The right to keep and bear arms preceded the Second Amendment

[Wyldekard]

This article sums up very well the fact that firearms are an intrinsic part of the person I was born to be. I thought others here might find the same value in Mr. Hawkins philosophy. The lines in bold print are my editing. Wyldekard.


The right to keep and bear arms preceded the Second Amendment

By AWR Hawkins, Ph.D. 1:17 PM 05/04/2012

A recent article in The New Yorker titled “American Battleground,” by Harvard’s Jill Lepore, has been gnawing at me ever since I critiqued it last week for The Daily Caller. As I wrote then, it is a convoluted piece of quasi-academic work that is intended to make gun owners question the founders’ position on private gun ownership and, if possible, open 21st-century American minds to the idea of more gun control. Lepore does this via subtle and not-so-subtle attacks on the Second Amendment throughout the article. By attacking the Second Amendment, she hopes to somehow convince us that we really don’t have an individual right to keep and bear arms. Rather, we were only intended to have a right to form militias to use guns in that capacity when emergencies arise. In an attempt to prove her point, she quotes FDR’s solicitor general, Robert H. Jackson:

[The Second Amendment] is restricted to the keeping and bearing of arms by the people collectively for their common defense and security, [and that right] is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only one which exists where the arms are borne in the militia or some other military organization provided for by law and intended for the protection of the state.

This brings me to what has been gnawing at me so badly for the past week. Lepore has made a mistake that’s all too common with anti-gunners and even with some staunch defenders of the Second Amendment. That mistake is to look at the Second Amendment as the source of our right to keep and bear arms. You see, in Lepore’s mind, if she can just disprove the “perceived meaning” of the Second Amendment, gun owners across the country will sell their gun safes, throw away their ammo and let Obama collect all the guns so we can have safer streets. But in reality, the Second Amendment is only a reflection of the dictates “of nature and of nature’s God.”

Ultimately, we don’t have rights because the Bill of Rights says so. Rather, the Bill of Rights says so because we have rights intrinsic to our very beings: rights with which we were endowed by our Creator.

One of the reasons Lepore and her fellow academics don’t teach students about natural law anymore is that they don’t want students to understand that long before the U.S. government existed, God had endowed his creatures with rights. These rights were explained and defended at length by men like John Locke and William Blackstone long before ideas like the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights were even passing thoughts. Recent Supreme Court decisions like District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010) have upheld and incorporated the Second Amendment. But what happens when an academic or two with the mindset of Lepore gets appointed to the Supreme Court and pro-Second Amendment decisions become a thing of the past?

At that point it will be crucial that every American understands that our right to keep and bear arms does not rest in the Second Amendment, but in the God who endowed us with rights which the founders dutifully expressed in the Bill of Rights.

The bottom line: Had the Bill of Rights never been written, the fact that God endowed us with certain inalienable rights would remain a fact that academics like Lepore could never change.

AWR Hawkins is a conservative columnist who has written extensively on political issues for HumanEvents.com, Pajamas Media, Townhall.com, and Andrew Breitbart’s BigPeace.com, BigHollywood.com, BigGovernment.com, and BigJournalism.com. He holds a Ph.D. in U.S. military history from Texas Tech University, and was a visiting fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in the summer of 2010. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.


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[Domineaux]

Amen and just to add, most forms of life have defensive properties including such examples as tough skin, sharp barbs/teeth/claws, etc and humans have the intelligence and capacity to devise tools of protection including but not limited to clothing, shelter and arms.

[CharlieK]

Absolutely!! The Bill of Rights, in layman's terms, designates the PRIOR EXISTING rights that shall not be infringed. The Second Amendment does NOT GIVE us the right to bear arms; it preserves the existing right.

If it gave us the right, it would say "citizens hereby have the right...."

[Oldgrunt]

Noah Webster said it best in 1787. This is the reason Obama wants us disarmed, to enforce unjust laws.



"
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 constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive. An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, (1787).
"

Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.

[eagleeyes]

civics lesson number one:
the thing about rights

our rights are not supposed to be voted on
that's why they called them rights
;)

[Bikenut]

One can never actually... lose ... a right because rights, all of them, are intrinsic to being a human being. If you are human you have rights... you own them and always will own them. Your rights are as much a part of you as your fingers and toes, eyes and hair are.

However.... owning a right and being able to exercise that right without being penalized by those in authority are two different things.

We.. all human beings.. have the right to keep and bear arms but those in authority have passed laws that make it impossible to exercise that right (actually do it) without their oversight and without being penalized in some way, shape, or form. We haven't "lost" the right but the ability to exercise it has become.............. controlled.

Now why would anyone want to control the right to keep and bear arms? For the same reason a pet owner declaws his cats... it's not for the good of the cat but is to prevent the cat from being able to claw the owner if the owner decides to hurt the cat. Please note I used the word..................... "owner". That word is appropriate when discussing how those in authority view the one's they have authority over.

[Dr. Detroit]

From a political standpoint: RKBA has roots in early English common law. Its identity as a government-recognized right therefore predates the U.S. Bill of Rights right by hundreds of years.

From a moral standpoint: RKBA is a God-given right that is very clearly embedded in both Old and New Testaments.

Cheers,
Dr. Detroit

[Seeya]

WHO HAS RIGHTS?!

[gman099]

I do not carry a gun to kill, I carry it to protect my family and myself, which is my right. There is a difference.

The more you practice, the better gun control you have, lol.

[buckey01]

Both Madison, often called the father of the Constitution, and Jefferson believed in "natures law" or natural law. The Bill of Rights guarantees the rights of the people under natural law will not be violated by the New Constitution. Jefferson further believed that the second amendment was the most important of the enumerated rights because it was the guarantor of all the others. Law schools today only teach case law not natural law. To the budding dictator in the Whitehouse our Constitution is an impediment to the implementation of his progressive and Marxist agenda. Our government has been violating the Constitution for the last century. Obama has taken this violation to new heights, however. He is not merely violating his oath of office; he is violating it to the point of treason. Destroying our educational system, destroying the Christian religion, and eliminating the second amendment are the most important steps in the destruction of our constitutional republic. He is the domestic enemy talked about in that oath of office. If this man is reelected we will lose all of our rights; because individual rights can not be tolerated in this Marxist, socialist utopia towards which he is working.
.