Posted on 01/28/2019 7:40:12 AM PST by Liberty7732
With all deference to hunters and sportsmen, it wasn’t their right to hunt that inspired James Madison and our nation’s First Congress to include the Second Amendment in their proposed Bill of Rights. There’s was a much greater concern: checking the power of a potentially tyrannical state. The modern left dismisses this argument as nonsensical, superfluous, and yes, even hysterical. They’re wrong.
The right for every American citizen to be armed was designed as a bulwark against tyranny.
But despite its foolish attempts at diminishing the importance of gun ownership as a check on government, the fact remains that the concern was central in the minds of the Framers. Perhaps Noah Webster, that great American scholar and teacher whom we have all come to know by way of his dictionary, put it best when he wrote, “The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.”
That was the point.
Indeed, history has seen the pattern of gun right suppression in coordination with the rise of tyranny and oppression play out time and again. China, Nazi Germany, communist Cuba, Russia and North Korea are but a few examples. In fact, in keeping with Webster’s observation, the propagation of a dictatorship would be difficult to conceive if imposed upon a well-armed population. And now, as we witness the financial and societal collapse of our distant southern neighbor, it is evident that Venezuela is no exception.
In 2012, Venezuela’s communist National Assembly banned gun ownership. The stated reason for such an intervention is the oft-quoted safety argument. In 2011, 40% of Caracas’s homicides were robbery related with armed robberies accounting for 70% of all major crimes.
Predictably, the government’s call for voluntary disarmament produced virtually no results on safety, leading to the forcible confiscation of 12,603 firearms in 2013 alone.
The result? A rise in violence against police officers, and most ominously, a rise in violence by the state against its own citizens.
In 2015 alone, 252 law enforcement officers were killed in Venezuela. Why? Well, in Venezuela, police officers are targeted for their firearms!
Additionally, when Venezuelans took to the streets to protest the “unjust laws” of which Webster wrote centuries ago, the state used live ammunition to quiet them down. And like Cuba, Maduro’s regime established a group of colectivos, groups of local individuals charged with the implementation and enforcement of Maduro’s policies, except that, in Venezuela, 400,000 of them were officially armed by the state and allowed to “carry out the regime’s rule by violence.”
And what about the national homicide rate? The rate that the government was trying to reduce? It actually rose from 73 per 100,000 in 2012 right before the ban was implemented to 90 per 100,000 in 2015. In fact, in 2015 Venezuela faced the world’s highest homicide rate with 27,875 murders.
There are elements within our country obsessed with restricting our gun rights. Yes, there are portions of our country in urban areas where gun violence reigns supreme. And yes, the recurrent stories of senseless killings and associated suffering is tragic beyond words. But there is no greater tragedy than a people who once given freedom are robbed of their liberties in pursuit of false assurances of safety and protection.
They will have neither liberty nor safety.
Truly, Madison was not thinking of our right to hunt when he penned our Second Amendment. He was thinking of much more ominous possibilities, the same eventualities that inspired Thomas Jefferson to proclaim, “it is [our] right and [our] duty to be at all times armed.”
Here is a highly suppressed Senate Report on the RKBA from 1982. It has several State Court cases on the 2nd Amendment BEFORE the Civil War.
http://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndschol/87senrpt.pdf
19. *
Nunn v. State
, 1 Ga. (1 Kel.) 243, at 251 (1846).
“’The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.’ The right of the whole people,
old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every
description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or
broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing
up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State.”
****
***”The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second
amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major
commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected
is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.”
NOW YOU see why this is suppressed today.
Venezuela never had strong gun rights. My understanding for the last century, it allowed some hunters or professionals to be armed, but with strict registrations. The Chavistas came along and simply turned the existing screws a little bit tighter, that’s all.
Latin countries all have a very strong dictatorial, “caudillo” culture.
The reverse experiment is about to be run in Brazil. Its new president is VERY pro-citizen-gun-ownership.
this right was not "designed", it's natural. defending oneself against anyone and anything is a natural right. just like breathing. the Second Amendment affirms that right. The 2A says the government cannot take this right away. I've heard many pro-2A people say the 2a grants the right. wrong.
if one believes the government can legitimately grant rights, than one concedes the government can take rights away.
The United States government is a system of checks and balances. The courts balance the legislative, the legislative balances the executive and the executive balances the courts by selecting it’s judges. While the people balance all three from the ballot box the last balance is the 2nd amendment.
When Legislators, executive branch bullies or dictatorial judges will not follow the voters will they are in serious danger of of losing their life from long guns. This fear should help them to make good decisions but because the courts have already eroded the power of the 2nd amendment they do not feel as threatened as they should. I do believe change is coming. I just don’t know which way the change will be.
Great find, thanks for posting.
I have a paper copy of this Senate report. It has much more, including arguments pro and con. You cannot find the complete report on line. The link is to the Senate report only and not rebuttals.
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