Presents
Pamphlet #231

"We Need an Armed Citizenry to Protect Our Liberty"

"Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta for eight hundred"
with an armed populace,
while other countries who disarmed their citizens
     "lost their liberties in less than forty years." (The Art of War, 18)

During the Philadelphia Convention of 1788,
Patrick Henry argued passionately for the individual's rights
against the Federalists James Madison and Edmund Randolf.

Henry was insistent that the new Constitution of the United States
contain a Bill of Rights similar to Virginia's.

Madison did not believe one was necessary
as the people retained the right to overthrow an unjust government.
He also believed that all rights not given up to the new government were retained by the people.

Henry and Mason both argued against ratifying the new Constitution
unless specific right's were enumerated as had been done with their own State Constitution.

Randolf, himself an ally of Madison's,
refused to sign the new Constitution unless a Bill of Rights were present.

     "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed;
a well armed, and well-regulated militia being the best security to a free country:
     but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms,
shall be compelled to render military service in person."

Madison added the language of the right to keep and bear arms in first draft.
A right of the people.
The wording the house committee chose read:

     "A well regulated militia,
composed of the body of the people,
being the best security of a free state,
the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,
but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms."

This draft, reversed the people and militia clauses
but retained Madison's conscientious objector clause.
Additionally author Halbrook points out that it is clearly shown
from Madison's notes that he would use to propose the Amendment:

     "They [the proposed amendments] relate first to private rights .." (That Every Man be Armed, 76)

The Senate version dropped the conscientious objector clause all together,
and what was to become our nation's second amendment
was finally adopted by the states:

     "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."

During the House debates, of our Second Amendment,
Representative Elbridge Gerry begged the question:

     "What, Sir is the use of a militia?
It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army,
the bane of liberty."

The well-regulated clause of the second amendment
suggests that the citizen soldier must retain not only the right to keep and bear arms,
but must be proficient in their use.

The argument that the "well-regulated militia" clause
implies a collective rather than an individual right
can be rebuked with the Federalist Papers number 29,
where Alexander Hamilton wrote:

     "..the great body of yeomanry
and of the other classes of citizens to be under arms
for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions,
as often as might be necessary
to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them
to the character of a well-regulated militia." (Federalists #29, 184-185)

Here, as can be clearly seen,
a well-regulated militia is composed of ordinary citizens who are trained to arms.

The contemporary argument used by gun control advocates
that the militia clause means only police or the government
should be allowed to have arms, has no historical, or factual precedence what so ever.

The militia is quite simply you and me.
It is our moral duty to be proficient in the use of arms
for our own self preservation and that of our country.

Standing armies have been viewed as the bane of liberty,
and not the protectors of it.

Freemen have a right and moral duty to oppose
the unlawful taking of our natural rights by any means available to us.
As radical and revolutionary as this may sound today,
it has been said many times before.
It is as true today as it was in Ancient Rome, Sparta,
or in Eighteenth Century Virginia.

But our propensity to believe that this is the case
may be little more than a sign of how truly different we are
from our radical forbearers.

I do not want to argue that the state is necessarily tyrannical;
I am not an anarchist.
But it seems foolhardy to assume that the armed state will necessarily be benevolent.
The American political tradition is,
for good or ill, based in large measure on a healthy mistrust of the state.
The development of widespread suffrage and greater majoritarianism
in our polity is itself no sure protection, at least within republican theory.

The republican theory is predicated
on the stark contrast between mere democracy,
where people are motivated by selfish personal interest,
and a republic, where civic virtue, both in common citizen and leadership,
tames selfishness on behalf of the common good.

In any event, it is hard for me to see how one can argue
that circumstances have so changed us
as to make mass disarmament constitutionally unproblematic.

Indeed, not long ago we saw the brutal suppression
of the Chinese student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
It should not surprise us that some
NRA sympathizers have presented that situation as an abject lesson
to those who unthinkingly support the prohibition of private gun ownership.

If all Chinese citizens kept arms,
their rulers would hardly have dared to massacre the demonstrators...
The private keeping of hand-held personal firearms is within the
constitutional design for a counter to government run amok...
As the Tianamen Square tragedy showed so graphically,
AK 47's fall into that category of weapons,
and that is why they are protected by the Second Amendment."
It is simply silly to respond that small arms are irrelevant
against nuclear armed states;
Witness contemporary Northern Ireland
and the territories occupied by Israel,
where the sophisticated weaponry of Great Britain
and Israel have proved almost totally beside the point.
The fact that these may not be pleasant examples does not affect the principal point,
that a state facing a totally disarmed population is in a far better position,
for good or ill,
to suppress popular demonstrations and uprisings
than one that must calculate the possibilities of its soldiers
and officials being injured or killed.
 

 One of the first such arguments in regard to the events in Tianamen Square
was made by William A. Black in a letter,
Citizens Without Guns, N.Y. Times, June 18, 1989, at D26, col. 6.
Though describing himself as "find[ing] no glory in guns
[and] a profound anti-hunter,
"he nonetheless "stand[s] with those who would protect our right to keep and bear arms"
and cited for support the fact that "none [of the Chinese soldiers] feared bullets:
the citizens of China were long ago disarmed by the Communists."
"Who knows," he asks,
"what the leaders and the military and the police of our America
will be up to at some point in the future?
We need an armed citizenry to protect our liberty."
As one might expect, such arguments draw heated responses.

The Founders and the AK-47 (Cont'd) Washington Post,
July 20, 1989 at A22, col 3.
Jonathan Rudlin accused Ms. Wimmershoff-Caplan of engaging in Swiftian satire,
as no one could "take such a brilliant burlesque seriously."
Neal Knox, however, endorsed her essay in full,
adding the Holocaust to the list of examples:
"Could the Holocaust have occurred if Europe's Jews
had owned thousands of then-modern military Mauser bolt action rifles?"

is

Published by:

Rhine Publishing Co.
PO Box 455
Bainbridge, PA 17502

If you would like to have your essay published
as part of the American Wisdom Series
submit your manuscript to Rhine Publishing Co
at the address above for consideration, or e-mail us
at the address shown on our home page.

Click Here to Return to "The American Wisdom Series" home page.