Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: Where do you stand? [View all]Francis Marion
(250 posts)...consisted of every able bodied male of sound mind from 16 to around 60 years old. Everybody in town, excluding conscientious objectors.
Their intent was to have nearly the entire male community trained and equipped for service.
The means by which they accomplished this goal was through popular, private arms keeping and community training. Some New England towns set aside money to buy muskets for people too poor to own one.
Yes, it's true that today we have institutionalized and professionalized military service. But none of that changes the fact that the supreme law of the land acknowledges the right of THE PEOPLE- not the right of the militia- to keep and bear arms. The New England militia arose from among the people; you would have recognized just about every male in your town there.
The day we have to stand, hat in hand, and ask the government if we might please be allowed the privilege of keeping a gun- we're through as a nation. The People are, at that point, no longer in charge.
Do we really expect such a government to be liberal and magnanimous in other fields, when they may violate the plain meaning of Amendment 2?
It's fatal precedent for our highest legal code to say "x", and for lawmakers to interpret it as "-x". No part of the code will remain sacred or inviolable after we give up our freedom, or tolerate negation of any amendment therein.
The reason we own guns isn't to make government and lawmakers feel nice.
Private gun ownership is, rather, a concrete affirmation that we are free and in charge of our country. After the gun freedoms disappear, so will the most governmentally inconvenient of the Bill of Rights protections- for self incrimination, privacy, due process of law, cruel and unusual punishment. After guns, the deluge.
The state you propose resembles an authoritarian police and military state. That's just something I hope we never learn to tolerate in America. Slavery makes a poor trade for any condition, freedom most of all.
Remember the historic definition of slavery in America? Among many other prohibitions, slaves were disarmed. It was disarmament which made every moral outrage perpetrated upon black people both possible and indisputable. Frederick Douglass knew this, and he pointed to gun ownership in Union army service as the means to alter the mentality of slaves into that of a free person. Moreover, armed veterans were harder to push around after the war, in contrast to easily brutalized slaves.
So in sum, it's a hard sell to convince Americans to disarm and cease being free. Having read about slavery times, I want no part of it for myself or any American. Never again.
Our system is a People's system in the true sense of that term, not the Communist doublespeak sense. We really do run things- if armed. Is there a higher level of trust and mutual respect between the government and the governed than when the governed have weapons?