I have yet to hear a single pro-second Amendment speaker discuss at length, the Founders wisdom regarding the 2nd Amendment. Oh sure these speakers know what the Constitution says about it. They get the reading of it right. But what about the dirth of quotations from the Founders that convey their Originalist views on the right to keep and bear arms? I’m just not hearing any. Except from maybe David Barton. So, with that as my opening argument, I wish to posit as background the idea of Original Intent – or correct constitutional interpretation – which is what the Founders directed to be used in order to understand what they meant when they wrote the Constitution in the first place.
Patriot Post – On the subject of constitutional interpretation, Jefferson wrote: “The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered … according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the People of the United States at the time of its adoption — a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated it. … On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
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James Madison agreed: “I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that is not the guide in expounding it, there may be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers.”
Justice James Wilson set forth, “The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.”
The Federalist Papers, considered to be the definitive explication of our Constitution’s original intent, clearly delineate constitutional interpretation. In Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote, “[The Judicial Branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment. … Liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments.”
In Federalist No. 81, Hamilton declared, “[T]here is not a syllable in the [Constitution] which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution. … [T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution.” And yet this non-existent “spirit” is the essence of the so-called “living constitution,” as amended by judicial diktat rather than its prescribed method in Article V.
“The basis of our political systems is the right of the People to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People is sacredly obligatory upon all.” –George Washington
So, the Living Constitution idea be damned. The current debate over the Second Amendment by the left is nothing more than political drivel being built upon the deaths of innocent victims while using the engine of the Living Constitution to drive the debate over freedom’s abyss.
Let us therefore examine the proper Constitutional exegesis as intended by our Founders with their own commentary on the right to bear arms. A few quotes will make the point.
Guncite – We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;
—Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. Memorial Edition 16:45, Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.
No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
—Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution, 1776.
Quotes from the Founders During the Ratification Period of the Constitution:
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.
—James Madison,The Federalist Papers, No. 46.
Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.
—Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).
Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.
—Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.
The Virginia ratifying convention met from June 2 through June 26, 1788. Edmund Pendleton, opponent of a bill of rights, weakly argued that abuse of power could be remedied by recalling the delegated powers in a convention. Patrick Henry shot back that the power to resist oppression rests upon the right to possess arms:
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.”
Roger Sherman, during House consideration of a militia bill (1790):
“[C]onceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.”
14 Debates in the House of Representatives, ed. Linda Grand De Pauw. (Balt., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972), 92-3.
H/t to Guncite whose raison d’être is “Until the Second Amendment is treated as normal constitutional law, this web site will always be under construction…”
Now, the next time some ignorant leftist cretin makes a false statement on the intent of the founders or a so-called conservative proponent of the second amendment fails to make mention of the Founders intent, bring up these quotes and why it is that Original Intent is a Constitutional exegesis while the Living Constitutional idea is pure crapolla.
Using the victims of a crime as a political prop in an effort to take away a Constitutional right is egregious on its face. It is another Stalinesque grab for power by government diktat. Every freedom-loving American should be telling Dianne Frankenfeinstein and her ilk to go straight to hell. You too Skeeter. As for you Joe Biden, before you tell others to go out and buy a shotgun, why don’t you set the example by buying a clue.