“The Founding Fathers didn’t and couldn’t envision the modern world!”

Indeed.

They couldn’t have imagined that the nation they created would have devolved to one that took half of many people’s income. The Boston Tea Party was over a 3 pence per pound tax on tea. Tea at the time cost from 7.5-16 shillings. At 12 pence per shilling, that’s a 1.5-3% tax rate.

They couldn’t have imagined that the federal government would grow to the size it has, or that the state would be as intrusive into people’s lives as it is, or that the many rights they considered so obvious and inherent that they merely gathered them under the umbrella of the 9th Amendment rather than enumerating them would be so degraded as to barely even exist any more.

They couldn’t have imagined the invasive searches that occur at airports.

They couldn’t have imagined the incredible loss of economic liberty through licensing and regulation.

They couldn’t have imagined the monstrousness of disarming the German population, then rounding up and killing six million Jews. They couldn’t have imagined 50 million murdered by government in Red China’s Great Leap Forward. They couldn’t have imagined Stalin’s murder of 20-30 million Russians. They couldn’t have imagined 800,000 Tutsis slaughtered in a mere 100 days. They couldn’t have imagined the Great Purge, or the Armenian genocide, or the Greek/Pontic genocide, or the Bosnian genocide, or the Rape of Nanking, or the Cambodian genocide.

Think those atrocities of recent history could not happen here? Early gun laws were intended to keep blacks disarmed, and that meant that lynchings and the KKK got to have a free run of things. Oh, and remember that bit of American history, the Wounded Knee massacre? Obviously, the numbers were small, but the principle was the same. An unarmed populace could not defend itself against a murderous and tyrannical government, and the mass slaughters listed in the previous paragraph were perpetrated against disarmed populaces.

THAT is why we have the Second Amendment. THAT is why the FFs specifically protected the right of the People to keep and bear arms. The People, not government-run militias, not police departments, not national guards, not other arms of the government. The same People whose freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, etc are protected in the same Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is written to protect individuals’ rights from an intrusive government.

Furthermore, the FFs couldn’t have imagined a nation where a citizen could not carry arms with which to defend himself, and would be utterly amazed that the proposed response to the mass shootings that prompt this essay’s opening question was to further disarm the citizenry.

Certainly, the FFs did not envision the modern world. If we want to consider that they missed their mark, the modern world tells us that they were too naive and trusting, and didn’t build enough protections into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Many of the Founding Fathers felt the Bill of Rights was superfluous, given that the Constitution listed that which the government was permitted to do. They argued that anything not enumerated in the Constitution as a government power was obviously not permitted, and that listing specific things the government was not allowed to do would muddy that message. These FFs never envisioned a government that would keep pecking away at the limits the Constitution emplaced, that would keep torturing the plain language of the Interstate Commerce Clause, the General Welfare Clause, and the Necessary and Proper clause, and that would ignore in a wholesale fashion the premise that the government is permitted to do what the Constitution says, and no more.

Fortunately, the Anti-Federalists insisted on a Bill of Rights, and I dread to think of the state of our rights were one not included. Sadly, despite the language of the 9th Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

too many people today feel that, if it’s not specifically protected by the Constitution, a right doesn’t exist. Rights so obvious they didn’t warrant enumeration, like freedom of association, freedom of travel, and freedom of contract, have been trampled into the mud. If we could convey 20/20 hindsight to those lovers of liberty and distrusters of government that founded the nation, I suspect that they would have (after recoiling in horror), written additional protections into the Bill of Rights and strengthened the Second Amendment.

So,

Gun rights lesson #132: Had the Founding Fathers envision the modern world, the Bill of Rights would be twice as long, and our gun rights would be even more protected.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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