Besides a son that went through A&M, I’ve a daughter that graduated this spring and I can honestly say it would have been a non-issue to everyone with an interest.
The “would” for my daughter is because she’s attending U of Ala. and hasn’t an issue about guns. My son went through the concealed carry class but doesn’t - he just thought it be a good idea from a practical standpoint.
There is another way to look at this.
Civics and government discussion are not automatically political in nature. To not be able to discus the duties and rights of citizens vs the duties and powers of government would be to reduce all conversation to the level of understanding of a 6th grader. if something is happening to citizens or asked of citizens, the conversation is worthless without the fundamental context of who, what, and why.
I would agree that if the thread devolved into a back and forth fight of which political party or person was correct in doing X, then I agree that such threads would be considered political.
However, to simply define and debate differences in what posters’ views as duties and rights of citizens and what are duties and powers of government is a necessary component when discussing the creation and passage of legislation.
And as to the issue of limiting the discussion on whether/how guns would work on Texas campus, that specific question cannot be divorced from the fact someone or something in authority has to define what is meant by “working” and also whether they have the “right” and “power” to effect the changes they mat=y deem necessary. Thus, that specific issue really cannot be discussed without debating the state and federal government powers and the rights of citizens.
There is no reply I can give that would be clearer, as to intent of the 2nd Amendment, than the words directly from the minds and pens of the Founding Fathers and others who set up the US republic:
“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”
It is a shame we do not give the letters of the Founders to students to read and depend only on hogwash from biased historians. The entire concept here is that Jefferson, while part of government, knew that government must be kept in line by the thought (fear) it cannot roughshod the people. Again, note, he too says nothing that arms limited to the military or national guard or anything of the sort.
“I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.”
Expressly for those who keep saying the militia only refers to the National Guard and military. Kind of hard to define the “whole” people, as the only the National Guard and military. And this was stated as the Constitution was up for ratification and it was at these times the Founders had to be clear about what they meant to influence people that the government they were setting up was truly for and by the people.
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.”
This is very telling on how the Founders viewed the disarmed people of Europe, as a absolute negative to individual freedom.
Please note again that, as all the Founding Fathers did, they took a qualitative distinction between an armed military and an armed citizenry. And they purposely made the same distinction in the Constitution. They set up the armed military as a defense power of the Federal government in Article 2. They also set up the 2nd Amendment in the Bill of Rights, as the defense power of the citizenry just in case the people had to fight a tyrannical military. The Founders viewed the people as the ultimate fighting force to stop a rogue military, if need be.
“The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
Quote speaks for itself.
The above is but a small sample of what the Founders said. All can be found in the Smithsonian archives etc. To best learn what the Founders believed, instead of reading history books found in schools, it is more enlightening to read their letters to each other and the speeches they gave. Nothing like getting it directly from the horse’s mouth.
^^^ Excellent.
On the topic:
If it’s a for or against vote, then I’m against concealed carry guns on campus. Certainly wouldn’t want my kid’s dorm roommate to have a gun in the room.
Regarding the Founding Fathers…to only cite isolated quotes is looking at the issue with blinders on. You have to look at what laws they made, what actions they took, you’d have to study more closely the historical context of such letters and cross reference them to what others were writing at the same time. That’s what historians do.
The Founders were certainly not in support of the notion that the people should be able to take arms against the government when they felt aggrieved about something (taxes in particular.) The constitution includes the right of the government to quell insurrection and rebellion, hence you have Washington sending 13,000 militia men from three states to put down the armed citizens rebelling in the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 and five years later Adams used militia and federal troops to halt armed rebellion against property taxes in western PA.
The 2nd Amendment says citizens have the right to bear arms, not that the right should have no restrictions, and that was true in the Founders day as well.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/
“To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.”
–John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the United States 475 (1787-1788)
I don’t find any point in arguing about gun rights - which btw I support (though I don’t support distorted and/or nonsensical arguments). But take the Jefferson letter: it isn’t to James Madison, as every single ridiculous website repeats, but to William S. Smith, who is mostly known in history as John Adams’ son-in-law. All these websites attempt to link this Jefferson quote to Madison to draw a direct line to the writing of the Constitution. (William Stephens Smith, besides being married to Nabby Adams, was the first US Marshal in NY when the Presidency was there.) Another example of poor history being passed off wrongly to make a fake political argument.
As to the contents, I doubt 1 in 1000 of the quoters of this letter has read the entirety. His point is the exact opposite of how the letter is used: he says, in essence - and I’ll quote it - that there will be idiots and some idiots will, every once in a while, rebel and we will put them down, even kill them, and then we should pardon the rest because they’re idiots who didn’t know better. He doesn’t mean people should be armed so they can rebel but rather that because the people are “misinformed” it is to be expected they will rise up out of ignorance and that should be accepted because, bluntly, it doesn’t matter much if you have to kill some of them.
Jefferson came at this in two contexts: Shay’s Rebellion and British history. He’s quite blunt that Britain’s problem is the people and the government have perpetuated lies for so long they believe them (and he says we used to believe them too). He was not just a revolutionary but was put in charge of defining the reasons why the Americans should separate and end their political connection to Britain, so he had a very detailed picture of why the British accepted what the Americans did not. His second context is Shay’s Rebellion and he makes clear his belief that it wasn’t a big deal, that if some ignorant Americans rebel and the government has to kill them, that means the country is fine. A big part of American political argument then was what to do about the participants in Shay’s Rebellion and Jefferson joined the side that said they were misled and should be forgiven.
My personal favorite part of this letter is this: “The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.” This is Jefferson the intellectual at his snobbiest. I love it. He was not a man of the people. (John Adams was much more a man of the people, though he is not remembered this way.)
Some websites also distort the final lines of the letter. Jefferson frames the letter by referring to his significant issues with a leader staying in office indefinitely. It is fairly clear - to me and historians generally - that he sees this as the enabling factor which makes a country like Britain susceptible (in his mind) to a long history of lying which the people accept. Nothing to do with guns at all. Here’s that part: “What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: & what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life.” He returns to this at the end of the letter.
Here is the entire letter and, yes, it would be great if people were given letters from men like Jefferson to read but only if they actually get the letter and not some website’s repeated distortions and lies about them. AFAIK, the misspellings and punctuation are as in the handwritten original.
– I am now to acknoledge the receipt of your favors of October the 4th, 8th, & 26th. In the last you apologise for your letters of introduction to Americans coming here. It is so far from needing apology on your part, that it calls for thanks on mine. I endeavor to shew civilities to all the Americans who come here, & will give me opportunities of doing it: and it is a matter of comfort to know from a good quarter what they are, & how far I may go in my attentions to them. Can you send me Woodmason’s bills for the two copying presses for the M. de la Fayette, & the M. de Chastellux? The latter makes one article in a considerable account, of old standing, and which I cannot present for want of this article. – I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: & very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: & what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent & persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independent 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen-yard in order. I hope in God this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted. – You ask me if any thing transpires here on the subject of S. America? Not a word. I know that there are combustible materials there, and that they wait the torch only. But this country probably will join the extinguishers. – The want of facts worth communicating to you has occasioned me to give a little loose to dissertation. We must be contented to amuse, when we cannot inform.
That is the Supreme Court’s position as well. States are free to pass (or not) reasonable restrictions on gun ownership as long as the restrictions are not so draconian as to serve as a de facto ban on commonly owned firearms. For example, the Supreme Court just refused to take up a case challenging San Francisco’s regulation that handguns be stored under lock and key.
The key point is that Texas is allowed to not restrict gun possession on a public campus. Some other state is allowed to restrict the same thing. Different strokes for different states. And, ultimately, we get data to learn whether one approach works better or not. For example, it’s pretty clear at this point that the nation’s most restrictive gun laws haven’t produced lower murder rates in Baltimore, New York, or Chicago than in Houston.
The most recent stats I found in a quick search were 24 murders per month in the first three months of 2015 in Houston (pop. 2,200,000) compared to 100 murders per month this year in Baltimore ( pop 622,000). On a per capita basis, the murder rate in Baltimore would have to fall from 100 per month to 7 per month to match the murder rate in “gun crazy” Houston. It is simply impossible to make the case that draconian gun laws in Baltimore make the city safer.
Re Post #205:
My first thought when I read the quote was “Well, duh!”
All the passage does is affirms the Founders’ view of the private individual and the right of said individual to private self-defense, i.e., not being dependent on police or military to defend his person.
Additionally, the passage affirms the Founders knew guns were deadly (well, duh again - they used guns to defeat the King), and therefore civil, courteous behavior is expected of new American citizens who are afforded the right to carry firearms. In simple English, guns should not be used simply to strong-arm your way in a dispute, as that is what the courts were for.
More importantly, John Adams was not making this argument in the defense of not having citizens have guns; he was making this argument to assuage anyone who thought that citizens with guns would develop into chaos.
Let’s actually read what John Adams says instead of making up that he is talking about disarming private citizens, because he is not.
The key to this sentence lies in the bolded passage above. These are actually the uses of guns in the hands of private citizens that Adams deemed acceptable and that he expected. Linguistically, theses uses are expected because they are exceptions to other potential uses someone can think of.
The rest of the sentence simply affirms that private citizens cannot use guns to force their will on other private citizens or else government would be effectively dissolved because there would be no civil society. Nothing more. Have dispute of a non-physial nature, then use the courts.
Another way to think of it is what I have been saying in other posts. That is, it is illegal to use one’s gun during an argument about a place in line at Starbucks, the grocery store, or in a parking lot, etc. just to get your way. Obviously, if guns were allowed to be used this way then that truly “is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man…” However, if physically attacked in said line or if a criminal comes in and starts shooting up the place, then one can use one’s firearm to defend one’s private self.
Furthermore, this quote is doubly delicious because note that it is another stake in the heart of the 2nd Amendment refers only to the National Guard meme. Specifically, note the qualifying distinction Adams makes between “private self-defense” or “by partial orders of the town,”, i .e., if called to fight to defend the town. Guns were considered appropriate to use in both cases. The use of the conjunction “or” is joining two separate actions and means that defending the town is not treated as the same as private self-defense.
It would be rather difficult to defend your private self with a gun, if you did not have one, yet Adams thought you should be able to do as much.
This affirms what @interesteddad wrote in Post #207, and what I wrote above.
Guns cannot be used in any / all purposes and there can be laws governing use and states have the right to pass such laws, which restrict how guns are stored, carried, etc.
However, there is no such such restriction on the use of guns to limit private self-defense. Meaning, if someone attacks you or comes into your house or anywhere you are, you have the right to use a gun to stop the assault, which John Adams expects one do that as per this quote.
And the sentence must also be viewed in the context that the Founding Fathers viewed the militia as the “whole people.” This was stated many times at the ratifying conventions by many and no one tried to correct and say, “No, militia only means the military, state or federal, and the citizens should be disarmed.”
Back to present day - conceal carry permits (CCP) are the extension of what John Adams says here, and this quote is used to support the right of people to personally carry an firearm on his person.
It is pretty illogical to try to make the augment that when I leave my home that I am not taking my “private” self with me and if I am traveling in places, such as Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit, then I may come into the need of “private self-defense.” It is not to difficult to see why even Washington DC and other places are losing the CCP argument that they have the right to disarm people and limit their ability of “private self-defense.” Based on the above quote, John Adams would want it no other way than the ability to defend one private self with a firearm.
Nice strawman. Never said Adams wished to disarm private citizens. Your segment in bold should include the first part of the sentence: **To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except **…
because he is no doubt referring not only to using guns to settle arguments but to rebel against the legal government.
I posted it to counter the argument — not necessarily yours ---- that the 2nd Amendment was intended by the Founders to allow for the people to revolt against the government.
I just want to say this one time: it doesn’t matter what people think about Adams, etc. but what the Supreme Court rules and that is clearly that there is an individual right to own weapons. What bothers me is the rampant distortion of the founders actual sentiments and that this is offered in the name of “history” when 99% of it is misleading, often horribly wrong nonsense cut and pasted from one website to another.
Some of us think that it is ridiculous for anyone to claim there is only one “right” interpretation of historical events or quotes by historical figures. It is impossible to make that sort of claim about things that are happening and being said now.
This is an interesting and illuminating debate on the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution. Civil and intelligent. I’m enjoying it immensely. Please carry on!
Finally got the time to address Post #209.
Post #209 is the kind of statement that it makes it easy to see why people can easily get subjugated by government and think it is intellectually justified. When in fact, they become nothing, but slaves to the state.
It is interesting that rolling over for the state is considered OK by some. I say this because if citizens cannot vigorously defend themselves against the state, then the people have collectively rolled over. I posit the loss of all important freedom would not be too far behind.
With respect to understanding what a Republic is and how the parts of a Republic function, the intellectual and philosophical fallacies in the quote above are two-fold: 1) no adjective used to qualify “legal government,” and 2) the complete misunderstanding that “citizen” is a term that is applicable in reference to any the legal government as well.
Summarily, a legal government does not automatically mean a moral one; a legal government does not automatically mean one that respects the citizens’ rights; a legal government does not automatically mean one that does not abuse its citizens; and, a legal government does not automatically mean one that would peacefully step aside if rejected. It could be the best and fairest, but the legal government could also be the worst in each of these departments.
Historically, the position that Adams meant one should not use guns to rebel against legal government really falls apart before it even begins. It seems people need to be reminded that the government structure of the colonies was all legal and set-up quite properly by the British. They had courts and a robust judicial system etc.
The problem - as the colonies became more prosperous, this legal government became more and more corrupt and encroached on the colonists’ freedoms. All the various taxes and Acts imposed on the colonists were legally passed by the British-controlled magistrates or legally imposed as the King had the right to do as much under this legal government.
News Flash - the Founding Fathers did rebel and fight against the legitimate, legal government of the time. They lived through a legal government that over the years became more and more oppressive.
Therefore, it would be absolute cognitive dissonance for Adams who, himself, raised firearms and killed members of the legal government (British soldiers) to say attacking a legal government is off limits. He and the others believed their legal government was now abusing its powers; it had become immoral, unjust, abusive legal government, and he deemed it necessary to revolt against it.
It then follows that Adams would expect future American citizens to protect and follow the spirit in which he revolted and thus citizens implicitly have the right to rebel against a future legal government that becomes immoral, unjust, and abusive.
It is intellectually backwards to think Adams would deny future citizens the very tool he used to gain his and the colonists’ freedom.
Therefore, it follows, as the Founding Fathers amply demonstrated, if the legal government has been deemed to become abusive by the people, the private citizens have the right to raise arms against the legal government and change it by force, if said legal government refuses to step aside or change peacefully. There is a right of private self-defense against government!
Bottom line - it is rather wimpy and, frankly, un-American to think that if the legal government goes rogue (either state or federal) that the citizens should not have the option to raise arms, especially if the government exhibits similar to what the British did to the colonists.
Thus, the conclusion that the quote “no doubt” meant legal government should not be rebelled against with firearms is just made-up. One can make it up and believe if one wants, but I will go with the the more sure approach of If you want to understand what someone believes - watch what he does, i.e., actions speak louder than (made-up) words.
Since Adams revolted with firearms against his legal government, which turned increasingly corrupt and confiscatory, then I will follow his example, unless he explicitly takes back in writing and in his philosophy that fighting for and protecting freedom may require taking arms against the government, no matter how legal it was when conceived, instituted, or elected.
None of this matters: the Supreme Court has held there is an individual right to bear arms. Period. End of story.
BTW, Adams never killed anyone.
Good point, which is why it was so essential, I guess, to nip that whole citizenship debate in the bud, as it might apply to human chattel.
“Bottom line - it is rather wimpy and, frankly, un-American to think that if the legal government goes rogue (either state or federal) that the citizens should not have the option to raise arms, especially if the government exhibits similar to what the British did to the colonists.”
Bottom line is that it’s also very paranoid and tin foil hat to think our govt is about to “go rogue.”
You’re missing a somewhat critical point. The colonists had no vote, no representation in that government. Remember the “no taxation without representation” cry?
So they set up a government that was legitimate because it depended on the consent of the governed as established by representatives chosen by vote.
It makes absolutely no sense to say we as citizens vote for our representatives, but can take up arms against the government we ourselves vote in. That is what would be tyranny - that a militia with guns could override a duly elected government chosen by the majority.
If we’re talking history as opposed to current day political points, the context of the late 18thC was very different and those differences mean the debate then can never be put entirely into today’s terms, politics or no. To list a few of the main points:
In this context, the question of regulation of guns would have been very different. That was true later as well. Towns like Abilene and Dodge City during the cattle drive era required guns to be checked on arrival in town because the context recognized a difference between potential need outside of a town versus inside one (especially given the 19thC’s predilection for heavy drinking). As a note, as a project in college, I went through all the existing newspapers of towns like these and found almost no mention of gun violence, just brawls and the occasional knifing or clubbing (often by surprise). That was gun control before gun control became an issue of “fundamental rights”.
We today simplify the past to fit what we want to believe now. It wasn’t actually that way. My guess and it can only be a guess is that every single one of the founders would be horrified by the idea that guns are some sort of special right, that people have the right to carry weapons that cause mass fatalities, because they saw gun ownership and gun regulation in a context of that time. I also think they’d be horrified by the idea that weapons are to enable the population to arise because that is why they established the vote - and in context, the vote for a sufficient number of adult males so they considered that a form of universal suffrage. They believed the vote and representative government was the necessary protection against tyranny. If they specifically feared anything related to weapons, it was (and was said explicitly) the creation of a standing army and that was not because a political leader would use it but out of fear the army would take over.
I preface by saying our family does not own guns for a perceived need to protect against the government. Having said that, I think many people today, maybe even more than way back in history, might think our government is becoming more and more oppressive, with its police brutality, high numbers of incarcerated citizens, unbelievable numbers of laws on the books, even water rationing, etc. I’m not saying that this means we need to arm ourselves to stop government overstepping, just to refute your expressed derision that some think our present day government is oppressive. Perhaps some present day citizens do see their only recourse for protection against our unwieldy government to be guns.