delegate the task of defending themselves to the police. But to delegate is not to surrender. Each citizen retains the ultimate right to defend himself in emergencies when his appointed agents, the police, are not available to help.
But what constitutes an emergency? What acts of self-defense are permissible in such a situation? And what tools may private citizens own for emergency self-defense? The law’s task is to furnish objective answers to such questions, so that citizens may defend their lives without taking the law into their own hands.
An emergency, properly defined, arises from an objective threat of imminent bodily harm. The victim must summon police, if possible. An emergency ends when the threat ends, or as soon as police arrive and take charge. During that narrow emergency interval, a victim may defend himself, but only with the least degree of force necessary under the circumstances to repel his attacker. A victim who explodes in vengeance, using excessive force, exposes himself to criminal liability along with his assailant.
Many objects commonly owned for peaceful purposes can be pressed into service for emergency self-defense. But unlike kitchen knives or baseball bats, handguns have no peaceful purpose--they are designed to kill people. The same lethal power that makes handguns the most practical means of self-defense against robbers, rapists, and murderers, also makes handguns an essential tool of government force. Handguns are deadly force and nothing but--a fact that gives rise to legitimate concerns over their private ownership in a civilized society.
These concerns can be resolved only by laws carefully drawn to confine private use of handguns to emergency self-defense, as defined by objective law. Such laws must also prohibit all conduct by which handguns might present an objective threat to others, whether by intent or negligence.
Contrary to an often expressed worry, therefore, a right to keep and bear arms in no way implies that citizens may stockpile weaponry according to their arbitrary preferences. Cannons, tanks, and nuclear weapons have no legitimate use in a private emergency, and their very presence is a threat to peaceful neighbors.
If handguns are confined to emergency self-defense, no legitimate purpose is served by an outright ban such as the District of Columbia enacted. Even if such laws actually deprived criminals of guns (which they don’t), they would infringe upon a law-abiding citizen’s right in emergencies to repel attackers who are wielding knives, clubs, fists--or cans of soda.
With the aid of his handgun, Willie Lee Hill survived that violent home invasion last July. Self-defense was his right, as it is ours. A proper legal system recognizes and protects that right, by permitting private ownership of handguns under appropriate limits.
Thomas A. Bowden is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute and the author of “The Enemies of Christopher Columbus.”
To all the liberal legislators out there reading this. You will try to take away our right to self defense. You will not succeed.
Seizing legal guns from honest, law-abiding citizens is necessary in order to bring about a totalitarian system, which is your ultimate goal.
I suggest you don’t try it.
You can read about citizens who have successfully defended themselves at the following address. They are most interesting.
http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefenseblog/blogger.html
Boo Yeah..
I’m sure RP will have a different opinion on this article.
The Constitution doesn’t say anything about “private emergencies.” It says that the RKBA “shall not be infringed.” Revolvers are arms. So are F-22s and nuclear bombs.
Depends on what the meaning of "cannon" is.
The phrase "shall not be infringed" implies in its turn that the would-be ruling class may not use government to impose their own arbitrary preferences on what citizens may or may not own.
It so happens that I consider the "machine gun" ban to be one of these arbitrary preferences. My neighbors have nothing to fear from me having a full-auto capable M16, mainly because I couldn't afford to shoot it full-auto. But requiring a Class III license for me to own one is still an infringement.
In 1934, it was the automatic weapons, in 1964 it was mail-order, in 1994 it was high-cap mags....where does it stop?
Baa-aaa.....
this guy is a gun grabber in disguise....there should be NO regulations regarding the owning of firearms...the second amendment was written so that ordinary citizens have the capability to rise up against a run away government. That means that any weapon the military has, the citizens not only have a right, but an obligation to own and possess...the second amendment is the constitutions reset button....
Thomas A. Bowden is an idiot who obviously hasn't studied history. Many individuals owned "weapons of mass destruction" (aka "cannons" and armed sailing ships), so his little rant about "Cannons, tanks, and nuclear weapons have no legitimate use in a private emergency, and their very presence is a threat to peaceful neighbors" is so much bull****.
There are a few individuals even today who own artillery pieces, tanks, prop and jet fighter aircraft, NONE of whose "...very presence is a threat to peaceful neighbors".
The RKBA was retained so that any citizen could be an immediate, effective defender of liberty.
This sentiment was stated in the Declaration of Independance:
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
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.
The framers intended to give the people the ability to defend their liberty, and penned the 2nd Amendment to guarantee our right to keep and bear Arms so that I can defend my liberty in a free State.
"We the People..."
My unalienable Right to Keep and Bear Arms has already been “defined” by the founding fathers of this once great nation. It is not a “collective” right, it is not a “theoretical” right, and it is not one reserved for the government or the state to arm a militia.
It is a natural human right given to us by our Creator. One that allows us to defend ourselves against the beasts of nature and the tyranny of man.
Our founding fathers knew this to be true and self evident; and they were way smarter than the crop of people that occupy the same ground today.
WWII Japanese Admiral Yamamoto (mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor)
The trick is to try to believe our forefathers had figured out a way to disarm the citizenry but still give them the right to arm themselves for the purposes of being ready to participate in a militia.
We need to be thinking about the next major phase of the argument which I think will deal with scope and extent: Is it a “Right”, a noun modified by the words “to keep and bear arms” to show what kind of right, or is it a “right to keep and bear arms”, a noun clause with a (so far undefined) meaning of its own.
The argument will be that it’s not a right which happens to be to keep and bear Arms but that it is a more limited right to keep and bear Arms and regulation beyond those limits is not infringement of the right to keep and bear Arms itself.
They will point to Jefferson, “No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms…”, Sam Adams “...who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms...” and the early State declarations of rights which used words like “defence of themselves and the State”.
They will then try to constrain the right to keep and bear Arms in a way that many will not like.
Some time in the early 80s, I attended a speech by the late Arkady Shevchenko, then the highest ranking Soviet official to defect to the West. He had been their top guy at the UN.
He spoke, interestingly, at KENNESAW COLLEGE — and we all know what Kennesaw is famous for! I’m proud to have played a a small role in helping Mayor Darvin Purdy get that legislation through the Kennesaw City Council.
His talk dealt with the clear intent of the leadership of the old Soviet Union to somehow take America. He mentioned their ICBMs and the nuclear blackmail threat they posed.
Then he broke from his prepared remarks and offered the audience this wisdom:
“The leaders of my country are as AFRAID OF YOUR 200 MILLION PRIVATE FIREARMS as they are of your ICBMs. NEVER GIVE UP YOUR GUNS.”
Frankly — and, while he had to be careful as he was under FBI protection at the time, Shevchenko alluded to this in his remarks — I’m as concerned about some domestic tyrant (say, a Hillary, Barack HUSSEIN Obama or Chuck Schumer) as I am about some foreign enemy.
And it is THAT threat about which the Founding Fathers were concerned that prompted them to leave us the Second Amendment.
The BIG question is: WILL WE KEEP IT?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j73SsNFgBO4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg9q9sxJFnA
That is correct. If the majority of citizens, speaking through their elected representatives, want handguns for self defense, that is their right.
Similarly, if the majority of citizens, speaking throught their elected representatives, do NOT want handguns for self defense, that is their right also. The DC City Council, elected by the voters and residents of DC, passed a law in 1976 prohibiting handguns.
So in summary, according to the author, citizens have a right to choose how they will live together .... provided they choose the author's way.
That is correct. It is a God-given inalienable right.
The right of self-defense with a weapon, however, is regulated by each state as to 1) who may keep a weapon for self defense, 2) which weapons may be used for self defense and 3) the conditions under which those weapons may be used for self defense.
So you’d be ok with a city legalizing slavery if the majority voted for it, in spite of the US constitution’s stance on the subject?
I really don’t get why you don’t understand the concept of ‘supreme law of the land’.
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