The End of Gun Control: 6. Do Your Civic Duty
Constitutional Self-Government Demands an Armed Citizenry, Actively Involved In Executing Law and Securing a Free State.
Rather than responding to gun control proponents that ask why a civilian “needs weapons of war”, the higher quality question is to probe why the unarmed are derelict of their civic duty. This properly frames the issue in terms of community service, the responsibilities of a citizen, the need to contribute to mutual security matters, and the maintenance of political order in a free society.
Gun rights advocates cede entirely too much ground to gun control agitators by claiming that keeping and bearing arms is for their personal self-defense. Similarly, it plays into the aspiring tyrant’s turf to quibble about crime statistics, magazine capacity, caliber sizes, or the benefits of ‘shall issue’ concealed carry licenses.
The heart of the matter regarding the average citizen’s right to keep and bear arms is that it is necessary to the security of a free state, with the immediate implication that a free state is impossible without widespread and robust exercise of these rights and responsibilities.
The issue comes into starker relief when examining just how it is that We The People are supposed to accomplish the goal of securing a free state. The manner is clearly explained in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 15 of the United States operating charter: to execute the laws of the union, repel invasions, and suppress insurrections. These are not tasks for “the government” as something separate from the body public. We The People must be fully involved in carrying out these crucial justice and security functions.
The fact that these activities are currently administered largely by unelected, tax-funded bureaucrats, that enjoy an effective monopoly on these activities, only provides a clear indicator of why there is so much dysfunction and waste in the production of security and justice.
The politico-bureaucratic monopoly on the use of force over a given geographic territory is completely opposite to what was conceived when the federation was constituted. The ‘supreme law of the land’ is not a license for Leviathan but a cooperative framework of decentralized government with multiple branches, layers, and levels of administration, and even these are not the sole domain of those holding official positions. We The People are the government with equality under and through law.
George Mason’s definition of who composed ‘the militia’ specifically, and rightly, excluded the ‘few public officials’ because that subset of the population was a) busy making policy, b) subject to the same ‘inconveniences’ John Locke described of being a ‘judge, interpreter, and executioner’ in one’s own case, and, most importantly, c) those that make their living through taxation are most susceptible to corrupting law enforcement toward perverse ends.
Whether Mason fully comprehended these elements and deliberately intended to make this distinction is uncertain. However, there is a hidden genius in his definition offered in the Virginia ratification debates regarding the proposed constitution for the United States. Knowingly or not, Mason separated the ‘few public officials’ from the subset of the population that was task organized to execute the laws in the proposed federated republic. Again, this categorical separation legally divides legislating, judging, and interpreting law from functionally enforcing it.
In sum, those that shape policy need to be separate from the ones that carry it out in order to ensure correct alignment with the ‘preservation’ of life and property functions governments are instituted to provide. Those that make their living through expropriating other people’s property, through taxation and regulation, cannot be allowed a monopoly on the use of force in a free society. The responsibility is on We The People to maintain the integrity of security and justice practices if the blessings of liberty are to prevail in the present and for posterity.