In the wake of the murders committed March 27 at Covenant School, a private school in Nashville, the chorus of voices calling for curbing gun rights has crescendoed. The proposals range from “sensible restrictions” on the ability to purchase a firearm, to calling for complete repeal of the Second Amendment.
One headline from a newspaper in Arizona read: “Second Amendment fundamentalists aren’t just political misfits. They’re belligerents,” insisting that such people “are willing to watch the bodies of murdered children pile up as a price for their beliefs.”
A similar tone was echoed in a Colorado newspaper promoting “the option of rewriting the amendment to allow for reasonable governance.”
I’ll analyze that Arizona headline first.
Frankly, all of these “respectable” news outlets are using the tragedy of the senseless murder of children as cover for their never-ending quest to disarm civilians, who would then become sitting ducks for would-be mass murderers. Tragically, such was already the case with the three students and three adults at Covenant School, which was, after all, a gun-free zone. And such is the case in many other locales across the country where guns are prohibited.
Regarding the woeful lack of logic in this argument, I am reminded of the words of the Italian jurist Cesare Becarria, who said, speaking on this exact subject:
[Disarmament] certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and the assailants better, and encourages rather than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed persons than those that are armed.
Wouldn’t the widespread knowledge that there were people at the school armed and trained to protect the children give pause to even one would-be killer? Could it save even one life?
But, disarmament isn’t about saving innocent lives. We know this because of the position held by the gun grabbers on the mass murder of other innocent children.
The same people insisting on depriving fellow citizens of the fundamental right to defend themselves also insist it is a fundamental right of every woman to have her baby murdered in utero. As an aside (this isn’t the point of this article), more than 56 million babies have been killed by abortion since 1973. By comparison, since the year 2000, there have been 175 people killed in school shootings. That’s still tragic, as is every murder, but the number of victims would undoubtedly be fewer if, as indicated above, the schools were not soft targets that the perpetrators knew could be attacked without fear of armed resistance.
Next, despite the rhetoric, surely those reacting to the heart-rending acts of the murderer in Tennessee surely understand that there is no law, no regulation, no restriction, and no executive order that could ever dissuade someone from committing murder in cold blood, if that person is determined to commit such an atrocity.
The very premise is laughable. Such acts are the result of mental instability and are the product of a perversion of purpose inscrutable to most people.
Temperate appeals to right reason will instruct the thoughtful person that a propensity for such an act is not born of opportunity, but of instability.
Moreover, even the most discerning minds in the fields of medicine and psychology are now and likely to remain woefully ignorant of the vortex of abnormalities that combine in one’s mind to produce such anti-social behavior. Inside every cranium there is a universe, and no explorer has successfully navigated the myriad spheres of influence that orbit therein. This is particularly evident in the case of the person responsible for killing the people at Covenant School in Nashville.
While the attempt might be born of a noble impulse, the presumption that there are explanations to be found in this or that shooter’s “manifesto” or threatening social media posts is naive at best — and purposefully misleading at worst.
Finally, with regard to the argument in the Colorado article that the Second Amendment should be amended or repealed and some sort of “reasonable governance” should be enacted to take its place, I would ask, who has the authority to confiscate privately owned weapons?
Our Founding Fathers very well intended that every American be armed, believing that such was the only way to avoid being enslaved by tyrants. They knew from their study of history that a tyrant’s first move was always to disarm the people, generally claiming it was for their safety, and to establish a standing army to convince the people that they didn’t need arms to protect themselves, as the tyrant and his professional soldiers would do it for them.
Regarding Arizona article’s claim that the Second Amendment was never intended to protect the individual’s right to keep and bear arms, but was meant to apply only to the military force and its weapons, I offer this from Tench Coxe:
Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against 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.… The 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.
And this from Coxe’s contemporary, St. George Tucker:
Whenever 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.
The irrefutable fact is that not a single syllable from the record of the history of the Second Amendment or its antecedents indicates that the right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment was to be narrowly applied to the army.
Furthermore, regardless of the headlines, there is no constitutional authority given to the federal government to restrict the purchase of firearms, ammunition, or component parts. In fact, the Second Amendment explicitly proscribes any attempt by the federal government to infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms.
Let us not dishonor the memory of those killed by allowing pundits, professors, or progressives to convince lawmakers in state or federal government to infringe whatsoever on the right that protects enjoyment of all the other rights: the right to keep and bear arms.
