"If you are told you have a right to bear arms, it is a natural consequent that you have a right to use them whenever it seems right to you."
I am not sure if this is true. Members of the arms bearing classes in European monarchies did not have the opinion that they could use them whenever it seemed right to them. The peers and nobles and armed freedmen bore weapons in their sovereign defense, and both in theory and in law, the use was not a matter of private opinion.
All that is going on here is that the Englishmen who founded America took the established right of free-born Englishmen to bear arms and prohibited the Congress of the general government from making any law to abridge the same. In effect, everyone in America is of the knightly class.
It is also alien to Enlightenment political theory to speak of the Second Amendment as an abdication of the State of its most basic right. We, the people, we are the state. The governments of the several states are merely our servants and administration, who serve for fixed periods of time, but at our pleasure. The general government is a federation of these several sovereign states. We, the people, can no more be said to have abdicated the exclusive right of violence than we can be said to have denied ourselves of the police power or the right to free speech. Our government is the opposite of a monarchy: our administration receives a grant of power to use on our behalf which comes from us. We are sovereign.
Considering the stability of our government over and above any government in Europe, with the possible exception of the English Monarchy, to chide us for violence seems a difficult proposition to maintain, unless you restrict your comments to a carefully sculpted period of years. The dynastic wars of France and England, the endless brutal fighting among the Italian city-states, the oppressions, wars, and Inquisitions of the Spanish Monarch do not speak favorably of restricting the use of arms to a special noble class. We have had one Civil War and one peaceful usurpation of power by FDR. New Hampshire has never fought Maine, despite the alleged "natural consequent" that we all think we have a right to use them "whenever it seems right".
Let us see what another brilliant Italian political theorist has to say on the matter:
"And experience has shown ... it is more difficult to bring a republic, armed with its own arms, under the sway of one of its citizens than it is to bring one armed with foreign arms. Rome and Sparta stood for many ages armed and free. The Switzers are completely armed and quite free."
This is Machiavelli, THE PRINCE, Chap 12, which I assume you read in grammar school. He goes on to speak of using mercenaries to fight for you as something which has brought Italy into slavery and contempt.
I assume the same sort of comments as apply to mercenaries would apply to a situation where we restricted the use of arms to special groups, the bodyguards of the rich and powerful, the military and the police. Having special cadres ruling over an unarmed population of plebeians (for, if they are unarmed, we cannot call them citizens) is something Machiavelli would not approve of.
Since your main point, which I think is very clear and well said, is to warn of the emergence of a new aristocracy among the United States, I ask you if matters would be better for us if the use of arms was restricted only to them and to their supporters? If guns were banned in the USA, whom do you think would have the power and prestige to get special permits to carry them, aside from the very wealthy and their bodyguards and sentries? Do you think all these new palaces being erected will go undefended?
I am asking a serious question. It is the Democrats here who usually back gun control, and the Republicans who usually back the NRA. This strikes me as one of the paradoxes similar to what you analyze here: restricting arms to the well-to-do should be a Republican scheme, and protecting poor blacks from predation by arming them should be a Democrat rallying point. Instead we see the opposite.
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Re: Gun Control and Assassinations
Date: 2006-12-05 11:04 pm (UTC)I am not sure if this is true. Members of the arms bearing classes in European monarchies did not have the opinion that they could use them whenever it seemed right to them. The peers and nobles and armed freedmen bore weapons in their sovereign defense, and both in theory and in law, the use was not a matter of private opinion.
All that is going on here is that the Englishmen who founded America took the established right of free-born Englishmen to bear arms and prohibited the Congress of the general government from making any law to abridge the same. In effect, everyone in America is of the knightly class.
It is also alien to Enlightenment political theory to speak of the Second Amendment as an abdication of the State of its most basic right. We, the people, we are the state. The governments of the several states are merely our servants and administration, who serve for fixed periods of time, but at our pleasure. The general government is a federation of these several sovereign states. We, the people, can no more be said to have abdicated the exclusive right of violence than we can be said to have denied ourselves of the police power or the right to free speech. Our government is the opposite of a monarchy: our administration receives a grant of power to use on our behalf which comes from us. We are sovereign.
Considering the stability of our government over and above any government in Europe, with the possible exception of the English Monarchy, to chide us for violence seems a difficult proposition to maintain, unless you restrict your comments to a carefully sculpted period of years. The dynastic wars of France and England, the endless brutal fighting among the Italian city-states, the oppressions, wars, and Inquisitions of the Spanish Monarch do not speak favorably of restricting the use of arms to a special noble class. We have had one Civil War and one peaceful usurpation of power by FDR. New Hampshire has never fought Maine, despite the alleged "natural consequent" that we all think we have a right to use them "whenever it seems right".
Let us see what another brilliant Italian political theorist has to say on the matter:
"And experience has shown ... it is more difficult to bring a republic, armed with its own arms, under the sway of one of its citizens than it is to bring one armed with foreign arms. Rome and Sparta stood for many ages armed and free. The Switzers are completely armed and quite free."
This is Machiavelli, THE PRINCE, Chap 12, which I assume you read in grammar school. He goes on to speak of using mercenaries to fight for you as something which has brought Italy into slavery and contempt.
I assume the same sort of comments as apply to mercenaries would apply to a situation where we restricted the use of arms to special groups, the bodyguards of the rich and powerful, the military and the police. Having special cadres ruling over an unarmed population of plebeians (for, if they are unarmed, we cannot call them citizens) is something Machiavelli would not approve of.
Since your main point, which I think is very clear and well said, is to warn of the emergence of a new aristocracy among the United States, I ask you if matters would be better for us if the use of arms was restricted only to them and to their supporters? If guns were banned in the USA, whom do you think would have the power and prestige to get special permits to carry them, aside from the very wealthy and their bodyguards and sentries? Do you think all these new palaces being erected will go undefended?
I am asking a serious question. It is the Democrats here who usually back gun control, and the Republicans who usually back the NRA. This strikes me as one of the paradoxes similar to what you analyze here: restricting arms to the well-to-do should be a Republican scheme, and protecting poor blacks from predation by arming them should be a Democrat rallying point. Instead we see the opposite.