Second Amendment Pledge

I was listening to Tom Gresham's Gun Talk radio program today (Sunday, December 30, 2012) and heard a FANTASTIC call from "Mark" in Corpus Christie, TX whereby he presented what he called the "Second Amendment Pledge"

This was so good that I took a moment to transcribe in verbatim his brief but poignant call for all of us to enjoy.

While he didn't say, but I am sure that this was intended primarily for all the lawful gun owners of the United States, but it seems just as applicable to any elected politicians (I am sure that only a hand full of them would swear by it).

I for one have already taken this pledge as my birth right - thanks to mark from Corpus Christie for so eloquently putting it into words!

So, here it is; as heard on hour 2 of Tom Gresham's Gun Talk radio show at 29min 18sec Sunday, December 30, 2012.

Hey there Kris, how’s the weather up at the pole? :)

Anyway, you’re asking some illuminating questions. In law school, when the professor tests the limits of a point by raising all the hidden qualifications/asssumptions etc., we call that slicing the balogna. It’s actually a good exercise. You just know some lib will come along and ambush you with one of these, so I appreciate the practice.

As for the right to self defense, that is inherent and implied in the right to life, and clearly the founders did recognize that right, as captured in the Lockean formulation, “Life, Liberty, and Property.” If you have a right to live, but cannot exercise it freely, it is a right denied. If you have a right to life, but cannot own the private property required to live it, it is still a right denied. And if you have a right to life, but cannot keep it when attacked, but must forfeit it to any criminal, private or public, who decides to take it from you, it is categorically a right denied.

But what limits that right? If I have understood you, that is the essence of your question, and it is a reasonable question, but I believe it has a reasonable answer (or answers). The problem of rights is that they do not occur in a vacuum. The universe is not a single Self alone by itself. It is God and you and me. Thus there are always at least two parties to any transaction in which a particular right is either given its due or else denied. For example, with abortion, the only way to preserve both parties alive, mother and child, is to not intentionally kill either party. To honor the right of the one without honoring the right of the other is still an unjust denial of the right of life to someone. To honor the rights of both, in proper balance, is the objective, theoretically, of our entire system of justice.

So too with the 2nd Amendment. It sometimes happens that the only way I can defend my right to live is to threaten or take the life of another. We have different ways of accounting for this apparent contradiction, but most commonly we say that the aggressor forfeits their right to live to the extent they threaten my life and put me in a situation where I have no choice but to respond with lethal force. A person who has an unalienable right cannot lose that right against their will, but may voluntarily surrender that right, and they assume the risk of adverse consequences when they do so.

Furthermore, you can extrapolate from this the right to collective self defense. You raise the question of an offensive use of arms. What may be offensive use as between two individuals, if it occurs in the context of a larger defensive action, may still be justifiable. I think here we are getting into “just war” theory, and that does have a bearing on the 2nd Amendment, but may be a bit difficult to capture in a single post. Suffice it to say that for a natural law republic such as ours, acts of individual aggression, if the larger context is collective self defense, can be justified under traditional just war theory.

Therefore, “keeping and bearing arms,” as it is always tied to the right to life, and is therefore always ultimately defensive, can still be taken to imply a capacity for effective individual aggression in a defensive context. Less abstractly, if, hypothetically, Vermont launch a tank attack against Texas (no laughter, please), individual Texans would have a natural and a constitutional right to individually acquire and use tank killer weapons on invading Vermont tanks.

In theory then, there is no limit on the scale of the right, as long as it is justified by an unjustifiable threat to the life of the individual or the group.

As for legal ownership of a weapon versus illegal, it is irrelevant to the question of necessity for defensive protection of life. Under even ancient legal systems, an act of theft may cause the forfeiture of the right to freedom, or to an equivalent or punitive value for the item stolen, but not the forfeiture of life.

Here a hypothetical may be helpful. If I am a simple burglar stealing a weapon to use in a future felony, I am assuming the risk that goes with burglary, in law the presumption of a potential lethal threat to the rightful owner. But if I am a civilian prisoner of the Taliban, in a run down section of Detroit, and I steal a gun and use it to effect my escape, that comports with the natural law basis for the 2nd Amendment, and while it may be a technical violation of lesser laws, those laws are by definition subject to the higher laws. The letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. In just societies, when the two are in conflict, deference is given to the spirit, not the letter. In tyrannies, the opposite is true, especially for the slave class.

As for whether I can control who carries a weapon onto my property, that again will be a matter of finding a just balance of rights. First, under the Constitution we have a right to choose our associations. If I own a piece of property, and I want to exclude all parties that carry guns, or even if I want to exclude all parties who part their hair a certain way, that is an expression of my liberty. So if I own a shopping mall or a theater, I can establish gun-free zones. And if I am a potential customer, I have a right to shop where I please, and if I feel unsafe in a gun-free zone, I should shop elsewhere.

Again, I understand perfectly what you are trying to do, and I don’t see it as a bad thing, just easily misunderstood. There is strong emotion on both sides. What is needed is the level of preparation of a well trained salesman. We conservatives are in the business of selling the virtues of conservatism, and we must sell to a market that has lost contact with many of the truths we take for granted. The pitch must be built on first principles, points so inarguable and basic that the customer just has to keep saying yes to each of the next steps in our logic until they arrive at our irresistible conclusion. Than means we have to understand the potential objections, evasions, and obfuscations as deeply as if we held them ourselves. Only then can we show our customer how our product overcomes those hurdles. Any discussion which gives us a greater ability to do that is a benefit to the movement.

Peace,

I already addressed your paragraph 1: “n” not “g” :)

As to paragraphs 2, 3, 5, 9, 10 and 12 I have no comment. I might quibble over words, but I think we’d just end up in what I’ve heard called “violent agreement”.

As to paragraph 4, “But what limits that right? If I have understood you, that is the essence of your question…” That’s close. A right is at least limited by one’s ability and the similar rights of others. Arguably one does not have a right to free speech if one is mute by birth or accident (sign language and so forth aside for the moment) because such a one does not have the ability to speak. Also, one does not have a free speech right in the face of another’s property right to say things offensive to that other when he says not to say such. On the other hand, if you’re on another’s property and that person proposes a sexual liaison, you do have a free speech right to say “No” no matter how offensive the other thinks that is. But to fully know the limits of a right, we have to know what that right is, what the words mean. Does the right to free speech include sign language? It does if sign language is speech, so is sign language speech? What is covered by the words “freedom of speech”? Do they cover a right to slander? I don’t care all that much about that right now, but I do care about what is covered by the words “The right of the people to keep and bear arms”.

In paragraph 6 you bring up “just war” theory which leads to “just use of force”, and you’re correct, that’s more difficult to capture here than I want to attempt. But, is an arm that is not compliant with “just war” or “just use of force” covered by “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”? Several years ago in England, someone used a tricked up umbrella to inject a poison pellet into a man and murder/assassinate him. An arm like that umbrella is pretty much only good for murder or assassination. As such, is it covered by “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”?

In paragraph 7 you write: “Therefore, “keeping and bearing arms,” as it is always tied to the right to life, and is therefore always ultimately defensive, can still be taken to imply a capacity for effective individual aggression in a defensive context.” I have to disagree that “keeping and bearing arms” is always ultimately defensive. I think some people and some peoples throughout history have kept and borne arms for offensive purposes.

As to paragraph 8, since I disagreed with paragraph 7 I can’t say that the thought in paragraph 8 follows from paragraph 7. I might or might not agree with it for other reasons.

Now about paragraph 11. One of the problems I have with the discussion of property rights vs any other rights is that folks don’t say what property rights are in any coherent way. They just say they’ve got them and they trump any other rights. And there are various kinds of property: real, personnel, intellectual, tangible, intangible. You write “So if I own a shopping mall or a theater, I can establish gun-free zones.” Well my neighbors and I have an intangible property right in our neighborhood, our community, our town. If we have established that in our neighborhood, our community, our town, that there will be no “gun free” zones, then I don’t believe that the anti-gun mayor of New York City, the rich Mayor Bloomburg, who is never even going to set foot in our neighborhood, community, town has the right to establish a “gun free” zone in the mall or grocery store he recently bought there, just because he owns the property. As to shopping elsewhere, consideration of rights should take a broader more universal view. Depending on the time and place one is living, there may be no elsewhere to shop.

Peace to you also.

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