Amending My Thinking

The Bill of Rights is a uniquely American creation.  When George Washington wrote them on the back of an envelope before his appearance at Gettysburg as the rocket’s red glare glowed overhead, it was a simpler time of principles over politics and majorities over minorities.  Men were men, women were women, and we were who we were, once and for all, e pluribus unum.  What was different back then?  We all had guns the way the Founders intended. 

We can recapture that peaceful easy feeling again, but to do so, we will need to follow more closely and literally this grand Bill of Rights and be prepare to pay that bill at all costs. 

In the Bill of Rights, there is one amendment that is the greatest among equals.  It is greater than the other enumerated rights because without it, all the other rights are at risk of being taken from us.  Over the years, the power and reach of this amendment has been eroded, but now more than ever, it needs to be followed as the pilgrims intended.

The 2^nd Amendment states:

“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.”

So what was the original intent of this amendment?  I’ve been doing some reading on this.  In the late 1700s, muskets, rifles, and cannons were the weapons of war.  If you had muskets and rifles, and the government had muskets and rifles, then you had a state of MAD – mutually assured destruction.  The government could not move against the people, because both sides were proportionately armed.  This created an environment in which the government was careful not to tread on any person’s individual liberties, lest the one of the government’s unionized public servants pay the ultimate price.

Today the sides are no longer even.  The government now has enhanced weaponry at its disposal.  Armored trucks with machine guns, SAMs (surface to air missiles), long range bombers, and high powered rifles fill their arsenals.  These high-tech weapons were not available in 1789.  Making sure that the sides were of even strength was easy in colonial times.  Rebalancing the scales of power today is more complex and expensive, but no less important. 

In order to protect citizens from tyranny and government oppression, we must protect the right of law-abiding citizens to purchase and maintain weapons equal in lethal firepower to those owned by the government.  

If your neighbor owned a nuclear weapon, doesn’t it follow that no one would try to break into his home, trample on his flower beds, or drop by unannounced selling coupon booklets for local businesses during the traditional dinner hour?  You betcha.  Your right to live and let live would be respected, or else.  If you could drive a tank loaded with 50 caliber shells, what federal agency lackey would pull you over for violating those liberal utopian HOV restrictions on your favorite highway?  Now that is real freedom, my friends, like the Founders had when they traveled by horseback over hill and dale, to grandmother’s house they went.

Of course, it naturally follows that tracking these purchases would be an invitation to the government to come and confiscate your legal property on a whim.  There can be no freedom as long as a database of these purchases exists.  If the government doesn’t know which person has a Predator drone in his garage capable of dropping a 2,000 pound bomb, it has to assume that everyone does.  That, my friends, is a blanket of security under which we can all sleep, albeit with one eye open.

In fairness to all Americans large and small, we cannot consider restricting the purchase of these vital weapons systems to those deemed “mentally incompetent”, a subjective determination.  Restricting weapons ownership would be an invitation to the government to oppress those less emotionally stable members of our communities, or worse - label people like me as “unbalanced” in order to tramp on my rights.  This is an invitation to tyranny.  And tyranny is bad.  We are against that.  And you must be, too.  Or else.

The cost for the average weapons system can deter many hard working Americans from buying and owning the gun, rifle, launcher, or nuclear submarine to best provide adequate home defense; however, if this onerous and unconstitutional restriction on buying large systems is lifted, more buyers in the marketplace will mean lower prices for all.  How?  Surely government contractors looking to expand their market share will develop new, more affordable weapon systems to meet the new demand.  Neighbor could band together with neighbor to pool their resources, creating their own militia as prescribed in the Constitution.  It’s a win-win for Americans and the American economy! 

 

We need to get back to our roots.  Let’s finally start embracing the original intent of the 2^nd Amendment in this country, and allow for the unfettered individual ownership of high tech military weaponry by private citizens.  The scales of justice have been tilted for too long in the government’s favor.  We will never be truly free until we are all heavily armed.

The best defense is a good offense, and defense wins championships.  Let’s win the future!