Gun Rights Lesson #790 – Weapons of War

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope.

“Civilians Should Not Possess Weapons of War!”

This assertion, recently and embarrassingly put forth by the Court Of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, is a classic example of anti-gun arguments rooted in nothing more than personal bias and emotional ploy. It pulled, out of thin air, a new “test” for whether a firearm can justifiably be owned by civilians (an inherent and inalienable right set forth in the Second Amendment and affirmed by the Supreme Court). That test, described in detail in a splendid deconstruction of this idiotic and unconstitutional decision over at National Review, applies a “most useful in military service” metric to, in this case, “assault weapons” and high capacity magazines.

Rather than echo NR’s analysis** here (which dismantles the “weapons of war” exclusion), I instead posit that the Second Amendment affirms our right, as citizens, to possess “weapons of war.” The Second Amendment was written by people who had a distrust of government and of the government’s standing armies, and recognized that liberty was best defended when the populace had access to arms. These arms could serve in the defense of the nation against foreign enemies, or in defense of liberty against a tyrannical government. I touch on this topic in Gun Rights Lessons #378, #633, #918, and the forthcoming #404 (The Militia) and #419 (High Capacity Magazines).

This “most useful in military service” exclusion thus runs completely afoul of a major premise of the Second Amendment – that the citizenry be armed in case it is called upon to defend the nation – and should not, in any rational world, survive a Supreme Court challenge. It’s a wholesale fabrication whose sole purpose is an attempt to validate a position that runs afoul of individual rights, the Constitution, court precedent and rational analysis. It starts with the conclusion that “assault weapons” (that eye-of-the-beholder term that has been popularized by anti-gun politicians, activists and press) are Bad and should be banned, and offers some spaghetti “logic” to support that conclusion. It’s hogwash, it’s an attempt to nibble away at our gun rights, and if unchallenged, will only encourage further baseless infringements of our gun rights.

** As a footnote, lets go ahead and consider the “most useful in military service” test. The military does not use AR-15s, despite their being the most popular style of rifle in America today. It uses the M-16 and the M-4, both of which look like AR-15s, but which have functionality that the AR-15s do not. The Circuit Court argued that the lack of the M-16’s full-auto functionality in the AR-15 make it theoretically more lethal than the M-16 – as if lethality and accuracy are functions that only the military requires. If so, why doesn’t the military prefer AR-15s over M-16s. The Fourth Circuit ruling attempts to rewrite the landmark Heller decision, and the sooner SCOTUS smacks it down, the better.

So,

Gun rights lesson #790: Citizens are supposed to have access to weapons of war. It is with this access that liberty can be defended from its enemies, foreign and domestic.

• 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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