Posted on 06/13/2020 7:01:57 AM PDT by DoodleBob
Heavily armed citizens showed up recently at protests in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Montana, Colorado and Idaho to allegedly protected peaceful protesters from antifa.
...
The FBI stated there is no evidence that any protests have been linked to antifa. Still, President Donald Trump tweeted: “Domestic Terrorists have taken over Seattle, run by Radical Left Democrats, of course. LAW & ORDER!”
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In mid-April, after blue-state governors enacted quarantine measure, he also claimed multiple times that these governors were trying to take people’s guns away...Less than two weeks later, armed anti-lockdown protesters descended on Michigan’s statehouse. In response, some state legislators wore bulletproof vests, and the state’s legislative session ended early.
In each instance, armed protesters used the Second Amendment to undermine democracy and individual rights. Democratically elected bodies in Virginia and Michigan were effectively threatened if they choose to act on measures — gun control and an extension of lockdown orders — that had wide public support. When citizens descend on a state capital brandishing guns, they effectively end any commitment to democratic debate.
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The contrast between the anti-lockdown protests and the Black Lives Matter protests demonstrates the limits of the Second Amendment to check government tyranny. Mostly white, heavily armed, protesters were able to challenge largely popular public health measures by intimidating state officials.
However, it is difficult to imagine Black Lives Matter and other anti-police brutality protesters using the Second Amendment effectively. It stretches the bounds of credulity to think that heavily armed Black Lives Matter protests would be met with anything other than large-scale state-sanctioned violence.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
I think ol’ Katie is using some powerful drugs...
If you consider stupidity a drug.
“The FBI stated there is no evidence...” Well they did pass on hildabeast as well due to nothing to see here info so....... No longer respected by most law abiding citizens.
You're DAMN RIGHT!
Is Seattle being taken over by out of state militant right wing extremists?
The author sits on a throne of lies.
Anyone citing the FBI as an authoritative source has already lost the argument.
NO evidense of antifa involvement?
Not according to the AG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z687W0235pU
“{At the time, Southern slaveholders worried that since the federal government was given power over the militias, Congress could eventually block southern states from using their militias to put down slave rebellions.+
She knows she is lying; there are enough quotes from the writers of the Constitution who explicitly stated that firearms were to be used against tyrannical government.
I think Katie Schofield is a pseudonym. I couldn’t find any such person when I did a brief search online.
From the Left’s perspective, the government is always lawful and good when they are in charge. That’s why I own guns.
Liberals usually have better timing than this. Arguing against guns after Nationwide looting and arson? Talk about a hard sell!
It’s actually Scofield at the link, but yeah, she’s not listed in their ‘People’ of contributors...
My guess is that she wrote this tripe against the peaceful lockdown protests and it sat in someone’s inbox. Then, riots broke out, and the Hill editors threw it back to her. Katie had to throw in some woke commentary to avoid her losing Street cred with her anti-gun salon. The result is an absolutely incomprehensible article.
Actually, that’s right. The 2nd Amendment does not protect individual liberties.
When I carry my gun for protection, it’s not a piece of paper protecting my liberties ...
It’s the gun.
The 2nd Amendment merely promises that the government will not try to stop me from protecting my liberties this way. And ultimately, it’s also not a piece of paper protecting my liberties if they break that promise ...
It’s the gun.
The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
Not at all. Katie’s article makes perfect sense if you approach it from her point of view:
Mainly white people protesting being placed under house arrest and losing their livelihoods are evil, selfish, racist troglodytes who don’t care if grandma dies who should just shut up and do what they’re told by their betters.
Mainly black/radical people protesting the death of an unarmed black man are righteously expressing legitimate outrage at the racism present in possibly the worst nation on earth. Any collateral damage to property or people by these mostly peaceful protests is justified. Also, medical experts have stated any spread of the ‘European virus’ by large crowds of protesters is mitigated by the seriousness of the cause.
Did I touch all of the bases?
[Katie Schofield] The full text of the Second Amendment states: “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.” It is not an accident that James Madison, a slaveholder himself, mentions the need for states to have militias in the Second Amendment.The great irony here is that the Second Amendment can be read a different way — as protecting Americans from an overly militarized police force.
Dearest Katie - The right to keep and bear arms does not come from the Second Amendment. It came from the English common law, and was a right the colonists had as British citizens, and that right was defined in Blackstone's Commentaries before there was a United States. By the Second Amendment, the People withheld that right to themselves and put it beyond the reach of the Federal government which they created with limited delegated powers.
As for whether the right is an individual right, the U.S. Supreme Court stated emphatically that it is just such a right. "There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms." Heller at 554 U.S. 595.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/554/570/opinion.html
District of Columbia v Heller, 554 US 570 (2008)
Heller at 589:
A purposive qualifying phrase that contradicts the word or phrase it modifies is unknown this side of the looking glass (except, apparently, in some courses on linguistics). If “bear arms” means, as we think, simply the carrying of arms, a modifier can limit the purpose of the carriage (“for the purpose of self-defense” or “to make war against the King”). But if “bear arms” means, as the petitioners and the dissent think, the carrying of arms only for military purposes, one simply cannot add “for the purpose of killing game.” The right “to carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game” is worthy of the Mad Hatter. Thus, these purposive qualifying phrases positively establish that “to bear arms” is not limited to military use.
Heller at 624-25:
“In the colonial and revolutionary war era, [small-arms] weapons used by militiamen and weapons used in defense of person and home were one and the same.” State v. Kessler, 289 Ore. 359, 368, 614 P. 2d 94, 98 (1980) (citing G. Neumann, Swords and Blades of the American Revolution 6–15, 252–254 (1973)). Indeed, that is precisely the way in which the Second Amendment’s operative clause furthers the purpose announced in its preface. We therefore read Miller to say only that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns. That accords with the historical understanding of the scope of the right, see Part III, infra.We conclude that nothing in our precedents forecloses our adoption of the original understanding of the Second Amendment.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch1.asp
Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England
Book the First - Chapter the First: Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals
5. THE fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute 1 W. & M. ft. 2. c. 2. and is indeed a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.
Heller at 593-95:
By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects. See Malcolm 122–134. Blackstone, whose works, we have said, “constituted the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation,” Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 715 (1999), cited the arms provision of the Bill of Rights as one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen. See 1 Blackstone 136, 139–140 (1765). His description of it cannot possibly be thought to tie it to militia or military service. It was, he said, “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation,” id., at 139, and “the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence,” id., at 140; see also 3 id., at 2–4 (1768). Other contemporary authorities concurred. See G. Sharp, Tracts, Concerning the Ancient and Only True Legal Means of National Defence, by a Free Militia 17–18, 27 (3d ed. 1782); 2 J. de Lolme, The Rise and Progress of the English Constitution 886–887 (1784) (A. Stephens ed. 1838); W. Blizard, Desultory Reflections on Police 59–60 (1785). Thus, the right secured in 1689 as a result of the Stuarts’ abuses was by the time of the founding understood to be an individual right protecting against both public and private violence.And, of course, what the Stuarts had tried to do to their political enemies, George III had tried to do to the colonists. In the tumultuous decades of the 1760’s and 1770’s, the Crown began to disarm the inhabitants of the most rebellious areas. That provoked polemical reactions by Americans invoking their rights as Englishmen to keep arms. A New York article of April 1769 said that “[i]t is a natural right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the Bill of Rights, to keep arms for their own defence.” A Journal of the Times: Mar. 17, New York Journal, Supp. 1, Apr. 13, 1769, in Boston Under Military Rule 79 (O. Dickerson ed. 1936); see also, e.g., Shippen, Boston Gazette, Jan. 30, 1769, in 1 The Writings of Samuel Adams 299 (H. Cushing ed. 1968). They understood the right to enable individuals to defend themselves. As the most important early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries (by the law professor and former Antifederalist St. George Tucker) made clear in the notes to the description of the arms right, Americans understood the “right of self-preservation” as permitting a citizen to “repe[l] force by force” when “the intervention of society in his behalf, may be too late to prevent an injury.” 1 Blackstone’s Commentaries 145–146, n. 42 (1803) (hereinafter Tucker’s Blackstone). See also W. Duer, Outlines of the Constitutional Jurisprudence of the United States 31–32 (1833).
There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.
The 2nd Amendment protects the 1st amendment.
They don’t give a damn about that one either. . . YOU have no rights under their proposed new system of any kind at all, so why worry about protecting any?
You will only have privileges granted doled out by the benevolent autocratic state which you can earn be given or taken away by pleasing kissing the jackboots of your benevolent whim-filled overlords owners.
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