[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12486-12487]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              GOD AND GUNS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, when I was at a town hall meeting in 
Texas recently, a local man came up to me afterward to talk about his 
concerns over where our country was headed-- something to do with a 
fiery inferno in a hand basket. Anyway, as he was talking to me, I 
noticed his T-shirt. Here's

[[Page 12487]]

what it said: ``I love my Bible,'' and it had a photograph of the 
Bible, ``and I love my guns,'' with a photograph of two .45 Colt 
revolvers. Naturally they were in the right order. After all, he was a 
local preacher.
  The most important right we have as Americans is the freedom of 
speech, and that includes the freedom of religion. It's first in the 
constitutional Bill of Rights because without it, none of the rest 
would be possible. The right to bear arms is the Second Amendment 
because without it, we could not protect the First Amendment.
  The recent Supreme Court decision simply stated the obvious as it is 
written in the Bill of Rights: ``A well regulated militia being 
necessary to the security of a free State, right of the people to keep 
and bear arms, shall not be infringed.'' Now I'm sure the halls of 
academia were all up in arms about the right to bear arms. The media 
immediately began spreading the shocking news: the Supreme Court 
actually upheld the Constitution. Oh, the hysteria they went through. 
They said, Murder rates will surely double upon the mere announcement 
of this. Never mind the fact that more gun control does not lower 
murder rates; it actually increases them. Look at this city, 
Washington, D.C., the toughest gun control in the country.
  But let's don't let the facts get in the way of a political agenda. I 
wonder how the media and the antigun protesters would have felt about 
the First Amendment being ignored for political purposes. The Second 
Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, protects citizens from 
the power of government. People have rights. Government has no rights. 
Government has power. And when citizens give away their rights, like 
the Second Amendment, government increases its power and oppression 
over the people.
  The Supreme Court ruled accurately and restored the rights of all 
Americans based on the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the 
Constitution which commands that no State shall ``deprive any person of 
life, liberty or property without due process of law.'' To truly 
understand the meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment, we need to 
understand the men who actually wrote the Constitution and what they 
said when it was ratified.
  The Founding Fathers were very concerned that a strong Federal 
Government would trample on individual freedom and individual rights 
because that's what happened to the colonists under the power of Great 
Britain. Governments historically do that to their people, trample on 
individual rights. That's historical. So after the ratification of the 
Constitution, the Framers knew that a declaration of rights had to be 
added to protect basic individual rights, rights that are inalienable, 
created by our Creator and not created or given to us by government.
  The Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to prevent 
the government--that's the Federal Government--from disarming the 
public like the British Army did to American citizens. The right of the 
free people to defend freedom and protect themselves was so important 
that it was placed second in the Bill of Rights behind the First 
Amendment, freedom of speech and freedom of religion and the freedom of 
press and the right to peacefully assemble.
  Currently, gun control advocates and their elitist allies wish to 
subject the people to more government oppression of freedom by denying 
individuals the right to arm themselves. Thomas Jefferson knew the 
importance of an armed citizenry. He said: ``No free man shall ever be 
debarred from the use of arms.'' Samuel Adams wrote: ``The Constitution 
shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who 
are peaceful citizens from keeping their arms.'' And of course James 
Madison, who helped write the Bill of Rights, once wrote that the 
Americans had ``the advantage of being armed,'' and that other nations' 
governments were ``afraid to trust the people with such arms.''
  So leave it to a Texas preacher to keep it all in perspective. You 
see, without the Second Amendment, you can't protect the First 
Amendment, the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the freedom 
of press and the freedom to peacefully assemble without the Second 
Amendment.
  And that's just the way it is.

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