Posted on 06/12/2007 4:23:30 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Repeal Second Amendment, Analyst Advises By Nathan Burchfiel CNSNews.com Staff Writer June 12, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - The Second Amendment guarantees the right of an individual to own guns and for that reason should be repealed, according to a legal affairs analyst who opposes gun ownership.
"The Second Amendment is one of the clearest statements of right in the Constitution," Benjamin Wittes, a guest scholar at the center-left Brookings Institution, acknowledged in a discussion Monday. "We've had decades of sort of intellectual gymnastics to try to make those words not mean what they say."
Wittes, who said he has "no particular enthusiasm for the idea of a gun culture," said that rather than try to limit gun ownership through regulation that potentially violates the Second Amendment, opponents of gun ownership should set their sights on repealing the amendment altogether.
"Rather than debating the meaning of the Second Amendment, I think the appropriate debate is whether we want a Second Amendment," Wittes said. He conceded, however, that the political likelihood of getting the amendment repealed is "pretty limited."
Wittes said the Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms meant more when it was crafted more than 200 years ago than it does today. Modern society is "much more ambivalent than they [the founders] were about whether gun ownership really is fundamental to liberty," he said.
"One of the things that they believed was that the right of states to organize militias, and therefore individuals to be armed, was necessary to protect the liberty of those states against the federal government," Wittes said. "This is something we don't really believe as a society anymore."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Center Left??? More like far-left whacko organization.
Why do these idiots continually believe that any good can come from the government having a monopoly on firearms?
This is precisely why the second amendment was written, so that the populous could actively resist tyranny.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Yeah just try it. Whoever tries to take mine away better bring an army with them because they’ll certainly need it.
guns are illegal in mexico,
but people get killed by guns there all the time
by the government, gangs, drug lords, etc.
Except that gun confiscation would necessitate the budget to buy the firearms back. I think that would be unlikely to occur that quickly.
“This is something we don’t really believe as a society anymore.”
Maybe in his social circle
The government doesn’t compensate the poor slobs that get hit with domestic abuse charge and their guns taken away.There is no certainty you wouldn’t simply be told “guns are illegal,you must turn them in or the authorities will come put you in prison”;don’t believe for a minute there aren’t huge illegal databases in the hands of rogue government and Brady-type persons that would be used to identify a majority of gun owners.Remember the roving inspections with photcopiers of the FFL dealers,4473s,CCW lists at the state level.If the data is on a networked computer ,given time and money ,that data can be retrieved by hackers.Faced with federal(Congression blackmail) orders to give up all firearms data or face cutoff of federal moneys,how many states would fight?
Eloquently said.
Question: Is the right to be armed a natural or a divine right?
I think he is probably right when he says that americans AS A WHOLE, are more ambivalent about gun ownership than they have been in the past. Whether that is a good or right thing is another matter.
Do you need to protect yourselves against the Federal government? It seems an odd thing, in a democracy, to feel you have to protect yourself against your own elected government. In fact, some of the posters on these boards are almost paranoic about this need.
Personally, I think there are far more dangerous threats to freedom out there. There is a rising beauracracy, a stultifying legalism, a greed for material wealth and a denying of justice to others. There is increasing secularism leading to a denial of the spiritual and a consequent meanness in personal relationships. There is an all consuming selfishness that puts the individual and his or her personal happiness as the measure of success.
And of course, there are enemies external. Neo-fascist regimes, communist regimes, islamist regimes - all of them want to see us ruined, if not bury us.
The end justifies the means. Its never, ever true.
Here, I must give Mr. Wittes credit; unlike many others who also despise the Second Amendment, he can at least read. There is hope.
Ok, first a correction, we are a Republic not a democracy.
Do we need to protect ourselves against our elected government? I don’t see that, they are paderers and cowards. They will do what they can to stay in power (ie. be re-elected). It is the un-elected federal government that we have to worry about. We can always recall or elect someone else when it comes to the elected government. When it comes to the BATFE (more accurately the BFE, as I have not heard them doing anything in recent years with Alcohol or Tobacco), etc. in which unelected people work. They abuse and grow their power both with and without the help or consent of elected officials.
The 2nd was not just about our government but all enemies. The threat against the 2nd is the most important, because even if society were to crash and all your firearms have been taken from you, how will you defend yourself or survive.
That is why I say that repeal of RoeV.Wade and a marriage amendment to the Constitution (both of which I think are important) can wait until after eliminating gun control laws/executive orders and securing our borders.
Ok, consider the quote suitably modified. It seems an odd thing, in a republic, for you to want to protect yourself against your own elected government.
As for your comments re the “unelected federal government”, well, I think we are on the same page. The rising tide of bureaucracy, (fuelled, alas, by technology) is a really serious threat to individual liberty. I personally believe it to be THE threat. I’m sick and tired of not being allowed to do this, and having to fill in this form and that form and obey this obscure regulation or that safety rule.
The thing that always gets me is that the purveyors of all this really honestly believe they are doing good. Often of course they are - you can individually justify every new law and regulation that is issued - but the net overall effect is that we are all getting slowly strangled in red tape.
I agree with your red tape statement, but there is no red tape involved when the BATFE decides that a stock like the Atkins Accelerator (I think that is correct) or a shoestring is a machinegun, or when a part (reciever) is considered a firearm when alone it is not good for anything. That would be like a turbo making a vehicle a sportscar (even if it is a diesel truck) or a firewall (because it has the VIN) is a car. That is overstepping its powers and taking on the powers of Congress.
The left wants to seize guns from law-abiding people and deliberately leave them in the hands of criminals so that criminals can take money, property, and lives from law-abiding citizens, thus restoring the “balance” that the left works for.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
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