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The Right to Self-Defense
Townhall.com ^ | March 6, 2013 | Judge Andrew Napolitano

Posted on 03/08/2013 5:31:42 AM PST by Kaslin

In all the noise caused by the Obama administration's direct assault on the right of every person to keep and bear arms, the essence of the issue has been drowned out. The president and his big-government colleagues want you to believe that only the government can keep you free and safe, so to them, the essence of this debate is about obedience to law.

To those who have killed innocents among us, obedience to law is the last of their thoughts. And to those who believe that the Constitution means what it says, the essence of this debate is not about the law; it is about personal liberty in a free society. It is the exercise of this particular personal liberty -- the freedom to defend yourself when the police cannot or will not and the freedom to use weapons to repel tyrants if they take over the government -- that the big-government crowd fears the most.

Let's be candid: All government fears liberty. By its nature, government is the negation of liberty. God has given us freedom, and the government has taken it away. George Washington recognized this when he argued that government is not reason or eloquence but force. If the government had its way, it would have a monopoly on force.

Government compels, restrains and takes. Thomas Jefferson understood that when he wrote that our liberties are inalienable and endowed by our Creator, and the only reason we have formed governments is to engage them to protect our liberties. We enacted the Constitution as the supreme law of the land to restrain the government. Yet somewhere along the way, government got the idea that it can more easily protect the freedom of us all from the abuses of a few by curtailing the freedom of us all. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's where we are today.

The anti-Second Amendment crowd cannot point to a single incident in which curtailing the freedom of law-abiding Americans has stopped criminals or crazies from killing. It is obvious that criminals don't care what the law says because they think they can get away with their violations of it. And those unfortunates who are deranged don't recognize any restraint on their own behavior, as they cannot mentally distinguish right from wrong and cannot be expected to do so in the future, no matter what the law says.

When the Second Amendment was written and added to the Constitution, the use of guns in America was common. At the same time, King George III -- whom we had just defeated and who was contemplating another war against us, which he would start in 1812 -- no doubt ardently wished that he had stripped his colonists of their right to self-defense so as to subdue their use of violence to secede from Great Britain. That act of secession, the American Revolution, was largely successful because close to half of the colonists were armed and did not fear the use of weaponry.

If the king and the Parliament had enacted and enforced laws that told them who among the colonists owned guns or that limited the power of the colonists' guns or the amount of ammunition they could possess, our Founding Fathers would have been hanged for treason. One of the secrets of the Revolution -- one not taught in public schools today -- is that the colonists actually had superior firepower to the king. The British soldiers had standard-issue muskets, which propelled a steel ball or several of them about 50 yards from the shooter. But the colonists had the long gun -- sometimes called the Kentucky or the Tennessee -- which propelled a single steel ball about 200 yards, nearly four times as far as the British could shoot. Is it any wonder that by Yorktown in 1781, the king and the Parliament had lost enough men and treasure to surrender?

The lesson here is that free people cannot remain free by permitting the government -- even a popularly elected one that they can unelect -- to take their freedoms away. The anti-freedom crowd in the government desperately wants to convey the impression that it is doing something to protect us. So it unconstitutionally and foolishly seeks, via burdensome and intrusive registration laws, laws restricting the strength of weapons and the quantity and quality of ammunition and, the latest trick, laws that impose financial liability on law-abiding manufacturers and sellers for the criminal behavior of some users, to make it so burdensome to own a gun that the ordinary folks who want one will give up their efforts to obtain one.

We cannot let ourselves fall down this slippery slope. The right to self-defense is a natural individual right that pre-exists the government. It cannot morally or constitutionally be taken away absent individual consent or due process. Kings and tyrants have taken this right away. We cannot let a popular majority take it away, for the tyranny of the majority can be as destructive to freedom as the tyranny of a madman.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: biggovernment; guncontrol; individualliberty; secondamendment

1 posted on 03/08/2013 5:31:42 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin; ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas; Gilbo_3; Impy; NFHale; Arthurio; mike_9958; Perdogg; ...
RE :”In all the noise caused by the Obama administration's direct assault on the right of every person to keep and bear arms, the essence of the issue has been drowned out. The president and his big-government colleagues want you to believe that only the government can keep you free and safe, so to them, the essence of this debate is about obedience to law”

Not after the ‘sequester’. Now we know that the government will keep us hostage to get tax increases if we depend on it for our safety.

Furloughing border patrol and police and releasing illegal criminals from jails into US cities.
His sequester Apocalypse tour proved more than ever wWE CANT DEPEND ON GOVERNMENT!
He-killed his own argument against private gun ownership.

2 posted on 03/08/2013 5:43:14 AM PST by sickoflibs (O's sequester Apocalypse tour just proved why we need the 2nd amendment NOW!)
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To: Kaslin

Napolitano makes a great point. One item that is factually wrong - muskets fired lead shot/ball, not steel.


3 posted on 03/08/2013 6:06:53 AM PST by Bosco (Remember how you felt on September 11?)
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To: sickoflibs; NFHale
He-killed his own argument against private gun ownership.

on the contrary, what he did was make the case for more *revenue* to keep us 'safe'...

the only thing more private guns will accomplish is more lawlessness and chaos, resulting from the aforementioned lack of funding for BP and cops and jails...

havent you been paying attention in class ???

4 posted on 03/08/2013 6:15:48 AM PST by Gilbo_3 (Gov is not reason; not eloquent; its force.Like fire,a dangerous servant & master. George Washington)
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To: Gilbo_3; NFHale
RE :”He-killed his own argument against private gun ownership.
on the contrary, what he did was make the case for more *revenue* to keep us ‘safe’... the only thing more private guns will accomplish is more lawlessness and chaos, resulting from the aforementioned lack of funding for BP and cops and jails...”

Yes, especially safe from racism and homophobia as the ‘gun lobby’ puts the guns in black kids hands to get them to shoot one another, and make lots of money by doing it too.

No minority can feel safe till only the government has guns, not those aging white male hetro-sexual Tea Partyers.

Is that a drone overhead?

5 posted on 03/08/2013 6:23:01 AM PST by sickoflibs (O's sequester Apocalypse tour just proved why we need the 2nd amendment NOW!)
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To: sickoflibs
The Judge really "gets" it!

And so does Obama, from the would-be tyrant's POV.


6 posted on 03/08/2013 6:55:07 AM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Travis McGee; sickoflibs; Gilbo_3

“...We cannot let a popular majority take it away,...”

Someone can only “take away” what you choose to let them take away.

Even if they use force. It’s still your choice.

The moment they try to “take away” is the moment you decide whether to let them, or make them pay heavily for it.

Like all of life, it’s a choice. All choices have consequences.

But it is still a choice. Obey, or do not. Those are the options.

If you obey, you often times find yourself with your hands bound behind your back, held there by some of the people in Travis’ historical photo montages.


7 posted on 03/08/2013 9:07:38 AM PST by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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To: NFHale; Travis McGee; Gilbo_3
“...We cannot let a popular majority take it away,...”
.....
Someone can only “take away” what you choose to let them take away.
Even if they use force. It’s still your choice.
The moment they try to “take away” is the moment you decide whether to let them, or make them pay heavily for it.”

Is that a drone flying overhead?

8 posted on 03/08/2013 9:23:47 AM PST by sickoflibs (O's sequester Apocalypse tour just proved why we need the 2nd amendment more than ever NOW!)
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To: sickoflibs; Travis McGee; Gilbo_3

Probably...

Regardless. There’s always ways around things.


9 posted on 03/08/2013 9:39:46 AM PST by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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