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Default Reagan's own words on Second Amendment

From Guns & Ammo magazine...

Classics - Ronald Reagan: The Gun Owner's Champion

In our September 1975 issue, Ronald Reagan, then two-time Gov-
ernor of California, penned this column. A man of conviction,
Ronaldus Magnus was true to these words before and during
his eight-year presidency.

A firm defender of the Constitution, Ronald Reagan was the 40th
President of the United States, serving from 1980 to 1988.

http://www.gunsandammomag.com/classics/reagan_1007/

There are tales of robbery victims that are shot down in cold blood
or executed "gangland style." There are stories of deranged parents
killing their children or deranged children killing their parents.
There are reports of snipers. And now and then the headlines blurt
out that an assassin has struck again, killing a prominent official or
citizen.

All of these stories involve the use of guns, or seem to. As a result,
there is growing clamor to outlaw guns, to ban guns, to confiscate
guns in the name of public safety and public good.

These demands come from people genuinely concerned about rising
crime rates, persons such as Sheriff Peter Pitchess of Los Angeles,
who says gun control is an idea whose time has come. They come from
people who see the outlawing of guns as a way of outlawing violence.
And they come from those who see confiscation of weapons as one
way of keeping the people under control.

Now I yield to no one in my concern about crime, and especially
crimes of violence. As governor of California for eight years, I
struggled daily with that problem. I appointed judges who, to the
best of my information, would be tough on criminals. We approved
legislation to make it more difficult for persons with records of
crime or instability to purchase firearms legally. We worked to
bring about swift and certain punishment for persons guilty of
crimes of violence.

We fought hard to reinstate the death sentence after our state
Supreme Court outlawed it, and after the U.S. Supreme Court fol-
lowed suit, we won.

Now, however, the California court that sought eagerly to be the
first to outlaw the death penalty is dragging its heels as it waits
for the U.S. Court to rule. The Chief Justice in California, whom I
appointed with such high hopes, in this regard has disappointed many
of us who looked to him to help again make our streets, our shops
and our homes safe. I find it difficult to understand persons like
President Ford's new Attorney General, Edward H. Levi. Attorney
General Levi would ban guns in areas with high rates of crime.

Mr. Levi is confused. He thinks somehow that banning guns keeps
them out of the hands of criminals. New Yorkers who suffer under
the Sullivan Act know better, they know that the Sullivan Act
makes law-abiding citizens sitting ducks for criminals who have
no qualms about violating it in the process of killing and robb-
ing and burglarizing. Despite this, Mr. Levi apparently thinks
that criminals will be willing to give up their guns if he makes
carrying them against the law. What naivete!

Mightn't it be better in those areas of high crime to arm the
homeowner and the shopkeeper, teach him how to use his weapons
and put the word out to the underworld that it is not longer
totally safe to rob and murder?

Our nation was built and civilized by men and women who used guns
in self-defense and in pursuit of peace. One wonders indeed, if
the rising crime rate, isn't due as much as anything to the crim-
inal's instinctive knowledge that the average victim no longer
has means of self-protection.

No one knows how many crimes are committed because the criminal
knows he has a soft touch. No one knows how many stores have been
let alone because the criminals knew it was guarded by a man with
a gun or manned by a proprietor who knew how to use a gun.

Criminals are not dissuaded by soft words, soft judges or easy laws.
They are dissuaded by fear and they are prevented from repeating
their crimes by death or by incarceration.

In my opinion, proposals to outlaw or confiscate guns are simply
unrealistic panacea. We are never going to prevent murder; we are
never going to eliminate crime; we are never going to end violent
action by the criminals and the crazies--with or without guns.

True, guns are a means for committing murder and other crimes. But
they are not an essential means. The Los Angeles Slasher of last
winter killed nine men without using a gun. People kill and rob
with knives and clubs. Yet we have not talked about outlawing them.
Poisons are easy to come by for the silent killer.

The automobile is the greatest peacetime killer in history. There
is no talk of banning the auto. With the auto we have cracked down
on drunken drivers and on careless drivers. We need also to crack
down on people who use guns carelessly or with criminal intent.

I believe criminals who use guns in the commission of a crime, or
who carry guns, should be given mandatory sentences with no oppor-
tunity for parole. That would put the burden where it belongs--on
the criminal, not on the law abiding citizen.

Let's not kid ourselves about what the purpose of prison should
be: It should be to remove criminals from circulation so that they
cannot prey upon society. Punishment for deterrent purposes, also
plays a part. Rehabilitation, as many experts, including California
Attorney General Evelle Younger, have discovered, is not a very
good reason for imprisoning people. People don't rehabilitate very
well in prison.

There is an old saying that slaves remain slaves while free men
set themselves free. It is true with rehabilitation, also. Crim-
inals rehabilitate themselves, there is little you and I can do
about it. But back to the purpose of this article which, hopefully,
is to make the case against gun control.

The starting point must be the Constitution, because, above all,
we are a nation of laws and the foundation for our laws, or lack
of same, is the Constitution.

It is amazing to me how so many people pay lip service to the
Constitution, yet set out to twist and distort it when it stands
in the way of things they think ought to be done or laws they
believe ought to be passed. It is also amazing to me how often
our courts do the same thing.

The Second Amendment is clear, or ought to be. It appears to
leave little, if any, leeway for the gun control advocate. 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."

There are those who say that, since we have no militia, the
amendment no longer applies; they would just ignore it. Others
say nuclear weapons have made the right to keep and bear arms
irrelevant, since arms are of little use against weapons of such
terrible destructive power. Both arguments are specious.

We may not have a well-regulated militia, but it does not
necessarily follow that we should not be prepared to have one.
The day could easily come when we need one.

The nuclear weapon argument is even more silly. Many wars have
been fought since World War II and no nuclear bomb has been
dropped. We have no assurance that the next world war will be
a nuclear war. But, regardless of any possible merit they might
have, both these arguments beg the question, which is: Shall the
people have a right to keep and bear arms?

There is little doubt that the founding fathers thought they
should have this right, and for a very specific reason: They
distrusted government. All of the first 10 amendments make
that clear. Each of them specifies an area where government
cannot impose itself on the individual or where the individual
must be protected from government.

The second amendment gives the individual citizen a means of
protection against the despotism of the state. Look what it
refers to: "The security of a free state." The word "free"
should be underlined because that is what they are talking
about and that is what the Constitution is about - a free
nation and a free people, where the rights of the individual
are pre-eminent. The founding fathers had seen, as the Declar-
ation of Independence tells us, what a despotic government can
do to its own people. Indeed, every American should read the
Declaration of Independence before he reads the Constitution,
and he will see that the Constitution aims at preventing a
recurrence of the way George III's government treated the
colonies.

The declaration states this plainly: "But when a long train
of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it
is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government
and to provide new Guards for their future security."

There is no question that the first 10 amendments are a part
of those "new guards" for their future security. And one of
the most basic of those guards is the right to keep and bear
arms.

There are those in America today who have come to depend
absolutely on government for their security. And when gov-
ernment fails they seek to rectify that failure in the form
of granting government more power. So, as government has
failed to control crime and violence with the means given
it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more power at
the expense of the Constitution. But in doing so, in their
willingness to give up their arms in the name of safety,
they are really giving up their protection from what has
always been the chief source of despotism--government.

Lord Acton said power corrupts. Surely then, if this is true,
the more power we give the government the more corrupt it will
become. And if we give it the power to confiscate our arms we
also give up the ultimate means to combat that corrupt power.
In doing so we can only assure that we will eventually be
totally subject to it. When dictators come to power, the
first thing they do is take away the people's weapons. It
makes it so much easier for the secret police to operate, it
makes it so much easier to force the will of the ruler upon
the ruled.

Now I believe our nation's leaders are good and well-meaning
people. I do not believe that they have any desire to impose
a dictatorship upon us. But this does not mean that such will
always be the case. A nation rent internally, as ours has been
in recent years, is always ripe for a "man on a white horse."
A deterrent to that man, or to any man seeking unlawful power,
is the knowledge that those who oppose him are not helpless.

The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a
small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is
a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the
people are the equal of their government whenever that govern-
ment forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed.
When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a
result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that,
as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If
we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our
freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all.

I am not ready to take that risk. I believe that the right of
the citizen to keep and bear arms must not be infringed if
liberty in America is to survive.



 
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