Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ucla-cs.ARPA
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!houxm!houxz!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrba!cepu!ucla-cs!reiher
From: reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Guns and the Constitution
Message-ID: <527@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 24-Jul-84 19:54:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.527
Posted: Tue Jul 24 19:54:08 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jul-84 08:00:29 EDT
Organization: UCLA
Lines: 41


>	"The people who framed the constitution had no love for
>government.  Jefferson said that the country should have
>a revolution every seven years.  He said that mankind would not
>be free until "the last tyrant is strangled with the entrails of the
>last priest."   Part of the reason that the framers of the
>constitution gave themselves the right to bear arms is that they
>wanted to be armed if their newly created government got out of hand."

The right to keep and bear arms is in the Bill of Rights, not the original
Constitution.  The exact phrasing is:

"	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."

The reason they put this in, I suspect, is that they didn't expect to have
a very large army.  None the less, whatever the reason for it, the Constitution
does say that people have the right to keep and bear arms.  Now, on the other
hand, it doesn't say that we can't make them register those arms.

As for "the people who framed the constitution had no love for government",
well, it's just not true.  Jefferson's signature isn't on the Constitution,
so he's a poor choice of Founding Father for interpreting it.  Hamilton,
Madison, and John Jay are better choices, as the authors of the Federalist
Papers.  In these letters, they repeatedly state that the danger from
anarchy is greater than the danger from tyranny.  The whole series of papers
is a justification for why the states should join in one federation, rather
than be more loosely bound, and hence less governed.  The Founding Fathers
hated tyranny of all kinds, but recognized the need for government, and did
not believe that the latter implied the former.

(It is interesting that the other great proponent of frequent revolution
is that well-known lover of the rights of man, Mao Tse Tung.)
-- 

					Peter Reiher
					reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
					{ihnp4,ucb}!ucla-cs!reiher

"Is the baby smiling, or is it just gas?  Which do you want it to be?"