If you want insight into the

mentality of the intellectual elite, observe the hysterical reaction to

the Bush administration's declaration that the right to keep and bear

arms is horror! an individual right.

In two U.S. Supreme Court briefs

filed by the Justice Department on May 6, Solicitor General Theodore B.

Olson wrote: "[The] current position of the United States is that

the Second Amendment more broadly protects the rights of individuals ...

to possess and bear their own firearms."

What is so outrageous about

this? True, this has not been the government's position for the last several

decades. But that doesn't make it invalid. Maybe the former position,

that the Second Amendment refers to the states' right to arm their national

guards, was wrong.

You'd think Olson and Attorney

General John Ashcroft had just legalized the mugging of old ladies. According

to Michael Barnes, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence,

"This action is proof positive that the worst fears about Attorney

General Ashcroft have come true: his extreme ideology on guns has now

become government policy."

Is he kidding? It's extreme

to believe that rights belong to individuals? If that's extreme, the Declaration

of Independence must be the most extreme document ever written.

Barnes's organization continued:

"The Department's new policy weakens the federal government's defense

of gun laws ... ." (Unfortunately, it doesn't. The government believes

the right may be legally limited.)

This is the real issue for

the anti-self-defense lobby. It's not concerned with the soundness of

any argument. All that matters is its agenda. Anything that works to restrict

and outlaw gun ownership is good. Anything that promotes it is bad. Objectivity

and honest discourse are irrelevantif not dangerous.

Here's another example. New

York Times columnist Bob Herbert is alarmed that the administration's

position will put "more guns into the hands of more people."

(Surely we all know several hardened criminals who put off buying guns

until the Justice Department's position was clear.) Even if true, that

does not prove that the administration's position is wrong. Herbert also

claims there was "no need for the government to take a position on

the Second Amendment in the two cases for which the briefs were submitted."

Even if that's right, so what? The issue is whether Ashcroft and Olson's

position on this important issue is valid.

But all the anti-gun lobby

cares about is its agenda. Truth and falsehood don't matter. That's demagoguery.

If you look objectively, you

readily see that Ashcroft and Olson have done nothing radical at all.

Obviously, gun rights belong to individuals. There's no one else for them

to belong to. And the Supreme Court has never said otherwise. On the contrary,

the Court has said "the people" in the Bill of Rights means

"individuals."

Could a right belong to a collective?

What nonsense! A collective is composed of individuals. It can have no

right not possessed by its members. What does it mean to say the group

has a right if no individual has it? The "collective right"

position is absurd.

Bear in mind that the Second

Amendment does not say that "the people shall have a right to keep

and bear Arms." It says, "the right of the people to keep and

bear arms shall not be infringed." The Amendment does not create

the right it recognizes it. This is important because it puts the Amendment's

preamble "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security

of a free State" into perspective. The anti-gun lobby says this means

only that states may arm their national guards. But the Framers did not

attribute rights to states, only to persons. The one reference to the

states in the Bill of Rights is about powers, not rights.

The militia is mentioned in

the Amendment only to explain that a citizen-based defense (the militia)

will be effective only if people know how to use guns, and that proficiency

with guns depends on individuals' being free to possess them. Hence, "the

right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Twisting this right against

tyranny into a state power cynically insults the intelligence of every

American.

[Sheldon Richman is senior

fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org) in Fairfax, Va.,

author of "Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State,"

and editor of Ideas on Liberty magazine.]