OPINION:
The Second Amendment reminds us that our government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. So when the home state of the National Rifle Association passes landmark restrictions on firearms, we must take notice.
Starting July 1, Virginia law will forbid the future sale, manufacture and transfer of a huge swath of America’s most commonly owned rifles, pistols and shotguns, along with magazines holding more than 15 rounds. Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed the package in May, and lawmakers in Richmond are already congratulating themselves for “commonsense” reform.
Don’t believe it. This is a Beltway-style assault on a constitutional right, headed for the same legal reckoning that similar bans have met elsewhere. The Second Amendment is, and always has been, a freedom amendment.
The text is not complicated: “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” It is not a select militia, not a government bureaucracy; it’s the same “people” referenced in the First and Fourth Amendments, where nobody pretends the word means something other than individual citizens.
This right traces back to Great Britain, which historically did not have a large standing army. Instead, there was a requirement for free men to be armed and ready to enter the king’s service if needed. As gunpower spread, Charles I, and later James II, moved to disarm the people (especially those they distrusted). Parliament and the people pushed back, including through a Civil War, and a proto-right to bear arms was ensconced (though limited to a subset of Protestants at first).
St. George Tucker, annotating Blackstone’s Commentaries for an American audience in 1803, called it “the true palladium of liberty” and warned what happens when rulers chip away at it: “The right of self-defense is the first law of nature … and [where] the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
Our Second Amendment supplies its own logic up front: a “well-regulated Militia” is “necessary to the security of a free State.” Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist No. 29, wrote about keeping the body of the people “properly armed and equipped.”
The founders understood, especially with British History in mind, that citizens must be capable of common defense, and, if it ever came to it, resistance to tyranny. After all, Lexington and Concord were about protecting arms and supplies. Later in another revolt, patriots in Gonzalez, Texas, raised the “Come and Take it” flag when the Mexican government wanted to confiscate their cannon.
This is the right that makes the rest of the Bill of Rights enforceable. Free speech and due process mean little to a population that can be steamrolled at will.
The militia clause is not a relic. States still maintain organized forces that can be called up, and federal law still defines the unorganized militia as able-bodied citizens of fighting age. Virginia’s new ban on common semi-automatic rifles thwarts at that design, disarming precisely the citizens the Commonwealth’s own constitution still calls the militia.
The Supreme Court spoke clearly in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). Individual self-defense is “the central component” of the Second Amendment right. Two years later in McDonald v. City of Chicago, Justice Alito wrote for the majority and extended that protection against state and local governments, calling the right “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty.”
This is not fringe legal theory. It is the settled law of the land, grounded in centuries of legal tradition.
Beyond the constitutional architecture, the right to keep and bear arms sustains a way of life. Hunting and shooting sports bring families outdoors together, pass skills from one generation to the next, put food on the table and fund conservation programs.
Freedom is a father teaching his daughter to shoot. It’s a family filling a freezer each fall. Virginia’s new law doesn’t just burden self-defense, it tells law-abiding sportsmen and hunters that Richmond knows better than they do what arms they’re entitled to own.
Laws like Virginia’s are precisely why the Second Amendment needs zealous guardians on the bench, in the legislature and at the ballot box. This is the right that preserves all the others: the one that makes the rest of the Bill of Rights more than mere words. A disarmed citizenry is one whose other freedoms rest on borrowed time.
• Derrick Morgan is executive vice president of The Heritage Foundation where he oversees the policy and government relations functions of America’s largest and most influential conservative policy organization. Morgan has worked at the White House, for four U.S. Senators, and in the energy sector. He has analyzed the economy, along with immigration, energy, national security, and regulatory policy on Fox News, Fox Business, CNN, CNBC, and Newsmax, among others. Morgan holds a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Texas at Dallas and a J.D. from Georgetown University.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.