Lightening slashed across the sky as the gloom deepened. A gale was howling, spinning, twisting the air in a dark death shroud; rain hammered the windows of the castle turret, like coffin spikes driven into rotten wood. The maelstrom heightened on that doomed evening of February 22, 1452. The small events happening this eve, would ripple across the waves of time, a pebble tossed into the pond of destiny; setting into motion events that would affect lives and countries for centuries, and affect you - the reader this very moment - as you ponder this story. As the thunder heightened, destiny swirled around two people dining. Fates, this evening, would eventually join two warring countries and sunder another from the greater whole. The threads of the tapestry woven that cruel night, prepared to cast their weave. The thunder, swift approaching found William, Earl of Douglas sitting calmly having dinner with the Stuart King, James II of Scotland. The ancient Gaelic unbreakable law of hospitality provides comfort and safety to this evenings repast. The law of hospitality that stretched far back into the deepest and darkest ages of Scottish history protected all men, King and Earl, noble and peasant, Laird and Serf alike while breaking bread under the same roof.
An argument flared, tempers inflamed, James II pulled his jewel encrusted dagger from his sheath and drove it into Douglas throat, killing him. He then threw his body out the window of the castle into the gloom of the night. That one fatal stroke insured the downfall of the House of Stuart, though yet centuries in the future; for the Douglas’s henceforth became the bitterest of enemies. The old poets described it as thus
Then drew the King that jeweled glaive
Which gore so oft had spilt
And in haughty Douglas heart
He sheaved it to the hilt
That knife stroke has rippled across time to affect us now, this very day, a continent and an ocean away. A descendent of James II, then known as James VI, was adopted by Queen Elizabeth on her death bed to become the monarch of England, James I. Thus England and Scotland were joined and a bible written. The Stuart dynasty, after loosing the handsome head of one of its kings was later deposed and the Hanovers from Germany brought to rule in England. During the reign of the subsequent Georges, there were a series of attempts to restore the Stuarts to the throne, the Jacobite rebellions - a precursor to our own great fight of independence. A fateful day for American independence was April 16th, 1746. The Clan Douglas, not committing till the last second, still bitter of the perfidy of James II, throws in with the English to defeat the Scotts, their own countrymen, trying to restore the Stuarts to the crown. The knife stroke of three hundred years previous, dramatically slashed across the battle of Culloden, as The Duke of Argyle Chieftain to the Douglas, supported the German “English” King to defeat once and for all Clan Stuart. Thus plunging a knife, deeply, and irrevocably into the heart of the Stuarts pretensions to the British throne - gaining their final revenge for the betrayal centuries before. The victorious English then passed the Highland Dress Proscription Act, whose draconian provisions outlawed the speaking of Gaelic, wearing a tartan or clan plaid, ownership of guns by Scottish, and hunting in the highland moors. Thus began the infamous pogrom of the Highlands, a war of extermination, unlike any since the day of Wallace, initiating one of histories most massive genocides. King George, a tyrant to his core, eliminated the food source of the Scottish highlanders by burning crops and killing game and cattle - tens of thousands starved. Ownership of firearms was punishable by death. The tyranny of England was long remembered by the hard pressed Highlanders. Those Scots not outright murdered or starved to death migrated to the United States in one of the most massive cultural migrations ever before seen. Many of our forbearers tenderly kindled their bitter hatred against English tyranny, always keeping its flame alive. Waiting patiently, harboring their bitter grudge, as only the Scotts can do. Generations passed, while the wrong is remembered as if it happened yesterday. Waiting patiently for revenge, many of them and their children, nurtured in their overpowering hatred of all things English, swarmed to the ranks of the revolutionary army and served as the military nucleus to the budding Army of Independence. They were experienced and accomplished in war, and became the Majors, Colonels and Generals of the revolutionary army.
As a new nation this recent memory of the horrors of King George’s and his brother “Bloody Brunswick” Highland campaign of extermination was deeply and forever imprinted on the Scots. Their lineal descendents, a mere generation past, made up a large portion of the signers of the declaration of independence, drafters of the constitution, and were instrumental in forming our country. Their influence was keenly felt, and later became part of our constitution, most particularly under the 2nd amendment. The right of the people to bear arms. This one immutable right was so closely tied to the Scottish perception of a “free man” that it was incorporated into our constitution. Not as a protection against outsiders or self defense, but as a balance to tyranny that had left a hundred thousand dead a mere generation previously. A Scot was not a Scot without his claymore and a brace of pistols, fiercely independent, proud, and martial. The genocide of the Highlands by a tyrant had only ended a scant 40 years previously to writing the constitution. The right to bear arms was a direct result of the all the powerful Scottish heritage, having been deprived of liberty, wealth and life under an English tyrant.
They keenly understood the importance of the right to protect citizenry from the excess of government that had so recently devastated their beloved Scotland. In addition, the game laws, specifically those affecting hunting, was significantly different from England, intentionally so. Our game belonged directly to the people, through the state - not nobility. This was no accident. The right to hunt was not dispensed by a King in our new country. During the late 1700’s only the nobility of England could hunt. The Scotts saw this as an important right of the common people. England had long considered Scotland a land of poachers for not respecting their noble game laws, the Scots saw this as an erosion of their hereditable rights. America sought to make something new, bold and different from the mother country.
Make no mistake, the second amendment directly descended from that foul February night, whose end result, centuries later, was to dispel from their native home so many of our ancestors. Yet with them they fled with a love for liberty and an oath that they would never allow a tyrant to displace them again. No single feature of our Constitution epitomizes their dedication to protecting freedom by the citizenry, than their inclusion of the 2nd amendment. It was wise, ahead of its time, and drafted with the recent memories of the horrors of tyranny foremost in their thoughts. What other country has every constitutional right of their citizens to overthrow an unjust government, to protect themselves and their homes, and provided the weapons to do so? Revisionist historians, that twist the 2nd amendment to mean something other than it does, clearly follow not, or know not history. The 2nd amendment was not a protection related to national guard, or arming citizens for war. It was a very wise, reasoned and calculated protection for a free man against tyranny based history. A people against future genocide and tyranny by one’s own government. Some signers of the constitution had actually lived through the Highland genocide as small children. The history of this amendment is clear, and the mandate included in the bill of rights as one of our most important rights.
It is always amazing how one insignificant act, word or belief can set in motions a small ripple in history that take a life of their own, and can last millennia. A bitter division between clans created the opportunity for this countries independence. It is well to remember what happens when firearms are taken. Every one of you that can say they have a drop of Scottish blood can trace their being here - today in this country - from the excess of a tyrannical government. The Scots in America took the bold imaginative steps to insure that we now enjoy a safeguard - the 2nd amendment - for the future of their kith and kin.