A lot of anti-rights lawyers like to make a lot of noise over how much education they may or may not have received, and how many cases they have managed to stay awake for, and how smart they are, and so on so forth, but it is always interesting to note how little their superiors and betters care about their opinions – how many times have their comments been cited by any kind of higher court as a basis for that court’s decision?
On the other hand, David E. Young does not go on seemingly endless ego-stroking tirades about his perceived mastery of the law and all contained within it, but his works were "cited over one hundred times in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals US v Emerson decision and six times in the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Washington DC v Heller decision". Seems to me that Mr. Young might know a thing or two about the Second Amendment.
Thankfully, he i also more than willing, if not downright eager, to share his knowledge with anyone willing to read it, and recently did so by way of his article, The American Revolutionary Era Origin of the Second Amendment’s Clauses, published in the Journal on Firearms and Public Policy. The entire article is well worth your time to read, especially since it lays out all of the building blocks necessary to reach this conclusion:
All eight Revolutionary Era Second Amendment predecessors, as well as the three Ratification Era two-clause proposals copied from them, were leading parts of complete Mason Triads. This context indicates the intention of both Second Amendment clauses was to assure the armed civil population’s control over government raised military force for the purpose of preventing oppression and tyranny. The First Congress, by protecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms, assured the people of being in a position to self-embody as an effective militia. Indeed, this was the very foundation of the Federalists’ polity as often expressed in their arms related mantra during the ratification struggle. A free state was ensured by such an armed populace because the people were inherently able to prevent the forceful implementation of acts that violated their rights and the Constitution. In the unlikely event such situations of force should ever arise, the people by merely defending themselves would be enforcing the supreme law of the land, and those attempting to use force against the people would be in direct violation of that supreme law, which the people had authorized.
Mr. Young explains the peculiar grammatical structure of the Second Amendment, explains the period meanings of the concepts of "well-regulated" and "militia", expounds upon the rationale given by the Founding Fathers for maintaining and preserving an armed populace, brings to bear the similarities of state constitutions, and completely guts the narrow-minded notion that the Second Amendment is somehow "outdated" or "obsolete"; but one common thread remains throughout his entire article – the Second Amendment is about self-defense.
Primarily, the Founding Fathers were concerned with the concept of law-abiding citizens – from whom our government is allowed to draw its power and legitimacy – being able to protect themselves from any abuses of power or overreaches of their particular mandates by those we elect to represent us in that government. This only makes sense, considering the nation-creating war our Founding Fathers just emerged from was sparked by exactly those kinds of governmental injustices. However, if the minds behind the Bill of Rights wanted to preserve our ability to protect ourselves from a tyrannical government (which they obviously did), do you really believe they would prefer us defenseless against mere people who would seek to deprive us of our rights just the same?
I think not. But, then, unlike anti-rights cultists, I tend to construct my thoughts off facts and reality, rather than baseless beliefs and specious assumptions.
(Courtesy of Mr. Young’s weblog.)
When I taught the Bill of Rights in my high school U.S. History classes, this is exactly how I explained the 2nd Amendment. I reminded my students that the 2nd Amendment was not about duck hunting. It was about the ability of an armed citizenry to resist an abusive Government. Unfortunately, I was a minority amongst my Lib-Cong collegues.
Would that we had more teachers – at all levels – like you… Were that the case, I might not have quite as dim a view for our country.