E!!

I know a guy in southern Ohio who believes that Democrats will take his guns away so he can’t defend himself against the Government. Not against criminals, the Government. When I ask him why he said that is what he was told. So I asked did he know of any people who had their guns taken from them by Democrats and he replied did not know but he believes what he was told.

Now I see a big problem…

First, how anybody believing that they can take arms against their government is not a crime. Let’s be honest he was talking about killing cops. There is no justifiable reason to intentionally and knowingly kill a cop in the performance of his duty. If you disagree with the execution of the law that is what court is for. If you think the law is wrong motivate your legislator to change it. Totally Uncool!

Not sure what your comments have to do with wealth redistribution…but the discussion re: whether the Second Amendment recognizes the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms, or whether the right belongs solely to state governments (and empowers each state to maintain a military force) is always interesting.

Does the language of the 2nd Amend. create an individual right or a state’s right? And was the intent of the Founders to arm the citizenry so they could defend the State, or so they could defend their personal freedoms against the potential tyranny of the State?

The Federalists (those supporting the Constitution as originally drafted) accepted the premise that governmental tyranny was the primary evil people needed to guard against. In one of the first Federalist pamphlets, Noah Webster argued that the proposed Constitution provided guarantees to limit the threat of any standing army:

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every Kingdom of 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 bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.”

Similarly, James Madison said that although the proposed Constitution offered sufficient guarantees against despotism, the *real* deterrent to governmental abuse was an armed population. To the Antifederalist criticism of the standing army as a threat to Liberty, Madison replied:

“To these [the standing army] would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from amongst themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by government possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops …. Besides the advantage of being armed, which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of…”

Alexander Hamilton voiced a similar view. He suggested that if the elected representatives of the people betrayed their constituents, the people retained the *right* to defend their political rights and possessed the means to do so through their right to bear arms.

It is important to note that even the Antifederalists believed the main danger to the Republic was tyrannical government and that the ultimate check on that threat was an armed population. They simply differed from the Federalists as to whether sufficient checks and balances had been placed on the proposed national government in the Constitution.

The Antifederalists believed a bill of rights should be incorporated into the Constitution to guarantee certain rights. The Federalists argued that such a bill of rights was unnecessary because the power of the federal government was restricted to the grant of authority provided by the Constitution, i.e. that there was no need to provide exceptions to powers not granted.

Further, the Federalists argued that providing exceptions to powers not granted was dangerous because it could encourage a claim that powers not expressly stated HAD in fact been granted.

But again, both sides not only agreed that the people had a right to be armed, both sides assumed the existence of an armed population as an essential element to preserving liberty.

The framers adopted James Harrington’s political theory that the measure of liberty attained and retained was a direct function of an armed citizenry’s ability to claim and hold those rights from foreign AND domestic enemies.

So, Constitutionally your Ohio friend is quite right when he speaks of his right to bear arms as a means of defending himself against the tyranny of a government that oversteps its bounds.

Your belief that there is “no justifiable reason” to kill an officer of the state reveals, simply, that you cannot imagine a future in which our elected representatives and/or our Courts have ignored the Constitution and stomped on our personal Liberties to the point that a citizen uprising (revolution) would be necessary or justified.

I wish I could say I share your faith in the goodness of the State, and the wisdom of our legislature and our courts. Recent developments in Congress and the judiciary, however, compel me to remain skeptical. I therefore support your Ohio friend in his passion re: his right to bear arms as key to preserving his personal liberty.

(Source for some of the above quotes: http://www.guncite.com/journals/vandhist.html)

Your argument has merits but it sounds like you are trying to justify assassinating a government official that is elected by a majority of the citizenry he serves when he doesn’t do something you like.

E you have to realize that our form of government was scandalous back in the 18th Century. A democratic nation standing among kingdoms, principalities, and empires stood out then the way interracial couple stood out in the sixties. I believe their concerns where somebody seizing power from Congress by force and declaring himself king or emperor with the support of one of the monarchies. Frankly if that were to happen I would be leading the charge on that one.

Yes I have faith in my government because the government is composed of people we both grew up and went to school with. When I serve in a jury I am the government. When I vote I am the government. When my family have served in the armed forces they are government. I believe in my government because it has strived to improve. It was a nation that enslaved people, not anymore. It was a nation that has oppressed minorities and women as a matter of policy, not anymore.

It is very different for me because I swore an oath to obey and protect the constitution when I became a state trooper. I swore to protect everybody and be fair to everybody. That still means a lot to me. Although you may not of been part of majority that elected your senator or your member of Congress if he doesn’t hear from you that is your fault not his or hers. If he gets in your face and tells you he doesn’t work for you that is his fault but that doesn’t justify taking a shotgun, drive to his office, and lighting him up.

We are nation of laws and that means as citizens we must obey them. That’s the deal. Our nation also allow us to have a saw in the creation of those laws, that’s in the deal also. If the law doesn’t work we have a process to change them. If a law is executed upon a person and he disagrees with how that law is executed he has his day in court and if the judge rules against them he is entitled to go to higher court but he doesn’t have a “right” to take arms against the judge because he ruled against him.

If a military force marches in to your town and seize control of the police station, city hall, and the local court and the commander of that military force declares himself the authority over you without your consent, then denies you due process and a say over how laws are executed over you send me an email and I will be on my way from Virginia.

I can tell you a time when I got worried about the Constitution was when the Patriot Act was passed. That law was supposed to make my job easier but there wasn’t a decent cop I knew that was comfortable with that law. Now my guess is that you supported that law because you were told it is designed to weed out terrorists… as long as they were from the Middle East. The Klan and most street gangs (Bloods, Skin Heads, Latin Kings) are terrorists and the Patriot Act works on them too, frankly anybody that instill terror in people is a terrorist. The Patriot Act is out there to take on anybody that fits the definition of a terrorist. You could be a terrorist if you scare enough people. There is no limit to the Patriot Act if you can articulate fear and there appeared a bypass around several amendments to the Constitution.
If you can believe with the Patriot Act then you must have faith in your government. If you don’t well you can have faith if Congress lets it go.

Do you really believe that there are people that have dedicated their lives to public service who chose service to feed their desire for World Domination? This I will concede government service is the only job that can be done too well. That is often when things go wrong, and even then the checks and balances kick in as they should.

Candle: I’m not advocating or justifying murder or assassination, nor am I suggesting “taking up arms” against individuals with whom we disagree. Frankly if that is what you got from my post there is probably no point in continuing this dialogue.

Look I wasn’t looking to scare you silent. It is unsettling that you can’t acknowledge that people who serve this country and their states and municipalities are not evil.

I can take a lot from your arguments but a consistent problem I see with a lot of Conservative writers is that so far none of them can discuss their positions. They all turn and run. Don’t do that. If your position has merits then explain it to me, but don’t walk away when I question it. That too is Uncool.

I told you about my friend in Ohio because if his understanding of how government interacts with its people he will seriously hurt or kill somebody and it won’t be the exercise of the 2d amendment but murder, and all those that preached it wrong to this guy will have to take responsibility for that.

What I am looking for is somebody to take responsibility for what they preach.

I am not sorry that I questioned you, but I am very sorry that my questioning causes you to withdraw.

CHTT: You didn’t question me; you said “it sounds like you are” and then misconstrued and misstated what I wrote.

In fact, most of your comments so far have addressed things I never said. I’m more than willing to engage and discuss, but it would be nice to do so with someone who can and will respond to what I actually write.

I never said our public servants were/are evil, nor do I believe they are. I do think some of them are misguided, especially those who wish to engage in lots of constitution amending and social engineering and who seek to legislate from the bench when those efforts fail.

As to the merits of the second amendment issue, whether yours or mine, it seems we disagree on the fundamentals (whether it is conceivable that Americans would ever need to rise up against an overreaching government), so let’s try it this way:

If the State is basically good and trustworthy, and if the citizens of the land are willing to submit and live peacefully as long as that remains the case, who cares if those citizens have a gun in their closet?

E!!-lizabeth Crum’s last blog post..Change.gov