Gun Control and the Second Amendment

President Obama's stance, indeed the stand of anyone who is against ownership of guns or of specific guns and/or of specific bullets, clips, or other portions of guns, are acting as utilitarians. This is against the concept of natural rights inherent in the Constitution.

Opponents of such restrictions are fighting it on grounds of the Second Amendment. But they are fighting on the grounds that it is that Amendment which gives us the right. It is not. That merely states the right which existed before it was written. Indeed, James Madison and others were fearful that if some of man's natural rights were put into a Bill of Rights, it would seem as if that was the limit of them, that there were no others. But more than that, many members of Congress knew that by listing some of them it would open them to scrutiny 'as written'. In other words, while all natural rights belonged to Man, the way one or another was written could be argued against and altered.

That has happened in the modern case of the Second Amendment. The right does not exist because it is written; it was written because it exists, and because some Congressional leaders believed it necessary to say they existed.

A Bill of Rights was not only unnecessary, but would even be dangerous. James Madison agreed with Alexander Hamilton, who asked, "For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do [by Congress]? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?"

The harming of another in his person or property is not a right, natural or otherwise. The restriction of a natural right is the prerogative only of a tyranny. 

© Curtis Edward Clark 2012