Second Amendment Designed to Protect

Second Amendment Designed to Protect “Assault Weapons”

(Wednesday, October 8, 2003) - Even though the media campaign against semi-automatic firearms has slowed somewhat since this spring, anti-gun extremists like Sen. Diane Feinstein, Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy are still working full time to crack down on semi-autos.

To date, three bills have been filed in Congress to renew and expand the Clinton Semi-auto Ban. All three are based on the same weak assertions and worn-out falsehoods that were fabricated in order to pass the original ban in 1994.

A representative from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence recently repeated one of these lies: “Military style assault guns are the weapons of choice for criminals and have no place in our communities.”

Research indicates, however, that so-called “assault weapons” are used in only one half of one percent of homicides.¹ They are so rarely used to commit a crime that a police officer is two to three times more likely to be killed by his own gun than by an “assault weapon”.²

In reality, gun grabbers’ efforts to ban semi-autos have little to do with reducing crime. Their goal is to disarm the American public, and banning semi-autos is just the first step.

But America’s Founders understood that a free country cannot long exists without an armed populace, as they stated in the very text of the Second Amendment:

“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.”

Today, the gun grabbers claim that the militia is the National Guard, and disingenuously conclude that the individual citizen has no right to arms.

The Founders themselves, however, directly contradicted this ludicrous notion.

Richard Henry Lee, the original framer of the Second Amendment, declared, “[T]he militia shall always…include…all men capable of bearing arms.”

“Who are the militia?” asked George Mason, who is called the Father of the Bill of Rights. “They consist now of the whole people.”

These men framed the Second Amendment primarily to protect the right of the people to keep and bear military arms. They intended that America would be defended in the same way that she had been established: by her citizens.

According to the Militia Act of 1792, every adult male was required by law to keep in his home an up-to-date military firearm, along with a supply of ammunition and military accouterments.

When the militia was called up, every able-bodied man was required to respond to the call, bringing with him his privately owned military weapon. During the founding era, this would have been something comparable to the British “Brown Bess” or the French Charleville muskets, the most advanced “assault weapons” of their day. Today, the equivalent would be select fire automatics, such as the M14 and M16.

The Clinton Semi-auto Ban strikes at the heart of the original intent of the Second Amendment. It bans the very arms our Founders took such pains to protect.

If we allow this despotic ban to be renewed and expanded, the future of our nation will be in jeopardy.

The permanent loss of the right to keep and bear military arms will eventually lead to the loss of liberty itself.

1 - Florida state criminologist Gary Kleck

2 - FBI Uniform Crime Reports, as reported by Gun Owners or America, Fact Sheet www.gunowners.org

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