Volume 3/Issue No. 5

A monthly newsletter

November 1997

All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain natural and unalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and of pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness. --Article I, Section 1, New Jersey State Constitution

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." (Richard Henry Lee, Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, initiator of the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which passed the Bill of Rights.)

"The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun." (Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution.)

"The advantage of being armed...the Americans possess over the peoples of all other nations. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several Kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, in the Federalist Papers No. 26.)

"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." (Second Amendment to the Constitution.)

In my studies as an attorney and as a United States Senator, I have constantly been amazed by the indifference or even hostility shown the Second Amendment by courts, legislatures, and commentators. James Madison would be startled to hear that his recognition of a right to keep and bear arms, which passed the House by a voice vote without objection and hardly a debate, has since been construed in but a single, and most ambiguous, Supreme Court decision, whereas his proposals for freedom of religion, which he made reluctantly out of fear that they would be rejected or narrowed beyond use, and those for freedom of assembly, which passed only after a lengthy and bitter debate, are the subject of scores of detailed and favorable decisions. Thomas Jefferson, who kept a veritable armory of pistols, rifles and shotguns at Monticello, and advised his nephew to forsake other sports in favor of hunting, would be astounded to hear supposed civil libertarians claim firearms ownership should be restricted. Samuel Adams, a handgun owner who pressed for an amendment stating that the "Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms," would be shocked to hear that his native state today imposes a year's sentence, without probation or parole, for carrying a firearm without a permit.

This is not to imply that the courts have totally ignored the impact of the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. No fewer than twenty-one decisions by courts of our states have recognized an individual right to keep and bear arms, and a majority of these have not only recognized the right but invalidated laws or regulations which abridged it. Yet in all too many instances, courts or commentators have sought, for reasons only tangentially related to constitutional history, to construe this right out of existence. They argue that the Second Amendment's words "right of the people" mean "a right of the state"--apparently overlooking the impact of those same words when used in the First and Fourth Amendments. The "rights of the people" to assemble or to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is not contested as an individual guarantee. Still they ignore consistency and claim that the right to "bear arms" relates only to military uses. This not only violates a consistent constitutional reading of "right of the people" but also ignores that the second amendment protects a right to "keep" arms. These commentators contend instead that the amendment's preamble regarding the necessity of a "well regulated militia...to a free state" means that the right to keep and bear arms applies only to a National Guard. Such a reading fails to note that the Framers used the term "militia" to relate to every citizen capable of bearing arms, and that Congress has established the present National Guard under its power to raise armies, expressly stating that it was not doing so under its power to organize and arm the militia.

When the first Congress convened for the purpose of drafting a Bill of Rights, it delegated the task to James Madison. Madison did not write upon a blank tablet. Instead, he obtained a pamphlet listing the State proposals for a bill of rights and sought to produce a briefer version incorporating all the vital proposals of these. His purpose was to incorporate, not distinguish by technical changes, proposals such as that of the Pennsylvania minority, Sam Adams, or the New Hampshire delegates. Madison proposed among other rights that "That right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person." In the House, this was initially modified so that the militia clause came before the proposal recognizing the right. The proposals for the Bill of Rights were then trimmed in the interest of brevity. The conscientious objector clause was removed following objections by Elbridge Gerry, who complained that future Congresses might abuse the exemption to excuse everyone from military service.

The proposal finally passed the House in its present form: "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." In this form it was submitted into the Senate, which passed it the following day. The Senate in the process indicated its intent that the right be an individual one, for private purposes, by rejecting an amendment which would have limited the keeping and bearing of arms to bearing "For the common defense".

The earliest American constitutional commentators concurred in giving this broad reading to the amendment. When St. George Tucker, later Chief Justice of the Virginia Supreme Court, in 1803 published an edition of Blackstone annotated to American law, he followed Blackstone's citation of the right of the subject "of having arms suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law" with a citation to the Second Amendment, "And this without any qualification as to their condition or degree, as is the case in the British government." William Rawle's View of the Constitution published in Philadelphia in 1825 noted that under the Second Amendment: "The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could be a rule of construction conceived to give to Congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both. "The Jefferson papers in the Library of Congress show that both Tucker and Rawle were friends of, and corresponded with, Thomas Jefferson. Their views are those of contemporaries of Jefferson, Madison and others, and are entitled to special weight. A few years later, Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution considered the right to keep and bear arms as "the palladium of the liberties of the republic", which deterred tyranny and enabled the citizenry at large to overthrow it should it come to pass.

Subsequent legislation in the second Congress likewise supports the interpretation of the Second Amendment that creates an individual right. In the Militia Act of 1792, the second Congress defined "militia of the United States" to include almost every free adult male in the United States. These persons were obligated by law to possess a firearm and a minimum supply of ammunition and military equipment. This statute, incidentally, remained in effect into the early years of the present century as a legal requirement of gun ownership for most of the population of the United States. There can be little doubt from this that when the Congress and the people spoke of a "militia", they has reference to the traditional concept of the entire populace capable of bearing arms, and not to any formal group such as what is today called the National Guard. The purpose was to create an armed citizenry, which the political theorists at the time considered essential to word off tyranny. From this militia, appropriate measures might create a "well regulated militia" of individuals trained in their duties and responsibilities as citizens and owners of firearms.

If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying--that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976--establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime.

Immediately upon assuming chairmanship of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, I sponsored the report which follows as an effort to study, rather than ignore, the history of the controversy over the right to keep and bear arms. Utilizing the research capabilities of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, the resources of the Library of Congress, and the assistance of constitutional scholars such as Mary Kaaren Jolly, Steven Halbrook, and David T. Hardy, the subcommittee has managed to uncover information on the right to deep and bear arms which documents quite clearly its status as a major individual right of American citizens. We did not guess at the purpose of the British 1689 Declaration of Rights; we located the Journals of the House of Commons and private notes of the Declaration's sponsors, now dead for two centuries. We did not make suppositions as to colonial interpretations of the Declaration's right to keep arms; we examined colonial newspapers which discussed it. We did not speculate as to the intent of the framers of the second amendment; we examined James Madison's drafts for it, his hand written outlines of speeches upon the Bill of Rights, and discussions of the second amendment by early scholars who were personal friends of Madison, Jefferson, and Washington and wrote while these still lived. What the Subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear--and long lost--proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms. The summary of our research and findings forms the first portion of this report.

In the interest of fairness and the presentation of a complete picture, we also invited groups which were likely to oppose this recognition of freedoms to submit their views. The statements of two associations who replied are reproduced here following the report of the Subcommittee. The Subcommittee also invited statements by Messrs. Halbrook and Hardy, and by the National Rifle Association, whose statements likewise follow our report.

When I became chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, I hoped that I would be able to assist in the protection of the constitutional rights of American citizens, rights which have too often been eroded in the belief that government could be relied upon for quick solutions to difficult problems.

Both as an American citizen and as a United States Senator I repudiate this view. I likewise repudiate the approach of those who believe to solve American problems you simply become something other than American. To my mind, the uniqueness of our free institutions, the fact that an American citizen can boast freedoms unknown in any other land, is all the more reason to resist any erosion of our individual rights. When our ancestors forged a land "conceived in liberty", they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against government interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men.

ORRIN G. HATCH
Subcommittee on the Commission
January 20, 1982

The right to keep and bear arms is a tradition with deep roots in American society. Thomas Jefferson proposed that "no free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms," and Samuel Adams called far an amendment banning any laws "to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." The Constitution of the United States, for example, recognizes the "right of an individual citizen to bear arms in the defense of himself or the State." Even though the tradition has deep roots, its application to modern America is the subject of intense controversy. Indeed, it is a controversy into which the Congress is beginning, once again, to immerse itself. I am personally disappointed that so important an issue should have generally been so thinly researched and so minimally debated both in Congress and the courts. Our Supreme Court has but once touched on its meaning at the Federal level and that decision, now nearly half-century old, is so ambiguous that any school of thought can find some support in it. All Supreme Court decisions on the second amendment's application to the States came in the last century, when constitutional law was far different than it is today. As ranking minority member of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, I, therefore, welcome the effort which led to this report--a report based not only upon the independent research of the subcommittee staff, but also upon full and fair presentation of the cases by all interested groups and individual scholars.

I personally believe that it is necessary for the Congress to amend the Gun Control Act of 1968. I welcome the opportunity to introduce this discussion of how best these amendments might be made.

The Constitution subcommittee staff has prepared this monograph bringing together proponents of both sides of the debate over the 1969 Act. I believe that the statements contained herein present the arguments fairly and thoroughly. I commend Senator Hatch, chairman of the subcommittee, for having this excellent reference work prepared. I am sure that it will be of great assistance to the Congress as it debates the second amendment and considers legislation to amend the Gun Control Act.

Dennis DeConcini
Ranking Minority Member
Subcommittee to the Constitution
January 20, 1982

Closing Note: The subcommittee report itself goes into the history of the Second Amendment and why each and every American citizen has an unalienable right to be armed. It makes for good reading and would certainly be well received by any militia group in the country. However, if the Constitution could speak for itself, it would probably quote Isaiah 29:13; "...For as much as this people [Congress] draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men." Legislation coming out of Congress isn't based on the dictates of the Constitution, but on "the precepts of men." In other words, Congress passes legislation based on what they think the Constitution should have said, or how they would have written the Constitution--not how it's actually written. Our judiciary interprets the Constitution in the same manner.

You only need to look at the legislation passed since this subcommittee report: The assault weapon ban, the Brady Bill, and a host of other firearm and ammunition restriction laws. Has anyone seen an amendment to the Gun Control Act of 1968 as DeConcini proposed 15 years ago? No one in Congress will touch that sacred cow--it's become an object of worship to the liberals.

"I dream of the hour when the last Congressman is strangled to death on the guts of the last preacher--and since the Christians love to sing about the blood, why not give them a little of it." -- Gus Hall, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA, February 1961

"I also made it clear that Socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under Socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not the character and industry enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner; but whilst you were permitted to live you would have to live well [emphasis added]." -- George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide To Socialism

If any of our readers would care to explain to us how you execute someone in a "kindly manner", feel free to write us and explain because we can't figure it out.

The above quote is from the book Creating a New Civilization by Alvin and Heidi Toffier. Not only does Newt Gingrich endorse this book--he wrote the foreword to it!!!

If this weren't enough to enliven your spirits, PRNewswire released a report entitled: "Changing The Way We Pay."

"Cash and checks will become an endangered species," said Visa International CEO Edmund P. Jensen accompanied by six Visa regional presidents at a news conference.

"Demand for convenience, globalization and large new markets are driving technological advances to create new ways to pay. Chip cards, combined with the Internet, will transform the way we shop, allowing consumers to conduct safe electronic transactions anytime and anywhere in the world. And chip cards will literally put a bank in the consumer's pocket. In five years, more than one billion Visa cards will be in use and up to a third of those cards will be chip cards--and that's just the start," said Jensen.

Anyone who has read Apocalyptic prophecies in the Bible will soon realize that we are entering a dangerous period in our history.

How about the 3,000 people the IRS notified in 1993 that they each owed $4 billion in back taxes?

How about the Philadelphia chemical firm that was penalized nearly $47,000 because the IRS determined that its tax payment of $4,448,112.88 was a dime short?

The IRS spent $8 billion to overhaul its computer programs. What it got for all that money, a top official admitted, are systems that "do not work in the real world."

The federal tax agency sends out some 30 million tax penalty notices every year. Nearly half erroneous!

As the tax deadline approaches each year, the IRS invites taxpayers to call its toll-free number with questions. When they do call in, millions are given the wrong answers. When those callers rely on those wrong answers, they are slapped with interest, penalties and liens on their property. The Heritage Foundation documented some of the IRS' ineptitude. Here are a few examples:

The number of times the IRS gave the wrong answer in 1993 to taxpayers seeking assistance: 8.5 million.

The percentage of its own budget for which the IRS could not account in an audit: 64%.

The number of correction notices sent out by the IRS each year that turned out to be wrong: 5 million.

The number of women wrongly fined each year because they get divorced or re-married: 3 million.

The number of taxpayers whose old age benefits will be cut because the IRS doesn't properly record their tax payments: 10 million.

As the IRS Code grows ever more complex, it becomes easier for agents to find something wrong with any tax return. The existing tax code has become a source of unfathomable power for IRS agents--and power corrupts. In a survey of IRS officials in 1991, three-fouths said they would probably not be "completely honest" if they had to testify before Congress. Nearly half admitted they would use their position to harass personal enemies."

The above biblical quote is Ohio's state motto --but not for long if the ACLU has its way. "The state is not supposed to pick a favorite religion," said ACLU Executive Director Christine Link.

Characteristically, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to try and force the state of Ohio to change its motto.

"Under the First Amendment of the Constitution, the government is supposed to be neutral and neither supportive nor hostile to religion. The state's promotion of Christianity in this manner violates that neutrality," said Link.

The true purpose of the First Amendment was to prevent the government from establishing a state religion--at the expense of other denominations by persecution, such as William Penn experienced from the Church of England. Ohio's state motto does not, in any form, violate the First Amendment.

Dear Mr. Dickey,

Thank you for your letter requesting a copy of the Attorney General's opinion regarding resolutions submitted by the [New Jersey Safety] Committee.

Opinions issued to the Commission by the Attorney General's Office are privileged documents in an attorney-client relationship. As such, they are not available for public dissemination.

Should you have further questions...[blah, blah, blah].

Sincerely,

Terrence D. Moore
Executive Director

To Militias and Patriots nationally,

It's with extreme caution after 16 years duty with the minutemen, that I break silence with the major media. Kevin Harris is a beloved and respected citizen of Republic, Washington. It is my opinion that Ruby Ridge will not be settled by current events in Idaho. U.S. Senator Arlen Spector has stated that the book cannot be closed. Indeed not; Ruby Ridge remains too intertwined with federal agency behavior in Waco, Texas.

I appeal as an Administrative Commander for Washington State Unorganized militia, that you help me launch an immediate national campaign to unite America in petitioning the Congress for effective and final redress of this matter. Equally, it is appealed that we encourage responsible citizen behavior during the potential upcoming trials in Idaho. The citizens of Republic stand united for a peaceful reinstatement of Kevin Harris' freedom.

I do not have e-mail or Internet connection. Please help us get the word out. Please contact me.

For God and country.

Jim Watkins, APRA NW
P.O. Box 1286
Republic, WA 99166

Kevin Harris Defense Fund
(Send help to)
Mrs. Danielle Harris
P.O. Box 995
Republic, WA 99166

Excellent Newsletter the August issue. It's getting around Washington and Alaska. Enclosed is my April clash with the local carpetbagger, scumbag friends of SPLC!!!

Take care,
J. W.
Republic of Washington

"In the beginning of change the patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." --Mark Twain

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