" This constitutional security for "the right to keep and
bear arms," implies the right to use them as much as a
constitutional security for the right to buy and keep food would
have implied the right to eat it. The constitution, therefore, takes it
for granted that
the people will judge of the conduct of the government, and that,
as they have the right, they will also have the sense, to use arms,
whenever the necessity of the case justifies it. And it is a sufficient
and legal defence for a person accused of using arms against the
government, if he can show, to the satisfaction of a jury, or even
any one of a jury, that the law he resisted was an unjust one.
In the American State constitutions also, this right of resistance to
the oppressions of the government is recognized, in various ways,
as a natural, legal, and constitutional right. In the first place, it is
so recognized by provisions establishing the trial by jury; thus
requiring that accused persons shall be tried by "the country,"
instead of the government.
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