John Longenecker
For Non-Gun Owners: D.C. v. Heller and Nutshell 2A.
November 14, 2007 at 1:06 pm · Filed under Vox Populi
I was so very pleased to join Bob Parks on his show, Outside The Wire last night, November 13th. We talked about gun bans and what personal weapons are all about. Thanks again for having me, Bob.
The Supreme Court Of the United States may soon decide whether to hear District Of Columbia v. Heller, a case about gun bans and frustration of a civil right in high crime areas. In these areas, the right is needed most, and in these areas, it is vexed and frustrated the most. How does blocking a civil right operate in the public interest?
D.C. v. Heller, if the Supremes elect to hear the case, can have a profound impact on the country’s gun control policy, and thus an effect on individual liberty and on how crime is met. Gun bans do not work, and where the Second Amendment is affirmed, crime doesn’t seem to be a problem. You might say that government burden has been lifted a bit, as — even with more than 2 million gun owners carrying their weapon – none of the dire predictions of shootings has come true, and armed citizens are demonstrated to play an important role in crime control.
In this country, there are about 300 million guns in the hands of some 80 million gun owners, and most of the shootings are criminal in nature. Out of 11,000 annual shooting deaths, nearly all are criminal in nature, while armed citizens use their gun to de-escalate a crime more than 2.5 million times every year, almost exclusively without even firing their weapon. [Source:
www.FBI.gov, Uniform Crime Report.] Look at this again: Compared to 11,000 criminal shootings each year, these are 2.5 million non-shootings, or put another way, 2.5 million crime that didn’t happen. What doctors, activists and officials point to in trauma is not responsible or irresponsible gun use, but Crime. What they are seeing is not carelessness of gun owners and it is not enough to call it Violence — it is Crime. It is one-sided aggression. What they will never see is the 2.5 million acts of crime which are stopped by an armed citizen. As I said, right-to-carry states don’t seem to have the same high-violence, high crime problem nor the government burden. Some forty states seem to like it that way.
But what is 2A really all about? National Guard? Private ownership? How does 1776 thinking relate to 2008 and beyond? This is old hat for liberty nuts, but probably new to the non-gun owners.
Let’s review in a nutshell, since the Supremes will do what they do best: interpret the Constitution, which means the thinking of Original Intent of the Founders.
In a nutshell, the Founding Fathers, in defeating the Crown of England, defeated abuses of due process, and in founding the new nation, in preventing this from ever happening again, they declared the Citizen as Supreme Authority, Point #1.
Through education content, media, entertainment and outright activism, this Authority is being buried deeper and deeper from public view. For instance, many Americans do not know that their police have no duty to protect them. [Castle Rock v. Gonzales, U.S. Supreme Court, 2005: No constitutional right to police protection.] For some heads of household, this comes as a big surprise.
Point #2 is that 2A was not written for you and me, it was written for officials, like most of the Document. It recognizes a small bundle of rights as pre-existing and creator-given, and places a wide scope of limits on officials. 2A is a limit on officials.
Point #3 is that the Founders did not imagine weapons of the future to be a threat to the new nation – what they did fear as a threat was future abuses of due process as likely to recur in any age, in any administration including state or local, so they said in their debates, in their writings and in the final ratification that the citizen authority of the future must be backed by lethal force, and for all time, or the new nation would perish at any time.
Armed citizens are in the public interest for many reasons, and vexing and disarming citizens is against the public interest whatever the reason. The 11,000 homicides by criminals is not reason enough to disarm the 2.5 million who de-escalate crime for themselves and on behalf of their communities.
2A is as absolute as the Emancipation Proclamation is. In this country, you cannot own and trade in human beings, not even a little. Neither can one legally write laws which disarm the supreme authority of the nation, not even a little. Notwithstanding another amendment, 2A is absolute because it backs citizen authority forever, and without another amendment, there can be no such thing as a sensible gun law to interfere with that authority.
Point #4 is that Militia of 1776 must be what guides today’s interpretation of 2A, which is that Militia meant the Everyman. The National Guard did not come into existence for another 130 years after the signing of the Constitution – they couldn’t have meant that.
We must be guided by the Original Intent of the Founders and their perspective in what they defeated and how they wanted to prevent its recurring in the new nation: their solution was to prevent future abuses of the law by declaring the citizen as supreme authority and to back that authority with force. The Original Intent of the Founders was not for only their time, but for survival of the nation for all time.
Today, the exquisite example of abuse of due process is in the use of Crime as an excuse to further and further disarm all via gun control policy, and this cannot stand. Any effort to disarm Americans is to disarm the supreme authority of the nation, which is the People, not public servant executives. Gun control policy is adverse to public interest because it obfuscates citizen authority to act when facing grave danger alone, and cultivates dependency on those executives for increased government burden.
Independence in supreme authority impeaches gun control policy and many anti-crime policies which have acted only to the detriment of the American people.
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'Sec. 5. It shall not be lawful for any body of men whatever, other than the regular organized volunteer militia of this state, and the troops of the United States, to associate themselves together as a military company or organization, or to drill or parade with arms in any city or town of this state, without the license of the governor thereof, which license may at any time be revoked: and provided, further, that students in educational institutions, where military science is a part of the course of instruction, may, with the consent of the governor, drill and parade with arms in public, under the superintendence of their instructors, and may take part in any regimental or brigade encampment, under command of their military instructor; and while so encamped shall be governed by the provisions of this act. They shall be entitled only to transporta- [116 U.S. 252, 254] tion and subsistence, and shall report and be subject to the commandant of such encampment: Provided, that nothing herein contained shall be construed so as to prevent benevolent or social organizations from wearing swords. Sec. 6. Whoever offends against the provisions of the preceding section, or belongs to, or parades with, any such unauthorized body of men with arms, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding the sum of ten dollars, ($10,) or by imprisonment in the common jail for a term not exceeding six months, or both.' The indictment charged in substance that Presser, on September 24, 1897, in the county of Cook, in the state of Illinois, 'did unlawfully belong to, and did parade and drill in the city of Chicago with, an unauthorized body of men with arms, who had associated themselves together as a military company and organization, without having a license from the governor, and not being a part of, or belonging to, 'the regular organized volunteer militia' of the state of Illinois, or the troops of the United States.' A motion to quash the indictment was overruled. Presser then pleaded not guilty, and, both parties having waived a jury, the case was tried by the court, which found Presser guilty and sentenced him to pay a fine of $10. The bill of exceptions taken upon the trial set out all the evidence, from which it appeared that Presser was 31 years old, a citizen of the United States and of the state of Illinois, and a voter; that he belonged to a society called the 'Lehr und Wehr Verein,' a corporation organized April 16, 1875, in due form, under chapter 32, Rev. St. Ill., called the 'General Incorporation Laws of Illinois,' 'for the purpose,' as expressed by its certificate of association, 'of improving the mental and bodily condition of its members so as to qualify them for the duties of citizens of a republic. Its members shall, therefore, obtain, in the meetings of the association, a knowledge of our laws and political economy, and shall also be instructed in military and gymnastic exercises;' that Presser, in December, 1879, marched at the head of said company, about 400 in number, in the streets of the city [116 U.S. 252, 255] of Chicago, he riding on horseback and in command; that the company was armed with rifles, and Presser with a cavalry sword; that the company had no license from the governor of Illinois to drill or parade as a part of the militia of the state, and was not a part of the regular organized militia of the state, nor a part of troops of the United States, and had no organization under the militia law of the United States. The evidence showed no other facts. Exceptions were reserved to the ruling of the court upon the motion to quash the indictment, to the finding of guilty, and to the judgment thereon. The case was taken to the supreme court of Illinois, where the judgment was affirmed. Thereupon Presser brought the present writ of error for a review of the judgment of affirmance.
