The basic question is this: Who should be trusted, the people or the government? If the people are to be trusted, the right of the people to arm themselves should not be abridged. If the government is to be trusted, the power of the government to restrict the arming of the people should not be denied. The framers of our Constitution understood this question. They had experience with tyrannical government. The iron fist of King George III had driven them to seek independence from the crown and, at the risk of their lives, to form a new republic. Their goal was to create a country governed by laws that would never allow heavy-handed government rule. They understood that a citizenry with access to guns is necessary. Guns in the hands of private citizens are the last line of defense against both foreign invasion and tyrannical government. If the citizens in the days of the Revolution did not have guns, America might still be a British colony. I believe the founding fathers would be aghast at the tactics which gun control advocates employ to do away with individual liberty in this area, attempting instead to put control in the hands of government. The number of myths put forth by gun control advocates is truly astonishing. Here are a few of those.
The first myth, and the one used most often, is that should more government restriction be imposed on gun ownership, fewer crimes would occur. To best understand the situation, the citizens of this country can be divided into three basic groups: those who make the laws, those who keep the laws and those who break the laws. The argument of gun control advocates is that those who break the law, namely those who commit violent acts with the assistance of a gun, would not break the law if the lawmakers, namely the government, further restricted guns. They believe that simply because guns are restricted, law breaking individuals would cease their violence. Any logical person should be able to see the critical flaw in their thinking. This argument, in essence, supposes that the violent nature of criminals is dependent on the availability of the instruments used to carry out their violence. Frankly, I find this assumption absurd. To believe this is to believe that lawbreakers derive their criminal tendencies from a set of government regulations, or the lack thereof. To believe this is to ignore the fact that lawbreakers will find ways to get weapons to act out their criminal desires whether or not the government restricts them. Abusable drugs are illegal, and yet large quantities of these substances can be found on nearly every street corner. To put it simply, lawbreakers break laws. The very fact that they want to commit crimes demonstrates that they have no respect for the law. It is ludicrous to expect that a criminal who wants to break the law and murder will be deterred because there are laws to restrict guns. If a criminal is deranged enough to break the laws against murder, why on earth would anyone assume he would have respect for laws against guns?
Making guns illegal would not take guns out of the hands of those who break the laws, it would take them out of the hands of those who keep the laws. Law abiding citizens would have no means of defense against law breaking citizens. As Thomas Jefferson wisely put it, “[Gun control laws] disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” The statistics support his assertion. A recent study showed that if a robbery victim does not defend himself with a gun, the robbery will succeed 88 percent of the time, and the victim will be injured 25 percent of the time. However, if the victim defends himself with a gun, the success rate of the robbery falls to 30 percent, and the injury rate to 17 percent.
The other popular myth advanced by gun control advocates is that the Constitution does not imply that every citizen has a right to bear arms, but only law enforcement and the military. The text of the Second Amendment reads, “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.” The argument of gun control advocates is that the “militia” mentioned in the text does not consist of ordinary citizens, but of government-sanctioned organizations like the military. But this is simply not the case. The term “militia” would have been understood to mean any citizen capable of defending himself or herself. The Supreme Court affirmed this in its most recent case on the subject, United States v. Morton, which stipulated that the only requirement for being considered part of the “militia” was to be able to act “in concert for the common defense.”
The Constitution is a document that legitimizes an entire form of government in a few pages. As such, it uses generally broad language, and does not often go into the minute details about the rights of citizens. The fact that the gun is the only piece of personal property guaranteed not to be regulated in our Constitution speaks volumes about the founders desire to place the responsibility of gun ownership in the hands of the citizens. Gun laws will not deter criminals, and the restriction of guns by the government is fundamentally unconstitutional. If we ignore these simple facts, we not only endanger our citizens, but we trample upon the founding documents and the legacy our founding fathers fought and died to pass on to posterity.
Josh
