Are they ready to abrogate the contract?

I wrote recently that under the Second and 14th amendments, the average citizen must be "allowed" to own, without government license or permission or taxation, "every terrible implement of the soldier."

One correspondent insists that's absurd, because that "would mean just anyone would be allowed to own machine guns, mortars and biological weapons!"

Another ridicules the presumption that we retain the right to bear arms so our armed strength will strike fear into any would-be tyrant. This is absurd, argues Correspondent No. 2, because our current state of arms-bearing is so pathetic there's no way any American community could successfully resist a brigade of regular Army troops sent in to impose martial law.

Taken together, these two form a circular argument. If we're now so inadequately armed as to render laughable the usefulness of our "right to bear arms" as a prophylactic against tyranny, then, unless tyranny is the goal, the inescapable conclusion is that we must repeal every existing gun law, sell surplus mortars and machine guns and encourage "civilians" to stock up on any terrible weapon they can figure out how to buy, import or manufacture.

Instead, the statists' obvious conclusion is we must give up what few, weak arms we still retain.

A corollary argument asks: "What did the Founding Fathers mean when they penned the Second Amendment? American colonists had flintlocks, not AK-47s and Glocks. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison didn't have 33-round clips. They had gunpowder, lead, gun flints, bullet molds, powder horns. ... They couldn't shoot 20 people in a split second. Colonists had guns mainly to protect themselves from British abuses of power. Do we fear the English today?"

Someone who contends you can kill 20 people a second with a modern weapon has clearly never tried to hold one steady while placing even 10 rounds in a target.

Besides, the Founding Fathers could shoot 20 people a second. Load a bag of grapeshot into a cannon of 1775 vintage and fire it at a tightly formed company of redcoats.

Does the First Amendment protect only newspapers printed on 18th-century, hand-cranked presses? Of course not.

The Founders may not have foreseen that fighting terrorism and the "War on Drugs" would, 230 years later, be excuses to abrogate our right to be secure in our homes and persons. They didn't need to. The principle remains.

Or would the gentleman argue it's OK to break down our doors and ransack our homes without a warrant so long as no one's wearing a tricorn hat and shoes with big buckles?

I was not the one who decided the great contract of 1787 meant the American people would forever retain the right to possess "every terrible implement of the soldier."

Schoolchildren are taught the Articles of Confederation were inadequate, so the delegates were sent to Philadelphia to design a more powerful central state. Not true. Instead, the delegates were instructed merely to make some minor improvements.

With Jefferson safely away in Paris, the dominant Hamiltonians came up with a charter for a vastly stronger central government that shocked many Americans. The anti-Federalists organized. The Hamiltonians were obliged to promise their skeptics a Bill of Rights and to spend considerable time offering assurances.

Peruse pages 66-69 of Stephen Halbrook's "That Every Man Be Armed." Federalist after Federalist vowed the new government could never impose tyranny "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" (Hamilton, Federalist No. 29), that any encroachments on our liberties by the new government "would be opposed (by) a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands" (Madison, Federalist No. 46).

"Who are the militia?" asked Tench Coxe in the Pennsylvania Gazette of Feb. 20, 1788. "Are they not ourselves. ... Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American. ... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people."

Finally, have our correspondents considered the real ramifications of what they propose?

A contract can no longer be held valid if one side unilaterally abrogates its responsibilities. You cannot tell your landlord you're going to stop paying rent as agreed, and expect to continue to reside in his domicile.

Lysander Spooner, in his brilliant 1867 essay "The Constitution of No Authority," argues compellingly that it has no force upon those who were not alive when it was ratified.

In a practical sense, a working majority of naive American voters disagree.

To the great benefit of the cynical pigs fattening at the trough in Washington City, we semi-morons operate on the theory the Constitution is still in effect, still limiting the powers of the federal government to the legitimate ones to which our forefathers assented.

(Few in Washington City still believe this. Asked in October 2009 where the Constitution authorizes Congress to order Americans to buy health insurance, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi responded, "Are you serious?")

But if the central government and its supporters now seek to unilaterally abrogate the promise of our forefathers that "Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American," then they have undeniably abrogated the contract. The people are henceforth morally and ethically free -- I do not say we are pragmatically free, because we are not -- to ignore every enactment, levy and assessment of that central government as we choose. We are free of any obligation to make good the debts of a cynical cabal that has no legitimate claim to our loyalty, our support, or our obedience, because it has abandoned its central purpose of -- to protect our rights.

As they seek to ridicule and waive the parts of the deal they no longer like, have they thought that through?

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, and author of the novel "The Black Arrow" and the nonfiction "Send in the Waco Killers." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.