Our Most Important Right

Recently, an academic group upon which I lurk began a debate on the subject of gun control. As most of the participants are law professors – and, hence, liberals – their comments were predictably leftist. Of course, they hate the idea of originalism – interpreting the constitution in light of the intention of the folks who framed and ratified it – preferring, instead, that courts – presumably staffed with liberal judges – inject policy considerations into their determinations. In other words, if a decision produces "good" (to wit, Politically Correct) results, it’s admirable. If the court arrives at a result to which liberals object, it’s, perforce, objectionable, whether "correctly" decided or not.

This sort of "thinking" finds its most consistent advocate in the editorial page of The New York Times. As an unabashedly leftist rag ... er, newspaper, it routinely condemns judges who arrive at decisions favoring corporations, contrary to "civil rights" plaintiffs, etc. Never mind that those decisions might be "right", in the sense of following the law as it actually exists, rather than as The Times might wish it to be; if the text and history of the constitution, or a statute, stand against the result The Times supports, they must be disregarded by an enlightened judiciary.

Few bugaboos infuriate liberals more than the Second Amendment. Or, more broadly, Americans’ love affair with firearms.

I’ve read through the "debate" with some little interest. The willingness of some to part with originalism in favor of a judicial weighing of policy effects intrigues me. Presumably, these folks only support decisions in which the policy determinations come out their way. So, for instance, the indisputable economic disaster worked by (say) higher tax rates on "the rich" should be considered when assessing an equal protection challenge to progressive taxation. Right?

But back to guns. Gun rights opponents set up a false dichotomy: a (relatively) peaceful, non-violent disarmed society, versus a more violent society in which folks – not all of them stable or reasonable – have (relatively) easy access to firearms.

Consider, though, the almost puppy-like faith of the Left in the unchanging beneficence of government. We lose a few thousand folks a year to "gun violence", they aver, and would essentially abolish private owernship of firearms to make us "safer". Let’s assume the absurd: we’d save essentially all those lives if we banned firearms. No brainer, right?

Well, no. Historically, mass murder on a truly industrial scale requires governmental involvement. How many years of firearm freedom would be required to equal the death toll in China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Nazi Germany? One of the signal achievement of every tyrant, before displaying his/her truly tyrannical colors, is disarming the population.

That noted right-wing-militia supporter, Hubert Humphrey put it this way:

"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."

Anyone who thinks that Americans wouldn’t shoot at other Americans obviously never studied the minor unpleasantness in 1861, and never heard of Kent State. Relying for one’s freedom – indeed, for one’s life – solely upon the good faith of those with essentially unlimited power is downright nutty.

On the citizenship test, the government often asks, "what is the most important right given to Americans"? The official answer: "the right to vote". But like all other rights, if the people lack the ability to defend them, with force if necessary, the "right" to vote would become hollow. Cubans vote; citizens of the USSR voted. But, because the people lack any power whatsoever, the "right to vote" means essentially nothing.

An armed and vigilant citizenry, ever on guard against abuses of governmental power and encroaching tyranny, is America’s greatest virtue. Unlike our European brethren, we’ve never created a Hitler, a Lenin, a Stalin, or even a Napoleon; our people are not such easy marks. Threatened Americans learn quickly, and fight back. Airline passengers fought the terrorists on 911, and an American crew just took back their ship from thuggish pirates. Government must not deprive the citizens of the means to effectively defend their liberty against the gravest threat of all: governmental tyranny.

If history teaches anything, it teaches that armed power cannot be checked by ballots alone; it can only be checked by another source of armed power. If the cost of avoiding another Columbine is to risk another Auschwitz, which choice would any rational society make?