In speaking with many fellow gun-owners, I
have come to realize that most people don't know that the Second Amendment
does not give us the right to bear arms. The Second Amendment states
that the right to bear arms "shall not be infringed"; it does not
confer that right. The Second Amendment is an admonition to government that it may not
take away your right to bear arms,which is inherent.
What, then, is the origin of the right to bear
arms? While our forefathers had inherited rights and liberties as
Englishmen, those rights were curtailed and suppressed, which eventually led to
the Revolution. Without the many citizen-soldier militiamen such
as the Minutemen,
the new United States would not have won the War of Independence.
The Declaration of
Independence is thus central to our liberties and our law. The
Constitution was implemented to "secure those rights," not to confer
them. Considering
the critical involvement of the citizen-soldier in the Revolutionary War, it is
clearly evident why the Founding Fathers wrote in the Second Amendment:
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 Englishmen in the American colonies had inherited a right to
bear arms from the English, subject to the whims of Parliament, but Jefferson
and the Founding Fathers transformed the right to use force to protect yourself
and your family into a corollary of the unalienable rights to life and liberty
set forth in the Declaration of Independence. These unalienable
rights were secured as foundational laws in a new American nation, born of
liberty through the midwife of the Revolution.
The problem I see is that if the right to bear arms is considered
given to you by the Second Amendment, then that right is a product of the
Constitution. If it is a product of the Constitution, then it is
subject to interpretation by the "ultimate authority" over the
Constitution, the Supreme Court, through the concept of judicial supremacy
established by McCullough v. Maryland. It does not
help, in your author's view, if we continue to propagate the myth that the
Constitution confers upon us the right to bear arms. It is our inherent,
inborn right to protect ourselves and our families, bequeathed to us from our
forefathers' blood and sacrifice in the many battles for liberty. It
may not be legislated or interpreted away. It is not in the purview
of the Supreme Court (or Congress, for that matter) to abolish the right to
bear arms.
Since 1990, we have had the unconstitutional "Gun
Free Schools Act." If we help the false notion live on that
the right to bear arms is a creature of the Second Amendment, we invite and
empower the black-robed keepers of the Constitution to put the creature in a
cage. The fact
is that the Second Amendment is a cage for the creatures who want to take away
the guns given to you by your fathers, their fathers, and their fathers'
fathers.