Ted Cruz, the Times, and Guns

The New York Sun ^ | April 18, 2015 | The Editors

[2ndDivisionVet]

The New York Times is taking note of Senator Cruz’s suggestion that the Second Amendment was intended to “serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny — for the protection of liberty.” The Gray Lady calls it among the “ridiculous arguments against gun control.” It suggests the silliest such the idea is that the framers wanted to “preserve the possibility, or even encourage, the idea of armed rebellion against the government.” What arrests us about this note is the absence of any reference to Elbridge Gerry.

Gerry was the representative from Massachusetts who, during the debate over the Second Amendment in the First United States Congress, marked the point to which Senator Cruz refers. The House was considering an early phrasing of what became the Second Amendment. Namely: “A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms.” Here is what Gerry said:

“This declaration of rights, I take it, is intended to secure the people against the mal-administration of the Government; if we could suppose that, in all cases, the rights of the people would be attended to, the occasion for guards of this kind would be removed.” What bothered him, he went on to note, was the religious exemption, which, he feared, “would give an opportunity to the people in power to destroy the constitution itself. They can declare who are those religiously scrupulous, and prevent them from bearing arms.”(continued)

[marktwain]

.” It suggests the silliest such the idea is that the framers wanted to “preserve the possibility, or even encourage, the idea of armed rebellion against the government.”

They do not have a rational argument, so they resort to sarcasm.

[ez]

Ooh rah.

[FredZarguna]

The "subordinate government" Madison refers to here are the governments of the States.

So Madison actually sees Cruz's bet, and raises it: Madison had an expectation that not only would militias deter Federal tyranny, but that the State governments had a duty and obligation to rebel against the Federal government in extremis, and to raise their own militias for doing so.