Gun-grabbers: masters of the New Plantation

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:02:56 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JULY 16, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Gun-grabbers: masters of the New Plantation

Last time we dug into Yale Law professor Akhil Reed Amar's impressive 1998 tome "The Bill of Rights" (due out in paperback this month), the good professor -- neither a gun owner nor in any sense a "right-wing militia nut" -- demonstrated through historical research that the gun-grabbers are wrong: The Second Amendment does not merely protect firearms ownership by active duty members of the National Guard. Rather, it conveys the right to own and carry weapons of military usefulness to all Americans.

But now that this undead golem of those who despise our Bill of Rights is down, let's proceed to stake it through the heart.

For you see -- while the Second Amendment is sufficient to guarantee the right of citizens to own machine guns (not to mention rifles, pistols, "assault weapons," and shoulder-launched missiles) -- it's not even the best guarantee of this right. The whole debate over the Second Amendment, professor Amar points out, has largely distracted us from considering a pair of enactments even more directly on point: the 14th Amendment and the original, 1866, Civil Rights Act.

We rejoin professor Amar at page 258:

"At the Founding, the right of the people to keep and bear arms stood shoulder to shoulder with the right to vote; arms bearing in militias embodied a paradigmatic political right. ... But Reconstruction Republicans recast arms bearing as a core civil right, utterly divorced from the militia and other political rights and responsibilities. Arms were needed not as part of political and politicized militia service but to protect one's individual homestead. Everyone -- even nonvoting, nonmilitia-serving women -- had a right to a gun for self-protection. ...

"The Creation vision was public, with the militia muster on the town square. The Reconstruction vision was private, with individual freedmen keeping guns at home to ward of Klansmen and other ruffians. ...

"Alongside ...the Civil Rights Act of 1866 ... Congress passed the Freedman's Bureau Act, a sister statute introduced the same day by the same sponsor. ... The Freedman's Bureau Act affirmed that 'laws ... concerning personal liberty, personal property, personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment and disposition of estate, real and personal, including the constitutional right to bear arms shall be secured to and enjoyed by all citizens. ...' Thus, the Reconstruction Congress expressly repudiated Dred Scott's claim that because free blacks could never be citizens, they lacked many of these basic rights."

Allow me to interrupt the good professor to point out that the opposite also holds true. Though modern-day black Americans tend to despise antebellum Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney for ruling in Dred Scott that black Americans were neither citizens nor men, they might want to go back and re-read his logic. They will find the devil unintentionally gave them their due. Taney said blacks could not be considered men or citizens, because if they were so considered, there would be no option but to allow them to own and carry arms without restriction.

Quick, now: which side won the Civil War? Can a law-abiding black citizen today buy a 30-caliber machine gun and drive it home in the back of his pickup truck without seeking massa's "permission"?

Why was the 14th Amendment -- darling of the left when it appears to justify the expansion of federal power -- enacted? Professor Amar explains: "Southern states, ever fearful of slave insurrections, enacted sweeping antebellum laws prohibiting not just slaves but free blacks from owning guns. In response, antislavery theorists emphasized the personal right of all free citizens -- white and black, male and female, northern and southern, visitor and resident -- to own guns for self-protection."

Really? But what chance does a law-abiding citizen of any color have today, of carrying his self-defense pistol with him if he chooses to visit the collectivist metropolises of Los Angeles, Washington or New York City?

"In the 1846 case Nunn vs. Georgia," professor Amar continues, "the proslavery contrarian Chief Justice Joseph Henry Lumpkin proclaimed not only that the Second Amendment bound the states but also that 'The right [is guaranteed to] the whole people, old and young, men, women, and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not merely as are used by the militia.' ...

"Roger Taney and [prominent abolitionist] Joel Tiffany hardly saw eye to eye in the 1850s, but they both agreed on this: if free blacks were citizens, it would necessarily follow that they had a right of private arms bearing. According to Dred Scott, the 'privileges and immunities' of 'citizens' included 'full liberty of speech in public and in private ... and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.' ...

"One of the core purposes of the Civil Right Act of 1866 and of the Fourteenth Amendment was to ... outlaw the infamous Black Codes [by which the southern states sought to ban firearms for freed blacks], and affirm the full and equal right of every citizen to self-defense. ..."

Professor Amar quotes Sen. Samuel Pomeroy, declaring on the floor of the Senate in 1866, "Every man ... should have the right to bear arms for the defense of himself and his family and his homestead. And if the cabin door of the freedman is broken open and the intruder enters for purposes as vile as were known to slavery, then should a well-loaded musket be in the hand of the occupant." Even Rep. Henry Raymond, a founder and editor of the New York Times, declared that the black freedman "has a country and a home; a right to defend himself and his wife and children; a right to bear arms."

"Today's NRA," professor Amar concludes, "pays far too much attention to 1775-91 and far too little to 1830-68."

But is this curious forgetfulness about the original meaning of "Civil Rights" merely an accident? Where do the modern forces of "gun control" -- including the nation's largest gun-control organization, the National Rifle Association, which endorsed the federal gun control acts of 1934 and 1968 and the "compromise" Brady Law with its national gun-buyer registry -- now focus their energies?

What race predominates among the subsidized housing projects where HUD now claims it needs no search warrants to root out and seize "dangerous firearms" -- while the cheerleader NRA urges the government to "rigorously enforce the gun laws already on the books"? Where are most of the "gun buy-back" stunts conducted? Among the racial minorities of the inner cities, of course. What is the derivation of "Saturday Night Special" -- describing the inexpensive self-defense handgun which the NRA says it's OK to go ahead and ban as long as we rich white folk are allowed to keep our engraved fowling pieces?

Cover your ears if you like, but the origin of this term for the inexpensive handguns most useful for self-defense to a black or Hispanic resident of the inner city is the old, derogatory police slang "Niggertown Saturday Night," referring to inner city weekend violence not meriting much attention, since it mainly occurred among the black folk.

When handgun "licenses and permits" require expensive safety courses and the OK of the local sheriff, and one-third of our young black men today have experienced some kind of run-in with the legal system and are thus blocked from even applying, what percentage of these "permits" end up issued to black folk?

And when gun-grabbers try to terrify the soccer moms with visions of "inner-city street gangs armed with fully-automatic AK-47s," what color skin do you imagine those soccer moms are picturing on Ernesto, Raoul, Dante and Ahmad?

You see, those who would ban the private ownership of weapons of military usefulness to individual American today are not just liars ... they're also racists.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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'There Oughtta Be A Law,' Chapter 417

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair

End the War on Freedom

Gun-grabbers: masters of the New Plantation