Defending Freedom

Consider the possibility of the following television ad:

A dark, windy night. Several horsemen gallop along a wooded, country way, their white robes blowing out behind them, their masks and pointed hats covering grim faces, torches held high. They arrive at a small group of modest cottages and check their horses’ gait. The leader of the five shouts to the occupants of the homes, "c’mon outta there, boy."
Five black men emerge from the cottages and point Model 1863 Springfield rifled muskets at the intruders. The foremost of them responds, "who’re you calling a boy, boy."
Fade to black, with a simple text message: "If slaves had been armed, would they have been slaves? Support Second Amendment rights."

A powerful message to send to Americans: no one is free unless they’re willing to fight to defend their own freedom. And to do so, one much possess the means.

Fancying myself a student of history, I finally got around to reading McPherson’s acclaimed "Battle Cry of Freedom", a history of the Civil War Era, only to encounter the following tale:

In the late 1840's, two slaves escaped from Georgia and found their way to Boston, where they become folks of some little repute. Their "owner", hearing of their presence, sent slavecatchers north to return them to bondage. One of the former-slaves’ Pastor took the wife into his home, "... where he kept a loaded revolver on his desk. (The husband) went to ground in the house of a black abolitionist who kept two kegs of gunpowder on his front porch and a veritable arsenal in the kitchen." Faced with such resolve, and a solidly abolitionist community, the slavecatchers "left on the afternoon train" rather than risk their lives in the cause of oppression.

Later, the author notes that "colored folks" around the nation were arming against the possibility of being kidnapped. Clearly, they understood how to prevent such calamities.

(Digression: today, those abolitionists, who often found their justification in their religious beliefs, would be reviled by the media and the Left as members of the "religious right", excoriated for attempting to impose their morality upon others. Indeed, one can hardly read an anti-slavery tract without marveling at its similarity to pro-life rhetoric of today. Reciprocally, the arguments of the slaveholders closely mirror those made by NARAL and NOW.)

The Second Amendment issue merits new attention, given the Supreme Court’s agreement to hear argument in a case arising thereunder.

Several citizens of Washington, DC, affronted by the District’s de jure ban on armed self-defense, sued, asserting a violation of their Second Amendment rights to "keep and bear arms". Two federal courts agreed and, now, the Supreme Court will attempt to resolve the dispute between federal appellate courts.

Put simply, the question presented is whether the Bill of Rights protects individual rights, similar to the protections accorded by the First – a conclusion seemingly compelled by the use of the phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" – or merely a general, collective right, enjoyed by the States, subject to such limitations as they might see fit to impose. If a personal right, to what extent may the government impose limits?

As the above example demonstrates, our freedom may, in fact, depend upon our willingness to defend it, even – perhaps especially – against the government. In 1850, the Fugitive Slave law had just been passed and it was against this unjust and immoral law that the citizens of Boston stood prepared to fight. The Founders understood a thing or two about oppressive government and felt that an armed population – "the militia" – constituted the best possible defense of freedom, both personal and collective. Indeed, they saw state militias as a check on the feds and, later, after the Civil War, saw the individual right to bear arms as essential to protecting the liberty of former slaves.

As Hubert Humphrey, an icon of liberals, once said:

"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible."

In short, just because it hasn’t happened here, doesn’t mean it can’t, and a free people must forever be vigilant – and prepared – in case it does.