“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

— Benjamin Franklin, comments as a member of the delegation to the Crown

Most of us probably believe that this quote means something along the lines of:

If you give up your rights for a promise you will be kept safe, you don’t deserve rights or safety and you will loose both.

Some people claim that Franklin actually meant something close to the opposite of this, but it doesn’t matter.  No matter what Franklin originally intended, it is still true.  We know this because it is a Principle of Natural Law.

Our rights are God-given.  As such, we do not truly own them, we are just a steward of the Creator’s gift.  Furthermore, our rights are inherent and inalienable.  This means they are an inseparable part of ourselves.  You cannot give away your rights because they are a part of you: they cannot be separated from who and what you are.  It would be like trying to give away your thoughts, all of them, forever.  You can’t do it.  So the whole notion of being able to surrender your rights is absurd.  We can willingly restrain the exercise of our rights.  Our rights can be trampled upon by another.  But we can never give them away.

Nor can another person promise to keep you safe.  Even if they are the most noble and pure of heart, that is a promise that they simply cannot keep.  What if someone comes and kills your protector?  Who would keep you safe if your protector were no longer present?  Or what if ten men come to rob you?  Even if your protector can handle nine of them, who is going to stop the tenth?  Or what if you encountered a situation where your protector has to choose between saving you or saving their own family?  A person has a duty to their family first, so how could you be able to rely on your protector if they were ever faced with such a choice?  You couldn’t, and that’s the point: no one can promise to keep you safe because it is an impossible task.  The best a person can do is promise to guard and watch over you, but not keep you safe.

But what if you trade your rights to the government for a promise of safety?  The same thing applies.  The government is just a group of people.  As a group, they might have more resources to help watch over and guard you, but they also have more people to guard and watch over.  This means they still cannot make a promise to keep you safe for the same reasons I explained earlier.

Finally, what does it say about a person that they would demand you surrender a God-given gift in return for a promise they know they cannot keep?  How can such a person be considered honorable or noble?  They can’t.  They are not only willing to make such a demand and promise, they are showing they are comfortable with the idea by making such a demand.  This means that no one willing to take your rights in return for protecting you is of good enough character to trust with your safety.  Else, how could they summon the nerve to make the deal at all.  Anyone who demands you give up your Natural Rights for a promise of security is a tyrant at heart.  How long do you expect such a person to not trample on your rights?  Such a person is essentially asking you — the chicken — to let them — the fox — guard your house and promising not to do you any harm.  Well, it is in a fox’s nature to eat chickens, and likewise, it is in a tyrant’s nature to trample rights (and the people to whom they belong).

Now let’s apply a little Natural Law to this equation.  Let’s suppose — for the sake of argument — that you can give your rights away.  You give your rights to me in return for my promise to keep you safe.  I take your weapons as part of our deal.  Now you have no means to resist me, so I tell you I need to keep your money — so I can control how you spend it.  I have to make sure you don’t spend it on anything that might hurt you.  That was our deal, remember?  Same thing for what you eat.  I have to control that, too, and for the same reason: I can’t let you eat something that could harm you.  That was our deal.  Next, I have to make sure you don’t go anywhere, do anything or see anyone who I do not approve of first.  Your husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend?  Nope, not anymore, sorry — it is part of keeping my promise to keep you safe.  Do you see where I’m going with this yet?

OK, so you get tired of my tyranny and you go to the government and ask them to do something about me.  The government makes the same deal: they will get rid of me and promise to keep you safe, but you have to surrender your weapons.  Guess what?  Now you have many people watching over you, and they not only want to control your money, but they decide you have to start working two jobs.  You see, you don’t make enough to pay for everything they need to make you safe.  They also want to tell you what and how much to eat, who you can and cannot marry, where you can and cannot go or live.  They demand that they be allowed to listen to your private conversations (so they can make sure you are safe).  They take your children away (to make sure they are safe from you).  See where I’m going again?  Only, who are you going to go to this time to get protection from the government?  There’s no one left, at least no one strong enough to stand up to the government.  Heck, you don’t have a weapon, and neither do I.  You agreed to give my rights away as part of your deal with the government, so now we’re both slaves to tyrants (thank you, very much).

This is the inevitable outcome: whenever a person or group of people tries to surrender their rights to another person or organization in return for a promise of being kept safe, they eventually end up as the slave of the person or organization that promised to protect them.  It’s simple human nature.  If there is no risk to exploiting another person, the average person will exploit them — especially if they are in government.  If government has a monopoly on the use of force, and they decide who goes to jail and who doesn’t, then who is going to stop the people in the government from doing whatever they want to whomever they want?  No one!  That’s the point: you can’t trust the person or persons who demand you surrender your rights before they will promise to keep you safe.

Our founders tried to warn us about this:

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground.”

–Thomas Jefferson

Our Founders also warned us about why we should never trust the government with our rights or safety:

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,—it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

–George Washington

This is why those who are willing to surrender their Natural Rights in return for a promise of security will loose both.  They are making themselves slaves to a tyrant, and tyrants never honor their promises, let alone the rights of those over whom they rule.  Though it may come in different forms, and it may take more or less time, sooner or later, those who surrender their rights for the promise of security will eventually lose both — every time!

However, this problem doesn’t end with the individual.  The same people trying to give away their rights for safety are usually offering up the rights of others, as well.  No matter how lofty their goals or sincere their intentions, no one has the right to offer up or demand the surrender of another person’s rights.  This is an assault on that person, as assuredly as if they physically attacked them, and under Natural Law, that makes such a person an enemy of Liberty!

The issue of gun control is not difficult to understand — not when we look at it from the position of Natural Law.  If you have a moment, I’ll demonstrate:

1 — Under the Principles of Natural Law, we are all born with Natural Rights.  This means our rights are inalienable: or, in other words, our rights are an inherent part of us — they cannot be separated from who we are.

2 — Among our Natural Rights is the right to self-defense.

3 — It is also a Principle of Natural Law that a person cannot justly demand another person surrender their Natural Rights, nor can a person agree to surrender their own rights (this is because Natural Rights are inherent in the person).

4 — By logical extension, it follows that no person can demand another person surrender their ability to defend themselves, nor can they surrender their Natural Right to self-defense.

5 — Therefore, no one can justly demand that another person surrender their natural Right of self-defense.  By extension, this includes any means of self-defense that an individual chooses to employ — including ‘weapons of war!’

This means that any call for gun control is a violation of Natural Law.  And, because our Constitution is predicated on the principles of Natural Law, any call for gun control is also a violation of the Constitution, as well as the principles asserted in its authorizing document, the Declaration of Independence.

Today, it is common to hear people arguing that the militia is the army or National Guard, not the People, themselves.  But this is not the understanding the Founders held.  To them, the militia was the People.  This is not that difficult to prove, either.  All one has to do is go back to the time of the founding and read what the Founders wrote.

The first thing we have to understand is that the Founders were much more precise in their use of language than we are today.  They used it much the same way as a surgeon uses a scalpel.  Furthermore, the Founders valued honor and integrity and the rule of law.  They were proud of saying what they meant and meaning what they said.  This means they did not play games with their words like we do today.  Finally, the Founders wrote in a time when the average person was much more informed and engaged than we are today.  Much of what they wrote about lacks specific details because — in their time — the concepts were widely understood.  Therefore, the Founders saw no need to explain the definition of every word they used.  So, with all of this in mind, let us take a look at the 2nd Amendment.

The 2nd Amendment 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.”

First thing to note is the use of the word, ‘militia.’  The founders did not say ‘army.’  So we can safely assume they are talking about something different from the army.  Nor did they provide a definition of ‘militia,’ so we can assume that the Founders assumed the average person would understand what they meant.

Next, they said the right to keep and bear arms is in ‘the people,’ not the Congress or the several States.  Here again, the Founders did not provide a specific definition for ‘the people,’ but, this time, it should be clear that they were not talking about government as the representative of the people.

Still, in our modern times, we have an irrational need to hear people say exactly what they meant, and to say it in unambiguous words: words that cannot be misunderstood.  Is there anything in the historic record that might help us understand in clear and unmistakable language what the Founders meant by ‘militia’ and ‘the people?’  Yes, there is, and it comes from none other than the co-author of the 2nd Amendment:

“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

— George Mason, Co-author of the Second Amendment during Virginia’s Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788

“A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves . . . and include all men capable of bearing arms. . . To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms… The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle.” 

— Richard Henry Lee, Signer of the Declaration, Additional Letters From The Federal Farmer, 1788

As co-author of the 2nd Amendment, George Mason is the preeminent authority as to its intended meaning, and he is clear and forceful in stating that the militia is ‘the whole of the people.’  As a signer of both The Declaration of Independence and The Articles of Confederation, Lee is equally authoritative on this issue.  Their comments are clear: they understood the militia to be the whole of the People, not an agency of the government, and definitely not the army.  The Founders means what they said: the militia is the whole of the people — period.  So what is ‘the whole of the people?’  If it does not mean every man, woman and child in society, then we’re at a loss as to what it could possibly mean.  To interpret it any other way would be to destroy the plain meaning of the words the Founders used — especially when taken in context of the times in which they were written.