The above question is asked and answered by the Far Left as a resounding NO! They believe the Public or the masses should not have access to “assault style” weapons, which they believe include the AR-15. These Leftists are afraid that such weapons in the hands of American citizens could be turned on them, IF, they go too far implementing their socialist agenda; an agenda that is treasonous, depriving Americans of their individual freedom and private property rights. Rights guaranteed by our Founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States.
Due to the overwhelming negative propaganda & misinformation about so-called “assault style” weapons, a lack of knowledge of history and of the Bill of Rights, little-to-no self-defense & firearms training, and having the good fortune to NOT have been a victim of a violent crime, many moderates and conservatives also question why the General Public would need an “assault style” weapon, which they believe includes an AR-15 and, why would the General Public need more than ten (10) rounds of ammo.
The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), www.crimeresearch.org, funded a survey finding that the average American voter mistakenly thinks that over 46% of violent crimes involve guns, while the true figure is less than 8%. Not unsurprising… President Joe Biden, public health researchers and the mainstream media spew false propaganda stating that violent crime is all about guns, an inanimate object.
The reason average law-abiding individuals should have access to “assault style” weapons, like the AR-15, is because of Amendment II, “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.” Where does it say that Congress can decide the type of weapons or Arms that, we the people, may have or, the type of ammunition, or the size of our magazines… it doesn’t… why… because the purpose of the second amendment was to keep the federal government in check, i.e., to make sure that Americans have “a free State.”
Under Article I, Section 8, Congress can “raise and support Armies” and “provide and maintain a Navy.” Therefore, despite what President Joe Biden said—when the second amendment was passed, “you couldn’t buy a cannon”—you most definitely could, i.e., whatever weapons the Army or Navy had, average Americans were expected to have the same capabilities. The “Militia” was defined as every able-bodied citizen of the States (primarily men back then) and “well regulated” just meant that everyone possessing a particular firearm should train or practice and be able to shoot straight.
Before proceeding with a discussion of the ancient right to self-defense and the Second Amendment, I want to explain to those of you who have no weapons experience, the importance of owning an “assault style” weapon like the AR-15, along with having many high-capacity magazines. As a 19-year-old, I enlisted in the United States Air Force (USAF) during the Vietnam fiasco, was trained as Security Police (protection of Air Force Bases and Planes that landed in remote combat areas throughout the world) but, I worked primarily in Law Enforcement for four years until the USAF left Vietnam in March of 1975.
On arriving at Lackland Air Force Base for basic training, I became the Flight Leader, “the hood from Chicago,” as my former Marine Training Instructor (TI) called me. Our first weapons training was with a Smith & Wesson 4-inch barrel six-round revolver. Since I was the Flight Leader, I went first. The target was of a man, probably 6-feet tall, and just ten (10) feet in front of me. My TI handed me the loaded revolver and said shoot all six-rounds at the target. Since I am left-handed, I put the revolver in my left hand and proceeded to pull the trigger six times; each time the kick or recoil resulted in the barrel of the revolver pointing up over the top of my head; I did not hit the target once! My TI was much taller than me and it was August in Texas; he bent down, sweat and all, stuck his face in mine and screamed “Who the …. do you think you are, Wyatt Earp!” After making his point and an example of my lack of knowledge of how to handle a firearm, he proceeded to show us what to do, i.e., hold the revolver with both hands, cock the pistol each time before you pull the trigger, hold steady and breathe. After the basic instruction, I was able to hit the target with all six rounds; on the other hand, moving targets and distances greater than ten feet were much more difficult. Although I had to re-qualify with the revolver every six-months, I was never able to rise to the level of “expert.”
The Colt M-16, a precursor to the civilian version AR-15, was a whole different story. With the M-16, you could switch from semi-automatic (like the AR-15) to fully automatic (machine-gun style). Unlike the revolver, the kick or recoil was non-existent; just point at the target and even I was able to qualify as expert! Today, the AR-15 style rifle operates like the M-16 which I was trained to use during Vietnam; the difference is that AR-15s are NOT assault weapons, they are not sold to civilians to be fired as fully automatic or machine gun style. Despite what you hear, assault weapons are NOT sold to the General Public.
The AR-15 style rifle is an easy weapon to learn how to operate, primarily because of its simplicity and minimal kick or recoil. It is probably the best weapon to have for home defense, especially for those who are not expert marksmen. If you live in remote or rural areas, several AR-15s with plenty of high-capacity magazines are a must if you are interested in protecting your family, yourself, and your property. As a veteran of the USAF, you NEVER EVER want to run out of ammo or have to re-load when the enemy/criminal or several gang members are rushing towards you!!!
In November 2017 at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Spring, Texas, twenty-six (26) churchgoers were murdered. Stephen Willeford, a former NRA Instructor, living next door to the church heard the gunfire, grabbed his AR-15, and shot the perpetrator in the leg and torso before the Killer dropped his weapon and fled in his SUV. The good guy with his AR-15 stopped further carnage. Practically every mass shooting has occurred in gun-free zones.
If you want to reduce this mass carnage, eliminate gun-free zones altogether, make security arrangements to protect against such shootings & potential terrorist threats, and encourage law-abiding citizens to keep and bear Arms, as they are lawfully able to do under the second amendment. Don’t rely on politicians to pass laws making it more difficult for law-abiding Americans to protect themselves. After all, if laws worked, there would be no murders, no robberies, no theft, and no crime. Unfortunately, criminals do not obey laws and will be able to obtain access to the roughly 19.8 million AR-15 style rifles that are currently available in the United States. In addition, there are over 393 million firearms, both legal and illegal in the United States, which means that there are more guns than people in this country.
As Professor James Jacobs, New York University’s School of Law, has stated: “I’m skeptical on the ability to clamp down on guns. That horse has already left the stable. Most people who are highly dangerous don’t go to a legal gun dealer. They go on the internet or black market or just get someone else to buy a gun for them.” Or they steal whatever gun they desire. Why should law-abiding citizens have less firepower than killers and criminals… how does that make any sense? Besides, “clamp[ing] down on guns” is unconstitutional as explained below.
According to David B. Kopel, The Human Right of Self-Defense, “No government has the legitimate authority to forbid a person from exercising her [or his] human right to defend herself [or himself] against a violent attack or to forbid her [or him] from taking steps and acquiring the tools [e.g., handgun, rifle] necessary to exercise that right.” The right to self-defense goes back to ancient times. The natural right to self-defense requires that there “be a right to possess some defensive arms—for otherwise the right would be a practical nullity.” Yet, tyrants and illegitimate governments throughout history have nullified this extremely important right of self-defense by denying “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” The American Founders understood that free people had the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property; and therefore, had the right to defend themselves and their property with the weapons of their choice. Understanding human nature as they did, the Founders included the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
Despite what would seem a common sense understanding of the basic right of self-defense and this straight-forward statement— “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”—Laurence H. Tribe, Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at Harvard University, wrote the following in his third edition of his treatise on constitutional law:
“Another illustration of this ‘old is new’ theme is the Second Amendment ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms.’ The second edition of the treatise . . . summed up the then-conventional wisdom that this right belongs principally if not exclusively to the states rather than to individual citizens, and argued that you’d have to climb a pretty steep hill if you had any notion of invoking the amendment as a source of individual rights against the federal government.”
“Yet an avalanche of scholarly investigation, including my own research on the subject (not previously published), has required me to revisit the meaning of that amendment, with its peculiar preamble about ‘a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State’.”
Perhaps that “peculiar preamble” was an attempt by certain constitutional scholars, like Tribe, using “esoteric hermeneutics” and their “intellectual powers, to rewrite” the true meaning of the Second Amendment, favoring strict gun control laws. Many gun control Laws, especially in major cities like Washington D.C. and Chicago, have denied average Americans the right to defend themselves.
Unfortunately for Tribe and his ilk, who favored strict gun control laws, other scholars subsequently began arguing that “private gun ownership . . . may not be abridged by Congress or perhaps even by state and local governments.” These scholars, who supported the individual right to keep and bear arms, had an ally on the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas. With a Justice on the Supreme Court and many other scholars arguing that the Second Amendment supported an individual right, Tribe, reluctantly, was forced to address those challenges.
Tribe concluded his Second Amendment discourse with the following statement, hoping that the Courts would continue to let state and local governments to heavily restrict the individual right to keep and bear arms:
“Today, the jurisprudence of the Second Amendment is radically underdeveloped, largely because it has been mistakenly interpreted in binary terms: either the Amendment confers a personal right, in which case all forms of gun control are presumptively (or perhaps conclusively) unconstitutional, or it does not, in which case there is assumed to be no constitutional issue at all. If the Second Amendment does indeed play a role in securing some kinds of individual rights as well as securing a degree of state sovereignty, that role will have to be defined by careful argument from constitutional text, structure, and history.”
Since the release of Tribe’s Treatise in 2000, there have been two major Supreme Court decisions examining the individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense under the Second Amendment, Heller (2008) out of Washington, D.C., and McDonald (2010) out of Chicago. In Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protected the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense in the home in Washington, D.C. As usual, the Supreme Court punted and left the question open, implying to the gun control advocates, that once you leave your home, you no longer have a right to defend yourself with a weapon; and, that this was a limited decision that did not apply to state and local governments.
Several years after Heller, the McDonald decision expanded the right to keep and bear arms to state and local governments, concluding that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller, to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense.
Despite the McDonald decision, many states, and municipalities, aided by decisions of lower courts, continue to maintain, and pass strict gun control laws, which effectively deprive many Americans of their inalienable right to self-defense; and their constitutionally protected right “to keep and bear Arms” under the Second Amendment.
The Supreme Court has another chance to right this wrong once and for all. On November 3, 2021, they heard oral arguments in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. The issue: Does the Second Amendment guarantee all Americans the right to carry concealed firearms outside the home for self-defense?
Does anyone believe that the Founders wanted to restrict the carry of firearms outside the home?! Or that only Americans living in the South, or the West, can defend themselves but, in New York City or Chicago, the right to self-defense does not exist?! Thomas Jefferson stated, “No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. . . The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it. . . Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans and must be that of every free state.”
George Washington stated, “A free people ought . . . to be armed . . .” George Mason asserted in a debate, “. . . to disarm the people—that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” And, as John Adams explained, “Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society [e.g., the Constitution], and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.”
Self-defense and the right to keep and bear arms are inalienable rights that precede the State; and therefore, these rights cannot be surrendered to or denied by any legitimate government.
A violent crime occurs every 26.2 seconds; a forcible rape every 6.3 seconds; a robbery every 1.5 minutes; an aggravated assault every 42 seconds; and a murder occurs every 36 minutes. These statistics clearly illustrate that the police cannot protect us. “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” Police Departments have Robbery, Homicide, and Major Crimes Divisions; their primary responsibility is to investigate crimes after they occur. You have two choices. Take your chances and hope for the best. If your luck runs out, rely on the police to investigate, and solve the crime committed against you. Hopefully you survive to see the perpetrator(s) arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated. Or take responsibility for your own safety; be prepared and exercise your inalienable right to self-defense, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.
If we want to reduce crime and mass-shootings, we need to start encouraging law-abiding citizens to exercise their constitutional right to self-defense, to keep and bear Arms. Where we are not allowed to defend ourselves and the State has not provided adequate security, we need to pursue legal action against all political leaders that take away our rights and expect us to go defenseless. For example, if School Boards, and Big-City Mayors, Alderman and City-Council Members became financially and criminally responsible for the deaths and injuries of their students and constituency, we’d have far fewer gun free zones and gun-control laws resulting in More [Legal] Guns Less Crime. Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., The University of Chicago Press (1998)
Gun-free zones benefit criminals and terrorists, leaving law-abiding citizens defenseless; helpless; sometimes injured; and sometimes dead. Those responsible for establishing gun-free zones should be held financially and criminally liable for any injuries and deaths that take place, due to their gross negligence to provide adequate security.
The choice is simple: (1) Either allow individuals to carry concealed weapons; or (2) provide adequate armed-security capable of deterring mass-shootings. Otherwise, political leaders should be ruined financially; and spend time in prison if they violate our constitutional right to self-defense resulting in injury or death; and/or theft or destruction of our private property.
Dum Spiro, Spero—While I breathe, I hope.
Slainte mhath,
Robert (Mike) G. Beard Jr., C.P.A., C.G.M.A., J.D., LL.M.