WEBVTT NOTE Right to Bear Arms 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.480 The story is that I have a friend who works on Capitol Hill, who is one of the Republican 2 00:00:05.480 --> 00:00:11.720 staff organizations in Congress, and it's part of his job, he says, to escort foreign 3 00:00:11.720 --> 00:00:20.840 visitors around the Capitol and explain how the U.S. government works to them. 4 00:00:20.840 --> 00:00:25.800 And this is no easy task because foreigners never understand how the American government 5 00:00:25.800 --> 00:00:30.340 and Works, because in this country, among other things, we don't have two clear-cut 6 00:00:30.340 --> 00:00:35.260 ideological parties, a party of the left and a party of the right, and they never understand 7 00:00:35.260 --> 00:00:41.040 exactly what the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are about. 8 00:00:41.040 --> 00:00:45.200 So my friend has had, he's discovered a very simple way of explaining it to them. 9 00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:47.520 He says, well, it's very simple, really. 10 00:00:47.520 --> 00:00:58.400 In this country we have two parties, the stupid party and the evil party. 11 00:00:58.400 --> 00:01:03.880 But sometimes the two parties get together and they work together for a common end, in 12 00:01:03.880 --> 00:01:09.120 which case the result is both stupid and evil. 13 00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:15.280 This is known as bi-partisanism. 14 00:01:15.280 --> 00:01:20.440 He says that the foreign visitors always say, well, you know, we now understand it, that's 15 00:01:20.440 --> 00:01:24.040 exactly what we have in my government. 16 00:01:24.040 --> 00:01:32.600 Anyway, that story I thought was relevant to the theme of last year's conference, which 17 00:01:32.600 --> 00:01:40.160 was on welfare, and it's maybe even more relevant to this year's topic, the cost of war. 18 00:01:40.160 --> 00:01:44.720 But one of the more bizarre ironies of the Clinton administration is that at the same 19 00:01:44.720 --> 00:01:51.560 time it has been waging war or trying to wage war abroad all over the planet, from Somalia 20 00:01:51.560 --> 00:01:57.760 to the Balkans, Korea to Haiti, it is also in the process of trying to disarm American 21 00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:04.760 citizens at home through the most ambitious program of gun control in American history. 22 00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:11.480 Of course, Flatton did not originate this seemingly inconsistent policy. 23 00:02:11.480 --> 00:02:17.180 The military interventionism that has now become almost a routine and unremarkable constant 24 00:02:17.180 --> 00:02:24.360 of American life originated, at least in recent times, under President Bush in the Gulf War 25 00:02:24.360 --> 00:02:30.440 and enjoyed the enthusiastic support of most Republicans in Congress, an enthusiasm somewhat 26 00:02:30.440 --> 00:02:36.240 needed today only because a different political party now manages our global adventures. 27 00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:43.320 Nor are the Democrats the only ones who bear responsibility for the disarmament of citizens. 28 00:02:43.320 --> 00:02:49.680 Here too, Republicans have played major roles in popularizing the war against guns, not 29 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:54.760 only through the efforts of Sarah Brady and her husband, a pathetic human house plant, 30 00:02:54.760 --> 00:03:06.760 But also by the endorsement of the recent Congressional Assault Weapons Ban, a measure 31 00:03:06.760 --> 00:03:11.880 sponsored and supported by left-wing Democrats. 32 00:03:11.880 --> 00:03:16.680 Both former Presidents Reagan and Ford also endorsed the Assault Weapons Ban shortly before 33 00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:22.680 the House vote, and two Republican congressmen who usually oppose gun control legislation, 34 00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:28.280 Henry Hyde and Bob Michael actually voted for the bill on the floor, thereby ensuring 35 00:03:28.280 --> 00:03:34.200 its passage by two votes. This alone ought to show that it is really the Republicans, 36 00:03:34.200 --> 00:03:38.920 the stupid party, perhaps even more than the Democrats, whom we have to thank for whatever 37 00:03:38.920 --> 00:03:44.240 successes the Clinton administration will enjoy in conquering both other nations as 38 00:03:44.240 --> 00:03:51.080 well as this one. Nor is the combination of a foreign policy of military interventionism 39 00:03:51.080 --> 00:03:57.480 and a domestic policy of disarming and pacifying the citizenry at home, perhaps as ironic 40 00:03:57.480 --> 00:04:04.660 or as paradoxical as it may seem at first. It is a combination that would not have surprised 41 00:04:04.660 --> 00:04:09.540 though it would have deeply alarmed the exponents of the tradition of political thought known 42 00:04:09.540 --> 00:04:16.360 today as classical republicanism, a tradition that exerted a profound influence on the eighteenth 43 00:04:16.360 --> 00:04:46.360 In the 19th century, Americans formed the American Republic. To a large extent, the combination of a militarily aggressive foreign policy with an internal policy of disarmament and pacification constituted the essence of tyranny to the classical Republicans as their thought developed in Great Britain and as it was transmitted to America in the generations before the Revolution. It was precisely to avoid and prevent the evolution of such tyranny 44 00:04:46.360 --> 00:04:51.900 The American Republicans established certain institutions and principles in the Constitution, 45 00:04:51.900 --> 00:04:56.320 the main one of course being the Second Amendment itself, under which the right of the people 46 00:04:56.320 --> 00:05:00.720 to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. 47 00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:06.720 The legacy of the Classical Republicans is thus not only particularly relevant to Americans, 48 00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:10.880 but also has important implications for the meaning of what is happening in our own society 49 00:05:10.880 --> 00:05:16.340 Today, and what classical republicanism has to tell us about power and its strategy of 50 00:05:16.340 --> 00:05:21.140 social conquest is well worth examining. 51 00:05:21.140 --> 00:05:25.560 Classical republicanism refers to a body of thought that evolved in Western Europe and 52 00:05:25.560 --> 00:05:30.640 especially in Britain from the 16th through the 18th centuries, a body of thought that 53 00:05:30.640 --> 00:05:35.760 in modern times largely developed from the ideas of Niccolo Machiavelli and centered 54 00:05:35.760 --> 00:05:41.540 on various political movements in various countries aimed at restricting or doing away 55 00:05:41.540 --> 00:05:45.920 with the power of the dynastic monarchies that ruled in those states. 56 00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:52.280 If there was any defining principle to classical republicanism, it was its insistence on the 57 00:05:52.280 --> 00:05:54.320 restraint of power. 58 00:05:54.320 --> 00:05:58.640 And the favorite mechanism by which power was to be restrained was through what came 59 00:05:58.640 --> 00:06:01.240 to be called mixed government. 60 00:06:01.240 --> 00:06:07.040 Machiavelli followed classical writers such as Aristotle, Cicero and Polybius in grouping 61 00:06:07.040 --> 00:06:13.560 all forms of government into those of the three basic forms, monarchy, aristocracy and 62 00:06:13.560 --> 00:06:15.040 democracy. 63 00:06:15.040 --> 00:06:20.480 And Machiavelli, like some classical theorists, saw in a mixture of these pure forms the most 64 00:06:20.480 --> 00:06:26.800 effective means of ensuring political stability as well as of institutionalizing liberty. 65 00:06:26.800 --> 00:06:31.020 In this preference for mixed government, the classical Republicans challenged the prevailing 66 00:06:31.020 --> 00:06:35.680 Monarchies of Europe and England, and their theories played an important role in developing 67 00:06:35.680 --> 00:06:40.740 resistance to the Stuart Monarchy of the seventeenth century, eventually resulting in its overthrow 68 00:06:40.740 --> 00:06:46.120 in the English Civil Wars, the execution of Charles I, and the Republican experiments 69 00:06:46.120 --> 00:06:52.500 under the Commonwealth, and later the effective dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell. But the ideal 70 00:06:52.500 --> 00:06:58.680 of mixed government through Locke and Montesquieu also eventually came to influence the framers 71 00:06:58.680 --> 00:07:03.560 of Our Own Constitution, and it's the ultimate source of our own principle of the separation 72 00:07:03.560 --> 00:07:08.680 of powers under which executive, legislative and judicial functions check and balance each 73 00:07:08.680 --> 00:07:09.680 other. 74 00:07:09.680 --> 00:07:15.440 But while the original republican ideal of mixed government meant that no single social 75 00:07:15.440 --> 00:07:21.380 element of society should be dominant in the state, it also meant that all should actively 76 00:07:21.380 --> 00:07:25.120 participate in government and public life. 77 00:07:25.120 --> 00:07:32.420 In Machiavelli's theory, one of the most important forms of participation was service in the 78 00:07:32.420 --> 00:07:38.920 citizen's militia, and in his book, The Art of War, he developed the connection between 79 00:07:38.920 --> 00:07:42.680 the citizen and the soldier as links. 80 00:07:42.680 --> 00:07:47.840 Machiavelli is commonly faulted because he rejected the use of mercenaries and criticized 81 00:07:47.840 --> 00:07:52.600 reliance on artillery, and the use of both was indeed important in the rise of the absolute 82 00:07:52.600 --> 00:07:54.800 monarchies of that age. 83 00:07:54.800 --> 00:08:00.120 But Machiavelli's point was that he was not trying to develop an absolute monarchy, but 84 00:08:00.120 --> 00:08:05.000 a republic. And it was his constant teaching that the use of mercenaries and high-tech 85 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:11.160 gadgetry like artillery was dangerous and corruptive to republics. They were dangerous 86 00:08:11.160 --> 00:08:16.360 because they placed independent military power in the hands of the state and those who controlled 87 00:08:16.360 --> 00:08:22.560 the state and allowed them to circumvent the restraints imposed by an armed people. And 88 00:08:22.560 --> 00:08:28.600 They were corruptive because reliance on professional soldiers and military technology meant that 89 00:08:28.600 --> 00:08:33.520 the people would have no reason to bear arms in their own defense. If they did not bear 90 00:08:33.520 --> 00:08:38.440 arms, they did not expect to have a share in public power and the whole concept of a 91 00:08:38.440 --> 00:08:42.960 republican mixed government and an active public life withered. 92 00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:49.960 Moreover, it was the heart of Machiavelli's theory that citizens who bore arms would necessarily 93 00:08:49.960 --> 00:08:55.440 retain the ethic of personal and political independence that would ensure the survival 94 00:08:55.440 --> 00:09:02.440 of the Republic. As historian J.G.A. Pocock puts it in recounting what he calls Machiavelli's 95 00:09:02.440 --> 00:09:08.720 Doctrine of Arms, the analysis of the art of war defines both the moral and the economic 96 00:09:08.720 --> 00:09:14.000 characteristics of the citizen warrior. In order to have a proper regard for the public 97 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:20.200 of Good, he must have a home and an occupation of his own other than the camp. The mercenary 98 00:09:20.200 --> 00:09:25.100 soldier is a mere instrument in another man's hand, but the citizen warrior is more than 99 00:09:25.100 --> 00:09:30.740 an instrument in the public's hand, since his vertue is his own and he fights out of 100 00:09:30.740 --> 00:09:35.820 knowledge of what it is he fights for. But when a city ceased to use its own mercenaries 101 00:09:35.820 --> 00:09:41.640 in its armies and employed mercenaries, the citizens would be corrupted because they permitted 102 00:09:41.640 --> 00:09:47.120 Inferiors to do for them what should be done for the public good. The mercenaries would 103 00:09:47.120 --> 00:09:52.800 be agents of corruption because they performed a public function without regard for the public 104 00:09:52.800 --> 00:09:58.480 good. In other words, for Machiavelli and for almost all classical Republicans after 105 00:09:58.480 --> 00:10:05.920 him, it is the essential independence or autonomy of the citizen as citizen and as warrior that 106 00:10:05.920 --> 00:10:10.960 makes Republican life possible. The Republican citizen, unlike the passive subject of a 107 00:10:10.960 --> 00:10:15.600 of Monarchy took an active part in both war and government, and he was able to take an 108 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:22.080 active part precisely because of his personal independence, economically, morally, politically 109 00:10:22.080 --> 00:10:23.920 and militarily. 110 00:10:23.920 --> 00:10:29.440 It was Machiavelli's emphasis on the role of arms in the civic life of the republic that 111 00:10:29.440 --> 00:10:33.960 accounts for the long classical republican tradition of popular militias, and in the 112 00:10:33.960 --> 00:10:39.160 Second Amendment of our own constitution, we find a descendant of Machiavelli's doctrine 113 00:10:39.160 --> 00:10:42.200 of Arms. 114 00:10:42.200 --> 00:10:46.440 Many of the framers of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights no doubt knew Machiavelli's 115 00:10:46.440 --> 00:10:52.720 works directly and could have gotten the idea of a citizen's militia from him immediately. 116 00:10:52.720 --> 00:10:57.200 But there was a good deal of intervening experience and political theory between Machiavelli in 117 00:10:57.200 --> 00:11:01.760 the late 18th century that reinforced his teaching. 118 00:11:01.760 --> 00:11:07.280 And it was mainly from the British experience in the late 17th and 18th centuries that American 119 00:11:07.280 --> 00:11:12.000 England Republicans drew their immediate lessons about a citizen's militia and what it meant 120 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:19.480 for the preservation of political freedom. England had had a militia since Anglo-Saxon 121 00:11:19.480 --> 00:11:25.000 times, and throughout most of English history, the monarchs had actually encouraged and supported 122 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:29.760 the militia on the reasoning that well-armed subjects were useful supports for internal 123 00:11:29.760 --> 00:11:37.260 peace and external defense. Beginning in the mid-seventeenth century, however, when various 124 00:11:37.260 --> 00:11:42.260 As the social reforms of the Stuart dynasty began to meet armed resistance from popular 125 00:11:42.260 --> 00:11:48.140 elements well-schooled in the use of weapons, the monarchy began a policy of trying to disarm 126 00:11:48.140 --> 00:11:52.580 the English people and to rely instead on a standing army. 127 00:11:52.580 --> 00:11:59.740 During the English Revolution of the 1640s, this policy of the Stuart monarchs was actually 128 00:11:59.740 --> 00:12:04.460 continued and enhanced by Oliver Cromwell and his military dictatorship, which relied 129 00:12:04.460 --> 00:12:06.700 on a standing army. 130 00:12:06.700 --> 00:12:13.220 After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, King Charles II also sought to build up the 131 00:12:13.220 --> 00:12:18.660 military power of his government, and in fact this policy was part of a general transformation 132 00:12:18.660 --> 00:12:23.980 of the English state and society in that period. 133 00:12:23.980 --> 00:12:28.740 What was happening in England was essentially the creation of the modern state, with a monopoly 134 00:12:28.740 --> 00:12:34.060 of the means of violence and the financial resources to support the monopoly. 135 00:12:34.060 --> 00:12:40.780 In 1660 and approximately 1720, the monarchy developed and institutionalized a standing 136 00:12:40.780 --> 00:12:46.580 army and the bureaucratic machinery to tax and borrow sufficient money to finance it. 137 00:12:46.580 --> 00:12:52.060 And under William III, these state institutions were used for the explicit purposes of waging 138 00:12:52.060 --> 00:12:58.700 war on a global scale. But even under the last Stuart Keynes, Charles II and his brother 139 00:12:58.700 --> 00:13:04.940 James the Second, the same trends were apparent. In order for the state and the person of whatever 140 00:13:04.940 --> 00:13:09.900 king of whatever dynasty sat on the throne to transform the society to the point that it was 141 00:13:09.900 --> 00:13:15.660 possible for the state to raise money and wage war without internal resistance, it was necessary 142 00:13:15.660 --> 00:13:22.780 to disarm the heretofore very well-armed English people. The later stewards tried to do just that. 143 00:13:22.780 --> 00:13:29.420 The Militia Act of 1662 gave the officers of the militia appointed by the Crown the 144 00:13:29.420 --> 00:13:34.460 power to disarm any subject at the officer's discretion, a power unprecedented in English 145 00:13:34.460 --> 00:13:41.860 history. A few years later, in 1671, the first of a long series of laws known as the game 146 00:13:41.860 --> 00:13:48.020 laws was passed which actually forbade hunting by persons who lacked sufficient property. 147 00:13:48.020 --> 00:13:52.500 You had to have a property qualification in order to hunt. And which authorized the 148 00:13:52.500 --> 00:13:57.740 Confiscation of guns and other sporting equipment in the possession of people not qualified 149 00:13:57.740 --> 00:14:04.900 to hunt. Once the Catholic James II came to the throne in 1685, he conscious himself to 150 00:14:04.900 --> 00:14:10.020 disarm Irish Protestants and doubled the standing army that he had inherited from his brother, 151 00:14:10.020 --> 00:14:15.780 Charles II, the first standing army under the monarchy in English history. As the historian 152 00:14:15.780 --> 00:14:21.020 J.R. Western writes, there are signs that the disarming of the people for good was an 153 00:14:21.020 --> 00:14:25.900 and the integral part of the Crown's measures for destroying Whig powers of resistance. 154 00:14:25.900 --> 00:14:31.700 The disarming of the people was accompanied and intensified by the decline of the militia. 155 00:14:31.700 --> 00:14:36.620 Under James II, the militia was steadily superseded by the standing army. 156 00:14:36.620 --> 00:14:43.620 At the revolution of 1688, when the Catholic James II was overthrown and replaced by his 157 00:14:43.620 --> 00:14:50.340 Protestant son-in-law, William III, with the support of Whig and classical Republican factions, 158 00:14:50.340 --> 00:14:55.180 It was thought at first that William would recognize and restore the popular militia, 159 00:14:55.180 --> 00:15:01.340 but as it turned out he no more wanted an internal military force and independent of 160 00:15:01.340 --> 00:15:07.140 his own control than the Stuart Kings he had replaced. He refused to repeal the Militia 161 00:15:07.140 --> 00:15:14.540 Act and at the end of the Nine Years' War in 1697 he refused to demobilize the standing 162 00:15:14.540 --> 00:15:21.740 Army, now far, far larger than anything the later stewards had planned. It was his insistence 163 00:15:21.740 --> 00:15:26.660 on retaining a standing army, which soon was involved in yet another continental dynastic 164 00:15:26.660 --> 00:15:31.980 war, the War of the Spanish Succession, that led to the first explicit defense of a popular 165 00:15:31.980 --> 00:15:37.580 militia in English political thought by the classical republican pamphleteers John Trenchard 166 00:15:37.580 --> 00:15:43.900 and Walter Moyle. Trenchard and Moyle, along with other theorists, argued that the ancient 167 00:15:43.900 --> 00:15:47.900 The ancient constitution of England inherited from Anglo-Saxon times had been overthrown 168 00:15:47.900 --> 00:15:54.180 by the monarchs using mercenary soldiers, and that the way to restore the ancient constitution 169 00:15:54.180 --> 00:15:59.740 and the freedom that went with it was to rebuild the militia. They laid out rather elaborate 170 00:15:59.740 --> 00:16:05.580 plans by which all male freeholders were to join in the militia with each parish to provide 171 00:16:05.580 --> 00:16:11.300 its own stock of arms and ammunition. As historian Caroline Robbins describes the Republican 172 00:16:11.300 --> 00:16:16.720 and Discussion of Militia Reform, the emphasis was upon the danger to internal security from 173 00:16:16.720 --> 00:16:23.800 royal power rather than upon necessary protection against external attacks. Over and over again 174 00:16:23.800 --> 00:16:29.740 the connection between absolutism and mercenaries was pointed out, all deduced to the same moral, 175 00:16:29.740 --> 00:16:35.120 he that is armed is always master of the purse of him that is unarmed. 176 00:16:35.120 --> 00:16:39.520 In the event the classical republicans who urged militia reform and opposed the standing 177 00:16:39.520 --> 00:16:45.800 Army were defeated, in large part by the defection of what came to be known as the court whigs 178 00:16:45.800 --> 00:16:50.640 led by Lord John Summers who sided with the monarchy and used popular fear of Catholic 179 00:16:50.640 --> 00:16:56.480 absolutist France to justify a large standing army and all the paraphernalia of the modern 180 00:16:56.480 --> 00:17:03.400 state. But even though the supporters of the militia lost the political battle, there are, 181 00:17:03.400 --> 00:17:08.280 it seems to me, two significant implications of this episode of English history. One is 182 00:17:08.280 --> 00:17:12.560 is that the Whig and Classical Republican debate over militia reform had a profound 183 00:17:12.560 --> 00:17:17.760 effect on American colonists in the late 18th century, and it is largely from the works 184 00:17:17.760 --> 00:17:24.040 of such men as Trinchard and Moyle and their colleagues that the Americans formed their 185 00:17:24.040 --> 00:17:29.840 own theoretical ideas about owning and bearing arms and maintaining a citizen's militia. 186 00:17:29.840 --> 00:17:34.680 The second implication is that the state's attack on the militia and the effort to disarm 187 00:17:34.680 --> 00:17:39.560 and the English people was accompanied by the state's efforts to expand its military 188 00:17:39.560 --> 00:17:46.400 power and to use its power for external interventionism and war. The conjunction is not accidental. 189 00:17:46.400 --> 00:17:51.920 The English monarchs of any of whatever dynasty understood that they could not mobilize the 190 00:17:51.920 --> 00:17:57.280 financial resources for war from their subjects or indeed exercise political domination of 191 00:17:57.280 --> 00:18:03.640 their subjects at all if those subjects retained the means of military resistance. And therefore 192 00:18:03.640 --> 00:18:08.880 or the disarmament of the people through legal restrictions on the possession of guns was 193 00:18:08.880 --> 00:18:14.600 a constant theme of the early history of the modern state and modern imperialism. 194 00:18:14.600 --> 00:18:19.200 But despite the late 17th century efforts at disarmament, Englishmen did retain the 195 00:18:19.200 --> 00:18:24.200 right to bear arms and even confirmed and expanded that right in the course of the 18th 196 00:18:24.200 --> 00:18:25.200 century. 197 00:18:25.200 --> 00:18:30.080 In the Convention Parliament, summoned to sit at the time of the Revolution of 1688, 198 00:18:30.080 --> 00:18:36.400 The Whigs and Classical Republicans exerted influence on the English Bill of Rights that 199 00:18:36.400 --> 00:18:40.440 was adopted by the Convention, and one of these rights was that the subjects which are 200 00:18:40.440 --> 00:18:45.280 Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed 201 00:18:45.280 --> 00:18:46.840 by law. 202 00:18:46.840 --> 00:18:52.040 This was the direct ancestor of our own Second Amendment, and in fact the original language 203 00:18:52.040 --> 00:18:57.920 of the right was even more radical and asserted or implied an actual duty of subjects to keep 204 00:18:57.920 --> 00:19:15.640 The Recognition of the Right to Keep Arms in the English Bill of Rights was the foundation 205 00:19:15.640 --> 00:19:19.720 of this right in Great Britain down to the 20th century. 206 00:19:19.720 --> 00:19:23.800 Although the English Bill of Rights restricted the right to keep arms to Protestants, Roman 207 00:19:23.800 --> 00:19:28.300 When Catholics were legally forbidden only to store arms it could be used for rebellious 208 00:19:28.300 --> 00:19:32.400 purposes and they were explicitly assured of the right to keep arms for their personal 209 00:19:32.400 --> 00:19:37.640 defense in laws adopted in the 18th century. 210 00:19:37.640 --> 00:19:43.160 Moreover in 1692, 21 years after the passage of the game law restricting the right to bear 211 00:19:43.160 --> 00:19:49.720 arms, the law was amended so as to continue to protect game against hunting but not to 212 00:19:49.720 --> 00:19:53.280 restrict ownership or possession of firearms. 213 00:19:53.280 --> 00:19:58.000 The great English jurist of the 18th century, Sir William Blackstone, was emphatic about 214 00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:03.240 the right to keep arms and the central importance of that right to a free people. In his commentaries 215 00:20:03.240 --> 00:20:08.280 on the laws of England, after enumerating the rights of Englishmen, Blackstone writes, 216 00:20:08.280 --> 00:20:12.900 But in vain would these rights be declared, ascertained and protected by the dead letter 217 00:20:12.900 --> 00:20:19.900 of the laws, if the Constitution had provided no other method to secure their actual enjoyment. 218 00:20:19.900 --> 00:20:24.620 has therefore established certain other auxiliary rights of the subject which serve principally 219 00:20:24.620 --> 00:20:30.900 as outworks or barriers to protect and maintain and violate the three great and primary rights 220 00:20:30.900 --> 00:20:34.140 of personal security, personal liberty and private property. 221 00:20:34.140 --> 00:20:38.700 There were five such auxiliary rights in Blackstone's view. 222 00:20:38.700 --> 00:20:46.860 The fifth and last right of the subject being that of having arms for their defense, suitable 223 00:20:46.860 --> 00:20:54.980 People to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law, and indeed a public 224 00:20:54.980 --> 00:20:59.940 allowance under view of restrictions of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation 225 00:20:59.940 --> 00:21:04.420 when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence 226 00:21:04.420 --> 00:21:07.060 of oppression. 227 00:21:07.060 --> 00:21:11.260 Despite the qualifying language Blackstone used about the right to keep arms, his view 228 00:21:11.260 --> 00:21:15.900 also deeply influenced the American framers who took a less qualified and indeed more 229 00:21:15.900 --> 00:21:20.860 or egalitarian view of who might keep arms, regardless of what was suitable to their condition 230 00:21:20.860 --> 00:21:21.860 and degree. 231 00:21:21.860 --> 00:21:27.580 But in fact, there was in Great Britain throughout the 18th and 19th centuries very little dispute 232 00:21:27.580 --> 00:21:29.780 about the right to keep arms. 233 00:21:29.780 --> 00:21:35.980 The only exception was an act passed in 1819 as one of what came to be called the Six Acts, 234 00:21:35.980 --> 00:21:42.140 which were six laws enacted in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars to control internal security. 235 00:21:42.140 --> 00:21:46.460 One of these, known as the Seizure of Arms Act, allowed for the magistrates to seize 236 00:21:46.460 --> 00:21:49.780 weapons from subjects under certain circumstances. 237 00:21:49.780 --> 00:21:53.780 But it is notable that even the government spokesman, Lord Castle Ray, who sponsored 238 00:21:53.780 --> 00:21:59.220 the Seizure of Arms Act in the House of Commons, acknowledged that it violated the constitutional 239 00:21:59.220 --> 00:22:00.700 right to keep arms. 240 00:22:00.700 --> 00:22:06.580 Castle Ray stated, the principle of the bill was not congenial with the Constitution, that 241 00:22:06.580 --> 00:22:10.580 it was an infringement upon the rights and duties of the people, and that it could only 242 00:22:10.580 --> 00:22:16.540 may be defended upon the necessity of the case. Despite strenuous opposition, it passed, 243 00:22:16.540 --> 00:22:21.860 but only because it was supposed to expire in two years, which it did. From that time 244 00:22:21.860 --> 00:22:26.700 until a century later, there was virtually no serious attempt to enact gun control in 245 00:22:26.700 --> 00:22:31.900 England, and certainly no successful attempt. And Lord Macaulay, the historian in the middle 246 00:22:31.900 --> 00:22:37.020 of the nineteenth century, defended the right to keep arms as the security without which 247 00:22:37.020 --> 00:22:38.900 Every other is insufficient. 248 00:22:38.900 --> 00:22:43.800 Toward the end of the 19th century, there were certain laws adopted that imposed minor 249 00:22:43.800 --> 00:22:46.460 legal restrictions on the right to keep arms. 250 00:22:46.460 --> 00:22:51.780 In 1870, there was a Gun License Act that required those who wanted to carry firearms 251 00:22:51.780 --> 00:22:55.220 out of doors to buy a 10-sholling license at the post office. 252 00:22:55.220 --> 00:22:58.340 It was intended simply as a revenue measure. 253 00:22:58.340 --> 00:23:05.780 In 1893 and 95, the House of Commons considered more rigorous pistol control bills, but rejected 254 00:23:05.780 --> 00:23:16.860 In 1923, the Commons passed a Pistols Act that prohibited the sale of pistols to miners 255 00:23:16.860 --> 00:23:22.740 and felons. But as late as 1920, the British people enjoyed virtually as much right to 256 00:23:22.740 --> 00:23:29.920 own, buy, sell, keep and bear firearms as Americans did. 257 00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:35.220 In 1920, however, the coalition government of Lloyd George introduced what the King known 258 00:23:35.220 --> 00:23:41.180 is the Firearms Control Act, which effectively repealed the right to bear arms by requiring 259 00:23:41.180 --> 00:23:47.540 a certificate for anyone wishing to purchase, possess, use or carry any description of firearm 260 00:23:47.540 --> 00:23:53.860 or ammunition for the weapon. The local chief of police was supposed to decide who was and 261 00:23:53.860 --> 00:24:01.020 who was not to have firearms and could exclude anyone based on intemperate habits, unsound 262 00:24:01.020 --> 00:24:15.820 The applicant had to convince the police that he had a good reason for acquiring such a 263 00:24:15.820 --> 00:24:21.340 certificate, and the government spokesman in the House of Lords conceded that good reason 264 00:24:21.340 --> 00:24:26.060 would be determined by practice. In other words, that good reason would mean what the 265 00:24:26.060 --> 00:24:33.860 Under the bill, Englishmen could repeal refusal of a certificate to a court, but Irishmen 266 00:24:33.860 --> 00:24:36.940 were explicitly denied such a right of appeal. 267 00:24:36.940 --> 00:24:43.820 While the 1819 seizure of arms act, introduced in an undemocratic House of Commons in a period 268 00:24:43.820 --> 00:24:50.340 of severe social instability and revolutionary activity, was met with strong opposition, 269 00:24:50.340 --> 00:24:55.700 the Firearms Control Act of 1920 encountered little resistance. 270 00:24:55.700 --> 00:25:00.860 One member of the Commons, the Colonel Kenworthy, did object, and pointed out that the right 271 00:25:00.860 --> 00:25:05.580 to keep arms had been important historically, if only in order to keep and acquire other 272 00:25:05.580 --> 00:25:11.900 political rights that all Englishmen now enjoy, precisely because keeping arms enabled the 273 00:25:11.900 --> 00:25:18.260 people to resist the state. He was at once denounced by Major Winterton, who sneered 274 00:25:18.260 --> 00:25:23.980 that his colleagues' idea is that the state is an aggressive body, which is endeavoring 275 00:25:23.980 --> 00:25:28.740 and to deprive the private individual of the weapons which heaven has given into his hands 276 00:25:28.740 --> 00:25:34.100 to fight against the state. There are other people who hold those views in this country 277 00:25:34.100 --> 00:25:38.420 and it is because of the existence of people of that type that the government has introduced 278 00:25:38.420 --> 00:25:45.860 this bill. Apparently the government of 1920 would have considered that it had every reason 279 00:25:45.860 --> 00:25:51.460 to seize the weapons found on the persons or in the homes of John Trinchard, William 280 00:25:51.460 --> 00:25:56.380 and Blackstone and Lord Macaulay and other people of that type, who had explicitly defended 281 00:25:56.380 --> 00:26:01.840 the right to keep arms precisely as a security against the state. 282 00:26:01.840 --> 00:26:04.060 But in fact, Major Winterton was probably right. 283 00:26:04.060 --> 00:26:07.860 The main reason for the bill seems to have been fear of the Bolshevik Revolution by the 284 00:26:07.860 --> 00:26:12.660 government, even though the official reason offered by the government was that armed crime 285 00:26:12.660 --> 00:26:13.660 had increased. 286 00:26:13.660 --> 00:26:20.740 In fact, in the years 1915 to 1917, the average number of crimes in which firearms were used 287 00:26:20.740 --> 00:26:28.340 fell from 45 to 15. Not only Bolshevism, but also labor unrest as well as Irish violence 288 00:26:28.340 --> 00:26:32.540 may have contributed to the decision of the government to sponsor this bill. And it is 289 00:26:32.540 --> 00:26:37.740 significant that this gun control measure, too, like those of the late 17th century, 290 00:26:37.740 --> 00:26:42.900 was driven not by a desire to curb crime, but by a fear of popular resistance. In other 291 00:26:42.900 --> 00:26:48.620 words, by fear of the government's own people and of the very thing the right to keep arms 292 00:26:48.620 --> 00:26:49.620 was intended to ensure. 293 00:26:49.620 --> 00:26:57.580 But what is also significant is that the 1920 bill passed in the House of Commons by a vote 294 00:26:57.580 --> 00:27:00.580 of 254 to 6. 295 00:27:00.580 --> 00:27:06.380 Thus, by an overwhelming majority, did the British Parliament toss away a fundamental 296 00:27:06.380 --> 00:27:11.780 right, the defense of which had helped inspire the Revolution of 1688 and which had been 297 00:27:11.780 --> 00:27:17.060 defended as central to English liberty by the country's greatest jurists and one of 298 00:27:17.060 --> 00:27:19.740 of its Foremost Historians. 299 00:27:19.740 --> 00:27:25.060 As Major Wenerton's stupid remarks make clear, by the time of the debate on the Firearms 300 00:27:25.060 --> 00:27:29.900 Control Act, the English ruling class had totally forgotten what the right to keep arms 301 00:27:29.900 --> 00:27:35.460 meant, how it had developed, or why it was important. And there is no evidence to this 302 00:27:35.460 --> 00:27:40.540 day that Englishmen understand it any better now than they did when they stripped themselves 303 00:27:40.540 --> 00:27:43.860 of the right to keep arms in 1920. 304 00:27:43.860 --> 00:27:49.060 The Act has been progressively toughened several times, each time with little objection, and 305 00:27:49.060 --> 00:27:54.380 today The Economist magazine loves to publish spatially inaccurate editorials sneering at 306 00:27:54.380 --> 00:27:58.980 the backward Americans' insistence on their Second Amendment rights. 307 00:27:58.980 --> 00:28:03.100 The editorials are as inaccurate in their understanding of contemporary America as they 308 00:28:03.100 --> 00:28:07.860 are ignorant of their own country's history. 309 00:28:07.860 --> 00:28:11.620 The immediate reason for the British government's desire to pass gun control and abolish the 310 00:28:11.620 --> 00:28:16.900 and the Rights of Englishmen to Keep Arms may have been feared by revolution and unrest. 311 00:28:16.900 --> 00:28:22.360 But in a larger sense, the passage of the 1920 Act was certainly related to the major 312 00:28:22.360 --> 00:28:27.300 enlargement of state power that was then beginning in Great Britain and the United States, where 313 00:28:27.300 --> 00:28:33.340 the first Federal Firearms Act was passed in 1934 under the Roosevelt administration. 314 00:28:33.340 --> 00:28:37.620 I do not suggest that either the British or the American governments consciously sought 315 00:28:37.620 --> 00:28:50.820 What I do say is that the curtailment of the right to bear arms makes perfect sense in 316 00:28:50.820 --> 00:28:56.300 a society in which statism has triumphed, in which the central state, as opposed to 317 00:28:56.300 --> 00:29:01.820 the people who compose it, is the real source of authority, and that it makes no sense at 318 00:29:01.820 --> 00:29:07.540 all for such a society to permit or recognize a right to keep arms on the part of the subjects 319 00:29:07.540 --> 00:29:15.740 Those classical Republicans who first expressed and defended a right to keep arms understood 320 00:29:15.740 --> 00:29:20.420 that the kind of society they envisioned would be one in which authority came from the bottom 321 00:29:20.420 --> 00:29:26.500 up, that the democratic element of the mixed constitution, often in league with the aristocratic 322 00:29:26.500 --> 00:29:31.460 element, would, through the right to keep arms, prevent the state from transgressing 323 00:29:31.460 --> 00:29:35.060 on liberty, property and personal property. 324 00:29:35.060 --> 00:29:38.980 It can hardly be surprising that a society that has forgotten the teaching of classical 325 00:29:38.980 --> 00:29:44.500 republicanism, that personal and social independence is the precondition of free government, has 326 00:29:44.500 --> 00:29:50.200 also forgotten the meaning of the right to keep arms, which it so gaily pitches away, 327 00:29:50.200 --> 00:29:56.180 and the integral relationship of that right to the very nature of a self-governing republic. 328 00:29:56.180 --> 00:30:01.240 The alternative to the kind of mixed regime the classical republicans supported is precisely 329 00:30:01.240 --> 00:30:30.240 In the Republic, as the classical theorist conceived it, as in the American Republic that owes so much to that conception, the authority of the state is supposed to come from the people, from the social elements of which the mixed constitution is composed. 330 00:30:30.240 --> 00:30:43.240 And so it is the state that must persuade us, the citizens, and prove things to us, whether to enact a law that criminalizes otherwise law abiding gun owners, or to go to war in Rwanda this week. 331 00:30:43.240 --> 00:30:54.240 In the autocracy envisioned by James II and William III, not to mention their spiritual descendants in the shapes of Lloyd George and John Major, George Bush and Bill Clinton, 332 00:30:54.240 --> 00:31:01.600 and in the bipartisan monument to stupidity and evil they have constructed in the form 333 00:31:01.600 --> 00:31:06.680 of a therapeutic state. It is the citizen who must convince the state that he should 334 00:31:06.680 --> 00:31:11.780 be allowed to have a gun, and the state and its agents may deny his plea for whatever 335 00:31:11.780 --> 00:31:16.600 it considers to be good reason. What is involved in the current trades for 336 00:31:16.600 --> 00:31:21.480 gun control then is a bit more than just a drive for law and order or crackdown on hunters 337 00:31:21.480 --> 00:31:28.720 It is implicitly a revolution in our fundamental conception of the state, an implicit transformation 338 00:31:28.720 --> 00:31:35.920 of the American Republic from its republican character to an essentially autocratic character. 339 00:31:35.920 --> 00:31:40.760 Because the right to keep and bear arms, either as a militia or as individuals, is an essential 340 00:31:40.760 --> 00:31:43.280 characteristic of a republic and a free people. 341 00:31:43.280 --> 00:31:49.200 It is meaningless to say that we have a republic unless we also have the right to keep arms, 342 00:31:49.200 --> 00:31:54.080 Since the capacity of the people to protect and defend themselves against criminals, foreign 343 00:31:54.080 --> 00:32:00.560 aggressors, and their own government is also a condition of their capacity to rule themselves 344 00:32:00.560 --> 00:32:07.000 and to prevent others from ruling them, and the denial of a right to keep arms is equally 345 00:32:07.000 --> 00:32:12.840 characteristic of an autocracy and of a people that is essentially enslaved, regardless of 346 00:32:12.840 --> 00:32:17.940 how much money it makes or how often it votes, because a people stripped of the capacity 347 00:32:17.940 --> 00:32:23.020 to protect and defend themselves is certainly not the stuff of which a res publica is made. 348 00:32:23.020 --> 00:32:25.460 And indeed, it is hardly even a people.