Second Amendment
The United States of America has taken
drastic steps in taking away the American
peoples God given rights and
Constitutional rights. The United States government
is supposed to be a
government of the people, by the people, for the people.
There are very
clear signs of a cancerous growth within our government and the
citizens of
America need to take preventative measures to ensure the freedom for
which
our founding fathers fought and died. I am speaking of numerous issues
that
have arisen in the United States that clearly demonstrate that our
government
is taking away our rights. I will hopefully be able to show a
brief
description of the government, as it is today and what it was designed
to be. I
will also describe our rights and the reasons for keeping those
rights, such as
the gun control laws that have been passed restricting our
rights to bear arms.
History serves us well in that it provides us with
the facts that show increases
in crime, poverty, injustice and overall social
unrest is the result of
Democracy as defined by our current
administration. The fact is that the
governments idea of a democracy and our
idea of a democracy are two different
meanings entirely. I speak about this
because it directly affects the way that
the United States government has
taken away not only your Constitutional rights
but also your God given ones.
I have quoted below an excerpt from a military
manual that I once read that
struck me as very profound. In order to understand
the true meaning of the
word democracy, examine the definition of the word as
provided by the 1928
American Military Training Manual and then compare it with
the definition of
the word Republic, taken from the same manual. Now remember
these definitions
the next time you see a public official or anyone else for
that matter,
standing before the camera talking about democracy: Democracy: A
government
of the masses. Authority is derived through mass meeting or any other
form of
direct expression. Results in a mobocracy. Attitude toward property
is
communistic, negating property rights. Attitude towards law is that the
will of
the majority shall regulate whether it be based upon deliberation or
governed by
passion, prejudice and impulse without restraint or regard to
consequences.
Results in demagoguism, license, agitation, discontent, and
anarchy. Republic:
Authority is derived through the election of public
officials best fitted to
represent them. Attitude for property is respect for
laws and individual rights,
and a sensible economic procedure. Attitude
toward law is the administration of
justice in accord with fixed principles
and established evidence, with a strict
regard to consequences. A greater
number of citizens and extent of territory may
be brought within its compass.
Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or
mobocracy. Results in
statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and
progress. (1928
American Military Training Manual) While our government was
formed as a
republic, we have lost that form and exchanged it for a democracy.
The
fact that our forefathers had set up a Republic and not a Democracy is a
key
to understanding the present government. Ours will be a democracy so long
as our
elected officials will vote which ever way the powerful winds of
special
interests blow, as long as they do not "administer justice in
accordance
with fixed principles", those principles being set forth in the
Bill of
Rights. The vast majority of representatives need to be removed
from office and
replaced with those that will do a correct and honest job
without thought of
personal gain. We need to set term limits to keep career
politicians out of
office and elect citizen politicians who are true patriots
to our great nation
that are trying to uphold what our forefathers had
original set forth in their
sacrifices as the god given rights and
Constitutional rights. There are few
great patriots in positions of power
today. The end of the line, and I
reiterate, is that we are losing all of our
constitutional rights, as well as
our God given rights. On a daily basis, the
government is trying to take away
our Second Amendment rights as well
countless other rights. Only a constant
vigil will keep those that usurp
power and control from doing so. The Second
Amendment states, and I
quote: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to
the security of a free
state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms,
shall not be
infringed."(Bill of Rights) In the Second Amendment it does not
state that
you can own this type of gun or that type of gun, but it does state
that you
have the right to keep and bear arms. The opposition would state
that
legislation is needed to keep records of who can purchase guns legally.
This is
a fair idea and I agree with it to an extent but now they are trying
to
legislate every type of firearm and regulate gun shows. This is a fair
point but
let me state that gun control laws have not shown a difference in
the amount of
violence and killings. A gun does not kill people; people kill
people. If the
gun control measures were working then we would not need to
keep passing further
laws. The opposition continues to pass more and more
legislation on gun control.
If you take away an honest citizens right to
bear arms, then only the criminals
will have weapons and they do not care for
the laws. The legal system in the
United States has apparently failed on
most areas of concerns within our
society. The laws that are passed are very
biased most of the time. The legal
system needs to be examined closely. The
lawmakers do not need to pass more laws
and have so many on the books that it
requires you to have to hire an attorney
to be able to understand them. The
laws on the books need to be reviewed and if
they do not hold up or are
outdated then take them off of our law books. There
are laws on the books
that very few people even know they exist and are hence
not applicable. The
following statistics are taken from Congressmen’s Ron
Paul’s’ current
legislation, HR407, Second Amendment Restoration Act.
Law-abiding
citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as
2.5
million times every year--or 6,850 times a day. This means that each
year,
firearms are used 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest
citizens
than to take lives. Of the 2.5-million self-defense cases, more than
200,000 are
by women defending themselves against sexual abuse. And as many
as one-half
million times every year, somebody carrying a gun away from home
defends himself
or herself. Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns
to defend
themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish
their gun or
fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8
percent of the
time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker. The
police cannot possibly
protect every individual citizen. Currently, there are
about 150,000 police
officers on duty at any one time to protect a population
of more than 250
million Americans--or almost 1,700 citizens per officer.
(H.R. 407) These are
staggering statistics that cannot be ignored. Some will
say that Representative
Ron Paul is a proponent of the Second Amendment
and that these statistics would
be expected from him but you have to look
beyond the fact that he is proponent
Second Amendment and see just the
fact that it has shown a good for society. Let
me further testify that the
city and state police have no statement or
requirement in their doctrine to
serve the public and protect it. The police are
there to enforce the laws of
the municipality, state, and federal government.
The opposition will
argue that is why we have police and we also have the
ability to call 911. In
California thousands of 911 calls went unanswered
because the caller received
a message that all operators were busy. California
Senator Feinstein
wants to have severe gun control laws. The Senator has armed
bodyguards and I
would ask her why does she need armed bodyguards when all she
has to do is
call 911 for any help. An examination of policies and statistics by
John
R. Lott Jr., a professor at the University of Chicago, shows that areas
of
the country that had "right to carry laws" saw the number of
multiple-victim
shootings decline on average of 84 percent and deaths from
these incidents
plummeted by 90 percent, injuries by 82 percent. (3) American
citizens who are
law abiding, conscientious, and carry a concealed weapon or
own a weapon provide
a significant social service by making a criminal think
twice about who might
have a weapon and would the crime be worth it. Results
from an interview
conducted by Ginny Simone with Keith Tidswell of
Australia's Sporting Shooters
Association show that one year after
Australian gun-owners were forced to
surrender 640,381 personal firearms to
be destroyed, including semi-automatic
.22 rifles and shotguns, and a program
costing the government over 500 million
dollars a year was introduced and a
dramatic increase in criminal activity has
been experienced. Gun control
advocates responded, "Just wait, we'll be
safer, you'll see." The observable
facts after 12 months of data
compilation shows that Australia-wide,
homicides are up 3.2%, Australia-wide,
assaults are up 8.6%, Australia-wide,
armed-robberies are up 44%, and in the
state of Victoria,
homicides-with-firearms are up 300%. The figures over the
previous 25 years
showed a steady decrease in homicides-with- firearms and the
figures over the
previous 25 years show a steady decrease in armed-robbery-
with-firearms.
From 1910 to present, homicides in Australia had averaged
about
1.8-per-100, 000 or lower which shows a safe society by any
standard. The
Australian politicians are on the spot and at a loss to
explain how no
improvement in "safety "has been observed after such
monumental effort
and expense was successfully expended in "ridding society
of guns".
Their response has been to "wait longer". (Australia: The
Results Are
In) I quote Senator Hubert H. Humphrey to further show that
the Second Amendment
does give a citizen the right to bear arms and not to be
regulated by the United
States government: "Certainly one of the chief
guarantees of freedom under
any government, no matter how popular and
respected, is the right of citizens to
keep and bear arms.... The right of
citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee
against arbitrary government, one
more safeguard against the tyranny which now
appears remote in America but
which historically has proven to be always
possible."(Americans on
Self-Defense) All of the great dictators of this
era, Hitler, Mussolini, and
Stalin, were democratically elected and then
confiscated the constituent’s
weapons and passed laws to keep them from owning
a weapon. We do not need for
this to happen in our country. Gun control laws are
a negative type of
approach to controlling violence with firearms. Guns are used
for defensive
purposes about five times as often as they are used for crimes.
John R.
Lott, Jr. states that after examining a range of different policies
that
higher arrest and conviction rates, longer prison sentences, and death
penalty
generally reduce murders. But neither gun laws nor the severity of a
punishment
has any significant effects on public shootings. (2) A
multivariate statistical
analysis by Ik-Whan G. Kwon, et al, states that
while the background checks do
provide a small amount of results, the overall
result showed that major firearm
fatalities were associated with
socioeconomic factors such as poverty levels and
alcohol consumption. Unless
the country directs itself to curing these ills,
which have the greatest
influence upon violent deaths by firearms, we shall
continue to see people
abuse their Second Amendment rights. (Kwon et al. 8) If
the citizen cannot be
responsible then he should lose his Second Amendment
rights to bear arms. Let
us take for example the incident at Waco, Texas. The
Branch Davidian
complex was destroyed in a joint Federal Police (FBI, BATF, and
Local Law
Enforcement) and United States Military (Special Operations: Delta
Force)
coup. The United States law enforcement agencies and the Delta Force went
out
to Mount Carmel on an illegal weapons suspicion. The original reason
for
proceeding to Mount Carmel has been hidden by the federal government. The
have
stated, different reasons at different times, that they where out there
for
illegal weapons, child abuse, and drugs. The federal government has
lied
continuously about Waco to keep the public from becoming angered and
not
permitting a police state to develop in our country. The FBI has shown
recently
that they manufacture evidence and falsify reports used in criminal
cases. The
FBI’s own official has stepped down amid the lies and
manufacturing of
evidence. Frederic Whitehurst, the FBI forensic chemist and
lab supervisor,
states that he was and is tired of the FBI falsifying his
signature and
manufacturing evidence. (FBI) Given such actions can we trust
the United States
government to be truthful and honest to American citizens?
Do we not have
freedom of speech and freedom of religion in the United States
anymore? If you
do not believe the information that I provide here, then do a
search for
Operation "Urban Warrior" on the Internet and read it for
yourself. You will
be shocked at what you find available. The Branch
Davidians were all law abiding
citizens and had the proper permits for the
weapons that they owned. The United
States government went to the
Davidian church without a warrant in possession
and the resulting massacre
ensued. The United States of America needs to wake up
and take a long hard
look at what has been transpiring behind closed doors at
our nation’s
capital. Our society has lost the values and patriotism that our
history
provides. The average 16 year old high school student cannot tell you
who
Betsy Ross or Patrick Henry were or why they were famous. A person need
only
look into an American history book to understand what America really
stands for
or ask a military veteran. If our citizens and their children
cannot believe in
the ideals of what our country stands for, then we are
truly lost. We need to
take stock in America and bring back the idealism that
made our country what it
was and what it can be again. A person who forsakes
their freedom for safety is
a cowardly American citizen. We need to stand up
for rights, both God given and
Constitutional. It takes citizens who care
about their liberty and country to do
so. In the words of one of our founding
fathers, Benjamin Franklin, "Either we
all hang together or we will surely
swing separately."
Bibliography
United States. Department of
Defense. American Military Training Manual.
Washington: 1928 United
States. United States National Archives. Bill of Rights.
Washington: 1776
United States. House of Representatives 106th Congress. House
resolution 407:
1999 Lott, John R. Jr. "Gun Show." National Review 31 May.
1999.
Infotrack. Oct 1999. Saint Edward’s U. 2 Oct 1999.
Infowars. 19 Sep 1999.
24 Oct 1999. NRA Live.
Americans on Self Defense. 23 Oct
1999.
Kwon, Ik-Whan G., et al. "The effectiveness of gun control laws:
multivariate
statistical analysis." American Journal of Economics and
Sociology. Jan. 1997
v56 n1 p41(10). Infotrack. Oct 1999. Saint Edward’s U. 2
Oct 1999.
Friedan, Terry. "FBI Whistle-blower leaves, gets $1.6 million."
CNN. 14 Oct.
1999. A1-2.