Dear Editor,
When the Founders (mostly Thomas Jefferson) wrote the Declaration of Independence, they made two statements:
- The basic principles of existence for a free people, and
- A list of grievances against the British Government for attempting to abrogate those principles, which they expressed in very economical language: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness… ”
They went on to speak of free men establishing their government, and the right of the people to alter or abolish their government if it became destructive of the original purposes. In reading the writings of the Fathers, it becomes rapidly apparent they had no qualms about using force of arms to do the altering and abolishing, if more peaceful means failed. As we know, they had to fight in order to attain their freedom from England….
After the failed experiment of the Articles of Confederation, the founders wrote the Constitution that we live under today, and they were almost immediately moved to amend that Constitution with the first ten amendments that we know as “The Bill of Rights.” It is hard to say –- and scholars and pundits all have their differing opinions -– which of the Amendments is most important: the First Amendment, securing freedom of (political) speech and freedom of religion, and the Second Amendment, guaranteeing the right to keep and bear arms, are probably in the top of the list. It has been said, that the Second Amendment protects all the others.
It needs to be said, that these rights are not granted by the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights merely acknowledges pre-existing rights of human beings – most granted by God, some based on long-held traditions of English Common Law. Consider the Second Amendment: it guarantees that the citizens may be armed. Why? Certainly not for hunting or skeet shooting. The Declaration states that we have God-given rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. What good are these rights if we are not in a position to defend them against those who would take them away from us?
The very proposition of a right to Life implies a right –- even a duty -– to defend that life, and thus the right to possess weapons for that purpose. The right to Liberty carries with it a duty to defend that liberty from those who would usurp it. Ultimately, this could mean armed rebellion. At the least, it means an armed populace that will give pause to any overly ambitious politicians or bureaucrats.
The faint of heart, Tom Paine’s “Summer Soldiers, and Sunshine Patriots,” those who trust in the police to protect them from harm –- something that the police are neither able nor required to do (there have been court cases on this subject, where people unsuccessfully attempted to sue the police because of failure to respond in a timely fashion to a 911 call) – may cower down and lick the hand that feeds –- or beats –- them. That is their privilege as free human beings. What is not their privilege is to attempt to force their status and their mindset on the rest of us.
If you don’t like guns, or object to the “evil, scary” cosmetics of Modern Sporting Rifles –- so-called “assault weapons” –- nobody is forcing you to buy one. If you only want to own one or two guns, that is your personal, free choice. Please don’t try to force it on the rest of us. We don’t tell you what to speak and write or how to worship God; similarly, we don’t tell you how many or how few guns of what sort you may own. Please return the favor.
On practical matters, please note that:
- Mass murders like Newtown are actually quite rare, and a very small part of the total murders in this country.
- While the number of guns and gun-owners has been increasing, the crime rate (including gun crime) has been decreasing – do you suppose that there might be a connection between an armed population and lower crime rates?
- Have you noticed that almost all the mass murders have been committed by political liberals/leftists who are either insane or on some drug like Ritalin (or “off their meds”)?
- Have you noticed that what liberal/progressive gun-control proponents apparently consider to be the safest places – “Gun-Free Zones” such as schools, some shopping malls and theaters – seem to be the targets of these insane mass murderers (apparently, they are not so insane that they can’t figure out where they can most successfully get away with their crimes).
As the old saw goes, “when seconds count, the police will be there in minutes.” A former Groton Police Chief once told me that the typical Groton 911 response time was three to five minutes. For three to five minutes you are on your own, and while we don’t have much of a criminal element here in Groton, we are surrounded on all sides by cities that do have large criminal populations, most of whom can figure out how to drive to Groton….
Sincerely yours,
Brooks Lyman
This is probably the most vacuous, unpersuasive, unsupported missive which has ever darkened the corners of The Groton Line. The word “sophist” comes to mind when trying to describe the sort of logic used to attempt to cobble together arguments in support of the writer’s premise. I wish I had more time to I could blast the letter to pieces with my cherished right to free speech. The right to bear arms is an inalienable right handed down from god? Unbelievable.
So by your logic, the founding fathers would have also recognized your God-given right to stockpile anthrax and drive an Abrams tank through the streets of Groton. Okay, maybe, but so what? If Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and John Adams rose from the grave today and held a press conferece to encourage all citizens to start making nerve gas and high explosives…would you actually do it? These were Eighteenth Century dudes living at a time when our democracy was still new and untested, did not yet have the protection of a standing army, kept a tenuous peace at best with Native American tribes, worried constantly about slave uprisings, and could only hope that France, Spain, and Great Britain, the military superpowers of the age, remained too busy fighting each other to ever care about us. Of course they thought it was a good idea for everyone to be armed–with flintlock muskets, by the way. There were no assault rifles in 1789.
None of the gun safety proposals I’ve seen so far would have any effect on the absolutely protected use of guns for hunting, recreational shooting, or self defence. The only ones with cause to worry are the extremist fringe of conspiracy theorists who fantasize about shooting down black helicopters filled with jackbooted government agents.
Well, Alan, the logic (and sophistry, if you will) are certainly not mine, though I am happy to pass them along. I’m sorry that you consider them vacuous. As for the support, Jesus spoke of self-defense several times, and urged his disciples to buy swords for that purpose. Unlike Muhammad, Jesus also limited his support to self defense, not conquest in the name of God’s religion.
Now, to give you the benefit of the doubt, perhaps I was not sufficiently clear. Obviously, God did not command the Founding Fathers to write the Second Amendment. But I truly doubt that God gave man life, but intended him to sacrifice it willingly to the first murderer that came along. As I stated, the right to life implies the right (and duty, unless you approve of suicide) to defend that life. Implied is the right to possess appropriate weapons for that self defense.
tem2 makes an absurd argument about the individual possession and use of chemical/biological weapons and of heavy weaponry. That’s not what the second Amendment is about. Keep and BEAR arms, it says here. We’re talking about personal weapons, not artillery, armored vehicles and weapons of mass destruction.
The intent of the founders was, within some sensible limits, that the people would be as well armed as the government. The flintlock musket was the assault rifle of its day.
And here’s a few technical details about those evil black rifles and the current Massachusetts (and former Federal) ban on (some of) them, with comments added:
AR-15: the AR does not stand for Assault Rifle, but Armalite Rifle, because Armalite was the company that developed it back in the 1950′s.
Massachusetts classes as an “assault weapon” the following:
A semiautomatic rifle that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and at least two of the following features:
1) A folding or telescoping stock. (given that the gun is too large to be concealed even with a folding stock folded, and that the purpose of a telescoping stock is not concealment, but to allow different-sized shooters to adjust the stock length, this is not only silly, but refers mainly to what are cosmetics, not functional features.)
2) A pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon. (This improves the ergonomics of the gun; note that current Olympic target rifles use a similar pistol-grip stock. Older rifles didn’t have pistol grips mainly because the materials of construction didn’t readily allow them to be incorporated in the design. Again, this is mainly cosmetics with regard to the supposed deadliness of the AR-15 and similar guns.)
3) A bayonet mount. (And when was the last time you heard about a criminal or a drug gang performing a bayonet charge? Basically cosmetic.)
4) A flash suppressor or barrel threaded to accommodate a flash suppressor. (The purpose of the flash suppressor is to prevent the muzzle flash from blinding the SHOOTER; it does not prevent onlookers from seeing the muzzle flash.)
5 A grenade launcher. (So far as I know, the grenade launcher is not an integral part of the rifle, but an accessory, and the question about bayonet charges applies here as well: since real explosive, etc. grenades are definitely not permitted under the Second Amendment or any laws I am aware of, anyone actually using a grenade launcher to launch real grenades – if he could get them – would be shortly behind bars for a long time. So again, we are looking at cosmetic features.)
Semiautomatic rifles, shotguns and handguns have been around since the end of the 19th century. They were adopted first by civilians (although the Mexican army did adopt a semiautomatic rifle very early on) and only by armies nearly 50 years later. Of all the “evil” features of the so-called “assault weapons,” the only one that might have any significant impact on criminal activity (or more usually, insane activity) is the detachable magazine. Anyone who has fired a gun with a detachable magazine can tell you that the magazines are very easy to change – a second or two. This is particularly true if you are trying to make some sort of insane, narcissistic social statement by killing as many people as possible in as short a time as possible before you get caught or killed (or kill yourself – it would save us all a lot of trouble and grief if these nuts would go into the “Gun-Free Zone” and then immediately shoot THEMSELVES without shooting anyone else), so you don’t have to worry about dropping the empty magazines on the ground (they tend to be delicate and dropping them can ruin them). So limiting magazine capacity to 5 or 7 rounds wouldn’t have any effect on the wackos who feel the need to kill lots of people – they’d just come in with a pocket full of loaded magazines….
The point is, 1) concentrate on getting the nuts off the street and 2) get rid of these “Free-Fire Zones,” er, excuse me, “Gun-Free Zones.”
Thanks, Brooks. I’m still trying my best to understand your utterly fascinating mind. Let me see if I have this straight…
Under your failed interpretation of the Second Amendment and personal declaration of God’s will, citizens should be empowered to hold off the combined armed forces of the United States government. But at the same time, you also claim to believe that it’s “absurd” to extend the Second Amendment to cover military grade weapons.
So in your world, you must be imagining that some kind of magical switch will turn the U.S. into a dictatorship and simultaneously transform your AR-15 into a mystical talisman that can mow down an entire army.
That would make one heck of a screenplay, but back here in the real world, it sure would be nice to have reasonable gun safety laws to reduce the incidence and severity of criminal violence while having no impact at all on the right of law-abiding folks to protect themselves or to hunt. Universal background checks would be a good start, and banning magazines that hold more shots than anyone outside a Rambo film would ever need at one time. And I agree with you that an updated and improved assault weapons ban should be more focused on functionality than appearance. Or at least I think that was what you were advocating…
Mr. Lyman
While I often disagree with the positions that you take, I usually follow the logic of your opinions. In this case I cannot.
In your defense of the second amendment you make the following statements:
“They went on to speak of free men establishing their government, and the right of the people to alter or abolish their government if it became destructive of the original purposes. In reading the writings of the Fathers, it becomes rapidly apparent they had no qualms about using force of arms to do the altering and abolishing, if more peaceful means failed.”
“It needs to be said, that these rights are not granted by the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights merely acknowledges pre-existing rights of human beings – most granted by God, some based on long-held traditions of English Common Law.”
“The very proposition of a right to Life implies a right –- even a duty -– to defend that life, and thus the right to possess weapons for that purpose. The right to Liberty carries with it a duty to defend that liberty from those who would usurp it.”
In making these statements you have taken a fairly strict interpretation of what was intended in the first 10 amendments, or what is known as “The Bill of Rights.” Your argument requires that there be no grey area in making this interpretation as it applies to the second amendment. That is to say, the citizens are entitled (by God?) to be as well, or better armed, than the Government from which they may need to defend themselves. It is not clear if you interpret the next 17 amendments quite as strictly.
The problem I see with your position and your strict interpretation of what our forefathers intended when they drafted the bill of rights is that, by definition, it cannot be interpreted nearly as strictly as you have. The thirteenth amendment immediately alters the constitution from its original drafting, and in so doing, immediately demonstrates that the Constitution is a document meant to be altered and modified as we come to realize that its assumptions change over time.
In the same way that we evolved as a society and understood almost 100 years after the bill of rights was drafted, that slavery, or “involuntary servitude,” is no longer a principle in which we as a country and free society believe, we must be able to re-evaluate the absolute adherence to such a strict interpretation of the second amendment as written and intended more than 220 years ago.
Like many people, I have no interest in storming homes and removing legally owned guns from law abiding citizens. However, your position as a second amendment rights activist, insists that there is no flexibility, no evolution, and no thoughtful re-evaluation of what was written in a different age and time. We need to always and carefully re-evaluate the principles for which we stand and ensure that they make sense in current circumstances and in present times.
Your argument quickly veers off into police response times and other “data points” that, at best, are simply argumentative, and at worst, completely undermine any intellectual argument you may have been trying to make.
The theater shooting in Colorado, as well as the school shooting in CT, were both in publicly posted ‘gun free zones’. I wonder how many other famous shootings took place in these labeled defenseless places. If one is cowardly and crazy enough to target innocent victims, it would also seem that type of person would seek out a group who could not defend themselves.
I pray that if my kids were ever in a situation like this; someone among them would be armed and willing to protect them. I’m all for marshals, like airlines have. Put them in malls, schools, parks and movie theaters if need be. But the best protection from would-be criminals, is putting the fear of God in them that they might target victims who can fight back.
Violent offenders would be much less apt to attack innocent people, if they knew they could be armed. Remember, these people are the biggest cowards on earth. Who but a coward would slaughter second graders or unsuspecting movie goers? This is true of home invaders, too. The lowest violent crime rates in the US are in states with the highest gun ownership rates, per capita. Criminals are the lowest form of humanity. They prey on those who can’t fight back. Here are a few examples of those who could, and did. The difference between these would be victims and others who were not prepared for the worst, was the fact that they were armed. The criminals left these crime scenes in body bags, not their intended victims:
young girl v. home invader:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/20/oklahoma-girl-shoots-home-intruder_n_1992381.html
young mother v. home invader:
http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/01/04/teen-mom-sarah-mckinley-video/
A 92 yr old WWII veteran v. 3 home invaders:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/09/03/92-year-old-wwii-vet-shoots-and-kills-home-intruder-as-soon-as-he-got-inside-it-was-all-over/
Its a complex issue and not likely to be solved by slinging political cliches, as the knee-jerkers have already done. Intelligent conversations have to happen, among moderates seeking more than a chance to make political hay. It scares me to think that a president who is heavily guarded by armed sharpshooters, wants the rest of us to go it alone, with no way to protect ourselves or our children. If we outlaw guns, only criminals will have them.
@Yankee Mum: There have been mass killings in gun-free zones, gun-not-free zones, and even places with armed guards on the premises, like Virginia Tech and Columbine High School. The maniacs who commit these crimes do not seem to care, or to be thinking clearly enough to make a distinction. The three news stories you cherry-picked all happened in private residences, where criminals are on notice that potential victims are likely to be armed, and even that proved to be no deterrent to them.
I don’t understand what goes on in the mind of a mass killer, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the mere presence of a gun-free zone that makes them flip out and start shooting. If that were true, we’d have to be pretty leery of anyone who seemed unreasonably offended by gun-free zones.
Re-read my comment. Either you missed the point, or are a knee-jerker who likes to make irrational comments. As unfashionable as it is, I am honestly seeking a solution, not more fruitless arguments. I am referring to your comment, below, in parenthesis.
(I don’t understand what goes on in the mind of a mass killer, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the mere presence of a gun-free zone that makes them flip out and start shooting. If that were true, we’d have to be pretty leery of anyone who seemed unreasonably offended by gun-free zones.)
What a silly, irrelevant comment. Did you truly believe that was what I said or implied? I think you like to argue and have revealed a closed mind. I hope the silent majority got the point. This is a good example of why most of us remain silent.
“Surrounded on all sides by ….. Large criminal populations”. Glad you are there to hold down the fort. The mauradeing hoards from Townsend, And Ashby are on the way ! Gas prices being what they are we are car pooling.keep vigilant for a Volvo full of leftist liberals
There should be a way to append replies to each individual comment, but I haven’t figured it out yet. Art?
Anyway, been bit busy and a bit grinning and bearing some kidney stones, but here I am with, first, a reply to tem2′s second post:
tem2, I must congratulate you for managing to say a lot more in a few sentences than I can manage in paragraphs. Now, if the level of analytical thinking was up to the level of compression, however….
Now obviously, only a ten-year-old boy brought up on violent video games would think that a single person – or even a large group of people – armed with semiautomatic rifles would be able to hold off the armed forces of the USA, not to mention a few well-armed SWAT teams. But the 2nd Amendment speaks of “…the right to keep and bear arms…” and the word “bear” is the key here. The cannons, tanks, etc. were (and are) kept in militia or other military arsenals, not kept at home as personal defense weapons (or carried for defense away from home). Let’s face it, if the Federal Government decides to treat us as subjects instead of citizens, and considers some of us to be expendable, in the manner of Syria’s President Assad, then we’re screwed. Think about Waco, TX, if your memory goes back that far.
But if the government treats us as free citizens, then it will have some decent respect for our rights, even if we are in opposition to that government, and will hesitate to indiscriminately massacre citizens to prove their point and their domination. In addition, one assumes (or at least, I do) that the government does not consider its police and military (and I suppose we would, today, have to add DHS and TSA, etc. to the list) to be expendable cannon fodder, to be sacrificed for the sole purpose of intimidating or killing citizens who disagree with the government.
So there is a rather strong deterrent to excessive use of governmental force, given an armed populace. And as we know from bitter experience (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan), lightly armed guerrilla forces “swimming in the sea of the population” can inflict severe damage, both physical and morale, on much larger and better-armed forces.
Regarding background checks, we currently have them for licensed dealer sales; they are prohibited for private sales, but there might be some way around that problem (other than funneling all gun transactions through dealers, which would further enhance their current government-enforced monopoly). The real problems there are privacy and related abuses of the system – licensed gun dealers (I am one) are forbidden by federal law from using the National Instant Check System (NICS) for any purpose other than clearing an actual gun sale. Same with the Massachusetts system.
As far as the need for large magazines is concerned, it sounds so wonderful – ban large magazines (over 15, over 10, over 7 rounds; name your poison) and you will save lives/stop crime and the lamb will lie down with the lion. My guess here, is that the lion is holding his breath hoping for an easy meal. Changing magazines is a very rapid process – a second or less. Yes, a trained opponent can use that second to rise up out of cover and take down the shooter. But schoolchildren? Unarmed theater patrons? Typical shoppers in a mall? So, if Mr. wacko wants to make some sort of social/political/religious statement by killing as many innocent people as he can before the cops show up or he runs out of ammo (or, in the rare instance of the shooting being not in a “Gun-Free Zone,” an armed citizen intervenes), he simply needs to fill his pockets with as many lower-capacity magazines as he can carry and start blazing away.
Let me give an example why maybe a ban on large capacity magazines isn’t such a hot idea, really: The average policeman in a gunfight only hits his target 20% of the time. 5 shots, one hit. As any brief study of gunfights will tell you, there is absolutely no guarantee that one hit is going to stop the bad guy from shooting any more. That’s why most police these days carry handguns with large-capacity magazines – 13 to 17 rounds. Now, Vice President Biden has recently counseled women on using a gun for self defense: get a double-barreled shotgun. Two shots, and a long reloading process. Granted, that getting shot center-body mass with a 12 GA shotgun is likely to stop – permanently – any rapist or burglar. But can the lady manage to hit the attacker with one of those two shots (remember, trained police only manage 20% hits)? And what if there are two or more attackers (not by any means an unusual situation in a home invasion attack)? Talk about a war on women!!!
That evil-looking AR-15, on the other hand, has a much lighter recoil than the shotgun (much easier to shoot), and with a 20 or 30 round magazine, the attackers are more likely to run out of courage – or life – before the lady runs out of ammo. And no, she’s not going to be able to manage to reload using 10-round magazines when the attackers are at the end of a typical residential hallway – unless her house is a lot larger than mine (and probably, yours). In that situation, you need all your ammo with you, in the gun, RIGHT NOW!
And, yes and no, I was pointing out that the current and proposed “assault weapon” bans are mainly based on cosmetics, but also, that the whole exercise is an offense against our right to life and to defend that life.
Chris Graham, if you are not a religious person, then consider the Second Amendment from a Darwinian point of view. Survival of the fittest, “fittest” being defined, in modern, civilized usage, as those of most value to human society. There’s a lot of gray area there, but I assume that we can agree that robbers, murderers and rapists are not of any particular value to modern civilization, and that theirs is (or should be) a hazardous occupation.
The Supreme Court of the US is considered the final legal arbiter of the Constitution and its amendments. They have been pretty definite about the Second Amendment, and while I have some difficulty with their First Amendment interpretation of the “establishment clause” (First parish Church is not an “establishment of religion” in the sense that the local brothel is an “establishment of prostitution,” but that’s the way the court has interpreted it….), the SCOTUS generally gets things right.
Now, you seem to have (if I read your post correctly) come to the conclusion that the Bill of Rights encompasses the first 19 Amendments to the Constitution. Well, maybe you are right, after all, President Obama claimed that there were 57 states in the union. Do you suppose he was confusing geography with a Heinz pickle ad? Are we sure that our public schools are doing their job – no wait, Obama went to private schools.
In any event, only the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution are the Bill of Rights.
I grant that the comments about police response times was a bit of a non-sequitur. On the other hand, it’s absolutely vital to any argument in favor of an armed citizenry. I mean, if one isn’t willing to take responsibility for one’s own life and that of ones family in the time it takes the police to arrive, maybe it’s time to move to a nice safe (?) gated community with armed guards, or maybe a similarly guarded apartment or condo complex back in the inner city. Living in the country isn’t for everyone.
I think that Yankee Mum has got the right ideas. Obviously, the presence of a “Gun-Free Zone” doesn’t cause people to instantly go bats and start killing people, any more than the presence of a gun causes people to instantly pick it up and start killing people. On the other hand, if someone is already more-or-less bats, and intends to kill as many people as possible before he is apprehended or stopped, a “Gun-Free Zone” is a good place to start, because he will be pretty sure that there will be few if any guns there to be used against him. A few comments on that last: Anyone who was walked through the larger Groton public schools will note that they are fairly large buildings, often on more than one level. So: how many armed guards or police will it take stationed in each school to make sure of a reasonably fast response time in the event of a shooter incident? 2? 4? More? Granted, that a teacher or administrator with a gun locked in his/her desk may not be as well-trained as a cop, but they are THERE…. And the assailant doesn’t know who they are or how many there are or where they are. Trust me, that IS a deterrent. A sign out front saying, “Gun-Free Zone” is NOT a deterrent, it’s an invitation.
Note that I have referred to the shooters and potential shooters as “he.” This is not sexism. It’s fact: So far as I know (there may be a very few, rare exceptions), all the mass murderers are 1) male, 2) either insane or on (or off) drugs of some sort or other) and, for some reason, most of them are leftists and/or registered Democrats. For all the cries of “right-wing extremists” from the liberal media and politicians when one of these shootings goes down, the facts almost always show that the shooter had a leftist, radical political orientation.
Finally, Leslie has obviously not studied any local maps – or has the Groton Public School system given up on even local geography? Groton is surrounded by a number of fairly large cities: Nashua, NH, Lowell, MA, Fitchburg, MA and Leominster, MA. None of these is more than a half-hour drive away (and if the crooks come in a Volvo, it’s probably one they stole from some neighbor of yours….)
Mr. Lyman
Your know-it all comment regarding the Bill of Rights was wrong in all ways. If you had read my post, you would have noticed that I said that “…what was intended in the first 10 amendments, or what is known as “The Bill of Rights.”
Not sure where you got the impression that I had “come to the conclusion that the Bill of Rights encompasses the first 19 Amendments to the Constitution.”
Chris Graham,
When I read your post, it said that the bill of rights was the first 19 Amendments. I notice now, that either you wrote “10″ and my aging eyes misread it, or you made a typo which has since been corrected. You guys have to have a sense of humor, and if you will note, I used the opportunity to take a poke at President Obama.
As for the rest of it, I stand by what I said, and yes, I take the Constitution seriously and more or less literally. No doubt the “living Constitution” crowd could find ways to twist – sorry, interpret – it to allow it to mean anything they want it to mean (Obama seems to have found a simpler way: just ignore it and hope that the New York Times and MSNBC don’t call him on it).