Right to bear arms is our protection against tyranny(MA)

With his March 30 column, Jim Coogan missed the mark in the way all gun control advocates do.

Our Founding Fathers were prescient students of history. They understood that all governments tend toward tyranny. That's why they strove to severely limit the central government's power and to mire the branches of government in checks and balances to delay that eventual devolution toward tyranny.

Every constitutional scholar eventually questions why James Madison listed rights such as free assembly, free speech and the right to bear arms ahead of other natural legal rights such as protection from double jeopardy and self-incrimination, due process and the right to trial by jury. The answer is simple given the context of what the Founding Fathers had just gone through and what they expected in our nation's distant future.

The ability to assemble, exercise free speech and to keep and bear arms were key catalysts in our successful revolution. Our founders understood if the day should ever arrive that our citizens must once again rise against a tyrannical government, they would need both. As a result, any government action to unreasonably restrict gun ownership or somehow track the location of arms runs counter to the premise underlying the Second Amendment.

http://www.rescuefinder.0catch.com/2ndAmendment.html

Perennial Practice Makes Perfect Precedent:

The 2nd Amendment was not preceded by a vacuum of 180 years of right-to-bear-arms laws, customs and traditions. Au contraire:

It would appear that the 2nd Amendment put into
writing that which had been practiced for 145 years
by the citizens of old New Netherlands and New York,
and other states as well.
...

Actually, in fact, this right to bear arms stems
from the Dutch tradition in New York State dating
to 1643,45,46. The English conquerors of
New Netherland never invalidated these written rights of the
Dutch to bear arms nor confiscated their firearms,
but actually kept them on as a ready-made frontier
militia, [e.g., Saratoga blockhouse 1690`s] as a
buffer against incursions of the French and their
Native American allies. The civilian Dutch were
recorded as having firearms under the English as
late as 1753 just before French began reinforcing
their fortified positions on the New York/Canada
frontier.

This first section primarily focuses on the Dutch
colonial firearm tradition and laws for
New Netherlands which extended from New York City
[New Amsterdam] to the border of Canada and west to
Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.)

Here`s a bite of a Copperhead from Rattlesnake Hill
[Mt. Defiance, Ticonderoga, NY]

Don`t Tread On Me

.
THE DUTCH/ANGLO/AMERICAN PRECEDENT OF THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS

See more at

http://www.rescuefinder.0catch.com/2ndAmendment.html

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