Liberal mindset can lead to creation of killing zones

Editor's Note: The following column by Buckeye Firearms Association Leader Larry S. Moore, was published in response to guest column published in the Xenia Gazette on March 12, entitled "The Second Amendment, guns and death". The author of that anti-gun piece, attorney Jack LeMoult, once wrote that "most men are emotionally frail aggregations of self-doubt and vulnerability. The possession of a gun is like a tonic, adding an exhilarating sense of power to a sagging ego."

By Larry S. Moore

Mr. LeMoult puts forth several points in his recent "Ideas" column titled "The Second Amendment, guns and death.” This is not fresh thinking or new ideas on the part of the author. It is a rather tired summarization of many years of liberal thinking regarding the Second Amendment.

There are two views of the meaning of the Second Amendment. One is generally termed the collective view, which is the one put forth in the piece. The militia clause is the part of the amendment on which this view concentrates. The militia was every able bodied free man. That is not the same as the standing state National Guard units of today.

The other is the individual right approach to both the Constitution and the Second Amendment. The words "the right of the people" as used in the Second Amendment are also used in the First, Fourth and Tenth Amendments. Establishing the Bill of Rights was not done to protect the government or collective rights but for the rights of “we the people.” No one suggests that the right of the people to assemble in the first amendment is the right of the government to assemble or perhaps a collective right handled through the assembly of the state legislature. Neither is it considered that freedom of the press means only freedom of the government press.

Mr. Lawrence Tribe of Harvard is a liberal attorney who opposes private firearms ownership. Mr. Tribe has examined the Constitution, law and history. As reported by Vin Suprynowicz in "It is an armed citizenry that I fear.” Mr. Tribe and other liberal scholars have had to admit "this inconvenient Second Amendment" (without which the states would never have ratified the Constitution) does indeed guarantee each individual American the right to keep and bear firearms, without restriction -- just like it says. Nearly every responsible constitutional scholar who has reviewed the language and historical context concludes there is a prohibition on government action. William Rawle, in “A View of the Constitution,” second edition 1829, noted, "The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to Congress a power to disarm the people."

Mr. LeMoult talks about college students being able to pack handguns. There is either an intentional omission to mislead the reader or a lack of gun law knowledge. Given Mr. LeMoult’s status as a lawyer, I doubt it is a lack of knowledge. It is convenient to ignore that a person must be 21 to own a handgun. This means many of the youngest college students cannot be legally armed. Even if approved, the college students would have to apply for a concealed handgun license

Armed individuals stopped at least one college attack at The Appalachian Law School. The most recent publicized event stopped by armed civilians was the shootings at the Colorado Springs church where an armed church member, Jeanne Assam, stopped a shooting that could have been much worse in most other places of worship where guns are banned.

Perhaps Mr. LeMoult would be more comfortable with the Boston and Washington DC police efforts to search homes for guns if the parents think their children might have guns. The firearm recovery unit in Washington DC has the ability to search vehicles at traffic stops. Don’t worry about that pesky thing called the 4th Amendment anyway. It was written a long time ago by a bunch of old men and is irrelevant today. Don’t worry about the right of we the people; it surely must be a collective right of the state.

It is exactly the liberal mindset demonstrated by Mr. LeMoult that has led to the creation of gun free zones which have simply become “killing zones” where armed individuals, whether deranged or not, are free to prey upon the unarmed sheep. Guns are not the problem. Gun free killing zones are the problem. The liberal thinking espoused by Mr. LeMoult would have a freedom loving, "we the people" become nothing more than "we the sheeple" as we trade freedoms for supposed government protection. Benjamin Franklin noted that the man who trades freedom for protection deserves neither.

There have been increasing gun controls since the Gun Control Act of 1968. It is time to quit repeating the failed policies of the last forty years. It is time for a return to the ideals of freedom on which this nation was founded. The Second Amendment provides the perfect union between individual freedom and good public safety policy. I think out Founding Fathers knew something and got it right!

Larry Moore writes for the Greene County Dailies’ Outdoors page. He lives in Jamestown.

For further reading: