Anti-Gun Propaganda in School Textbooks

Washington, DC (TLS). Over the past 30 years or so it has been puzzling as to the growing tide of misinformation concerning the 2nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution that one is apt to hear in general conversation. Such propaganda was not at all prevalent in the days I was being reared in the nation's public schools.

Way back when, we were taught that individual U.S. citizens have the right to keep and bear arms and that this right is affirmed and protected by the Constitution under the provisions of the Second Amendment.

This right was assumed all the way through my college and graduate school years, including post-graduate education, fully ten years' worth of study in institutions of higher learning. Not once was it ever suggested that the Second Amendment ever meant anything other than referring to individual citizens' rights. Even in university courses on government and political science, it was never questioned that citizens have the ultimate right to own, possess, and use firearms for the legal purposes of self-defense and the defense of the nation against tyranny.

In the intervening years since the completion of my formal education, however, an insidious, erroneous 'interpretation' of the Second Amendment has gradually made its way through the society via the nation's government-run school system and its institutions of higher learning. It is the notion that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is purely to establish a state militia, period.

This blatantly erroneous notion totally disregards the plain wording of the amendment, which specifically states that the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.

It is no accident that the 2nd Amendment falls within that part of the Constitution that is called the 'Bill of Rights,' which was ratified sometime later after the Constitution itself had already been approved. The Founders felt that there were certain individual rights that were not addressed in the main text, and thus, ten amendments were added to protect those individual rights.

The sanity of a human being is in serious doubt if he/she claims that a right that is protected in the Bill of Rights is no right.

Yet, notice below two excerpts from public school textbooks concerning the meaning of the 2nd Amendment:

'The Second Amendment means that only a state has the right to keep an armed militia. A 1939 Supreme Court ruling says the Amendment applies only to state militias, thus allowing the government to limit gun ownership and sales. In other words, it is not an individual right and the Court has said so.'
-Glencoe, U.S. Government: Democracy In Action, 2008 edition, page 356.

'These words [Second Amendment] excite as much controversy as any words in all of the Constitution. The 2nd Amendment was added to the Constitution to protect the right of each state to keep a militia. The Amendment's aim was to preserve the concept of the citizen-soldier. Many---including the Bush administration today---insist that the 2nd Amendment also sets out an individual right to keep and bear arms just as for example, the 1st Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. The Supreme Court has never accepted that interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. The only important case is U.S. v. Miller, 1939...The Court could find no valid link between the sawed-off shotgun in the case and 'the preservation...of a well regulated militia.'
-Prentice Hall, Magruder's Government, 2008 edition, pages 570-71.

The reason there is no vast legal precedent concerning the Second Amendment is that it was commonly assumed that the amendment referred to the individual rights of citizens, just as Madison insisted. The Federalist Papers make this clear.

How do we know what a clause or a statement in the Constitution means? We have the Founders' own words to show us!

For example, the term 'separation of church and state' is found nowhere in the Constitution. The First Amendment merely states that Congress shall make no law regarding religion or the free expression thereof.

So, where do we get the notion of 'separation of church and state?'

The term is found in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist Association, explaining the meaning of the First Amendment with regard to religion. Legal analysts, scholars, judges, attorneys, professors, and teachers regularly refer to Jefferson's words to provide context and definition to the Constitution's statement on religion.

Yet these very same persons routinely ignore the Founder's own words when they explain in stark detail the meaning of the SECOND amendment. Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, and others explicitly detail the right of individual citizens to keep and bear Arms as means to keep check on government tyranny, and they take painstaking precision to contrast this uniquely American practice with that of European nations that as a matter of course disarm the citizenry.

Noah Webster, in his 1787 "An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution," wrote:

'Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.'

And as the Federal Farmer concluded: 'A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves....'

When history is our guide, only one conclusion can be reached concerning the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms--this right is guarded and guaranteed in the Constitution every bit as thoroughly as the First Amendment rights of free speech, assembly, religion, and the press. If individuals are not viewed as possessing of these rights, then there can be no 'collective right' to these activities either.

Only as individuals are viewed as fully possessing each of the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is the collective society as a whole to be viewed as free. Without individual freedom, the collective society is not free but held in the grip of tyranny.

Thus, modern-day public school textbooks are teaching our children lies. It is anti-freedom propaganda, and it must be stopped. It is time for lawsuits to be brought against school districts and colleges that unleash this barrage of subversive propaganda on the nation's youth. No wonder there is such ignorance today on the meaning of the Second Amendment!

Read the following thorough analysis on the Second Amendment here:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27587