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FiRiNG BACK The Founding Fathers were clear: Citizens should be armed
Sunday, March 12, 2006
By Dennis Hannick
RON MILLER is obviously a good fiction writer. His op-ed on the Second Amendment ["Hold your fire: Second Amendment was aimed at building militias," March 1], certainly qualifies as such.
Miller, like others who wish to restrict select freedoms, writes that the Second Amendment is obsolete--only there to form a militia--and that it does not guarantee an individual right to arms.
After reading the voluminous writings of the people who conceived the Constitution and Bill Of Rights, I can only find history that is at odds with Miller's theories.
I would certainly like to know the historical sources to back up his assertions that:
"A civilian militia simply doesn't work."
As a former Armored Cavalry Scout of the Virginia Army National Guard, 29th Infantry Division, I can assure him that I am insulted by the implication that the most decorated militia unit in Virginia history did not and does not work--especially after the landing on the beaches of Normandy in WWII, and the current deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
By Virginia law (Code Of Virginia: § 44-1, Composition of militia), each of us, including Mr. Miller, is currently a member in the Virginia unorganized militia (one of the four official militia classes of Virginia). He may be called upon until the age of 65. Members of the Virginia State Defense Force may be retained until age 75.
I will personally ensure that Mr. Miller reports for duty, with his weapons.
"The Second Amendment is a kind of fossil."
Remember New Orleans and the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles? Civilian-citizens banded together in the time-honored militia and defended their lives, neighbors, and communities. They defended themselves successfully with rifles, shotguns, and pistols.
The police tried and in some cases disarmed the people in New Orleans, then abandoned them to the gangs and looters.
Those police and their officials, including Mayor Nagin, are currently under a federal restraining order and are being sued for Second and Fourth Amendment violations. They have also had contempt charges filed, for ignoring that order.
"[The Second Amendment] can be made clearer by simply inverting the two clauses, thus: 'The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed because a well regulated Militia is necessary.'"
Legal minds strongly disagree with Miller's wishful thinking. "The plain language of the amendment, without attenuate inferences therefrom, shows that the function of the subordinate clause was not to qualify the right, but instead to show why it must be protected." U.S. v. Emerson, 46 F.Supp.2d 598.
Jurists St. George Tucker, William Rawle, and Joseph Story were contemporaries of the Founders, wrote constitutional commentaries--and read the Second Amendment as protecting a private, individual right to keep arms.
And Thomas Jefferson's thoughts on "interpretations"?
"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 what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." (Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823).
"A civilian army does not--and probably cannot--work."
See the first correction to this argument, above. Many times each year the militia is activated and used to support law enforcement and emergency personnel, all across America: the hurricanes of the Gulf Coast in 2005, the Virginia snow storms of 1980 & 1981, the Richmond floods of 1986, Hurricane Agnes 1972 in Fredericksburg.
They work.
Does Mr. Miller honestly think that a call to the civilian military veterans of America, for the defense of hearth and home, would go unanswered? How does he explain the Swiss, who use a militia exclusively without a standing army?
In perhaps the most obvious case of willful revisionism, Miller suggests that the Second Amendment is not a part of the Bill Of Rights, and the amendment does not guarantee an individual right.
In all of the other amendments to the Constitution, when it says "the People," it means individual citizens--except in the Second Amendment? I'm sure that James Madison and friends would find that astounding.
As one person on the scene at the time put it: "As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." (Tench Coxe, "Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution" writing under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.)
And consider: "The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; thatit is their right and duty to be at all times armed." (Jefferson, Letter to John Cartwright, 1824.)
"The amendment has nothing to do with the rights to protect one's home and family "
Miller thus concedes, by his own statement, that a right to protect [defend] one's home & family exists. Like all of our rights, it is a natural right that exists independent of any document or law.
The Second Amendment guarantees that the government shall not infringe the right of the people to own the instruments used to accomplish this defense.
Remember New Orleans & Katrina?
" the sole, original intentions [of the Second Amendment] were: the creation of a civilian militia."
That anyone could base such an assertion on his own interpretation and not on the writings of the people who conceived and wrote the Second Amendment is beyond astonishing--and sounds like an artifice of falsity.
It brings to mind a quote from another ODWG (old dead white guy):
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." (Samuel Adams, 1777)
Nowhere does Miller use the published words of the people who debated, conceived, and wrote the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. Why is that? Because they do not support his delusion. Miller would have to take out of context the words to prove his point.
Miller's attempt at "artifices of false and designing men" against "our fair inheritance" is summarily rejected.
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