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Sighting in the Second Amendment
by Jacob G. Hornberger, July 2000
WE SHOULD NOT let the
hoopla associated with the Million Mom March cause us to lose sight of the
real purpose and meaning behind the Second Amendment: the ability to
protect ourselves from the tyranny of our own government.
Virtually all the arguments in the
gun-control debate have revolved around gun violence in American society.
The proponents of registration, licensing, waiting periods, gun buy-backs,
and even gun confiscation aim to rid our society of gun-related deaths.
But as their opponents have so ably
pointed out, the means that the supporters of gun control are advocating
are not likely to achieve their ends. People who violate laws against
violence are not likely to feel constrained by gun-control laws. And people
who do obey the gun-control laws are going to be less able to defend
themselves against those who don’t obey the laws.
Moreover, there is no more reason to
believe that a war on guns will rid American society of guns than that the
war on drugs has eradicated drugs from our society. Those who wish to
purchase illegal guns will be able to do so on the black market as easily as
they purchase drugs on the black market.
Thus, the ultimate consequence of gun
control would be a society in which violent antisocial people are armed
while peaceful, law-abiding people are disarmed. Of course, that’s a
prescription for disaster for those who are disarmed.
But despite its obvious importance,
being able to protect oneself from murderers, thieves, robbers, burglars,
and the like is not why the people of the United States enacted the Second
Amendment to the Constitution in 1791. The true purpose of the
amendment — one that modern-day Americans forget at their peril
— was to protect us not from private thugs but rather from
government ones.
Don’t forget that revolutions
are, by their very nature, wars against one’s own government. Keep
in mind that when George Washington and Thomas Jefferson revolted
against England in 1776, they were British, not American, citizens. At
various times throughout history, people have taken up arms against their
own government because of what they considered to be nasty and brutal
acts that their own officials had committed against them.
Historically, the biggest threat to the
freedom and well-being of a people has lain not with some foreign
government but rather with their own government. And as Thomas
Jefferson pointed out in the Declaration of Independence, if a government
“crosses the line” by engaging in overly tyrannical conduct
against its own citizens, it is the right of the people to meet force with
force, even to the point of violent revolution.
Weapons and tyranny
Violent revolution and resistance to
tyranny, however, require an essential ingredient — weapons. In the
absence of weapons, there is only one course of action in the face of
government brutality — obedience. A disarmed society is an obedient
society, a society in which, at the extreme, people obey their own
government’s orders to follow the line into the gas chambers.
This point
was recently reflected by what Fidel Castro said about the U.S.
government’s raid on the home of the Miami relatives of Elián
Gonzalez. He commented that his forces would not need to be armed to
conduct a similar raid in Cuba because Cuban citizens are not permitted to
own guns. What he failed to say, of course, is that because of gun control,
the Cuban people also lack the means to overthrow the gun-toting
communist thugs who rule over them.
“But in America, our leaders
are democratically elected. We are the government. There’s nothing
to fear here.” But given the proper circumstances, a democratically
elected government can be even more tyrannical than a totalitarian one.
Remember: the very purpose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is to
protect us from our own democratically elected government officials!
When citizens are well-armed,
government officials must think twice before going too far down the road
to tyranny against the citizenry. Thus, the right to bear arms protected by
the Second Amendment is the best insurance policy that the American
people could have against tyranny.
Mr. Hornberger is president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation and co-editor of The
Tyranny of Gun Control (1998), published by the Foundation.
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