Professor Walter Williams
Published: July 4, 2015
The nation’s
demagogues and constitutionally ignorant are using the Charleston AME church
shootings to attack the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and
bear Arms.”
A couple of years
ago, President Barack Obama said, “I have a profound respect for the traditions
of hunting that trace back in this country for generations.”
That’s a vision
shared by many Americans, namely that the Constitution’s framers gave us the
Second Amendment to protect our rights to go deer and duck hunting, do a bit of
skeet shooting and protect ourselves against criminals.
That this vision is
so widely held reflects the failure of gun rights advocates, such as the NRA
and Gun Owners of America, to educate the American people.
The following are
some statements by the Founding Fathers. You tell me which one of them suggests
that they gave us the Second Amendment for deer and duck hunting and protection
against criminals.
Alexander Hamilton:
“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be
properly armed,” adding later, “If the representatives of the people betray
their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that
original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of
government.”
What institution
was Hamilton referring to when he said “the representatives of the people”?
Thomas Jefferson:
“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from
time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take
arms.” Who are the rulers Jefferson had in mind?
James Madison, the
“Father of the Constitution,” said: “(The Constitution preserves) the advantage
of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every
other nation ... (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with
arms.”
George Mason,
author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which served as inspiration for the U.S.
Constitution’s Bill of Rights, said, “To disarm the people — that was the best
and most effectual way to enslave them,” later saying, “I ask, sir, what is the
militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”
Richard Henry Lee
said, “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.”
Here’s a much more
recent statement from a liberal, bearing no kinship to today’s
liberals/progressives: The late Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey said,
“Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no
matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear
arms. ... The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against
arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears
remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.”
There are some
historical anti-gun statements that might please America’s gun grabbers. “Armas
para que?” (Translated: “Guns, for what?”)
That’s how Fidel
Castro saw the right of citizens to possess guns.
There’s a more
famous anti-gun statement:
“The most foolish
mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess
arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to
carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”
That was Adolf
Hitler.
At the heart of the
original American ideal is the deep distrust and suspicion the founders of our
nation had for Congress, distrust and suspicion not shared as much by today’s
Americans.
Some of the
founders’ distrust is seen in our Constitution’s language, such as Congress
shall not abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, violate or deny. If the founders
did not believe Congress would abuse our God-given rights, they would not have
provided those protections.
Maybe there are
Americans who would argue we are moving toward greater liberty and less
government control over our lives and no longer need to remain an armed
citizenry. I’d like to see their evidence.
[Ed; Amen to that.]
Walter E. Williams
is a professor of economics at George Mason University. His column is
distributed by Creators.
Thank You Professor Williams.
The amazing part of this is that the 2nd even needs explaining.
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