A right to own a firearm is firmly grounded in tradition and law

Guest Column by Timothy Toroian 

Now that the midterm elections are over, and Democrats are in some positions previously occupied by Republicans, here are some thoughts for your consideration: 

No politician has ever explained how inconveniencing law-abiding citizens removes guns from the hands of criminals. 

No politician has ever explained why habitual lawbreakers would surrender their guns to some kind of “buy back” program. 

Confiscating guns in this country, as some have suggested, would not only be unconstitutional, but would entail searching every enclosed space in every structure, and you still would not get all the guns in criminal hands nor prevent them from acquiring new ones. 

Does something cause you to think they wouldn’t enter by the same routes as smuggled drugs? 

Both the United States Constitution, in article one, section nine, clause three, and the Pennsylvania constitution, in article one, clause 17, prohibit ex-post facto laws.

Ex-post facto, “having retroactive effect or force,” means you cannot outlaw that which is legally possessed today. 

The Declaration of Independence in paragraph two lists life and liberty as unalienable rights which by their nature imply a requirement of self-defense. 

Self-defense requires weapons and the Second Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, specifies that the individual has the right to possess arms in order to defend himself. 

This amendment is the second in a list of eight codified individual rights. 

The Bill of Rights exists because some states were refusing to ratify the constitution because it had no explicit protection for individual rights. 

In the congressional debate of the amendment, on Sept. 9, 1789, the Senate voted in the negative to insert the words “for the common defense” next to the words “bear arms,” meaning not to.