Inalienable Gun Rights Are Not Extremist

Last week, Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed a secret about the Second Amendment: “The Second Amendment was not written to protect your right to shoot deer. It was written to protect your right to shoot tyrants if they take over the government.”

Why is it a 'secret'? It's a secret because 230 years ago, during a time when the Patriots and other colonists knew they would need weapons to fight the British, they knew they had right under the natural rights theory to own them, though the British government wanted to take them in order to keep the upper hand.

But since that period we have forgotten there might come a day when the federal powers to make us do whatever they wanted would be so great we would have to fight our own government. The NDAA which the President signed on New Year's Eve day, gives him the authority to use the military to arrest and detain indefinitely any American he chooses, for reasons he does not have to disclose.

On April 19, 1775, after British General Thomas Gage sent 700 trained troops to Concord, Massachusetts, the shot heard round the world began a war. The British had come for the guns of Americans. "Their own government had come to disarm them." [1] Arizona, Tennessee, Washington, Virginia, and six local governments including one in my home state of Michigan, have either nullified the NDAA, or are debating doing so. Several sheriffs and other law enforcement officials have stated they will not enforce the NDAA. In some places states have made it illegal for state authorities to enforce the NDAA and certain provisions of ICE rules. [2]

About Napolitano's comments, "Charles Blow wrote in The New York Times, 'These extremists make sensible, reasonable gun control hard to discuss, let alone achieve in this country, because they skew the conversations away from common-sense solutions on which both rational gun owners and non-gun owners can agree.' "

So those who defend the natural right of property ownership against a government that would abrogate those natural rights are the "extremists"; those who see the Second Amendment as something added to the Constitution, rather than as something which reinforces it as an "inalienable", right are common-sensical. 

Why is it a violation of the right-to-safety of other people to have a populace who is armed and has violated no laws? Is it because someone could steal his mother's guns and shoot 20 children and 6 adults?

If that is the reason, then who is to prevent President Obama or another President from sending another "General Thomas Gage" to some part of the U.S. to disarm people it knows will fight the tyranny of a government that does not act Constitutionally, but rather acts like a utilitarian extremist?
[1] http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/silveira119lw.html 
[2] http://www.naturalindependent.com/archives/7123/virginia-nullifies-ndaa-the-tenthers/

© Curtis Edward Clark 2012

On the 20 Year Anniversary of Ruby Ridge

Ruby Ridge energized the radical militarized part of the right wing in a way it had not been energized for years. Ruby Ridge was the event in which the U.S. government set out to determine whether a man who had bought land and moved his family there to get away from what he called a corrupt world, was "connected to" white supremacist or anti-government groups.

What libertarian--and even we Objectivists--are not opposed to the government? It seems that some of our 21st century objections come right from this wrongful use of government power that then turned to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, where it killed 76 people, after a 51-day standoff, by accidentally starting their building on fire. These two events were cited by Timothy McVeigh as one reason for his part in the Oklahoma City bombing.

But no right wing sentiment is justification for taking the lives of other innocent people, as McVeigh did. Whether it is justification for killing certain guilty officers of the government in an act of revolution is yet another question. During the American Revolution there were patriotic Americans who detested the acts of the British government, but rationally set forth their reasons to say it wasn't enough for a revolution.

Yet, short of killing specific government officers guilty of acting with disregard toward the Constitution, what other means do the American people actually have for unseating an evil government? How can America have its own 'Arab Spring'?        

Sara Weaver, one of the survivors of Ruby Ridge, said she is devastated each time someone commits a violent act in the name of Ruby Ridge. "It killed me inside," she said of the Oklahoma City bombing. "I knew what it was like to lose a family member in violence. I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

Ms. Weaver, who's older brother was killed by officers in an ambush, and who's mother was killed as she opened her front door while holding one of her babies, by a bullet to the head by one of the government snipers, did not say it was wrong to kill innocent people, as McVeigh had done. Weaver only talked about losing family members in violence. One is not the same as the other. McVeigh was clearly wrong; but was the government? A wrongful death settlement left Ms. Weaver and her sister each $1million. Today the survivors would ask for more, much more.

The Whiskey Rebellion was the first instance of the government using its force against Americans opposed to its use of power. During President Washington's first term Alexander Hamilton needed to raise money to pay federal debts, and persuaded Congress to pass an excise tax on the manufacture of whiskey. The tax was resisted, as it appeared that the eastern "big business" whiskey producers were being favored. When a taxman went to one area of western Pennsylvania, more than 500 armed men resisted. This should have been a wake up call to the new government that it was doing something wrong, but it didn't work. President Washington told the States to call out their militia to quell the resistance, and then he rode at the head of those forces, 15,000 strong. What better demonstration of government force than to have the President lead the army against you?

This use of federal armed power against Americans was one of the reasons for the formation of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, which later repealed the tax. And now we have the spectacle of President Obama's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law Dec. 31, 2011. "President Obama [ ] will forever be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law,” said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU executive director. The President can put you or I into jail indefinitely, without a cause presented to us and without an attorney--if he alone says so.

There is currently a preliminary federal injunction blocking its enforcement. Truth-Out.org said, "US District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York Katherine B. Forrest agreed [that a part of the NDAA would prevent journalists from talking to the enemy]. In a 68-page opinion, she wrote [that journalist Chris] Hedges' and his co-plaintiffs fears that section 1021 could impact their First Amendment rights are 'chilling,' 'reasonable' and 'real'."

But it could be used against you, me, our neighbors, our family members as well, if the President--and the President alone has the authority--decides that an American citizen, anywhere in the world including in our own home, was:

"a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces,"

These fears are 'chilling,' 'reasonable' and 'real' because neither Congress nor the president defined the terms 'substantial support,' 'associated forces' or 'directly supported', not to mention that neither al-Qaeda nor the Taliban can always be easily identified, and that a 'belligerent act' could be anything, including spitting on the sidewalk in a display of your disdain.

President Obama is energizing most of the right wing, both of the sort that has religious sensibilities, and the sort that says their guns will have to be taken from their cold, dead fingers. But he's not where the trouble began; he's only the trouble we elected.

We must stand for our state's sovereignty, our unalienable rights, above all for our individualism against the behemoth that is flying drones in our skies above us, and that is listening to our every phone and internet conversation for the secret words that trigger an investigation to determine whether we are 'connected to' this, that, or the other thing, or whatever it wants to call a 'belligerent act'.

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© Curtis Edward Clark 2012