Posted on 05/09/2010 8:59:12 AM PDT by An Old Man
“The Second Amendment … stands as the Founding Fathers’ clear and unmistakable legal statement that an armed citizenry is the bulwark of liberty and provides the fundamental basis for law-abiding Americans to defend themselves, their families, their communities, and their nation against all aggressors, including, ultimately, a tyrannical government,” wrote Daniel Schmutter in a friend of the court brief on behalf Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
Mr. Schmutter said the Second Amendment is “the very last line in the defense of American liberty.”
To gun control specialists this argument is deeply troubling. They worry that any armed person with a beef against the government will look to the Second Amendment for encouragement to lock and load and then rain down armed force in the face of what he or she perceives as “tyranny.”
“The Framers plainly did not envision ad hoc groups of armed individuals beyond state control (i.e. a ‘citizens’ militia’) as a constitutional check on tyranny,” Mr. Schreiber wrote. “They saw them as unruly mobs that must be quelled.”
Although it was not discussed during oral argument in the Chicago case, Justice Antonin Scalia addressed the issue briefly in his majority decision in the high court’s 2008 ruling striking down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
If this administration trys stealing our 401Ks and IRAs, we will see the American response to tyranny.
My suggestion to the Government post McDonald case would have to be... “Tread lightly”. Should SCOTUS rule broadly and with direct consequense in this case, they will be regarded as the greatest sitting court in history. Instead of tiptoeing on the issue, they need to enforce the intent of the Founding Fathers to the fullest.
There is no excuse not to fix the entire 2nd Amendment debate in this one case. This case should never have needed to exist exept for those that desire tyranny.
Tread lightly for the sleeping giant stirs.
Getting free men to do what you want them to is a difficult if not impossible task. Once those free men see the need for an action and begin to move toward it individually and collectively, stopping them is absolutely impossible. The Brits learned that in the eighteenth century. Other tyrants are relearning it now re: the TEA party.
i.e. Amendment XVI
As has been played out in Marxist regimes time and again: As individuals, Marxists never believe that they will be rendered expendable in the new People’s Paradise. They will never catch a bullet in the head. They will remain among the unassailable elite. It will always be the enemy, the opposition, the other guy; what they fail to understand is that as the criteria for acceptable thought and speech narrows, they become the other guy.
The delusion that it will never happen to them is simply narcissism, a quality Marxists possess in spades.
Gun rights shouldn’t be thought of with respect to *just* tyranny, but also need to be considered with respect to the *opposite* of tyranny—anarchy.
That is, a government that inflicts itself on the people is bad, but a government that abdicates its responsibility to protect the people from either foreign or domestic threats, likewise demands gun liberties.
Right now, the American citizenry face challenges from both government tyranny *and* government abdication of responsibility—specifically to protect America from invaders from without, such as illegal aliens, and criminals within.
And the solution to both of these is gun liberty.
Vigilantism, the people taking the law into their own hands, begins only as part of a process. Either the government does not support the people against criminals, or worse, takes the side of criminals against the people.
At first, vigilantism is peaceful, entreating the government to perform its duty. If the government ignores its duty in the first place, it likely will ignore this entreaty. Such a government will spend far more time holding on to power, so they also defeat the normal process to replace them with an effective government.
At this point, the vigilantes begin to form an organization, still very peaceful, to make their voices heard more clearly. But invariably, the bad government will see this as far more threatening than it does the criminals.
Faced with continued inaction, and maybe open hostility, the vigilantes then try to form self defense groups, whose purpose is to identify and inform on the criminals, and hopefully to convince the criminals to leave. But they just report, they do nothing directly.
The criminals, and possibly the government see this as a threat, so begin to fight back, with criminals and the police attacking the groups, and maybe threats to arrest the vigilante leaders.
Eventually this turns to violence, when the vigilantes are attacked, wounded, and maybe a few killed. This drives the organization underground, and is the final straw. The vigilantes now realize that they must resort to mob action.
Even then, their emphasis is still just to drive out the criminals, and maybe the corrupt government. But when the criminals and the government resist, the mob loses its temper. And then, only then, is vigilante justice seen.
Everything leading up to this point is ignored by the media, and the vigilantes are shown to be a spontaneous mob of ignorant people, bent solely on murder and oppression. But the truth is that both, this does solve much of the problem, and second, it achieves the goals of the vigilantes.
A good example of vigilantism in the face of government indifference or support for criminals was how black freedmen sought to arm themselves in militias after the Civil War, and how those that wished to oppress them relied on both gun control and lack of government willingness to protect black people to savage them:
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Mags/The-Klan’s-Favorite-Law.htm
Can't be done legally because of required Congress super majorities and 75% States' ratification.
The only way would be some sort of a benevolent dictatorship for a short period. Thatwould be quite risky and unacceptable by the majority of the populace.
It's a dilemma that the Communists fully realize, this is why they are ruining the country as fast as possible and they know that it can't be fixed without unacceptable drastic and draconian rule.
Right we need 75% of the states to do it. Lets do it. At the same time repeal the progressive socialist amendments like the income tax. Otherwise we will end up in a Communist country.
The army under such circumstances may usefully aid the magistrate to supress a small faction, or an occasional mob, or insurrection; but it will be unable to enforce encroachments against the united efforts of the great body of the people. - Publius, Federalist Papers Number VIII: THE EFFECTS OF INTERNAL WAR IN PRODUCING STANDING ARMIES AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS UNFRIENDLY TO LIBERTY
The whole tenor of Publius' remarks on this subject reveal a way of thinking that is lost to us. In his terms, we acquiesced to a totalitarian state a long time ago.
The last two paragraphs of the article quoting Judge Kosinski give the clearest and most concise definition I have ever read for the reasoning behind the Second Amendment and its continuing necessity.
It is hard to oppress a population equipped to hunt animals
the size of a man.
— L. Neil Smith, Pallas (New York: Tor, 1993), p. 380
Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons.
If you don’t have a gun, freedom of speech has no power.
- Yoshimi Ishikawa, Japanese author commenting on the lack
of protest with which Japanese tolerated governmental
corruption, Los Angeles Times, 10/15/92
The most important freedom of all is the freedom to defend
freedom.
- Kevin McGehee
Gun control, the opiate of the intellectuals:
covert elitism laced with self-righteousness.
ANON
Correct
Tyranny is a tad like pornography ... hard to define, perhaps, but you damn well know it when it stares you in the face.
Correct
Our Founders did not take up agression until King George made the first use of arms. Up until that time they were engaged in an intense letter writing campaign. If the 0bambots take the first shot, I'll think there will be an appropriate response from We The People.
Ditto.
Coming off a revolution for liberty, the framers knew exactly what they were doing.
Yes, I’d dearly love to see Judge Kosinski in the Supreme Court. I know that’s not very likely but I can dream, can’t I?
To quote an old Air Force general I read about, 'You bet your sweet ass' it does.
Modern liberals want us to believe that they forgot about that when they wrote the bill of rights. They didn't forget about it when they wrote the parts about unlawful search and seizure, they didn't forget about it when they wrote the other stuff about limits of power and rights of citizens, but they had no idea that people might contemplate taking up arms against an oppressive government.
They must be shocked even now.
</sarc>
I guess I’m just not as easy going as you are. I get irritated when journalists and government drones profess not knowing things every citizen should know. Remember they can get pretty forgetful about constitutional limits to laws and search and seizure when they want to. The Constitution was not intended to be a “living document” but to be set in stone for the life of our Republic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.