FRESH NEWS DEPARTMENT: It's National Banned Book Week. We don't plan to have a special section on banned books because we are confident that almost any book we have listed would be banned in a Communist or even Liberal country --- Rumors are out that Rush Limbaugh is in the midst of writing another book. It's a cinch to be a best seller --- Marc Ogle,, author of the US 60 stories, "Abend" and "Growth Industries" has graciously granted us an interview which will be featured in next weeks newsletter --- Things are heating up around big Bill Clinton. The Campaign Finance hearings have him within earshot of John Huang asking for contributions in the White House - He may as well have solicited bribes himself. Now might be a good time to catch up on Bill's past. Revisit our Bill Clinton Aisle by clicking the line below:

http://www.conservativebookstore.com/Clinton.html

Two issues ago we interviewed Dave Kopel regarding his book on Waco. In that interview we were struck by many references to the Second Amendment. We thought it was time for some discussion of the legal history of that section of the Bill of Rights.

SECOND AMENDMENT: Perhaps the biggest constitutional controversy raging in American society today concerns the Second Amendment, specifically the section regarding the right to bear arms. This part of the constitution, curiously enough, has long been virtually ignored by the arbiter of constitutionality, the Supreme Court, because the issue was essentially settled way back in the 1800s. Yet with liberal elements trying to pass legislation to remove weapons from the face of society, within the next few years there is sure to be another battle engaged before that final tribunal.

Before proceeding further we should take a look at the specific sentence of the second amendment over which all of the hullabaloo persists:

"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."

Admittedly, this is not the most well written sentence in the English language. A grammarian would spend a deal of time in its diagramming and would long ponder the exact meaning of the words. Does it mean that the people should be armed as individuals, as conservatives believe, or in bodies of militia, as liberals would tend to see it? By a straightforward reading of the sentence there is no real way to know. Perhaps, instead, we should look at the intentions of the founding fathers…what did they mean when they wrote this sentence?

The fact is, at the time the constitution was written no one ever thought it would be practical to take guns away from individuals. Guns were necessary for hunting and self-defense. Militias were armed with the weapons these individuals possessed as a matter of course. Thus it would seem the founders meant to secure the rights of states to have a militia AND the right of individuals to own guns.

The thought and findings of early jurists supports this presumption. St. George Tucker, a contemporary of most of the founding fathers and one of the first contributors to that bible of the legal world, "Blackstone's Commentaries", wrote that the second amendment applied to individuals and further, "The right of self-defense is the first law of nature."- in other words, a right possessed by Americans even before the Constitution.

Joseph Story, a pre-Civil War Supreme Court Justice concurred and further pointed out that the right to bear arms had long been thought to be a guarantor of personal liberty. He saw the Constitution as an instrument protecting personal SECURITY, personal liberty and private property.

Further yet, the Supreme Court in an 1837 case, Nunn vs Georgia, declared that the states could not infringe on an individual's right to bear arms.

The famous 14th amendment was partly passed by Congress during Reconstruction to insure that men of all races had the right to bear arms because some states were endeavoring to take this right away from black men as a way of taking away their basic right to self-defense.

Of course, none of these precedents keeps liberals from arguing to the contrary. They favor a loose interpretation of the constitution and the spurious argument that most of the Bill of Rights (those parts not implied in the 14th amendment) only apply to the Federal government and not the states. (So gunowner's rights may be infringed by the states and municipalities.) All this may be argued 'til doomsday by historians and lawyers.

In modern America a growing lack of trust in tradition and a rise in cultural relativism has made purely legal and historical arguments suspect. Thus modern debate has moved from constitutional grounds to practical and statistical grounds. The assumption being that we will work around the Constitution if it becomes expedient.

We will leave to some future issue of the newsletter a recitation of statistics and arguments that are currently bandied about. Suffice it to say that the left makes the case that guns kill innocent people. They site studies that reveal the number of children killed every year by guns. While the right can show how states which allow concealed weapons have lower crime rates, etc.

For a truly in-depth discussion of the second amendment and issues of gun control, please take a look at the following volumes. Each can be ordered by clicking on the url below the title.

Guns, Crime and Freedom (hb,263pp), by Wayne R. Lapierre

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0895264773/theconservativebA/

Guns: Who Should Have Them (hb, 475pp), by David Kopel

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0879759585/theconservativebA/

Self Control Not Gun Control (hb, 311pp), by J. Neil Schulman

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1882639057/theconservativebA/

EDITORIAL: For the editorial staff at the Conservative Bookstore the whole gun control issue must come down to practicality, which is the very reasons that the founding fathers sited for putting the right to bear arms into the second amendment. There is some validity in the slogan, "If guns are outlawed only criminals will have guns." In the world of crime and deterrence of crime, it would seem obvious that weapons become a great equalizer on the side of the righteous. A woman assailed by an attacker can be assured of relative safety in the recourse to a revolver. A shop owner may protect his property from the vagaries of the robber. A father can protect his home from the intruder bent on making off with his child. Weapons have a place in society. We should not strip away an individual's right to self-defense because a few irresponsible persons allow their weapons to fall into the hands of children. Rather we should apply one of the primary conservative notions of individual responsibility and hold the careless and negligent responsible.

The liberal might put forth as a counter to the above argument that if no one had guns, then we would all be more safe. To the contrary. A weaponless people leaves individuals open to depredations by the state. Had the people of Eastern Europe been properly armed would 6,000,000 small farmers have been murdered by Stalin? Would Hitler have had his way in building concentration camps? No one in those places and times believed such atrocities could be perpetrated in a modern society…but such things have happened and could happen again. An individually armed citizenry is the last guarantee of civil liberty.

…AND FINALLY, don't forget to read an entertaining and enlightening interview next week with Marc Ogle. It's not often we interview a writer of political science fiction.

Please tell your friends about us,

All the staff at the Conservative Bookstore