John W. Whitehead is president of The Rutherford Institute and author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. Whitehead also drafted anti-drone legislation which is making its way through state and local legislatures.
You can largely determine where a person will fall in the debate over gun control and the Second Amendment based on their view of government and the role it should play in our lives.
Those who want to see government as a benevolent parent looking out for our best interests tend to interpret the Second Amendment’s “militia” reference as applying only to the military.
To those who see the government as inherently corrupt, the Second Amendment is a means of ensuring that the populace will always have a way of defending themselves against threats to their freedoms.
And then there are those who view the government as neither good nor evil, but merely a powerful entity that, as Thomas Jefferson recognized, must be bound “down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” To this group, the right to bear arms is no different from any other right enshrined in the Constitution, to be safeguarded, exercised prudently and maintained.
Ironically, while the Obama administration continues its efforts to “pass the broadest gun control legislation in a generation,” the U.S. military boasts some weapons the rest of the world doesn’t have. Included in its arsenal are an AA12 Atchisson Assault Shotgun that can shoot five 12-gauge shells per second and “can fire up to 9,000 rounds without being cleaned or jamming”; a Taser shockwave that can electrocute a crowd of people at the touch of a button; an XM2010 enhanced sniper rifle with built-in sound and flash suppressors that can hit a man-sized target nine out of ten times from over a third of a mile away; and an XM25 “Punisher” grenade launcher that can be programmed to accurately shoot grenades at a target up to 500 meters away.
Talk about a double standard. The government’s arsenal of weapons makes the average American’s handgun look like a Tinker Toy.
It’s no laughing matter, and yet the joke is on us. “We the people” have been so focused on debating whether the Second Amendment “allows” us to own guns that we’ve overlooked the most important and most consistent theme throughout the Constitution: the fact that it is not merely an enumeration of our rights but was intended to be a clear shackle on the government’s powers.
As such, the Second Amendment reads as a clear rebuke against any attempt to restrict the citizenry’s gun ownership. It is as necessary an ingredient for maintaining that tenuous balance between the citizenry and their republic as any of the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, especially the right to freedom of speech, assembly, press, petition, security, and due process.
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