Editor’s note: John Klar is a Vermont grass-fed beef and sheep farmer, and an attorney and pastor who lives in Irasburg.
[O]ften, a lack of knowledge about the meaning of the United States Constitution is exhibited most pointedly by those who want to destroy the rights it seeks to preserve. In recent years I find a striking example of this in those who would ban guns on the premise that we gun owners “don’t need that gun to hunt.”
I must explain why this oft-repeated mantra is so offensive. There is no “right to hunt” in the United States Constitution; there is though a right to defend one’s home and preserve one’s country, a right that predates by hundreds of years the settling of America. The Supreme Court has affirmed this right and its history (See, e.g., Heller v District of Columbia). To argue that my gun should be taken away because I don’t need it to hunt is like telling a woman she has no right to an abortion procedure because she does not need to rid herself of that unsightly bulge.
Whether or not one supports abortion, we all know what that debate is about. And so, if I insulted all womanhood by averring that abortion is about a vain desire to eliminate a mid-section protrusion – that is, that it is solely a cosmetic procedure – many would take offense, and much derisive howling would follow. How dare I?
If you believe I do not need a semi-automatic rifle to hunt, you are correct – I don’t. But I do need it for the purpose for which I purchased it, and for the purpose specifically intended by the Constitution, which is the defense of my home and to stand against a growing and tyrannical government. I have a right to defend my family and home, and a duty to preserve my children’s constitutional rights. That right and its mirror duty have never gone away, and never will.
Of course, the next step in limiting guns to weapons used for hunting is to reduce gun owners to hunters – that is, if I don’t hunt, I don’t need any gun at all. Limiting gun ownership to hunting would thus limit guns, but also humans, to that narrow use not mentioned in the Constitution. That this argument about hunting is shaping policy in Vermont demonstrates just how out of touch and uneducated are those who seek to impose their will on a free people.
Thomas Jefferson famously observed that democracy would not work with an ignorant populace. We need to know what our rights are.
Now I don’t see why these people who restrict my rights to hunting should have any right to employ their uninformed mouths for anything other than eating. After all, if you are this uneducated and toxic you really don’t have a right to free speech. And if we limited all use of such mouths to chewing instead of for speech (just as you seek to limit my right of self-defense to a pastime I may or may not pursue), then we would not risk our children being poisoned with the errors that spill from your open gullet. This is much more worthy a justification to restrict your right to “free speech” than your restriction of my right to purchase and possess a firearm: you are attacking the Constitution, abusing the free speech right, and denigrating others’ freedoms; all from a position of smug self-satisfaction.
You are free not to own a gun; you are free to own a gun for hunting; but you are not free to take away my right to defend my home and country. That is precisely why the Second Amendment was passed – to prevent idiotic people from enslaving us to our federal government. The Second Amendment ensures that the federal government will never have that power to enslave, even if a majority of uneducated Americans forget what it says, and forget that many patriots, fathers and sons died to create the freedom it seeks to preserve.
I do not claim a federal “right” to hunt. There is no right to hunt (or right to abort an unborn child) contained in the Constitution. I possess a longstanding, express protection of my right “to keep and bear arms.” You who would limit this to a “right to hunt” are safe though – I respect your right to free speech even as you try to take away the clear rights of others; I respect the law of the land regarding abortion even though I find it morally objectionable. I would actually reach for my gun to protect your right to free speech and freedom of religion (no hunting there).
Those who would restrict the right to bear arms to hunting are exactly like those who would screen immigrants to America for their Muslim or other beliefs: they ignore the plain language and intent of the United States Constitution in an effort to remove or violate its express protections. Thomas Jefferson famously observed that democracy would not work with an ignorant populace. We need to know what our rights are.
Next time a politician or activist says, “You don’t need that gun for hunting,” just be aware of what a perversion of our heritage they are spewing and how much they are abusing their right to free (if ignorant) speech. Then tell them they should close their mouth and use it only for food, for they should be limited in their right to use that oral aperture.
The right to bear arms is the paramount right which provides the means to protect all the other rights. If we lose it we will lose all rights not magnanimously provided by an oppressive and bureaucratic government. The Framers knew this: we should too. Otherwise we might even lose the freedom to hunt, or to display a confederate flag, or to vote in a bizarre election like the current one.
I am every bit as jealous and protective of my right to keep and bear arms as any woman ever was of her right to abort her own child. And if a woman wants to defend herself with a gun, in a world of home intrusions, rapes and murders, I maintain that it is her “right to choose” – even to choose a gun she doesn’t need for hunting.
