From: [o--iv--r] at [cs.unc.edu] (Bill Oliver) Newsgroups: misc.writing Subject: Political Use of Gun Control: Classical (was: Re: Fun with Guns) Date: 14 Jun 1995 12:08:03 -0400 This article reviews some classical positions on private ownership of arms, and is taken for the most part from "The Second Amendment as a Phenomenon of Classical Philosophy" by Stephen Halbrook, in Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy, Don B Kates, ed, Ballinger Publishing Company, Cambridge, Mass, 1984. In this article, Halbrook attempts to describe the political and philosophical background which formed the milieu in which the Founding Fathers worked. The Bill of Rights, like the Declaration of Independence, derived its basic philosophy from what Thomas Jefferson called "the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc." (1) In fact, the "Right to Bear Arms" was discussed not only by the republican philosophers, but by the authoritarian philosophers such as Plato, Hobbes, and others. In general, as you might expect, the republican philosophers supported private ownership of arms, while the authoritarian philosophers considered dangerous. PLATO Plato saw institutions moving, undesirably but naturally, from oligarchy to democracy to despotism. Essential to each of these stages was the tendency of the unjust to win priviledge and power through "armed force" and the opposition thereto of "the armed multitude." Oligarchy arises when priviledge based on wealth is fixed by statute, and is threatened when the state faces an external foe, leading to the necessity of war and hence the arming of the multitude. The armed citizenry can then rise up, and "whether by force of arms or because the other party is terrorized into giving way," the poor majority takes power and establishes a democracy, which grants people "an equal share in civil rights and government." "Liberty and free speech are rife everywhere; anyone is allowed to do what he likes."(2) Plato's negative attitude towards democracy is based not only on rejection of democratic ideals, but also because he felt that it would inevitably lead to tyranny. After the oligarchy is replaced by a society progressing towards democracy, a strong leader arises who "begins stirring up one war after another, on order that the people may feel their need of a leader, and also be so impoverished by taxation that they will be forced to think of nothing but winning their daily bread, instead of plotting against him." Finally, the despot wins complete victory by reestablishing the state monopoly of arms: Then, to be sure, the people will learn what sort of creature it has bred and nursed to greatness in its bosom, until now the child is too strong for the parent to drive out. Do you men that the despot will dare to lay hands on this father of his and beat him if he resists? Yes, when once he has disarmed him. Plato's ideal was the "philosopher king," whose primary difference from a tyrant was alleged good intentions. Plato proposes a strictly hierarchical social structure with a royal elite at the top, soldier auxiliaries in the middle, and the "inferior multitude" at the bottom. The practical implementation of this system is found in his Laws (3). To assure domination of the elite, the individual would have no right to keep arms and would be allowed to bear them only at the discretion of the State. By thus carefully circumscribing the right to keep and bear arms, Plato hoped to avoid the conundrum he saw as inevitable in oligarcy -- providing the individual with arms necessary to support the state from external attack inevitably would lead to popular liberty. The Laws insists that "freedom from control must be uncompromisingly eliminated from the life of all men." "... no one, man or woman, must ever be left without someone in charge of him; nobody must get into the habit of acting independently in either sham fighting or the real thing..." ARISTOTLE In his Politics, Aristotle critically analyzed Plato's ideal. Aristotle's concept of polity was based on a large middle class which fulfilled all three functions of self-legislation, arms bearing, and working. According to Aristotle, "there are many things Socrates left undetermined; are farmers and craftsmen to have no share in government...? Are they not to possess arms...?"(4) In accord with his broad philosophical ideal of the mean, Aristotle saw in the right to keep and bear arms the true basis of political equality. "The whole consititutional set-up is intended to be neither democracy or oligarchy, but midway between the two -- what is sometimes called 'polity,' the members of which are those who bear arms." ... Since all true citizens possess arms, the class of arms bearers is not limited to those who defend the state in war. Just after referring to "the class which will defend in time of war," Aristotle states that "it is quite normal for the same persons to be found bearing arms and tilling the soil." By contrast, "oligarchial devices" exist in "regulations ... made about carrying arms," to the effect that "it is lawful for the poor not to possess arms; the rich are fined if they do not have them." ... In Aristotle's ideal polity, each citizen is to personally keep his own arms which would not be owned by the State, "... For those who possess and can wield arms are in a position to decide whether the constitution is to continue or not." And since he argued that no free person submits to a tyrant and that rule without consent is neither rightful nor legal, Aristotle deemed arms possession a requisite to obtain or maintain the status of being a freeman and citizen. In the Athenian Constitution, Aristotle described the manner in which Peisistratus seized power by force and set up a tyranny by disarming the Athenians. Having been exiled for establishing a tyranny, Peisistratus hired soldiers and returned. Winning the battle of Pallenis, he seized the government and disarmed the people; and now he held the tyranny firmly, and he took Naxos and appointed Lygdamis ruler. The way in which he disarmed the people was this: He held an armed muster at the Temple of Theseus, and began to hold an Assembly, but he lowered his voice a little, and when they said they could not hear hem, he told them to come up to the forecourt of the Acropolis, in order that his voice might carry better; and while he used up time making a speech, the men told off for this purpose gathered up the arms, locked them in the neighboring buildings of the Temple of Theseus, and came and informed Peisistratus. Peisistratus told the people that henceforth only he would manage public affairs. Peisistratus was tyrant for almost two decades and was succeeded by his sons, Hippias and Hipparchus. After Hipparchus was assassinated during a procession, Hippias resorted to torture and execution, "but the current story that Hippias made the people in the procession fall away from their arms and searched for those that retained their daggers is not true, for in those days they did not walk in the procession armed, but this custom was instituted later by the democracy." ROMANS Cicero, Livy, and other Roman philosophers and historians were particularly studied by the Founding Fathers, for the Roman Republic provided at once an ideal and a condign warning of the frailty of republican institutions. As a lawyer, Cicero upheld the right of individuals to bear and use arms against tyranny and in self-defense. In defense of Titus Annius Milo, Cicero argued that the right of self-defense is inborn, derived from nature, and known by intuition, and that arms bearing was justified absent any criminal motive. Referring to "the swords we carry' to meet violence with violence, Cicero stated: I refer to the law which lays down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right... Indeed, even when the wisdom of the law itself, by a sort of tacit implication, permits self-defense, because it does not actually forbid men to kill; what it does, instead, is to forbid the bearing of a weapon with the intention to kill. When, therefore, an inquiry passes beyond the mere question of the weapon and starts to consider the motive, a man who has used arms in self-defense is not regarded as having carried them with a homicidal aim.(5) Civilized people, barbarians, and wild beasts "learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons and lives form violence of any and every kind by all the means within their power." In short, Cicero held it a natural right to bear arms and to use them for individual self-defense. MACHIAVELLI Subsequently, the republican political philosopher Machiavelli, who heavily influenced Algernon Sidney, John Adams, and other British and American Whigs, took from the Roman example the lesson that the armed people was an essential safeguard for republican institutions. On this theme, Machiavelli develops several interconnected points. The first of these, which appears in his earliest work, The Art of War, is that an armed people will not forfeit their liberties to a domestic tyrant: Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.[This was also true for the Romans when they allowed themselves to be disarmed] For Augustus, and after him Tiberias, more interested in establishing and increasing their own power than in promoting the public good, began to disarm the Roman people (in order to make them more passive under their tyranny) and to keep the same armies continually on foot within the confines of the empire.(6) In the Discourses, Machiavelli again discusses Rome: If a city be armed and disciplined as Rome was, and all its citizens, alike in their private and official capacity, have a chance to put alike their virtue and the power of fortune to the test of experience, it will be found that always their and in all circumstances they will be of the same mind and will maintain their dignity in the same way. But, when they are not familiar with arms and merely trust to the whim of fortune, not to their own virtue, they will change with the changes of fortune... (7) ... Revolutionaries such as Jefferson took Machiavelli's advice that "all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones failed." In the final analysis, states are founded on "good laws and good arms... [T]here cannot be good laws where there are not good arms..."(8) AUTHORITARIANS The work of the great French 16th century absolutist, Jean Bodin, is in many ways the mirror image of Machiavelli. His Six Books of Commonweal (1576) lists recommendations for the preservation of monarchical power, among which are disarming the people and suppression of speech: Another and the most usual way to prevent sedition, is to take away the subject's arms: howbeit, that the Princes of Italy, and of the East cannot endure that they shall at all have arms; as do the people of the North and West... [Wise is the Turkish practice] not in only punishing with all severity the seditious and mutinous people, but also by forbidding them to bear arms... [Y]et another [cause of seditions and rebellions is] the immoderate liberty of speech given to orators, who direct and guide the people's hearts and minds according to their own pleasure.(9) Using several historical examples to show how arms and speech had "translated the sovereignty from the nobility to the people and changed the Aristocracy into a Democratic State," Bodin complained that "we have seen all Germany in arms... after that the mutinous creatures had stirred up the people against the nobility." ... Citing the example of the Egyptians and the teaching of Plato he concluded that it should be illegal for most subjects "to use and bear arms" and that society should be divided into distinct classes with only the few trained to arms. Although Bodin's considerable influence on Thomas Hobbes Leviathan is clear, distinct elements of English policy and tradition concerning the right to bear arms made it impossible for Hobbes to follow the Frenchman on this point. From at least 1500, the French monarchy had consistently sought to disarm the common citizen on the rationale that "since an imposing array of royal officers was charged with the protection of his life and property, he did not need to undertake this protection himself."(10) But the English had a long tradition of requiring citizens to maintain arms and perform these functions with the constant aid of "watch and ward" organizations and the general supervision of of the constables and shire reeves (sheriffs).(11) ... Thus Hobbes could join Bodin only in condemning sedition and repudiating Aristotle's and Cicero's belief in the right to overthrow tyranny by armed force. Hobbes could not deny the duty of the English citizen to enforce both King's law and natural law by arms. Thus, Hobbes acknowledged as the "summe of the Right of Nature" that "By all means we can, to defend ourselves." Indeed, he regarded this right as so fundamental as to be inalienable, that is, not subject to waiver under any circumstances: "a covenant not to defend my selfe from force, by force, is always voyd."(12) LIBERTARIANS John Locke's 1689 refutation of absolutism in the Second Treatise on Civil Government demonstrated the difficulty in Hobbe's attempt to reconcile the popular possession of arms and this right of self-defense with authoritarian theory. Locke's primary contribution in the minds of English revolutionaries of 1688 and the Americans of 1776 was his argument that tyranny may of right be resisted in the same manner as private aggression. If private persons "have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them," then they have the right to reclaim by force the liberties of which the state has unlawfully deprived them. Tyranny, being illegal, may be resisted by force just as people may resist robbers or pirates. As even the pro-monarchist Barclay conceded: "self-defense is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself."(13) The only work which might conceivably have rivaled Locke in influence upon the founders of the American republic is Algernon Sidney's Discourses concerning Government, published in 1698, fifteen years after his execution by Charles II. ... Sidney based his realist theory of arms and freedom on the premise that "Swords were given to men, that none might be Slaves, but such as know not how to use them." (14) ... Like Locke, Sidney held that each individual is naturally free, that by the law of nature each person has a right to his own life, liberty, goods, and lands, and that tyrannical governments may rightfully be abolished. Ultimately, each person must guarantee his own freedom, which is why the ancients "carried their Liberty in their own breasts, and had Hands and Swords to defend it." "Let the danger be never so great, there is a possibility of safety while men have life, hands, arms, and courage to use them; but that people must certainly perish, who tamely suffer themselves to be oppressed..." CONCLUSION Concurring with the seventeenth century English Whig Marchamont Nedham "that the people be continually trained up in the exercise of arms, and the militia lodged only in the people's hands," John Adams cited Nedham favorably on the Greek and Roman sources of this principle: "As Aristotle tells us, in his fourth book of Politics, the Grecian states ever has special care to place the use and exercise of arms in the people, because the commonwealth is theirs who hold the arms: the sword and sovereignty ever walk hand in hand together." This is perfectly just. "Rome, and the territories about it, were trained up perpetually in arms, and the whole commonwealth, by this means, became one formal militia. There was no difference in order between the citizen, and the soldier."(15) Adams went on to note approvingly that "arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion" for various purposes, including "private self-defense." REFERENCES 1) Thomas Jefferson, Living Thoughts, J. Dewey, ed. Fawcett, Greewich, Conn. 1940. 2) Plato, Republic. 3) Plato, Laws 4)Aristotle, Politics. 5)Cicero, Selected Political Speeches, trans. M. Grant. Penguin, N.Y., 1962. 6) Niccolo Machiavelli. The Art of War. trans E. Farnsworth. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1965. 7) Niccolo Machiavelli. Discourses. trans L. Walker Penguin, N.Y. 1970. 8) Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince. trans L. Ricci. New American Library, N.Y. 1952. For Machiavelli's influence on the Founding Fathers, see H. Granter, "The Machiavellianism of George Mason", J. Pocock, "The Machiavellian Moment", and John Adams, "A Defense of the Constitution of the United States of America." 9) Jean Bodin, The Six Books of Commonweale, trans. R. Knolles. G. Bishop, London, 1606. 10) Lee Kennet and James Anderson. The Gun in America. Fawcett, Greewich, Conn. 1975. 11) Colin Greenwood. Firearms Control: A Study of Firearms Controls and Armed Crime in England and Wales. Routledge and Kegan Paul. London. 1972. 12) Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan. Washington Square Press. N.Y. 1964. 13) John Locke. Of Civil Government. Henry Regnery Co. Chicago. 1955. 14) Algernon Sidney. discourses Concerning Government. London, 1698. 15) John Adams. A Defense of the Constitution of the United States of America.