CONSTITUTIONAL COMMENTARY 2nd AMENDMENT

 Submitted by: Joseph Grisafi Jr

CONSTITUTIONAL COMMENTARY

“False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. 

They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty – so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator – and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.”

Cesare Beccaria – An Essay on Crimes and Punishments

 The information given here was taken from an excerpt on “The Second Amendment and the Ideology of Self-Protection” by Don B. Kates, Jr. – 1992

To the Founders and their intellectual progenitors, being prepared for self-defense was a moral imperative as well as a pragmatic necessity; moreover, its pragmatic value lay less in repelling usurpation than in deterring it before it occurred.

To natural law philosophers, self-defense was “the primary law of nature,” the primary reason for man entering society. Indeed, it was viewed as not just a right but a positive duty: God gives Man both life and the means to defend it so that the refusal to do so reviles God’s gift. A refusal to engage in self-defense is a Judeo-Christian form of hubris.

Slavers, robbers and other outlaws who would deprive honest citizens of their rights may be resisted even to the death because their attempted usurpation places them in a “state of war” against honest men.

Modern Americans tend to see incidents in which a violent criminal is thwarted by a police officer as very different from similar incidents in which the defender is a civilian. When the police defend citizens it is seen (and lauded) as defense of the community. In contrast, when civilians defend themselves and their families the tendency is to regard them as exercising what is, at best, a purely personal privilege serving only the particular interests of those defended, not those of the community at large. Such influential and progressive voices in American life as Garry wills, Ramsey Clark and the Washington Post go further yet, labeling those who own firearms for family defense as “anti-citizens,” and “traitors, enemies of their own patria” who arm “against their own neighbors,” and denouncing “the need that some homeowners and shopkeepers believe they have for weapons to defend themselves” as representing “the worst instincts in the human character,” a return to barbarism and to “anarchy, not order under law – a jungle where each relies on himself for survival.”

I have personally discussed the above paragraph with many people in my circle both pro-gun and anti-gun. It’s amazing the responses I got from both. Their concern is based totally on the community not the individual – even pro-gunners. Not all but more than I had hoped. Of course the anti-gunners rely totally on the police to save them. Just dial 911 and everything would be okay. But as I pushed them with more questions their answers came much more slowly. They had to think to search for an answer and eventually the answers ended. I backed them into a corner and they couldn’t get out. But in the end their mind could not conceive of self-defense. They refused to acknowledge the idea that they would be dead before the police arrived. But it didn’t matter. They had a conflict in their mind, which we now know is called COGNITIVE DISSONANCE. This conflict will never go away. And the conflict on both sides is based on reality, not make believe.

There are at least two reasons why some cannot conceive of self-defense. As mentioned here, the police will protect them. The second one blows my mind. There are those that cannot even think of taking someone's life no matter the situation. I've discussed this with some and they will not change their mind. If they saw their wife or daughter being raped and/or brutalized they would not go to their defense. The attacker would live and the wife or daughter could die. The husband would stand by and not help because he could harm or kill the attacker. Hard to imagine but true.

The notion that the truly civilized person eschews self-defense, relying on the police instead, or that private self-protection disserves the public interest, would never have occurred to the Founders since there were no police in eighteenth century America and England.

“The life of governments is like that of man. The latter has a right to kill in case of natural defense: the former have a right wage war for their own preservation.”

Montesquieu – Spirit of the Laws

Thus a crucial point for understanding the second amendment is that it emerged from a tradition which viewed general possession of arms as a positive social good, as well as an indispensable adjunct to the individual right of self-defense.

This commentary by Kates, which he wrote in 1992 is an excellent piece to use for argument sake. What he expounds in this excerpt cuts through all the arguments the left tries to argue I would like to write more but the length is too long to continue.  But hopefully what I did write helps you to understand the issue between our Founders time and modern America.

Joe