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The Individual Right to Keep and Bear
Arms
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"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." |
| Resources:
"I ask, sir, what is
the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public
officials."
— George Mason, in Debates in Virginia Convention on
Ratification of the Constitution
| "The militia, when
properly formed, are in fact the people themselves, ... all
men capable of bearing arms;..." — "Letters from
the Federal Farmer to the Republic", 1788 (either
Richard Henry Lee or Melancton Smith). |
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"Who are the militia? Are they
not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our
arms each man against his own bosom? Congress shall have no
power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other
terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an
American ... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the
hands of either the federal or state governments, but where
I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the
People."— Tench Coxe, 1788.
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| Commentaries on the
Constitution:
§ 1889. The next amendment is:
"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."
§ 1890.
The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any
persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is
the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign
invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power
by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up
large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace,
both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and
the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled
rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the
people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly
been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic;
since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and
arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are
successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and
triumph over them.2 And yet, though this truth would seem so clear,
and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so
undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people
there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline,
and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid. (COMMENTARIES
ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE
UNITED STATES; WITH A PRELIMINARY REVIEW OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL
HISTORY OF THE COLONIES AND STATES, BEFORE THE ADOPTION OF THE
CONSTITUTION. BY JOSEPH STORY, LL. D., DANE PROFESSOR OF LAW IN
HARVARD UNIVERSITY.) |
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms
REPORT of the SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION of the UNITED STATES
SENATE NINETY-SEVENTH CONGRESS Second
Session February 1982
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| Silveira
v. Lockyer - Dissent by Kozinski,
states in part:
" ...a core value
protected by the Second Amendment for "the people" was
"the Right of the people to alter or abolish"48
tyrannical
government, as they had done a decade before. ...
As Blackstone describes the
"natural right" of an Englishman to keep and bear arms,
the arms are for personal defense as well as resistance to tyranny.
The two are not always separable. After the Civil War, southern
states began passing "Black Codes," designed to limit the
freedom of blacks as much as possible.50
The "Black Codes" often
contained restrictions on firearm ownership and possession.51
The codes sometimes made it a crime for
whites even to loan guns to blacks.52
A substantial part of the debate in
Congress on the Fourteenth Amendment was its necessity to enable
blacks to protect themselves from White terrorism and tyranny in the
South.53 Private
terrorist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, were abetted by
southern state governments’ refusal to protect black citizens, and
the violence of such groups could only be realistically resisted
with private firearms. When the state itself abets organized
terrorism, the right of the people to keep and bear arms against a
tyrant becomes inseparable from the right to self-defense....
the law establishes with the utmost clarity
that the militia is precisely what the panel says it is not, an
"amorphous body of the people as a whole."
Among the acts of the crown seen as
oppressions to be prevented from ever happening again were the
Militia Acts of 1757 through 1763 authorizing British officials
"to seize and remove the arms" of colonial militias when
they thought it necessary to the peace of the kingdom.69
The American Revolution was triggered when
General Gage ordered troops to march from Boston to Lexington and
Concord to do just that.70
...The one thing that is absolute is that
the Second Amendment guarantees a personal and individual right to
keep and bear arms, and prohibits government from disarming the
people...."
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| Historical references:
Original
Transcript of "The Bill of Rights"
Patriot's Day
- April 19, 1775
Nazi
Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews - Stephen P.
Halbrook 17
Arizona Journal
of International and Comparative Law,
No. 3, 483-535 (2000) Requires Adobe Acrobat
Nazism,
the Second Amendment, & the NRA
TARGET
SWITZERLAND
Swiss
Armed Neutrality in World War II
...In
World War II, the Swiss had defenses no other country had. Let's
begin with the rifle in every home combined with the Alpine terrain.
When the German Kaiser asked in 1912 what the quarter of a million
Swiss militiamen would do if invaded by a half million German
soldiers, a Swiss replied: shoot twice and go home. Speech
by Stephen Halbrook about this book
Bill
of Rights Day (December 15th)
Battle
for the U.S. Bill of Rights
Does Civilian Ownership of Firearms Actually Do Any Good-
The
Human Cost of "Gun Control" Ideas
Documentaries:
"Innocents
Betrayed
... shows why gun control must always be rejected." --Rep.
Ron Paul, U.S. Congressman (Texas, 14th District)
Download
a Clip from Innocents Betrayed
To
download the movie file of the introduction to Innocents
Betrayed to your computer, click the link with your RIGHT mouse
button, and select the "Save target as..." or "Save
link as..." option (depending on your web browser). Then tell
the browser where to put the file on your computer.
After
saving the movie file on your computer, open the file with the movie
viewer for that format.
The
Battle of Athens, Tennessee As
Recently As 1946, American Citizens Were Forced To Take Up Arms As A
Last Resort Against Corrupt Government Officials.
The
Freedom Pledge
The
Red Neck War - Virginia Coal Miners
JPFO
Files Amicus Brief for Heller Case
GOA Brief in Heller
Case
JPFO Alert: March 24th
2008
A sober assessment about
Heller vs. D.C.
Militia, Standing Armies,
and the Second Amendment
Some Perspectives from the American
Revolution
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1495
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