The Triangle

Issue date: 6/4/04 Section: Ed-Op

With the Million Mom March coming to an unsuccessful close, I think this would be a good time to tackle the timeless argument surrounding the Second Amendment to our Constitution. There are three basic positions on the second amendment: those who believe in the absolute right to bear arms, those who believe in a modernization of the amendment and those who believe in its absolute abolition. While I can understand the argument for modernization of gun laws, the idea of effectively erasing our Second Amendment is ridiculous and dangerous. To disarm the people would be to effectively control them without the checks and balances from the citizens.

The Second Amendment, along with the others in the Bill of Rights, are not granted to us by the Constitution. Rather, they are guaranteed by the constitution because the rights enumerated are ours as humans for no one person or body to take and give as they please. The rights aren't given to us in the first place, so who is any one person or body to take them away? There are two extremely important reasons that this right was guaranteed. First, the government cannot be entrusted to constantly keep watch over the citizen's safety and protection of their property. The Supreme Court upheld that police departments are responsible for protecting society as a whole and not the individual, so in essence, you can expect society will benefit overall from their presence, but it is not guaranteed that you as an individual will. Being able to carry a weapon in self-defense insures that you are in control of your own life, not the mugger.

The second, and most important reason for the existence of the Second Amendment, is the protection of the people from tyrannical government and enemies of foreign origin. As a whole, the importance of an armed group of citizens to the security of our free state is imperative. While a highly improbable scenario, the ability for the people to form a new government from the collapsed remnants of a tyrannical one is not only our right, but our duty. Our Founding Fathers knew that no one system was perfect, so our current government is always in pursuit of a more perfect union, not a flawless one. I do not wish the destruction of the current government and, while it has it's problems, it serves the people better than any government in the world. To have a backup, however, if a body were to dissolve the Constitution, prepares us to take back our rights by any means necessary.

Continued...

Page 1 of 4 next >

Article Tools