[The committee members very patiently sit through a whole day of
testimony giving a voice to the public, but there is no real
enlightenment, debate or discussion. The proponents give their
statistics and passionate pleas. The gun lobby pundits give
their predictable testimony and the NRA brings in large numbers
of gun owners to tell how oppressed they will be by the
governor's law. The numbers are necessary because the case is
not supported by the facts or any logic. The committee members
insist they have heard it all and are most interested in new
information. There is no inquiry into where anyone stands or a
demand from the committee for explanations on some very obvious
points. The FPJ gave them new testimony which they did not get
from anyone else but they were not really listening. I received
a demagogic letter soliciting money from Sen. Timothy Ferguson
who represents Frederick Co. addressing me by name and calling me
a supporter. (My father's family has lived in Frederick Co. for
more than 200 years.) The Washington
Post and the Baltimore
Sun refuse to publish anything that might enlighten the
discussion.]
My name is G. E. Ernst. I live in PG
County. I am a gun owner. I have owned guns all of my life. I
grew up in NRA programs. I dropped my membership to the NRA
years ago when I concluded that what motivates the gun lobby is a
doctrine of political liberty I cannot support.
The doctrine says basically that there is a balance of power
between an armed populace and any and all government. I have
written on this subject in recent years. I have published my
articles on the Internet in a thing called the Firearms Policy
Journal. I include a copy of the index. You can find more
there.
It is important to understand that the gun lobby has argued its
doctrine of political liberty in federal court and lost. I have
provided the case of US v. Francis J.
Warin. This is the most comprehensive Second Amendment
case. The US Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit, explicitly
rejected the gun lobby's Second Amendment individual right
claims, Ninth Amendment unenumerated right claims, and legal
status for the Sedentary Militia which is where the individual
right is manifest and the balance power between an armed populace
and any and all government is maintained. The Supreme Court
refused to hear the appeal. If there is any doubt about the
doctrine, I provide a page from the Second Amendment Foundation's
amicus curiae brief which contains the statement: "What Amicus
asserts is a basic right of freemen to take up arms to defeat an
oppressive government."
[David Kopel had testified twice
earlier in the day of the House hearings. Here I added in the
oral presentation that Kopel (who was no longer present) had
written: "The tools of political dissent should be privately
owned and unregistered." His paper is contained in Larry Pratt's
collection, Safeguarding Liberty (1995) but the words are
changed to "The tools of freedom. . ." The meaning and spirit
are the same.
Two guys in yarmulkes from Jews for the Preservation of Firearms
Owners had previously given some fallacious testimony about Nazis
confiscating guns. I was able to provide the comment that when
Adolph Hitler demanded a two-thirds vote from the Reichstag that
would give him dictatorial powers he brought his private army,
the Stormtroopers, into the legislative chambers with him to
guarantee the vote. The Weimar Republic was a government that
did not have the political will to maintain its sovereignty.]
The doctrine is a little more complicated. Some want to take up
arms against the government. Others want to take up arms for the
government but without legal authority. Included is a clipping
from the Enquirer-Gazette, a PG County newspaper. This is
an unnamed organization which wants support for an amendment to
the Maryland Constitution that would supposedly mimic the Second
Amendment to the US Constitution and guarantee a right to be
privately armed. Look at the purpose of the right. These are
private interests who want a right to keep and bear arms for very
public purposes: "protection of the State" and "defense of public
order." This is a prescription for anarchy, vigilantism and
paramilitarism.
Defeated in the courts the gun lobby will have its doctrine
anyway by defeating and repealing legislation. This legislation
to relax concealed carry permits is part of a strategy by some
people to have the doctrine of political liberty that the courts
have denied them. This legislation which has succeeded in 28
states, at my last count, is part of the strategy. The next step
in five or ten years when the public has become acclimated to
everyone carrying conceal weapons is to campaign for the
elimination of the permit requirement altogether.
The governor's comprehensive gun control bill before this
legislature also has to be conscious of the strategy. The gun
lobby works very hard to make sure gun laws are poorly conceived,
ineffective and unenforceable. The gun lobby can then declare
"gun laws do not work" and have the doctrine of political liberty
by working to repeal gun laws and dissolve government. There is
a slippery slope here to anarchy.
[I was cut short here in the Senate testimony. I was not able to
point out the Don Kates, prominent Second Amendment lawyer and
gun lobby scholar, who had testified previously that day, has
described when he was being intellectually honest in his 1983 Mich. Law Rev. article that
registration and licensing are consistent with the original
meaning of the Second Amendment and the practices of the 18th
century militia. I did get that point in in the House testimony
the next day. The committee members from either house did not
ask probing questions on these matter. They might have enlighten
the testimony by getting Kates to concede that registration and
licensing are mechanism to establish legal categories of gun
ownership that are in the best interests of gun owners.
I was not allowed to get to the part below regarding Neal Knox who was in the room.]
No local jurisdiction can make gun laws work without a national
policy that shuts down the illegal traffic in firearms. To shut
down the illegal traffic in firearms requires a national firearms
policy based on accountability of ownership and reporting of
private sales. A national policy requires a national debate that
can start in Maryland. The time is ripe in an election season.
The debate has to affirm the fundamentals of citizenship.
Why would anyone be opposed to accountability of ownership.
There are four categories of opposition. I have included
examples of each. There is substantial overlap between these
categories:
Category 1: The unenlightened. This is the largest category.
We do not have in this country public debates that enlighten the
citizenry. I could be here for a long time if I tried to set
straight every fraud and misunderstanding on gun ownership, but I
will just give you one. I have provided a page from James
Madison's Federalist Paper No.
46. Words from this passage are the most frequently
quoted to prove the gun lobby's individual right. In context,
Madison was describing a balance of power between state and
federal government not private individuals and any and all
government. Additional comments are provided. This falsehood
along with a great many others is widely believed.
Category 2: The Libertarian Fantasy. Provided are excerpts from
the Libertarian Party Platform. The
Libertarian Party declares "individual sovereignty," the right to
"secession," and advocates absolute gun DEcontrol.
Sovereignty is the attribute of a state. It is defined by the
monopoly on the exercise of armed force. States are sovereign.
Individuals are subjects. States do not consent to be governed
by any higher political authority. Individual sovereignty means
individuals are not subject to any higher law or authority. They
do not consent to be governed. As a matter of political theory
it means we reverse the process describe by John Locke in The
Second Treatise on Government: we withdraw the consent to be
governed, dissolve political community and return to the State of
Nature. It is very ironic that no one reads John Locke today.
At the time of the American Revolution, Locke was very familiar
reading by ordinary citizens at every level of society. The
American Revolutionaries self- consciously put themselves under
government very much according to the process Locke
described.
The libertarian fantasy is most dangerous in that it does not
conceive of wickedness. James Madison wrote in Federalist
Paper No. 51: "If men were angels, no government would be
necessary." The libertarians delude themselves, in their refusal
of the consent to be governed, that they are angels and will make
the rest of us victims of private concentrations of power.
Category 3: The Right To Arms as A Right to Insurrection: This
has already been described above in the Warin case. There is no
secret about this purpose. Provided is an article from the
Washington Post, July 6, 1989. Sue
Wimmershoff-Caplan, an NRA national board member, writes:
"Twentieth century military machines are far from invincible when
outflanked by armed citizen guerrillas." Ms. Wimmershoff-Caplan
does not have in mind the military machine of the government of
Uzbekistan. She has in mind any and all government, including
this government. I depend on this government to protect me from
"armed citizen guerrillas."
Category 4: Mystical Individualism. The next page is from a
book by William Cooper called
Behold a Pale Horse. (Also
.../197coop.html) It is a book of
rightwing conspiracy theories. It contains the only copy I have
every seen in print of The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion. Right there in the same book is a statement by Neal
Knox at present the guiding force at the NRA. Knox argues
Category 3 above, the right to arms as a right to insurrection.
He does not explain that Lithuania was a conquered province of
the Soviet Union. It was forcibly annexed by Stalin in the late
30s. Unlike Lithuania, States in the American Union enter into
this Union freely usually with enthusiasm and they consent to the
terms of political participation in the Federal Union.
But getting to the mystical individualism, Cooper provides a very
enlightening comment. He writes, "In case you have not guessed
by now, the fact that most Americans own at least one firearms
weapon is the only thing that has kept the New World Order at
bay." It is no longer tyrannical encroachments of the malignancy
of government but the New World Order. Clutching the gun becomes
like clutching a Voodoo charm that keeps away evil spirits.
Mystical individualism is not just something put forward by
William Cooper who can be dismissed as lunatic fringe flake whose
distinguishing concern is unidentified flying objects.
[RESOURCES].
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