My good friend, Kevin W. Boyd, wrote this and mailed it off to a number of Senators, Congressmen, and organizations (I hope also newspapers). Although I almost never blog anymore (and probably won't have the time to do so until summer rolls along) I felt it important to post this and give it some circulation. Whether you agree with Kevin or not, I believe that his essay has some definite merit.
Philadelphia, PA
14 Apr, 2013/5 Iyar, 5773
Sic semper tyrannis?
Just this week, Senator Cruz reiterated his vow to “protect our 2nd
Amendment rights” by opposing, among other things, a national gun registry (which
of course is a misnomer, it is the owners that would be “registered”). His words were a clarion, clearing the fog of
battle rather than summoning one; American citizens have been crafting tactics
in the fight over gun control while adhering to a faulty strategy. While it is commendable that the skirmishes
over hunting have been won, and gun grabbers seem to be conducting a rear guard
action over self-defense, without recognizing the true threat to popular
sovereignty which inspires the many demands to more rigorously regulate
possession of firearms, the rights defended by the Constitution will eventually
be lost, or more precisely, stolen.
“Unarmed citizen” is, if not a personal
choice, an oxymoron. If government
officials, elected or not, mandate a defenseless polity, then the people are no
longer citizens, they are subjects. This
idea is foreign to an increasing number of Americans. But our libraries are full of evidence that
the people who rejected their status as subjects of George III thought this
way. Those same stacks show that the
originators of democratic civilization, the Greeks and Romans, thought this way
as well. The 20th Century
alone provides evidence enough of the wisdom of such philosophies. And it is this conception of independence
that motivated the inclusion of the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights.
Despite the Heller decision, many
still argue, or simply believe, that the 2nd Amendment is a corporate
right, intended to maintain militias as a check of Federal power. I
shall dispense with this silly argument briefly, by pointing out that the
principal grievance of those at the South in antebellum America was founded on
a false understanding of the Bill of Rights.
The Civil War resolved the issue of
states’ rights; they are inferior to those of the Federal government. This anyway is what we are typically
taught. But there is a deeper lesson. The 10th Amendment says nothing of
states’ rights in the first place. The 9th
Amendment explains that the people have other rights which have not been put in
writing. But the 10th
explains that there are many powers which the states retain. A power is not a right. The 10th is not a protection of
corporate rights, it is a final check on Federal power. This raises an implication about the 2nd.
The proof resides in the Declaration
of Independence. People are endowed by
their creator with certain unalienable rights; governments are instituted among
them, for the single purpose of securing those rights. This alone demonstrates that the American
system is predicated on the idea that governments do not grant rights to
people; in fact they possess no rights to grant or exercise.
The Bill of Rights protects
individual rights from government tyranny, exclusively.
As a philosophic refresher, this is
all well and good. I should hope the
argument clear enough to sway some honest thinkers. My higher aim though, is to upend the debate
over gun control.
It is a sad irony that the greatest
moral battle of 20th Century America has led to an electorate
convinced that they have no need for all of their rights. The civil rights movement successfully
persuaded Americans and their elected representatives that it was wrong, based
on nothing more than the color of one’s skin, to prevent millions of their
neighbors from equal participation in governing this country. This is not the place to detail the countless
victories and failures over the last few decades. The point is that the two principal
conflicts, voting rights and education, made Federal issues out of topics
barely addressed by the Constitution; education was such a local issue the word
isn’t even in the Constitution, and control of elections was explicitly reserved
to the states.
This is not to suggest that civil
rights are not Federal issues; clearly when representative government fails at
lower levels, redress must be sought from a higher authority. This is the purpose of the 14th
Amendment. Indeed, this is why so many
wish for Congress to “do something” about guns; they believe that lower
governments are failing to contain nuts with guns.
The shift I am pursuing is the
recognition that the bearing of arms is a civil right. We are given rights, equally, by God; it is a
disingenuous oversimplification to claim that the majority of colonists thought
of Jefferson's god when hearing the Declaration. The Founders were particularly
sensitive to having their liberty dangling at the end of a thread tied to the
king’s finger; their government was to have explicit limits to its power. Its acceptance hung finally on the inclusion
of the Bill of Rights. Since we agree
that the ability to vote, like the freedom to be educated, are vital to our
health as a nation, we should also be able to agree that each of the rights, enumerated
in the Bill of Rights, including those of both pen and sword, are equally
fundamental.
American citizens (those who support
the erosion of the 2nd Amendment are in fact not citizens but rather
subjects) need to reconsider its importance.
We also need to seize control of the narrative. It was largely Democrats who opposed the
original civil rights acts in the 1860s.
It was Democrats who built Jim Crow, instituted poll taxes, and fought integration. It is Democrats who are, once again,
maneuvering to eviscerate the Bill of Rights, through speech codes and gun
registries. One need not imagine how all
that might end. Conservatives,
Libertarians, and Republicans must demonstrate, rhetorically and legislatively,
that the citizen, free to live and worship as he sees fit, is the only reason
this country exists. The final
expression of that is the defiance, and destruction, of tyrants. And on this Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel’s Day of
Independence, we would all do well to remember this struggle is that of all
mankind.
Kevin W Boyd
intrcptr2@yahoo.com
