Letter from Paul Martz
Bill of Rights – November 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors,
I’ll start out by saying that I’ve been a member of the NRA for 37 years and a Life Member for more than 25. I found Ben Long’s stated views on the organization in last month’s edition to be not only patently offensive, but totally ignorant. The level of “professionalism” demonstrated by his article makes me wonder if there shouldn’t be some sort of exam before one is allowed to call oneself a professional.
His remarks are offensive because he is a firearms owner, and doesn’t belong to the NRA. That leaves the burden of maintaining his Right to keep and bear arms up to those of us who are. In other words, he’s a freeloader. Offensive because he has no idea of what the NRA’s principal mission is: defense of the Second Amendment. It is not now, and never has been, the preservation of open space. Offensive because he is unaware that the Sierra Club, to which I once belonged a long time ago, has had a defacto anti-firearms ownership bias for decades. And even more offensive, because while not being a member, he claims not only to know something about the organization, but has the gall to offer instruction about what he thinks we should be doing.
He’s ignorant because like Bill Clinton (and John Kerry for that matter) he thinks the Second Amendment is about hunting and fishing. The Second Amendment doesn’t have anything to do with the right to defend one’s person and property, that was recognized by the Federalist’s as a so-called natural right. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to guarantee to the People certain specific Rights, including the one to possess the means to overthrow an oppressive, and thereby unconstitutional, government. Something the Federalist Papers also made abundantly clear.
While I might not be in agreement with the current Administration about a number of things, I am certain of one thing: it has never made a move to restrict my Right to arms which would allow me the means to be capable of undertaking such an action in the future. In fact it has been criticized for stating that the Second Amendment is an individual Right. I can easily and not favorably contrast that position with the previous government, as best exemplified by the passage of the utterly meaningless “Ugly Gun Ban.”
Before some fool gets up and starts arguing that the Second Amendment is about the right of the States to form militias, or that it is a collective right, not an individual one, don’t. Either statement would just demonstrate that ignorance of the Constitution is not a recent development. The Powers of the States are provided for in the main body of the Constitution in Article IV. The People in the Second are clearly the same as those “People” in the1st, 4th, 5th, etc. To state otherwise is just embarrassing to the rest of us.
This particular power to be guaranteed the People was so important that Harry Lighthorse Lee and Patrick Henry made clear to Madison that if the new Constitution did not specifically state it, Virginia would never ratify. Their worry was about a large standing Federal army, and particularly of a “Special Militia” in essence a Praetorian Guard, loyal to the newly powerful Executive.
Ben Long makes the statement that “over the years the National Rifle Association has become more and more political.” A wonderful example of someone exposing his ignorance to all and sundry. The NRA has always been political and when a faction attempted to abandon that responsibility twenty years ago (and become a super “gun club” tucked away from Washington in northern New Mexico), the resulting “revolution” created the structure of the organization that we have today.
While the NRA does sponsor the National Matches each year at Camp Perry, Ohio, its primary mission has always been political. Mr. Long is probably unaware that he would not even be allowed to own a telescopic sight for his “hunting” rifle if it were not for the NRA. That’s because after the Texas Tower murders, a movement was made to outlaw “deadly sniper rifles,” ie. all those with scope sights.
I could go on with similar examples, right up to the current attempts to economically destroy the domestic firearms industry with bogus product liability lawsuits brought to us by the same band of shysters who did such a public service with the tobacco lawsuits. However, I’ll close by saying that the Constitution is not like the menu in a Chinese restaurant. You do not take one government structure from Column A, and only those civil liberties you want from Column B. The whole success of our system has been dependent on checks and balances, and that includes those assured by the guarantees of freedom contained in the Bill of Rights.
Paul Martz
Poncha Springs
