Shall Not Be Infringed

Shall Not Be Infringed

by Mark Luedtke

Laws don't arise more elegant than: 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 Second Amendment is elegant for its simplicity and clarity. No honest person can argue the meaning. The independent clause guarantees the right of every American citizen to own and carry personal weapons without any interference from government. The dependent clause could well say, “Because the moon is made of cheese,” and it wouldn't alter the right. And it doesn't get any stronger than “shall not be infringed.”

But the framers understood the nature of government, that government is force, and that government cannot stand an armed citizenry that can resist it. They understood that government would begin eroding the right to keep and bear arms, starting specifically with military weapons, the weapons that made citizens a threat to government. The framers understood that government should fear citizens, not vice-versa. In order to insure the people could possess and train with infantry weapons, the framers added the militia clause. The Second Amendment guarantees the right of every American to own and carry the personal weapons of his or her choice including infantry weapons.

Liberals pretend the Second Amendment is a collective right, but willful misreading of plain English doesn't mean anything. Besides, the Constitution doesn't grant the right to keep and bear arms, it acknowledges the natural right of every individual to defend himself to the best of his ability.

Unfortunately, government has invented 40,000 excuses to infringe that right that have not been overturned by the courts. In 1934 Congress banned automatic weapons for everybody but special license holders, and in the 90s, Congress banned semi-automatic assault weapons, both clear violations of the right to bear militia weapons. The popular excuse is public safety, but it's a lie. People are obviously safest defending themselves with a firearm, and have been for centuries, or self defense firearms wouldn't exist. Police wouldn't carry them. Nobody would buy them. We don't have to look any further than the victims of the recent university shootings to understand that many lives could have been saved if students and teachers had not been disarmed by government.

As obvious as this is, you don't have to take my word for it. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports bear this out. Using a firearm to defend yourself from a criminal is the safest strategy - including safer than submitting. Firearms are such an effective tool for self defense that Americans use them for self defense 2.5 million times a year, rarely having to fire them.

Liberals like to point to other countries and claim those countries have lower rates of violent crime because they have stronger gun control laws. That's comparing apples and oranges. Those countries have lower rates of violence because their populations are different than ours. Every study of gun laws, no matter what country, shows that gun control laws increase violent crime. Gun control has increased violent crime in Great Britain and Australia as well as the US. Reducing gun control has reduced violent crime in Florida and several US cities. Gun ownership makes communities safer.

Washington D.C. provides a perfect example. Since D.C. enacted one of the strictest gun control laws in the US, violent crime has skyrocketed. Handguns are completely banned in D.C., and long guns must be stored with trigger locks, rendering them ineffective. Despite the plain language of the Second Amendment, Washington D.C. has disarmed law-abiding citizens. Only criminals are armed, and they terrorize D.C. citizens with impunity.

For decades, liberal Supreme Courts avoided Second Amendment cases because they didn't want to affirm the individual right to keep and bear arms. But the Roberts Court recently heard the case of District of Columbia versus Heller, testing the D.C gun ban. D.C. argued that its interest in promoting public safety outweighed the Second Amendment, so it could enforce reasonable restrictions on firearm possession. In response, Chief Justice Roberts asked what was reasonable about a complete ban on handguns. His question misses the point. What part of “shall not be infringed” doesn't Roberts or D.C. understand? The Second Amendment allows no infringement, no matter how reasonable.

Either the Constitution means what it says, or we might as well toss it in the trash. If government wants to legalize reasonable infringements on the right to keep and bear arms, it must use the amendment process, not ignore the plain language of the Constitution. But then who would define reasonable? Government is never reasonable, and as the framers understood, allowing government any wiggle room at all would lead to total gun bans. D.C. banned guns even without wiggle room.

It's widely expected that the Court will strike down the D.C. gun ban and affirm the individual right to keep and bear arms because of its political makeup. That would be a cop out. The Second Amendment has only one meaning, and liberals can read too. I predict the Court will affirm the individual right to keep and bear arms by more than a 5-4 decision split down political lines.

And if we are to take our country and freedom back from government, we should pressure Congress to impeach and remove any justice who votes otherwise for abrogating his or her oath of office.