The Left’s Insanity Underscores the Need for the Second Amendment
By Gary L. Wickert
As with so many things, the Radical Left continues to educate America on the meaning of one of the most misused words in the English language, “irony.” It is truly ironic that the actions liberals take with the purported intent of achieving certain goals (e.g., racism, immigration, livable wage, etc.) almost always end up achieving the opposite result. This is most certainly true with the issue of gun control, where the radical actions of those who assume that the answer to gun violence is to outlaw or curtail the ownership of guns punctuates the very intent of the Founding Fathers and the ever-growing important role that the Second Amendment plays in our Republic.
While the word “Nazi” and “fascist” are thrown around carelessly by those who don’t understand their meaning, Nazi Germany’s Gun Control Act of 1938 was signed by Adolph Hitler disarmed the Jewish population. When Cuba succumbed to the mistake of socialism in 1959, Castro took advantage of firearm registration lists and he ultimately proclaimed, “Guns, for what? To fight against whom? Against the Revolutionary government that has the support of the people?” Following those words, gun confiscation began in earnest and 150,000 Cubans were murdered by the Castro regime. Venezuela destroyed property rights and fundamental civil liberties over time, but it all began with the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law in 2013, at the hands of dictator Hugo Chavez. It banned the sale of guns and munitions to all—except government entities—and took away a vital pillar of protection remaining to a free people. Eerily similar to some Democrat-run urban cesspools, Venezuela initially announced a month’s-long amnesty program in which citizens could trade their arms for electrical goods. That year, there were only 37 people voluntarily surrendered their guns, while the majority of seizures - more than 12,500 – were by force. War was declared again an unarmed people.
The left’s plaintive wailing for repeal of the Second Amendment has always been heard. Lately, however, it has developed into a fevered pitch. Liberal pundits have always called for its repeal. On August 7, 2019, Elie Mystal, a writer for The Nation authored an article entitled, “It’s Time to Repeal—and Replace—the Second Amendment.” She argued that the meaning of the amendment has become so “badly mangled” that our only choice is to start over with something that allows for “real gun control.” This radical position isn’t limited to emotional journalists, however. Just last year, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens—a Ford appointee who died shortly after doing so—wrote a New York Times op-ed in which he argued we should repeal the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment has remained unchanged since it was written by James Madison and transmitted to the state Legislatures in 1789. "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." Fresh from the American Revolution in which guns and other arms to ward off an oppressive king, the amendment was originally created to give citizens the opportunity to fight back against a potentially tyrannical federal government. Underscoring this constitutional right are the words of Thomas Jefferson, “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
Jefferson’s fears about repressive regimes have been borne out in history, and they all began with gun confiscation. The Soviet Union’s monopoly on the use of force against its people was exactly what James Madison and the Founding Fathers intended to prevent. Mass murder has been a way of business for a lot of governments over time. Contemporary examples include mass genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur, and Bosnia. To consolidate power, Stalin had nearly a million of his own citizens executed, beginning in the 1930’s. Following gun control 20 million “dissidents” were rounded up and slaughtered.
While the word “Nazi” and “fascist” are thrown around carelessly by those who don’t understand their meaning, Nazi Germany’s Gun Control Act of 1938 was signed by Adolph Hitler disarmed the Jewish population. When Cuba succumbed to the mistake of socialism in 1959, Castro took advantage of firearm registration lists and he ultimately proclaimed, “Guns, for what? To fight against whom? Against the Revolutionary government that has the support of the people?” Following those words, gun confiscation began in earnest and 150,000 Cubans were murdered by the Castro regime. Venezuela destroyed property rights and fundamental civil liberties over time, but it all began with the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law in 2013, at the hands of dictator Hugo Chavez. It banned the sale of guns and munitions to all—except government entities—and took away a vital pillar of protection remaining to a free people. Eerily similar to some Democrat-run urban cesspools, Venezuela initially announced a month’s-long amnesty program in which citizens could trade their arms for electrical goods. That year, there were only 37 people voluntarily surrendered their guns, while the majority of seizures - more than 12,500 – were by force. War was declared again an unarmed people.
Turkey established gun control in 1911 and over the following years 1.5 million Christian Armenians were exterminated. China did the same thing in 2918 and from 1948 to 1952, 20 million citizens were captured and killed. Guatemala passed a similar gun control law in 1964, and in a three year period 100,000 Mayan Indians were rounded up and shot. The story is the same in Uganda in 1970, resulting in the government-initiated murder of 300,000 Christians. Ditto for Cambodia in 1956, following which one million educated people were exterminated. History repeats itself. The Republic of South Africa recently jumped on the gun confiscation bandwagon. On June 7, 2018, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ordered the confiscation of about 300,000 firearms. Political tensions are mounting and it all began with the Firearms Control Act of 2000. All totaled, during the 20th Century, 56 million defenseless citizens were killed by their governments following the institution of gun control.
The U.S. Constitution and the ink comprising the Second Amendment remain the “thin black line” protecting American citizens from the inevitable tyranny of government. Not exactly a model of clarity and good draftsmanship, the Second Amendment has given rise to heated debate regarding the ownership and use of firearms in America. First, there is a dispute regarding whether the Amendment limits federal action only, or also state gun laws. More importantly, gun rights advocates believe it protects the right of an individual to possess firearms, whereas the gun control crowd maintains that the founding fathers merely meant to protect the collective right of a militia to arm itself. They claim that the “well-regulated militia” clause necessarily adds meaning to the “keep and bear arms” clause by furnishing the reason for the latter's existence.
In 1934, the Roosevelt administration signed the National Firearms Act (NFA), mainly due to the failed Prohibition policy under the Eighteenth Amendment and the explosion of heavily armed organized crime that followed. It imposed a tax of $3,540 in today’s dollars on the purchase of various types of guns. Two bank robbers named Frank Layton and Jack Miller had possession of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun and were arrested under the Act. They challenged the NFA as a violation of the Second Amendment. The government also argued that the Second Amendment only protected arms that could reasonably be used by a "well regulated militia." In in U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment only protects the right to keep and bear arms that could reasonably be used by a "well regulated militia." The decision quickly came under criticism because the government made no compelling argument that sawed-off shotguns could never have a place in a militiaman's hands, and the ruling on its face would allow the ownership and use of machine guns.
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the Supreme Court reviewed a Washington, D.C. law which was effectively a stealth ban on handguns. It required residents to register firearms while at the same time refusing to allow any to be registered. Residents could have an unloaded, disassembled, or trigger-locked gun in their home, making them useless in an emergency, but were not allowed to carry a gun from room to room even in their own home. Dick Heller—a special policeman—lived in a high crime area and tried to register a handgun, but was turned down. At the time, Washington, D.C. was the “Murder Capital of the United States” due to an endless string of handgun murders. The court ruled that the handgun ban violated the Second Amendment, which it noted was an individual right to keep and bear arms, not connected with service in a militia. Justice Scalia wrote that only weapons "in common use" like handguns are protected by the Second Amendment and that dangerous or unusual weapons could still be prohibited. The decision applied to enclaves like D.C. but didn’t fully prevent states from issuing blanket restrictions on firearms. That didn’t happen until 2010.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court heard an appeal by Otis McDonald, an African-American who lived in a crime-ridden part of Chicago, where they also required registration of handguns but refused to issue any. In McDonald v. City of Chicago, Ill., 561 U.S. 742 (2010), the court held that the individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense is "deeply rooted" and "fundamental" to the American ideal of liberty, and that handguns were the "quintessential self-defense weapon." The ruling was a defeat for the "collective" interpretation of the Second Amendment by those arguing that the right to bear arms only exists to support the states' right to an effective militia. In reaching its decision, Justice Antonin Scalia and a plurality of the court for the first time relied relying on an historical analysis of the English common law roots of the right to keep arms for self-defense and the significance of this right to the American colonies, the drafters of the Constitution, and the states as protection against the type of overreaching governments history is replete with. Scalia noted that by the middle of the 19th Century, the perceived threat that the federal government would disarm its citizens had faded and suggested that the right to keep and bear arms became valued principally for purposes of self-defense. At that time, the Second Amendment’s purpose was to protect the right of ex-slaves to keep and bear arms.
History reveals that The Federalist Papers assert that local militias (as opposed to a "regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country") exist as a formidable check on federal power. In Federalist 46, Madison writes of the local militia versus a national military:
“Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of
subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”
Bearing arms is "the right of the people" who would make up a state militia, which protects us from national tyranny (even if Madison was overly generous in describing the efficacy of militiamen during the Revolutionary War). In Federalist 29, published 228 years ago, in 1788, Alexander Hamilton concurs as to why militias are necessary:
“If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.” [Federalist 29]
Wisconsin is no stranger to the right to bear arms. Article I, Section 25 of our own State Constitution provides:
“The people have the right to keep and bear arms for security, defense, hunting, recreation or any other lawful purpose.”
There are approximately 300 million guns in the hands of some 80 million American gun owners. Out of 300 million guns, there are 11,000 annual shooting deaths - nearly all of which are the action of criminals. At the same time, armed, law-abiding citizens use their guns to de-escalate a crime more than 2.5 million times every year, almost exclusively without even firing their weapon. We have a better chance of sending all illegal aliens back home than we do of removing these guns from their legal owners – and no chance of taking guns away from criminals.
Simple truths seemingly shine through impassioned and emotional responses to tragedies like Columbine and Virginia Tech. Guns do not cause crime, and gun-control laws do not reduce crime. Darrell Scott’s daughter was killed in the Columbine tragedy, yet afterwards, he uttered more common sense in four sentences than all the ribbon-wearing talking heads combined:
“The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the NCA - The National Club Association. The true killer was Cain and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain's heart.”