Vincent J. Curtis
17 Mar 22
After William the Conqueror occupied
England, he required his barons to obtain a license from him before they could
crenellate their castles. Crenellation
makes a castle more defensible against a siege, and William wanted to make it
difficult for any of his barons to rebel against him.
And rebel they could, since they had arms
and followers. Unlike his son William Rufus,
William ruled in a manner that made him at least respected by his barons.
On June 15, 1215, at a place called
Runnymede, which is near Windsor Castle, the leading barons of the realm met
with King John of England, where John, under pressure of rebellion, signed what
came to be called Magna Carta. This was
the deal: either John signed, or the barons would rise in rebellion. Being barons, they had arms and followers,
and would be able easily to overwhelm the unpopular John if it came to
rebellion.
On June 7, 1628, the Parliament at
Westminster passed the Petition of Right, which demanded of King Charles I that
he conform to Bills and agreements he previously made and to forego the
assertion of arbitrary powers. Parliament
passed the Habeas Corpus Act to
protect themselves from arbitrary arrest and detention by Charles. Charles didn’t listen to the Grand
Remonstrance, and in 1642 an impatient nation rose in civil war and deposed the
King, Charles famously losing his head.
In those days, the owning of a sword was nothing remarkable, as it gave
the owner a means of defending himself, self-defence being a recognized
principle of English law.
A restored Stuart dynasty failed to learn
its lesson, and in 1688, with the nation again rising in the Glorious Revolution,
James II abdicated, and William of Orange and his wife Mary Stuart assumed
jointly the throne of England. The Bill
of Rights was passed into law in 1689, and among its provisions was the
condemnation of: “causing several good subjects being Protestants to be
disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to
law.” And “By raising and keeping a
standing army within this kingdom in time of peace without consent of
Parliament, and quartering soldiers contrary to law.”
Consequently, it was declared and agreed to
by the King that: “That the raising or keeping of a standing army within the
kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against
law;” and “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their
defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.”
Together, these two provisions enable
oppressed subjects to rebel against Kingly misrule. There were, of course, many constraints
against such an extreme measure as rebellion, but the principle is clear: that
misrule by the King could have consequences.
The King’s defenses against rebellion were, first, the awful gravity of
rising against the King, who had a near divine right to rule, and, second, good
rule by the King, making rebellion unnecessary.
Such was the law of the land in the
thirteen colonies when, because of a quaking rebellion, British soldiers attempted
unsuccessfully to confiscate the firearms of the colonists. That the colonists retained their arms
enabled the American Revolution to succeed.
The right to keep and bear arms provided in the 1689 Bill and the
attempt by the British to confiscate privately owned firearms as a means of
quelling rebellion are what led to the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the
United 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.”
In the American view, a militia was what
won the American Revolution against King George III. While it may have occurred to some that a
government so excellently devised as American one, and led by so great and good
a character as General Washington, an armed citizenry was no longer necessary
or desirable. However, there were enough
anti-federalists around that the Bill of Rights, including the Second
Amendment, had to be ratified if the constitution drafted in Philadelphia was
going to be enacted. Even in America,
the power of the citizen to rebel against misrule was going to be retained,
however remotely.
The Dominion of Canada inherited British
law as it stood in 1867, which included Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights of
1689. The Riel Rebellions of 1870 and
1885 were both suppressed by superior military force, but the rebellions were
possible because the Metis people of Rupert’s Land had arms. There was the FLQ crisis in 1970, but various
gun control bills didn’t begin passing the Canadian parliament, until 1977.
The Firearms Act of 1995 gave the
government the nascent power to confiscate firearms, contrary to the provisions
of the Bill of Rights of 1689, though it wasn’t exercised on a large scale
until May 1, 2020. On that date, the
government, by order in council, declared approximately 250,000 semi-automatic
rifles to be prohibited, and revoked the permits granted to people under the
1995 law to possess them. This number is
at least three times the number of rifles the Canadian military has. In short, the gun confiscation would deprive
the people of Canada of the means of armed rebellion against misrule, contrary
to law and custom going back nearly 1000 years and particularly against the
intent of the Bill of Rights of 1689.
Lest one tut-tut such a need as never
arising in these days of democratic election, present need is not the
point. One only has to look to Australia
and New Zealand as democracies that subjected the people to the most extreme and
arbitrary misrule and police enforcement under a rubric of combatting a disease
– after the firearms of their populations had been confiscated. In Canada, the Emergencies Act was declared,
bank accounts frozen, and donations attempted to be seized by order of the
Prime Minister’s Office - to solve a parking problem on Wellington Street in
Ottawa. That protest arose because of the
misrule of the Prime Minister, who would not deign to meet with the protesters
or even propose to redress their grievances.
(He was democracy itself, he argued.) The protest was simply declared to
be an ‘illegal occupation’ by another political leader, and that was that. It wasn’t an armed insurrection, the protesters
were peaceful, unarmed, and they were seeking redress of grievance. Nevertheless,
the protest was broken up by armed agents of the state using superior force,
and by the attacks on personal finances before
guilt was proven in court.
It is said that an armed society is a
polite society, but there’s something about an armed citizenry that tends to
keep the rulers polite also, or at least restrained. Why should a popularly elected government
ruling well fear armed rebellion?
The law and custom of the English speaking
world has been to lay the executive government open to armed rebellion should
it misrule. King William III was
particularly clear on this point; he didn’t even require loyalty oaths from
those around him. The government is
protected against armed rebellion, first, by the awful prospect of rebellion
itself – the overthrowing of the existing order, an act never to be taken
lightly - by the maintenance of armed agents in the form of police and a
standing army, by other powers such as those over banks, and ultimately by its
own good rule.
Much pettifogging often attends the defence
of misrule, but no amount of law can justify misrule. A government that takes the means of armed rebellion
away from its citizens, for whatever reason, is up to no good – if not for
itself, then on behalf of a successor government it cannot control and does not
even know.
A thousand years of experience shows that
the attempt to mass confiscate arms from the public, for whatever excuse
alleged, must be resisted as being the first act of a further program of
oppression preparatory to misrule, however innocent the confiscators protest themselves
to be. In 1995, Prime Minister Jean
Chretien promised that registration would not lead to confiscation; well, less
than thirty years on, that trust and promise was broken, and confiscation has
begun. The innocent rulers of today can
make no worthwhile promises concerning the misrule of future governments.
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