Lux Lucet

Former Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens has written a most remarkable editorial in today’s New York Times. I hope to do a video on his piece later this week, but for now I’d like to share with you this pearl of wisdom from Stevens. He wrote, “For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation” (emphasis mine).

Well, I’m certainly no legal eagle. I’ve never so much as been to law school, let alone sat as judge on the highest court in the land. But for all that, I do understand the English language and I beg to different with Justice Stevens.

You see, there’s this little thing called the Second Amendment, and it reads

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 (emphasis mine).

Now my dictionary gives the following definition of infringe: “Violate, transgress, encroach.” For infringement it gives: “an encroaching or trespass on a right or privilege.”

To put in another way, the Second Amendment prohibits the Federal Government from violating, transgressing, encroaching, or limiting the right of the American people to keep and bear arms. Just what part of “shall not be infringed” does this addled former Justice not understand?

Joseph Storey, a Supreme Court justice from the early 19th century was no so confused. Commenting on the Second Amendment, he wrote,

“One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offence to keep arms, and by substituting a regular army in the stead of a resort to the militia. The friends of a free government cannot be too watchful, to overcome the dangerous tendency of the public mind to sacrifice, for the sake of mere private convenience, this powerful check upon the designs of ambitious men.”

Here, Storey gets at the heart of why we have a Second Amendment in the first place. It’s not primarily about duck hunting, or about target practice, or even principally about defending one’s home against burglars. It is about those things, true enough, but it’s primary function is to serve as a bulwark against tyranny.

It’s not for nothing that despotic governments always make sure the people are disarmed. Just ask the Philistines, who made sure the Hebrews had no weapons. In 1 Samuel 13:19 we read, “Now there was no blacksmith to be found throughout all the land of Israel, for the Philistines said, ‘Lest the Hebrews make swords or spears.’ ”

In our day, we tend to assume that newer is better. That may be true when it comes to technology. But when it comes to wisdom and jurisprudence, give me the 19th century any day.