Americans historically have not just believed in the “right” to bear arms, but they have, more importantly, claimed an actual republican duty of all Americans to bear arms.
Every two years at Hillsdale College, I have the immense privilege of teaching three of our upper-level U.S. survey courses: American Founding (1753-1806); Democratic America (1807-1848); and Sectionalism and American Civil War (1849-1877). Though I have taught these courses now for eighteen years, I never find them anything but fresh and revelatory. And, of course, I’m always humbled and inspired to talk about the times, the ideas, and the men and women involved. I can state with certainty that there have been many, many times when Americans have proven themselves not only worthy of history, but also worthy of the very essence of humanity itself.
Though written by a Brit, these lines serve many American women and men well.
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done;
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
—Alfred Lord Tennyson
After a year of immense violence, at home and abroad, the subject of gun ownership is a sticky one, even at a place like Hillsdale. Let me state from the outset of this essay that I do not belong—nor have I ever belonged—to the National Rife Assosication or any equivalent group. That said, I grew up with guns of all shapes and sizes and variable firepower. Additionally, I love the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Second Amendment is not just a right; it is an utter necessity to American freedom.
Having grown up as a libertarian in America, I am used to referring to the “right” to bear arms. As I study American history, however, I continually find that Americans historically have not just believed in the “right” to bear arms, but they have, more importantly, claimed an actual republican duty of all Americans to bear arms.
Aside from the pacifist Quakers, almost all colonial Americans believed it essential for personal well-being to defend oneself with personal arms. Granted, they generally armed themselves to fend off wild animals, American Indians, and phantom Roman Catholic papist-invaders, but arm themselves they did.
In the founding period, 1761-1793, Americans of every political persuasion believed that all citizens had not just the equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but that they had to secure such rights through the ownership of weapons for personal defense. Just as no man turned to the government for his rights (given to him by Nature and/or God, not by positive law or government), he did not rely on a standing army to defend him or his loved ones. The true man bore arms as a duty, to protect himself, his family, his hearth, his ideas, and his faith.
If one expected to live as a free person, he must be willing to live and die as a free person. Perhaps one of the greatest paradoxes in the history of freedom is that there is no freedom and never has been without immense sacrifices. If you (yes, you) are not willing to defend what is yours, you have no right to its security. At least this was the thinking of American republicans at the time of the founding and well through the American Civil War.
Such has been the case in Western civilization since its origins at the Gates of Fire, as the 300 Sparatans gave their lives for the glory and honor of Hellas.
This attitude also helps explain why throughout Western civilization armed men are free men and vice versa. Hence, Americans always held a very mixed attitude toward the American Indian. While, on one hand, we saw them as savages, on the other hand, we deeply respected their willingness to lay down their lives for hearth and home. Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo each fought vehemently against the United States, and each is a wonderfully American hero in his own way. The same is equally true of slave rebels such as Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner.
In 1863, through the state government of Massachusetts, Abraham Lincoln formed the first all-black regiments. They not only performed ably, they performed gloriously.
Beginning in January 1864, under the initial direction of the Irish Confederate General, Patrick Cleburne, the Confederacy argued fiercely about whether or not to arm black men, in order to defend the homeland. When the Confederate Congress refused to act, President Jefferson Davis issued General Order 14 on March 13, 1865: “No slave will be accepted as a recruit unless with his own consent.” Should he take up arms against the Union, the Confederate government would recognize him as possessing all of the “rights of a freeman,” Davis’s order concluded. In other words, the Confederate States of America would have ended slavery with or without the Thirteenth Amendment. President Davis’s order came far too late, for the first black troops to benefit from this order would not be trained or equipped by the time Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia in April of 1865.
As I type this essay, I appreciate the grave fears that many Americans have about personal ownership of firearms. It would also be foolish to ignore the outrageously complicated laws across these United States dealing with the manufacture, the sale, the possession, and the carrying of private firearms.
Additionally, one only has to see the typical response by the United States government since the horrific tragedies of 9/11. Since that fateful day, the government has created a myriad of new police forces, spy agencies, and bureaucracies to “protect” the American people from terrorism. If any of these new creations have succeeded directly, the United States government has not proclaimed their successes.
While I believe that the denial of our Second Amendment rights is utterly and completely unconstitutional, both sides of the debate speak in terms of “rights”—which is understandable given that the Second Amendment is in the “Bill of Rights,” and the actual language of the text is in terms of “rights.”
I wonder, however, if the debate would find some clarity if we instead spoke and wrote in terms of a “duty to bear arms” rather than a “right to bear arms.” Certainly for the vast majority of America’s history, as noted above, it was as expected that a man would defend himself as it was that he would feed himself. In a famous 1921 case, Brown v United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, “A man is not born to run away.”
While I believe forcing an American citizen to bear arms is as unconstitutional as denying his right to bear arms, I would certainly appreciate a society that encouraged the safe use of arms, beginning at the youngest age possible. Imagine how many crimes could be prevented—especially those involving the innocent—if the perpetrator had to think about his actions and their likely consequences should he initiate undue force and violence against another. Further, imagine how many fewer violations of our civil liberties there would be by law officials. Still further, imagine how difficult it would be for any of our foes to cross our oceans and invade if they knew the extremely high cost such an invasion would incur. We know that by roughly 1778 or 1779, Parliament knew it could not defeat the American population, not because of the Continental Army (which is greatly disliked), but because it would have to commit genocide to rid itself of the citizen militias. The British, thank God, were not willing to take the war to such a level.
We often teach our young to be responsible and to be virtuous. We hope they will become independent in religious matters, economics matters, and political matters. Why not in matters of personal defense? If we can trust each man with the vote, certainly we can trust each person with personal protection.
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The featured image is a photograph of “John M. Browning, the inventor of the gun [left], and Mr. Burton, the Winchester expert on rifles, discussing the finer points of the Browning Light Gun (BAR) at the Winchester Plant” (c. 1918), and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Hello Bradley, I understand the American constitution says the right to bear arms in a well organised militia what are your thoughts on this. I am but one off your many Australian fans and we don’t have the gun culture like America I suspect because we have’t had a civil war. Also I have a read a couple of good articles on your President Washington on Imaginative Conservative lately are you able to recommend a good book so that I may learn more about him.
And please keep up the good articles
Regards
Anthony
Dear Anthony, thank you so much for your good words, and, believe me, I know that my non-American friends think I’m crazy when it comes to guns. I understand. As someone who comes from a culture that treated guns with immense respect (and they were everywhere when I was a kid), I find it equally odd that others don’t share my views. Clearly, there’s a huge divide. I do think, however, that republican thought across the generations supports the right to self-defense. It doesn’t have to be guns–but pepper spray! Anyway, I really appreciate the caution and the good words. As to Washington, you can’t do better than Brookheiser’s biographical essay of him. Yours, in thanks, Brad
Hello Anthony…Welcome to one of our Australian friends and allies!
The right you refer to as “in a well-organized militia” is actually a personal individual right held by the people, and the individual as the smallest subset of the people…
The clause “well-organized militia” explain the purpose and advantage of every man who is able to keep and bear arms to the maintenance of our security as a people, but it is not a right held by the collective militia only, but by the individual as the smallest participant unit of the militia who’s right is secured by the Second Amendment,,,
Just as other amendments (the first ten making up the Bill of Rights) mention “the right of the people” to worship, assemble and speak freely, secure those individual rights…
This clause is variously misunderstood and/or misconstrued depending on the agenda of the person or group doing so…
There are many scholarly source of much better explanation than my humble attempt.
Good to hear from a freedom-loving friend from “down-under”…
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Notice that the right to keep and bear arms is clarified as belonging to “THE PEOPLE”. Not the people who serve in the militia or dont, not for the people to serve in the Militia. But reaffirming the god given right to self defense and acknowledging the need for arms to accomplish this.
No, Richard, the right of the people to bear arms was directly related to the need of a well-regulated militia, as is obvious from the plain wording of the amendment. The militia was made up of all the able-bodied men of each area, who needed to own firearms because they had to bring their own weapons with them. They didn’t join a distant army that issued them guns. No private ownership of guns, no militia.
The mutilating of plain English does a disservice to the cause of gun ownership.
Duty is certainly the better term. US Code Title 10 paragraphs 311 and 312 point out that if you’re not on the list of exceptions, you’re a member of the militia.(Or if you’re as old as I am, but whatever.) From there we can discuss whether or not your rifles are up to spec for doing your duty. Since the US cannot keep a spare 100M service arms on hand, our arms should at least use whatever ammunition our respective State Guard units have stockpiled. How well trained or provisioned to do one’s duty as a militia member is up to the individual, sadly.
A precision perhaps worth noting: “A man has always a right to self-defense, but he does not have, in all times and places, a right to carry a drawn sword.” (Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (7th ed.; p. 22).
Mr. Birzer,
I am a Swiss-American dual citizen and did my military service in Switzerland in 1998 – 2005. I have long considered the 2nd Amendment to be tragically mis-worded. The “right” should be the “duty”.
Carrying a weapon is an awesome responsibility which has been tragically lost in this country. My government gave me that responsibility at 19 by not only putting a SIG 550 in my hand but mandating that I should keep it in my home and demonstrating proficiency with it. I believe this should be the minimum standard for gun ownership.
I believe that a constitutional amendment to that one word would allow the United States to legally and politically corral that genie. As putting it back in the bottle would be a fools errand.
Gun ownership in Switzerland is granted by the federal government. Here It is claimed in opposition to it. Therefore gun owners in this country are de facto positioning themselves in opposition to their country via a right granted to them by same. This is a cognitive dissonance which cannot continue to stand.
The US should pay off all gun owners for the value of any guns of military use while allowing their owners to keep them. On the proviso that these guns and their owners be registered.This would be the definition of what constitutes a “patriot”.
This country needs to reclaim that word, and the responsibility that goes with it.
The second amendment has never been about “personal protection”. It is about protection of the State. It is time for the State to remind us of that.
Best regards,
Jean-Frederic Monod
Sarasota, FL