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Posted on 11/21/2019 6:21:23 AM PST by marktwain
For the last 50 years, I have been hearing or reading versions of this argument:
The Second Amendment is clear. All we have to do is bring a case before the court(s) and we win. Why doesn't the NRA, local lawyer, local defendant or whoever, just push a case forward? The law is clear!
When I was young and naive, I wondered the same thing. Why wasn't the NRA bringing a Second Amendment case before the courts, and specifically, to the Supreme Court?
A more general question is: How do judges routinely escape consequences when violating their oaths of office; when implementing their preferred policy instead of enforcing the law? How are they able to escape consequences when they do this instead of enforcing the U.S. Constitution and state constitutional protections of the right to keep and bear arms?
Men are not perfect. Men will always be tempted to abuse power. Men will always be tempted to accumulate power for their personal benefit. If men were perfect, we would not need government. Because they are not perfect, we need limits on governmental power.
The designers and writers of the Constitution set up a system to limit governmental powers through checks and balances inside and outside the government. The legislature has the power to set up courts and impeach judges; the President has the power to appoint judges; Judges have the power to judge cases, which involves an intrinsic ability to interpret the law, as written by the legislature.
In addition to internal governmental checks and balances, the writers of the Constitution depended on the people to limit governmental power through elections and by petitioning the government, informed by a free press and freedom of speech. That depended on people's understanding the governmental processes and having a common understanding of natural law and Judeo-Christian moral
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
It was done deliberately.
America’s robed mullahs. More nuanced than the ME goons. 666 ways to Sunday. Right Chuck?
Defy is more like it.
“It was done deliberately.”
Of course. Fundamental transformation and all that.
If there is no moral authority to our laws, they exist solely for political expediency. As history has so often — and bloodily — demonstrates, that motive is subject to whim and abuse, the very powerlust you describe, whether it lies with legislators, bureaucrats, or judges.
The Second Amendment is clear:
The “Supreme” Court is “Supreme” in name only, because the ultimately “Supreme” legislative, executive AND judicial power is held by armed citizens who establish government to serve their needs AND protect their rights. So the Second Amendment was put there to remind them that this supremacy is the ultimate check on powers granted to them by citizens.
“..It was done deliberately. ...”
Of course it was.
Which is WHY the 2A was put in in the first place...
...and which is also WHY they routinely and arrogantly try to strip it from us.
They know it, and we know it. And it’s up to us to NEVER let them off the hook, nor surrender our absolute RIGHT to own and carry firearms.
We’re their masters; they need to be reminded of that at every opportunity.
What he left out is that the Supreme Court flat out refuses to take most 2nd Amendment cases, and Justice Thomas has publicly said so.
Was baked in the cake from day one:
“The judicial power will operate to effect, in the most certain, but yet silent and imperceptible manner, what is evidently the tendency of the constitution: — I mean, an entire subversion of the legislative, executive and judicial powers of the individual states.”
Brutus, Antifederalist #11
https://www.constitution.org/afp/brutus11.htm
They knew what RIGHTS were in the early 1800s.
You really need to read the 1982 Senate report on the 2nd Amendment. I have a paper copy.
https://guncite.com/journals/senrpt/senrpt.html
“The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.”
19th century cases
16. * Wilson v. State, 33 Ark. 557, at 560, 34 Am. Rep. 52, at 54 (1878).
“If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the (p.17)penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of constitutional privilege.”
17. * Jennings v. State, 5 Tex. Crim. App. 298, at 300-01 (1878).
“We believe that portion of the act which provides that, in case of conviction, the defendant shall forfeit to the county the weapon or weapons so found on or about his person is not within the scope of legislative authority. * * * One of his most sacred rights is that of having arms for his own defence and that of the State. This right is one of the surest safeguards of liberty and self-preservation.”
18. * Andrews v. State, 50 Tenn. 165, 8 Am. Rep. 8, at 17 (1871).
“The passage from Story (Joseph Story: Comments on the Constitution) shows clearly that this right was intended, as we have maintained in this opinion, and was guaranteed to and to be exercised and enjoyed by the citizen as such, and not by him as a soldier, or in defense solely of his political rights.”
19. * Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. (1 Kel.) 243, at 251 (1846).
“’The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.’ The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State.”
And the SCOTUS case that led to the Civil War..
Are Negros citizens...Dred Scott
“It would give to persons of the negro race, who are recognized as citizens in any one state of the Union, the right to enter every other state, whenever they pleased.... and it would give them full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might meet; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to KEEP AND CARRY ARMS wherever they went.”
Any weapon authorized to an individual infantryman IS protected by the 2nd Amendment.
Agreed, except that our access to those weapons is ultimately protected by natural rights and our willingness to exercise that right as needed. 2A is a promise that the government will not infringe on that right, but regardless of whether or not that promise is kept, protecting everything related to that right is up to us.
I don't think my meaning came across correctly.
The "militia" included every person who could pick up a gun and shoot it. Supreme Court rulings have used the concept that a gun not used in the military may not be covered by the 2nd A.
You'll never win a court case for a heavy machine gun, which is a crew-served weapon, but a fully automatic rifle with a bayonet should absolutely be legal for a law-abiding citizen.
The militia, today, is every citizen. The enemy we'll probably face will be cartels, gangs and terrorists, who our politicians are inviting in.
You both scratched some edgy stuff for those raised on programmed misinformation and born into a structure the Founders would condemn.
In the Miller case, the court “made law”. They have no authority to do so. They may only “apply the law”.
Any law of man is first subject to the Law of Nature’s God and Nature itself. That is the only legitimacy courts have. It is the only authority the People consented to allow their government.
Rights may be delegated, but never alienated. If government can have it...the people can have it. Pretty scary, but...a Republic if you can keep it, a wise old Ben Franklin said.
Courts could and should be rejecting much of what passes for law under this first test (Nature and Nature’s God) as well as the lesser test of a strict application of the US Constitution.
They do not.
Many of our revolutionary founders formed at their own expense, and buying readily available military stores off the shelf....artillery units and armed ships of war. Only then did they offer them to their governors or the Congress.
80 years later their sons and grandsons did the same thing during the lead up to the War Between the States.
The better test for permissible arms under God’s law is not limited to what can be carried....but rather what a rogue government would intend to use against the People.
Since we have already had one moron Congressman lip off about using nukes to enforce gun control....prudence would ask what did the Founders really intend?
Reading the same authors they did and what they themselves said, it would be something along the lines that the People should have at their disposal arms in sufficient quantity and quality so that the majority of them might reign in a rogue government without too much trouble....or..
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The Founders would still at a minimum want to buy artillery and outfit ships for war on the seas and now in the air....and have lots of belt feds of various calibers.
If only because the government has them.
It is easily argued that anything up to and including crew served weapons are covered by it. Else there would be no point to Letters of Marque.
This Ping List is for all things pertaining to infringes upon or victories for the 2nd Amendment.
FReepmail me if you want to be added to or deleted from the list.
More 2nd Amendment related articles on FR's Bang List.
The courts began to change back in the 1860s when the dean of one of the Ivy League law schools mandated that law students be taught that “settled law” from previously adjudicated cases. Previous to that, law students were taught that in ALL cases they should go and research what the authors of the law and Constitution meant about a matter.
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