The right to keep and bear arguments

May 6, 8:47 AMDallas Libertarian ExaminerGarry Reed

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"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

Marc Rubin, writing as the NY Obama Administration Examiner, expended over 3500 words in a recent marathon manuscript proving that There is no 2nd amendment right to own a gun and there never was.

This Rubin guy is very bright, very educated, very articulate. He uses all the right arguments. He says he's not against individual ownership of firearms. He talks about original intent, the intelligence of the framers, and even teaches us how to properly deconstruct a sentence.

The author does an admirable job of defining, describing, explaining, expounding, elucidating, and parsing the wording, history and meaning of Amendment Number Two and proves his case: There is no second amendment right to own a gun.

What virtually every gun-grabber and gun rights activist misses is the fact that neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights "gives" one single right to anyone, anywhere, ever.

What the Constitution does is to assign certain "powers" (not rights) to a national government. It says that this government may do certain specific, explicit, designated, enumerated things and not a damned thing more nor less.

This guy was keeping and bearing arms
before the Second Amendment was written.
How could that possibly be?

It does not say, for example, that the president is granted the power to "run the country," or the world, as every modern president and presidential sycophant arrogantly assumes. It says that the president is merely the chief officer of only one third of the government, that being the executive branch. His powers are to execute the laws, act as the commander in chief of the military and do a few other specifically designated things such as pardoning his criminal cronies. 

(It also does not say, by the way, "This Constitution is a Living Document that anyone in the far distant future may reinterpret to One's Heart's Content for ye purpose of rendering This Constitution as a Comedy of Errors." But that would be another argument.) 

The Bill of Rights does not "give" anyone any rights either. It simply reaffirms that all of are rights are our rights, and that handing over certain "powers" to the big government doesn't take away any of those rights. 

This is specifically stated in Amendment Number Ten:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." – Tenth Amendment

 Since all sovereign individuals already had the right to keep and bear arms by dint of the fact that they were sovereign individuals before those documents were written, and continue to be sovereign individuals after those documents were written, neither a constitution nor a bill of rights, neither a second nor a tenth amendment, nor any other piece of paper, can take away anyone's sovereign rights.

So while most libertarians admire and even revere the Constitution, this whole discussion is essentially moot because libertarianism, the only true freedom philosophy, recognizes that only individuals are or possibly can be sovereign. Not governments, not states, not militias. Those and numberless other entities are composed of individuals. If an individual is not sovereign a group composed of individuals cannot possibly be sovereign.

And as long as the sovereign individual neither initiates force nor threat of force nor fraud against others those others have no "right" to use coercion against the individual. If there is no right to coerce another, that nonexistent right cannot be transferred to any other individual or group, like a government.

If said sovereign individual wishes to peacefully and nonviolently keep, conceal, carry and use firearms – or puppies or ginger snaps or motorcycle chains or finger puppets or numberless other entities, it's no business of any one else's.

In the big scheme of things, libertarians, as everyone ought to but apparently don't, care more about real, actual, no-kidding freedom than about the esoterica of constitutional amendments. 

Just as America (the band) sang, "But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't, didn't already have" so we (freedom lovers) can all sing today, “The Second Amendment never did give nothing to the Gun Owner that we didn’t, didn't already have.”