An Individual Right

by Keeva

(July 15, 2001) "Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizen to bear arms is just one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."

That is one heck of a quote right there. Take a minute and read it again. Good. We'll be getting back to it.

Just this past week, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the policy of the US Department of Justice would be that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, confers an individual right, and not a "collective" right as had been the Department's position for the last quarter-century. Folks, this is the big news.

Sure, Attorney General Ashcroft's proposal to flush the records of approved NICS checks after one day was big and provoked an outcry (well, more like an out-whimper) from the other side, which the White House answered with a very strong commitment to our Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Sure, the US delegate to that obscene UN conference on "small arms" stood up at the very beginning and made it clear that the US would not support any document that might affect our rights as Americans. And that provoked another whimper from the anti-gun crowd.

But the change in US policy towards the Second Amendment pretty much shook the foundation of the anti-gunners' entire agenda. After all, if it is an individual right, then they should not be trying to take it away. Then the ACLU, NAACP and NOW might have to side with the NRA on the issue. Imagine the shudders that ran through Sarah Brady and her fellow travelers at all those so-called civil rights organizations. Imagine the anguished conference calls over just how to advocate the denial of an Individual Right. So, once all logical arguments failed, they dipped into their emergency statement bag and came out with...The NRA as Satan.

Not exactly original, but it has worked in the past. And this time, they got to point at a Republican President and Attorney General and make all those noises about the "ultra-right wing" or as NAACP Chairman Julian Bond put it so sweetly, "the Taliban of the Republican Party." Which brings us back to that quote I started with. That one paragraph is adequate to stop almost every Democratic, "liberal" and anti-gunner objection to the Bush Administration's actions. Even the great and intolerant Julian Bond would have to stop at this one.

See, that isn't Chuck Heston, John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney or even Ronald Reagan. Hell, it isn't even a Republican. It is something that then Senator Hubert Humphrey told GUNS Magazine in February, 1960. That simple and ever true statement up there came from one of the great and lasting icons of the Democratic Party and one of the men most responsible for opening the way to equal rights for all, and especially for women. The same man that made it clear that all Americans were entitled to all their rights and was willing to fight for it.

That seat in the US Senate now belongs to Paul Wellstone (D-MN). I cannot help but wonder how he feels when he is making one of his impassioned pleas to curtail the rights of Americans if he is even vaguely aware of the historical irony at work. He and his cohorts care not one whit about their actual history. Certainly not any history that they find no longer fits. I would not be surprised to hear Chucko Schumer, Barbara Boxer and Hillary do all manner of linguistic contortions to put some kind of anti-gun spin on it. But some stuff is unspinnable.

The sentiments and beliefs of the Happy Warrior (as Senator Humphrey was known) are as clear as day in that statement. There is no wiggle and no spin and no twist. No equivocations and no legalistic mumbo-jumbo. There is only the simple truth, shining brightly and with beauty. Shining with a light that the foes of freedom cannot bear. For it is the truth that they most fear, and it is the truth that will finally win out.