Monday, April 15, 2013

First Principles and the Second Amendment:

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“And we must be clear – the Second Amendment is not about assault weapons, hunting or sport shooting. It is about something more fundamental. It reaches to the heart of constitutional principles – it reaches to first principles. A favorite refrain of thoughtful political writers during America’s founding era held that a frequent recurrence to first principles was an indispensable means of preserving free government – and so it is.

The Second Amendment reads as follows: “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 immediate impetus for the amendment has never been in dispute.

Many of the revolutionary generation believed standing armies were dangerous to liberty. Militias made up of citizen-soldiers, they reasoned, were more suitable to the character of republican government. 

Expressing a widely held view, Elbridge Gerry remarked in the debate over the first militia bill in 1789 that “whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia.”

For Progressives….the welfare of the people – not liberty – is the primary object of government, and government should always be in the hands of experts. This is the real origin of today’s gun control hysteria – the idea that professional police forces and the military have rendered the armed citizen superfluous; that no individual should be responsible for the defense of himself and his family, but should leave it to the experts.”

(The Second Amendment as an Expression of First Principles, Edward J. Erler, Imprimus, March 2013, pp. 2-3)

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