The Right to bear Arms According to Sam Adams

Auxiliary and Subordinate Right

This post enlarges points made in:

The Second Amendment is an Auxiliary and Subordinate Right

As I've said elsewhere owning and using weaponry for self defense is an "auxiliary and subordinate" right. Samuel Adams quoted Blackstone and Parliament when he wrote, referring to the Glorious Revolution when English Parliament overthrew the Stuarts:

“At the Revolution, the British Constitution was restored to its original principles, declared in the bill of rights; which was afterwards passed into a law”

Note the wording "restored" and "afterwards passed into a law", is expressing the principle that these human rights existed all the while in their denial, which is the reason that any right to own and use arms other than in the military is actually linked to the 9th and 10th Amendments and the product of hundreds of years of resistance by Citizens against Government Oppression. The right to bear arms is the right to participate in the defense, and by logical extension, the governance of the country.

This was a principle that dated back to "Old England." Samuel Adams in an essay published in the Boston Gazette during the early stages of the rebellion in New England that became our Revolution referred to the right to “have and use” arms as part of a list of "auxiliary and subordinate" rights that only apply;

• “When actually attacked”

Which are rights that people have auxiliary, to resisting oppression:

1. “first to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law”
2. “the right of petitioning the King and parliament”
3. “having and using arms for self-preservation and defense ”

These are only rights in a context of protecting the primary rights of:

1. “personal security”
2. “personal liberty”
3. “private property”

In Britain, only those with real estate property, "the gentry" were permitted to bear arms in the Militia. The Gentry were afraid of "the rabble" being permitted to bear arms, and as a result, Sam Adams said that:

“having arms for their defense” ... “a public allowance under due restrictions of the natural rights of resistance and self preservation, when the sanction of society and society are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.”

This right to bear arms is an auxiliary right necessary to resist "the violence of oppression", not a right of mere disaffection, or to engage in oppression or ethnic cleansing. If there is no oppression and no occupying military, there is no need to possess and sue arms. Hence the word "auxilliary." To the nascent Rebellion, it also was a response to the presence of “Military Troops” due to the fear that;

“Violence is always to be apprehended from Military Troops”

If you talk to any gun nut, they know full well this history, and that the great fear of "Standing Armies" was what drove the founders of this country to create a second Amendment. But they interpret that fear the way Southerners did in the antebellum period before 1865. They saw it as a right for the Free Men (they expanded the franchise from the Gentry) and Gentry to defend their property, which included other people. They didn't see slaves, peasants, indentured servants and the property-less worker, as full equals in society. But their arguments saying "All Mankind" meant that this was a deluded attitude.

On Standing Armies:

http://files.libertyfund.org/pll/quotes/192.html

Related Posts:

National Emergency Service and The Militia

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2018/02/second-amendment-sophism-and-militia.html

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-second-amendment-is-auxiliary-and.html

How the Militia of the Whole Failed in the 19th Century

What Founders Meant by Militia

DC versus Heller wrongly decided

Militia Second Amendmen & Democracy

Select Militia, National Guard and 2nd Amendment

Thoughts on Defending Democracy and Second Amendment

The Palladium of Liberty

The Case for Expanding the National Guard

The Right of the Individual to himself