The Second Amendment and the Legislator.....

In 1764, Cesare Bonesana, the Marquise of Beccaria, published a book entitled, Of Crimes and Punishments.  As its name implies, it is a treatise on crimes and appropriate punishments, the reasons underlying crimes, and the rights of citizens to protect themselves as a deterrent to crime.  Remember that date of publication.  1764.


On pages 83-84, Bonesana made the following observation in a section entitled, "Of false ideas of utility":

A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniencies, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, and dares say to reason, `Be thou a slave'; who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.

The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty?

It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons. (ephasis added)

Translation:  it is when legislators try to protect us from every conceivable evil that they cause the most damage.  It is then that they begin to enslave the populace by building fences against imaginary ills, rather than empowering the citizenry to exercise their own judgements in their own defense.  It is those kinds of laws that require the citizen to rely solely on the government for their protection, disarming them, and, therefore, empowering the criminal - the law of unintended consequences.  As a result, the governed are deprived of their liberties, while the criminal is given free-reign to terrorize those who have been so enslaved.


The Second Amendment exists for this very reason.  Our freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, press, due process,  protection from illegal search and seizure, all are based on our ability as individual citizens to prosecute those rights - by force of arms if necessary.  Our Bill of Rights is the only document of its kind that gives the ordinary citizen the right to take the defense of those rights into his or her own hands, to protect those rights from ALL who threaten them, whether from enemies foreign or domestic, private or public.


Think about the following statements made by past leaders of our great republic:

"That the Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe on the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent ‘the people’ of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms…" -- Samuel Adams

"This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty .... The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction" -- St. George Tucker, Judge of the Virginia Supreme Court and U.S. District Court of Virginia in Blackstone Commentaries, 1803

"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." -- James Madison, Federalist, No. 46.

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." -- Tench Coxe in "Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution," under the pseudonym "A Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.

"The great principle is that every man be armed.... everyone who is able may have a gun." -- Patrick Henry

Those who downplay the critical importance of the Second Amendment, as we hear with such increasing frequency these days from legislators, the media, and even our fellow citizens, truly misunderstand what is at stake. In the words of the Preamble to the Bill of Rights:

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.