29 April 1999 | Dr. Alan Keyes
Second Amendment Rights
"I am
a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment is still
in the Constitution of the United States, contrary to what some
elites would like us to believe.
And
the 2nd Amendment was not put into the Constitution by the Founders
merely to allow us to intimidate burglars, or hunt rabbits to our
hearts’ content. This is not to say that hunting rabbits and
turkeys for the family dinner, or defending against dangers, were not
anticipated uses for firearms, particularly on the frontier – this
is true.
But
above all, the Founders added the 2nd Amendment so that when, after a
long train of abuses, a government evinces a methodical design upon
our natural rights, we will have the means to protect and recover our
rights. That is why the right to keep and bear arms was included in
the Bill of Rights.
In
fact, if we make the judgment that our rights are being
systematically violated, we have not merely the right, but the duty,
to resist and overthrow the power responsible. That duty requires
that we maintain the material capacity to resist tyranny, if
necessary, something that it is very hard to do if the government has
all the weapons. A strong case can be made, therefore, that it is a
fundamental DUTY of the free citizen to keep and bear arms.
In
our time there have been many folks who don’t like to be reminded
of all this. And they try, in their painful way, to pretend that the
word “people” in the 2nd Amendment means something there that it
doesn’t mean in any one of the other nine amendments in the Bill of
Rights. They say that, for some odd reason, the Founders had a lapse,
and instead of putting in “states” they put in “people.” And
so it refers to a right inherent in the state government.
This
position is incoherent, and has been disproved by every piece of
legitimate historical research. For example, at one point in
Jefferson’s letters he is talking about the militia, and he writes
“militia, every able-bodied man in the state . . . “ (every man
capable of carrying arms). That was the militia. It had nothing to do
with the state government. The words “well-regulated” had
something to do with organizing that militia and drilling it in the
style of the 19th century, but “militia” itself referred to the
able-bodied citizens of the state or commonwealth – not to the
state government.
It
would make no sense whatsoever to restrict the right to keep and bear
arms to state governments, since the principle on which our polity is
based, as stated in the Declaration, recognizes that any government,
at any level, can become oppressive of our rights. And we must be
prepared to defend ourselves against its abuses.
But
the movement against 2nd Amendment rights is not just a threat to our
capacity to defend ourselves physically against tyranny. It is also
part of the much more general assault on the very notion that human
beings are capable of moral responsibility. Consider, for example,
the phony assertion that certain weapons should be banned because
“they have no purpose except to kill people.” This debate is not
about certain kinds of weapons that kill people; all kinds of weapons
can kill. It is people that kill people, and they can use countless
kinds of weapons to do so, if killing is in their hearts.
So
let’s get down to the real issue: are we grownups, or are we
children? If we are grownups, then we have the capacity to control
our will even in the face of passion, and to be responsible for the
exercise of our natural rights. If we are only children, then all the
dangerous toys must be controlled by the government. But this
“solution” implies that we can trust government with a monopoly
on guns, even though we cannot trust ourselves with them. This is not
a “solution” I trust.
Advocates
of banning guns substitute things for people, but this approach won’t
wash. It is the human moral will that saves us from violence, not the
presence or absence of weapons. We should reject utterly the absurd
theory that weapons are the cause of violence.
Anyone
who is serious about controlling violence must recognize that it can
only be done by rooting violence out of the human heart. That’s why
I don’t understand those who say “save us from guns,” even
while they cling to the coldly violent doctrine that human life has
no worth except what they “choose” to assign to it.
If we
want to end violence in our land, we must warm the hearts of this
people with a renewed dedication to the God-given equality of all
human beings. We must recapture the noble view of man as capable of
moral responsibility, and self-restraint. Purify the heart and we
will not have to worry about the misuse of weapons.
It is
the business of the citizen to preserve justice in his heart, and the
material capacity, including arms, to resist tyranny. These things
constitute our character as a free people, which it is our duty to
maintain. If we want to hold on to our heritage of liberty, we must
first and foremost strengthen our confidence in our own moral
capacity, and encourage such confidence in our fellow citizens. Only
a people confident that it can behave like grown-ups will be
justified in asserting its right to keep and bear arms, because it
will be a people responsible to use them only in defense of ourselves
and our liberty.
But
if we want that to be true, then we shall have to return, as a
people, to that same humble subjection to the authority of true moral
principle that characterized our Founders, and that characterized
every generation of Americans, until now. We must regain control of
ourselves.
Most
deeply, then, the assertion of 2nd Amendment rights is the assertion
that we intend to control ourselves, and submit to the moral order
that God has decreed must govern our lives. And just as we have no
right to shirk our duty to submit to that moral order, so we have no
right to shirk our duty to preserve unto ourselves the material means
to discipline our government, if necessary, so that it remains a fit
instrument for the self-government of a free people."
