Potowmack Institute amicus curiae in US v. Emerson (1999) The Rule of Law The National Rifle Association What does the NRA really want? The National Rifle Association Charlton Heston Speaks: The Founders and the AK47 Sue Wimmershoff-Caplan: The NRA's "armed citizen guerrillas" "outflank", Wash. Post 7/6/89 The Washington Post Cultivating Ignorance Guns, Rights, the Libertarian Fantasy, and the Rule of Law Not Seen in The Responsive Community Getting Commitment from Congress The blood on their doorstep The Libertarian Fantasy on the Supreme Court Thomas and Scalia Joyce Lee Malcolm Ayn Rand, Blackstone Joseph Story's "Palladium of the Liberties" The Second Amendment in Court True History John Kenneth Rowland Lawrence Cress Saul Cornell Gary Hart Leon Friedman, and more Pseudohistory LaPierre's List and the Law Reviews Revolutionary Militia Consciousness Militia Act, 1792 Mass. Militia Act, 1793 Whittaker Chambers Reviews Ayn Rand National Review, 1957

The gun lobby and the libertarians have a very difficult time accommodating to public authority. This childish insolence is elevated into the civic pathology that they cannot consent to be governed. The individual right to be armed outside of the law, as the gun lobby and the libertarians conceive it, is the ultimate hedge on the consent to be governed. The Potowmack Institute has made this point to the US Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, in its amicus brief in US v. Emerson. Other examples of how words are misused are given in Appendix I, The Meaning They Seek. That Every Man Be Armed by Stephen P. Halbrook is the gun lobby's most comprehensive statement. Halbrook provides extensive references to prove the thesis stated in Chapter 1: "These two basic traditions [authoritarians and libertarian republicans] in political philosophy have consistently enunciated opposing approaches to the question of people and arms, with the authoritarians rejecting the idea of an armed populace in favor of a helpless and obedient populace and the libertarian republicans accepting the armed populace and limiting the government by the consent of that armed populace." This is a preposterous characterization of the evolution of Western political values, concepts and institutions. Just as James Madison's Federalist Paper No. 46 and Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Paper No. 29 are abused to erect the doctrine that guns and gun ownership cannot be touched by laws, so is John Locke's The Second Treatise on Government, one of the founding documents of American political consciousness. Locke's The Second Treatise on Government is as much American political scripture as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. At the time of the American Revolution everyone studied Locke. The American Revolutionaries very self-consciously put themselves under government. The libertarian fantasy's extreme difficulty accommodating to public authority motivates enormous dishonesty— which may in fact be true belief. Below the dishonesty is blatant and has to be self-conscious. The passage Halbrook quotes is from Chap. VI, § 137 from The Second Treatise on Government. The parts below in bold are what Halbrook actually quotes. The rest he leaves out. Halbrook makes the case for staying in the State of Nature and not entering into political community where an absolute arbitrary ruler and his military force have all the weapons. In that case it is better to stay in the State of Nature where each individual is equal in his natural powers and there is no concentration of political power. The middle ground which Halbrook leaves out is political community under settled standing laws and stated rules of right and property. The political cynicism wants the courts to secure one foot planted in the State of Nature. The desire is now under appeal in Emerson. Men put themselves under government to "be safe and secure within the limits of the Law, and the Rulers too kept within their due bounds." They do not consent to be governed "by extemporary Dictates and undetermined Resolutions" of arbitrary power. The parts Halbrook lifts out of context give a very different meaning to The Second Treatise on Government.

There is no issue in Locke of disarming the population and no implication that an armed populace is a defense against arbitrary power. The defense against arbitrary power in Locke is settled standing law applied to people and rulers alike. The real defense against arbitrary power is a civic culture of public trust which Halbrook's political cynicism subverts.

Stephen Halbrook in bold, That Every Man Be Armed, starting from page 28:

The individual rights of independence, equality, and self- defense come from nature and antedate government, an institution with delegated power only and which may be resumed by the individuals in whom ultimate sovereignty resides. It could hardly be assumed that the people would voluntarily disarm themselves and permit themselves to be dictated to by a smaller body of armed men who compose the state; for life, liberty, and estate would be in greater peril from an unchecked and organized armed force than from disorganized individuals in the state of nature. Locke rejected the absolute arbitrary power of the government stemming from a disarmed populace.

137. Absolute Arbitrary Power, or Governing without settled standing laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of Society and Government, which Men would not quit the freedom of the state of Nature for, and tie themselves up under, were it not to preserve their Lives, Liberties and Fortunes; and by stated Rules of Right and Property to secure their Peace and Quiet. It cannot be supposed that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute Arbitrary Power over their Persons and Estates, and put a force into the Magistrates hand to execute his unlimited Will arbitrarily upon them: This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of Nature, wherein they had a Liberty to defend their Right against the Injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single Man, or many in Combination. Whereas by supposing they have given up themselves to the absolute Arbitrary Power and will of a Legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed him, to make a prey of them when he pleases. [foregoing emphasis added by Halbrook] He being in a much worse condition who exposed to the Arbitrary Power of one Man, who has the Command of 100000 than he that is expos'd to the Arbitrary Power of 100000. single men: no Body being secure, that his Will, who has such a Command, is better, than that of other Men, though his Force be 100000. times stronger. And therefore whatever Form the Commonwealth is under, the Ruling Power ought to govern by declared and received Laws, and not by extemporary Dictates and undetermined Resolution. For then Mankind will be in a far worse condition, than in the State of Nature, if they shall have armed one or a few Men with the joynt power of a Multitude, to force them to obey at please the exorbitant and unlimited Decrees of their sudden thoughts, or unrestrain'd, and till that moment unknown Wills without having any measures set down which may guide and justifie their actions. For all the power the Government has, being only for the good of the Society, as it ought not to be Arbitrary and at the Pleasure, so it ought to be exercised by established and promulgated Laws: that both the People may know their Duty, and be safe and secure within the limits of Law, and the Rulers too kept within their due bounds, and not to be tempted, by the Power they have in their hands, to imploy it to such purposes, and by such measures, as they would not have known, and own not willingly.

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