“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state.”
Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 28 (1)
Something near despair about the republic’s future is about the only reaction one can have when reading the media’s fatuous coverage of Trump’s words about the 2nd Amendment. Sharpening that reaction, of course, is the media’s simultaneous and knowing failure to note that, in 2008, Hillary Clinton said she would not drop out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, although far behind, because Obama might be “assassinated.” Coming from the co-leader of the Clinton political machine, which generally terminates with extreme malice those it no longer needs or deems obstacles to what it wants [NB: Most recently in Washington, DC?], Mrs. Clinton words were clearly as much incitement as comment, perhaps more. [NB: Did the Secret Service talked to her about what she said?] Currently, of course, she and her party are four-square behind their newest slave colony, the one composed of the lethally violent thugs, racists, and assassins who form the membership of Black Lives Matter.
Repeatedly in this space, I have suggested that Americans need to recall what the 2nd Amendment was and is intended to do. Yes, it assures Americans have the right and ability to defend themselves, their families, and their homes, as well as to hunt for various kinds of animals. But there is much more to it.
The other, much greater, and absolutely vital intent of the 2nd Amendment is to make sure that Americans — as a last resort — have the ability to act collectively to secure their freedom and liberties against other Americans who win public office and then fail to abide by the Constitution and/or refuse to execute laws that are already on the books. In short, the 2nd Amendment ensures that Americans perpetually have the option to choose between (a) submitting themselves like cattle, sheep, and goats to the whims of tyrants and their unconstitutional rule and (b) refusing to abide by a tyrant’s dictates and making an armed effort to subdue their tormentors. The 2nd Amendment, quite simply, is designed to allow Americans to faithfully abide by the instructions laid down in the form of a duty in the Declaration of Independence; namely, to rebel against and drive out or, if necessary, kill politicians who behave as tyrants.
And in this context it is worth saying that the Founders did not intend the 2nd Amendment to provide a right to “assassination.” In their day and ours the killing of one would-be tyrant would do little but give like-minded others the opportunity to try to become a tyrant. No, assassination is a means of exacting revenge or imposing discipline, and is most usually carried out by organized criminal groups, political gangs, or by individuals with a personal grudge against a specific person. In America today, moreover, an assassination would change nothing as the number of would-be tyrants who inhabit both political parties, along with their liberty-sapping corps of advisers, funders, academic shills, and media acolytes, are far too numerous. No, to effectively restore our republic to liberty could well require nothing less than a collective, armed, and wide-ranging American rebellion of the kind the Founders, God’s peace be upon them, presided over and risked their own lives in fighting.
The most basic reason, then, that an accurate understanding of the 2nd Amendment must be known by voters and taught to our children is the reality that the peaceful means of getting rid of would-be tyrants and restoring liberty are no longer working. The Founders spent a great deal of time in the sultry summer of 1787 crafting the constitutional means for removing presidents and other government officials — by impeachment and subsequent trial — for either their criminal activities or their deliberate violations of the U.S. Constitution. If that constitutional provision was still relevant, each of the last four presidents would have been quite easily impeached for starting wars without the congressional declaration of war the Constitution mandates, and for routinely, deliberately, and often boastfully violating their oaths of office by refusing to promptly execute and enforce the law.
Obama, of course, is the worst of this lot and should have been impeached for (a) using the IRS to persecute conservative organizations; (b) rewriting congressional legislation to meet his political needs; (c) refusing to arrest and hold/deport those foreigners who automatically become felons by crossing the border illegally; (d) releasing prisoners-of-war he knows will return to the battlefield to kill U.S. Marines and soldiers; (e) allowing the Department of Justice to block an investigation of the racketeering Clinton Foundation; (f) allowing groups of terrorist-seeded refugees into America without the rigorous vetting required by law; (g) starting unconstitutional wars; and (h) refusing to enforce laws passed by Congress. On the basis of Obama’s irrefutably tyrant-like performance, the Founders would, I think, be amazed that the people’s elected representatives did not employ the Constitution’s impeachment process against such a removal-meriting man. And perhaps they also might have been surprised, and even a bit dismayed, that the citizenry did not show signs of bringing the true intent of the 2nd Amendment into play on this issue.
Without the anti-tyranny safeguard of the impeachment process — now paralyzed by presidential criminality, congressional cowardice, the tyranny-loving media, incompetent and lying academics, and too much citizen inattention and apathy — the means for resisting tyranny in America are few. In addition to impeachment, for example, the ballot box also seems to no longer work as a means of halting the growth of tyranny, given the many unconstitutional acts of the last four presidents, and the Obama administration’s refusal to indict Hillary Clinton for perjury, aiding and abetting the country’s enemies, and using the office of Secretary of State for personal gain, thereby letting a woman who should be in jail run for the presidency. And in this age of computer voting and hacking, who, in their right mind, is gullible enough to believe that national elections are not rigged in one way or another by either the two power-mad political parties or outsiders.
There also is zero protection in the glib claim of politicians that Americans need not worry about their right to bear arms being abrogated because the Constitution cannot be changed save by using the amendment procedure it requires. Note Obama’s arrogant, clearly unconstitutional, and clearly unchallenged conduct, and recall that half of the 2nd Amendment already has been negated without amendment. Can anyone locate the amendment that ended the 2nd Amendment’s guarantee of state militias, which were meant to be the bulwark of state security and sovereignty, and were to be controlled by the states unless the nation became involved in a constitutional war? That part of the 2nd Amendment was negated by legislation, not by the amendment process required by the Constitution, and it has left the states no military force with which to prevent the national government from doing as it pleases, and that is precisely what the national government intended.
In this event, history, as always, was repeating itself. Virginia’s great, lawyer, politician, and statesman George Mason — who refused to sign the Constitution at Philadelphia because it had no bill of rights — told the 1788 Virginia ratifying convention that the one of first steps tyrants would take to disarm the people as a whole would be to neutralize their militia organizations.
“Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.” (2)
So with state militias already illegally destroyed, it becomes more important with each passing year to impress upon Americans and their children the sanctity of the still viable section of the 2nd Amendment, an accurate and sober understanding of its intent, and their responsibilities under it. As noted, the Founders intended the impeachment process to be a readily usable tool with which to remove criminals or tyrants from office, one that would leave resort to the 2nd Amendment infrequent, the very existence of which would warn would-be-tyrants that not only their offices and reputations, but also their lives are ultimately in the hands of the same kind of people who won the republic’s independence from Britain, ones whom the historian John Shy described as “A people numerous and armed.” (3)
With the multiple firewalls the Founders built into the Constitution to make the 2nd Amendment a last resort already discarded or quickly disappearing, the use of the 2nd Amendment’s right to rebellion is emerging as the citizenry’s only constitutional option, no longer its constitutional tool of last resort. If that option is ever used, ironically, the elites will suffer most from the bloody brunt of the constitutional storm they knowingly caused by their arrogance, condescension, greed, and corruption, and perhaps most of all by their failure to heed mama’s sage advice that it is very dangerous to play with guns.
Endnotes:
- The Federalist Papers : No. 28
- Rewriting the Second Amendment
- John Shy. A People Numerous and Armed. Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence. (Revised Edition). Ann Arbor, MI: Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1990.