Antone's Nightclub
The Right to Own Guns Runs Deeper Than the Second Amendment
RECEIVED Fri., Feb. 27, 2009
Dear Mr. Black,
Thinking about what you have said and implied recently about citizenship and firearms ownership [“Page Two”], I find your comments lacking in depth and insight.
It is certainly no less true now than it has ever been that an armed and free population is the only ultimate guarantor of its own freedom. By the same token, you and I are the only ones with final responsibility for our own safety and happiness (as in the pursuit thereof). I don't see how humankind's inclinations to commit violence and oppression have changed nor, unfortunately, that human institutions have become either more apt at reducing or less apt to reflect these propensities.
But things are not absolutely grim. We are free people, and we can take responsibility. In fact, we are citizens of the only country in the world – the only one that has ever existed, so far as I know – valuing that responsibility so highly that it has vested its national sovereignty in its people (as opposed to its king or its parliament or what have you). That means that our government has no power that the people have not granted to it, and it has been granted no power that cannot be taken back. But one power, among others, that it can never have is the power to limit or infringe my responsibility for my own freedom, safety, and happiness and that of the people whom I love.
When it comes to these fundamental rights and their relationship to firearms ownership and the constitutional protection thereof, I suspect that the Second Amendment might not even be the most powerful guarantee. I would look as well to due process, equal protection of the law, and other constitutional embodiments of those things without which "freedom" means nothing.
This forum that you provide and your contributions to it are of great value.
Thinking about what you have said and implied recently about citizenship and firearms ownership [“Page Two”], I find your comments lacking in depth and insight.
It is certainly no less true now than it has ever been that an armed and free population is the only ultimate guarantor of its own freedom. By the same token, you and I are the only ones with final responsibility for our own safety and happiness (as in the pursuit thereof). I don't see how humankind's inclinations to commit violence and oppression have changed nor, unfortunately, that human institutions have become either more apt at reducing or less apt to reflect these propensities.
But things are not absolutely grim. We are free people, and we can take responsibility. In fact, we are citizens of the only country in the world – the only one that has ever existed, so far as I know – valuing that responsibility so highly that it has vested its national sovereignty in its people (as opposed to its king or its parliament or what have you). That means that our government has no power that the people have not granted to it, and it has been granted no power that cannot be taken back. But one power, among others, that it can never have is the power to limit or infringe my responsibility for my own freedom, safety, and happiness and that of the people whom I love.
When it comes to these fundamental rights and their relationship to firearms ownership and the constitutional protection thereof, I suspect that the Second Amendment might not even be the most powerful guarantee. I would look as well to due process, equal protection of the law, and other constitutional embodiments of those things without which "freedom" means nothing.
This forum that you provide and your contributions to it are of great value.
Thank you,
David Warwick
David Warwick