President Biden, Champion the Second Amendment to Both Unite and Make America Safe Again

Ralph Benko

by Ralph Benko, Contributing Author: Here in suburban Maryland, as across much of America, flags are at half-staff. They are dipped in mourning for the victims of the tragic mass murder in Atlanta. Followed by Boulder. President Biden? Preserve, protect and defend us as well as the Constitution!

Here’s how, a way first proposed at Forbes at "After Sutherland Springs, Use The Second Amendment To Prevent Mass Gun Violence" and "After Orlando, Let’s Require Gun Owners To Join The National Guard." Now, yours for the taking.

The solution lies in more, not less, respect for the Second Amendment. Safety cannot be legitimately secured by eroding the right to keep and bear arms. Eroding any element of the Bill of Rights is a political nonstarter by virtue of America’s love of liberty. Per Ben Franklin, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

What to do? Follow Switzerland. Switzerland has a gun culture that makes Texas’s look like a Quaker meeting … with one-tenth of America’s gun violence.

How does that work? Switzerland has, in effect, a "well regulated militia."

Time Magazine, in a 2012 article, "The Swiss Difference: A Gun Culture That Works":"Even as the gun-control debate rises again in the U.S. in the aftermath of the horrific school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the gun-loving Swiss are not about to lay down their arms. Guns are ubiquitous in this neutral nation, with sharpshooting considered a fun and wholesome recreational activity for people of all ages.

"Even though Switzerland has not been involved in an armed conflict since a standoff between Catholics and Protestants in 1847, the Swiss are very serious not only about their right to own weapons but also to carry them around in public. Because of this general acceptance and even pride in gun ownership, nobody bats an eye at the sight of a civilian riding a bus, bike or motorcycle to the shooting range, with a rifle slung across the shoulder. … "Switzerland trails behind only the U.S, Yemen and Serbia in the number of guns per capita; between 2.3 million and 4.5 million military and private firearms are estimated to be in circulation in a country of only 8 million people. Yet, despite the prevalence of guns, the violent-crime rate is low: government figures show about 0.5 gun homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2010. By comparison, the U.S rate in the same year was about 5 firearm killings per 100,000 people, according to a 2011 U.N. report."The Second Amendment provides not one but two guarantees. It states: "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 first clause has been dangerously abdicated. Shame on the NRA for failing to defend the full Second Amendment

The evidence is overwhelming that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to create a states-based military counterforce to a potential future tyrannical national government.

Yes, the right of self-defense is virtuous.

Yes, hunters need rifles with which to hunt game. That said, neither of these virtues propelled the right to keep and bear arms into the Constitution.

Respect! The Second Amendment is a firewall against tyranny.

In the young United States of America there was no standing army. There were, rather, state militias which later mostly got subsumed into the National Guard. The Constitution’s chief architect James Madison observed to the Constitutional Convention: "A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty."

As one eminent historian states: "Well-regulated in the 18th century tended to be something like well-organized, well-armed, well-disciplined.” The way to Make America Safe Again,while uniting all but the lunatic fringes of the body politic is by taking more, not less, seriously the full Second Amendment.

President Biden! By restoring well-regulated militias you can create Constitutionally pristine mechanisms, in keeping them well regulated, to keep guns out of the hands of those dangerous to public safety … while putting them securely into the hands of the rest of us. The U.S. Army is not required to and does not accept those with criminal histories or psychological problems. The militias won’t either.

Such discipline is legitimate in a way that background checks to buy weapons are not. As in Switzerland, gun violence will plummet, likely by as much as 90%.

Joe Biden wishes to unite America. He sympathizes with those, like Newsmax readers, who greatly desire reduced gun violence. He has an opportunity to avoid getting jammed by the gridlock that thwarted his predecessors.

President Biden? Restore the Second Amendment’s orphaned guarantee of a well-regulated militia… necessary to the security of a free State. Thereby enter history as a truly consequential president.
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Ralph Benko is Chairman, The Capitalist League and contributor to the ARRA News Service.

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