The New York Times's Dumb Second Amendment Argument

I understand that to many people who work at the New York Times, guns are frightening animistic objects. But Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor of the Times, just took the following swipe at Ted Cruz, under the headline "Ted Cruz’s Strange Gun Argument," and it is his argument, not Ted Cruz's, that is strange to say the least:

Americans who believe the Second Amendment gives them an individual right to own guns (as opposed to a more general right to bear arms, as our editorial board argues) often make cogent arguments for their position. I believe that allowing people to own guns is not incompatible with imposing reasonable restrictions on their ownership, but I have heard sensible people strongly argue the opposite side.

But there are ridiculous arguments against gun control, perhaps the silliest of which is that the framers of the Constitution wanted to preserve the possibility, or even encourage the idea, of armed rebellion against the government. It’s a particularly absurd argument when it comes from a member of Congress who is running for president.

So, if we're tracking this argument here, Rosenthal thinks it's mystifying that the American founders who just successfully fought an armed rebellion against their own government and felt justified in their cause, would preclude the possibility of a future generation doing so? Let me direct Mr. Rosenthal to the Declaration of Independence:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Certainly, we can all agree governments should not be "changed for light and transient causes." But if, per America's founding document, it is our right and duty to cast off tyrannical governments, how does Rosenthal think that happens? Pillow fights? The founders's own example suggests a lot of guns would be involved. And the fact that these same men would later declare firearm ownership a God-given right should be an unsubtle clue to help connect the dots here. Rosenthal may find the prospect of armed insurrection horrifying to his urban liberal sensibilities, but it's almost impossible to argue allowing for this possibility was not a significant part of the historical rationale behind the Second Amendment -- and it's a rationale Americans would be foolish to stop believing in.

what always just bewilders me is the average apologists arguments against 2A and their obvious lack of knowledge on the subject. We can take the simple lines in the constitution and watch them attempt to interpret it as they see fit... but all the while, if they would simply read the CONTEXT in which such entries into the Constitution were written, they would see the very obvious and plain reason WHY they were put in there and what they meant by those condensed words.

Federalist Papers, #46 - Patrick Henry
Constitution (3 Elliot's Debates 384-7)
Virginia, Saturday, June 14, 1788.

P386
"The great object is, that every man be armed. "

Page 425
Mr. GEORGE MASON.
"Mr. Chairman, a worthy member has asked who are the militia , if they be not the people of this country, and if we are not to be protected from the fate of the Germans, Prussians, &c., by our representation? I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers. "

P14, James Madison
"Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
" Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession... "

this could go on and on and on. There were obvious arguments of opposition as well, but the point is, it was ratified, and more importantly, the papers tell us why... not the NYT, not Moms against Guns, not Bloomberg, Not Haggardly senators from California. quite frankly, they don't even have any business commenting on someone elses natural rights.

General Thomas Gage, who had become the military governor of Massachusetts in May 1774, was charged with enforcement of the highly unpopular Intolerable Acts, which British Parliament had passed in response to the Boston Tea Party. Seeking to prevent the outbreak of war, he believed that the best way to accomplish this was by secretly removing military stores from storehouses and arsenals in New England.

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