If the Bill of Rights would fail of ratification today, it is likely because of the Second Amendment. The modern progressive, and, about every Democrat candidate for President, deeply dislikes this right, and many of those candidates have talked about repealing the right to bear arms, modifying it, limiting it to law enforcement and the military, etc.
Many of them claim that the use of the term “Militia” in the amendment means that the right is a collective one, for national defense, and not an individual right. But recall that not only did the early American republic not have a large standing army, the Founders were wary of having one, knowing the dangers that one had posed during the colonial days. With no standing army, the “Militia,” that is, a mobilized armed citizenry, was the chief means of mutual protection; and those citizens had to possess their own firearms.
Let’s remember the reason that the “Minutemen” patriots (a militia if ever there was one) stood on Lexington Green on that April day in 1775: it was to prevent the British forces from seizing the arms at Concord. The powerful state, in other words, wanted to disarm the people; and the people knew what could happen if they had been disarmed. And the Founders, who lived through those days, knew it all too well – and they wanted to assure that the people would retain their natural right of self-defense, even against the newly-formed government of the United States. Remember, the former colonies had experienced oppression, and the Founders were well aware of the dangers that a non-responsive and oppressive government posed to the people.
However, as the years have passed and our nation has expanded, and the government gained in power, that original and natural right of self-defense has more and more been seen as a collective right – one that “allows” the people to bear arms only in a militia. Many lower federal courts have ruled in this way, notwithstanding the value that the Founders placed on the right to bear arms and their desires to keep the central government in check. The Supreme Court had not made a decision on this question until 2008, in the case of Heller vs. District of Columbia. By a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that “the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” And the Heller case (a 5-4 decision) prompted the progressive left to seek means to overturn it.
Several prominent progressives have vowed to undo Heller or somehow repeal that decision. Why those folks are so determined to deny the people the right to defend themselves is hard for us to understand, living here in a mostly law-abiding and peaceful rural America; but it is even harder to understand why those living in a violent urban America would want to render themselves defenseless against the criminals who are likely to prey on them; criminals who not any more likely to obey gun laws than they are to obey laws against robbery, theft, assault or murder. And let us also be aware that it is far easier to disarm a peaceful and law-abiding population than it is to keep weapons out of the hands of those who are neither peaceful nor law-abiding. As the old saying goes, in the forest of the blind the one-eyed man is king – and so too, in an environment without firearms, the men with box-cutters are able to take down the World Trade Center. Sam Colt’s revolver was known as “the Equalizer” because it enabled the weaker and less powerful to resist those intent on violence against them. In Heller, the Court made it clear that the people possess the right of arming themselves for defense of their lives and property.
And let us be quick to say that the government does have an interest in restricting certain types of weapons or to keep weapons out of the hands of certain individuals (criminals, abusive spouses, terrorists, etc.) – but it is one thing for the government to strive to keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous criminals or deranged or unstable people; it is something entirely different to deny the right to bear arms to everyone.
The progressives certainly would not approve the Second Amendment today, and they would seek to limit that right as much as they could. Kamala Harris would do it through executive action; Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders (and Hillary Clinton) would have “mandatory buybacks” of firearms (former candidate Eric Swalwell explicitly said - sell them to the government – or go to jail); Joe Biden would ban magazines that contain “multiple bullets”; Most would ban semi-automatic weapons and would have strict “red flag” laws; Elizabeth Warren would limit purchases, and would impose a national gun registry and universal background checks. One thing that all the candidates have in common is that they assume the problem is caused by the gun, rather than by the person misusing it; and they give no indications that they have compunctions about taking firearms out of the hands of peaceful, law-abiding people who never have committed a crime or used firearms unsafely, or about denying the natural right to bear arms. The Second Amendment keeps them from doing this, and they certainly would not ever approve something that says “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Of all our rights, perhaps this is the one in greatest jeopardy.
We will continue our review of the Bill of Rights next week.