The Lost Constitution - Book Review

The Lost Constitution
by William Martin
Tor-Forge Books 2007
Website
Second Amendment

This is the third book in the Peter Fallon series. Peter Fallon is a book detective. He searches for rare books. I must find and read the first two books.

In this novel, Peter searches for a lost draft for the constitution that had annotations written on it by the New England delegates in the 1760's.

At the same time the Gun controversy has risen up again in present day USA, and this time the federal government is seriously thinking about banning guns for the entire country. But this law goes against the constitution which says the following....

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.

So the NRA and the gun supporters are up in arms about losing their right to bear arms.

There is a legend from history that said there was a draft copy of the constitution on which delegates jotted down their thoughts and ideas on a variety of matters concerning the bill of rights, religion and guns.

This draft was held and lost by a young man named William Pike. He lost this draft and eventually regained it some years later and it was handed down to this descendents, until the civil war broke out. Then the draft went missing. Noone has seen it for 150 years.

Peter Fallon and his partner get dragged into the search. As does a congresswoman and a rich media billionaire. Peter and partner do a lot of library research, following William Pike's family and their descendants. Peter also gets caught up between 2 groups who are also hunting for this draft. The billionaire wants the original document for its antiquarian value, and the other group is a hunting group who do NOT want to lose their right to bear arms.

The showdown takes place at a baseball park in Boston, during which Peter must hand over the draft to one of these groups.


This is a comment on gun ownership

[BLURB]Americans have a right to own guns, Supreme Court justices declared (March 2008) in a historic and lively debate that could lead to the most significant interpretation of the Second Amendment since its ratification two centuries ago.

COMMENT When the Second Amendment was created, the arms in question reserved to the people were military arms. The Second Amendment did not consider the question of hunting weapons, for hunting was indispensable to survival in the early colonies. But the battles of Lexington and Concord had shown that government, when it becomes oppressive, seeks to remove military arms from the people, a fact well understood by the Minutemen.

Under US law, the militia is all able-bodied men and women able to carry arms and between the ages of 18 and 45. It is acknowledged in the law that there is an "Unorganized militia", meaning all citizens able to bear arms but not under the direct control of US authority. This is a hold-over from the days of the Minutemen when it was understood that citizens would exercise their own discretion in deciding when to shoot the redcoats. The common motto was, "Do not wait for orders, but grab thy musket and ride towards the sound of gunfire!"

All tyrants seek to disarm their own people, and it is not mere coincidence that every genocide since the start of the 20th century has been preceded by attempts to disarm the population being targeted.

Guns are the birthright of free people, because guns give free people the right to say "no" to a dictator. That is the very core of the reason the 2nd Amendment was given to us,to give us the ability to say "no', because there is no freedom without the freedom to say "no."

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson, in letter to William S. Smith, 1787

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764

[There has been a notable increase in the number of massacres happening in USA over the last few years. This is because the criminals do not care one iota about the laws, and they still get the guns and love to shoot unarmed people who do obey the law. Removing guns from the people will just cause MORE massacres and deaths to occur unless the government specifically legislates the removal of guns from the CRIMINALS!!!!]

"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights and those of their fellow citizens." -- The Federalist, No. 29 - Alexander Hamilton

"[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. . . Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." -- Thoughts On Defensive War, 1775 - Thomas Paine

AUTHORED ON 2008-03-19
http://whatreallyhappened.com/
Michael Rivero