|
The Founding fathers are not alive, but their words concerning the 2nd Amendment and how they felt about the right to keep and bear arms are forever recorded in history. The following is a mock type of question and answer forum. The questions are mine, but the answers are the actual words of the Founding Fathers and others that were alive when the Amendment was written.
Question: Some people are saying the 2nd Amendment does not provide an individual right. How do you gentlemen feel about that?
Patrick Henry: "The people have a right to keep and bear arms".
Thomas Jefferson: "On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying to determine what may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed".
Samuel Adams: "The Constitution shall never be construed (twisted)... to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms". (Emphasis mine)
George Washington: "A free people ought to be armed".
John Adams: "Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion...in private self defense".
Thomas Jefferson: "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms, as a last resort, to protect against tyranny in government".
George Mason: "Disarm the people...that is the best and most effective way to enslave them".
Question: Is the militia the strictly the government army or the National Guard?
George Mason: "I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials".
Richard Henry Lee: "A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms".
Patrick Henry: "The greatest object is that every man be armed...everyone who is able may have a gun".
Question: So we the people should defend most vigorously this individual right to keep and bear arms?
Thomas Jefferson: "No free man shall be debarred the use of arms".
James Madison: "Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed people". (I can think of one of these they already have and it comes out daily)
Richard Henry Lee: "To preserve liberty. It is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them".
Noah Webster: "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and they constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops".
George Washington: "When firearms go, all goes.we need them every hour".
Patrick Henry: "Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense".
George Washington: "The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference---they deserve a place of honor with all that is good".
Question: They are now passing laws that say we cannot have certain arms that are used in crimes and that conceal carry causes gun crimes and homicides. What do you think of that?
Cesare Baccaria: (Most famous criminal justice theorist of all time) "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man"!
I myself wonder how do we protect ourselves against the government as they said, if only the government is to have arms as the anti-gun people of today claim?
Gentlemen, I thank you for clearing up the many questions and doubts people have today. I'm sure your answers leave no doubt that the American people have an individual right. What I want to know is what part of "shall not be infringed" do they not understand!!
Don Bekeleski
|
