The Constitution does in several places declare and imply both Right and Duty pertaining to the Citizens possessing arms of their choosing, in addition to Arms of Congress chooses choosing. Judicial misconstruction of, and intransigence against, the Right of Arms being pandemic, Defendants recite to the Court sufficient of the Judgements of the Supreme Court to make plain that, absent an Amendment to the Constitution relieving the citizens of any Right of Arms in general, and of any specific duties concerning Arms manifesting in the Constitution, the individual Right of Arms is uninfringeable by the Decisions of the Courts, and immune to the statutes of the Legislatures.
Defendants note that, when it pleases the Court, each article and particle of the Bill of Rights has a "penumbra", or shadow, which is outside the precise words, but inside the scope of the principal. For examples see Miranda vs Arizona 384 U.S. 436 (1966), Griswold vs Connecticut 381 U.S. 479 (1965), and Roe vs Wade 410 U.S. 113 (1973); and that when it pleases the Court, an amendment has no effect at all (cf Plessy vs Ferguson 163 U.S. 537 (1896), The Slaughter House Cases 83 U.S. 36 (1872), Presser vs Illinois 116 U.S. 252 (1886), and Barron vs Baltimore 32 U.S. 243 (1833)).
If the Second Amendment were accorded as wide a penumbra as the First, no laws could be placed upon guns whose parallel would not be acceptable when levied against books, nor could burdens be placed upon Arms that cannot be placed upon publishing. Conversely, if the First Amendment were given as bitterly narrow a construction as the Second now suffers, books outside of government offices and government operated libraries (access to which being restricted severely) would be vulnerable to prohibitions backed by lengthy jail terms, and defendants would need a licence and permit to write this Motion.
Syllabus (emphasis added)
If courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.
Defendants cite to the Court, that the Courts and the Legislature are co-equal, therefore as the ordinary acts of the legislature must yield to the Constitution, then so must the ordinary acts of the Courts. Therefore this Court has a duty to defy even the Supreme Court of the United States to the extent that they, they Supreme Court, defy the Constitution.
Opinion, (5 US 137,174-179), the Justices wrote:
It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect.Defendants interject: So, lets not insist on the absurdity that the statute at bar is operative in the light of Amendment 2.If an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void, ... does it constitute a rule as operative as if it was a law? This would be to overthrow in fact what was established in theory, and would seem, at first view, an absurdity too gross to be insisted on.
If, then, the Courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the Legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.
Those, then, who controvert the principle that the Constitution is to be considered in court as a paramount law are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the Constitution, and see only the law.
This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written Constitutions. It would declare that an act which, according to the principles and theory of our government, is entirely void, is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare that, if the Legislature shall do what is expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the express prohibition, is in reality effectual. It would be giving to the Legislature a practical and real omnipotence with the same breath which professes to restrict their powers within narrow limits. It is prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.
That it thus reduces to nothing what we have deemed the greatest improvement on political institutions -- a written Constitution, would of itself be sufficient, in America where written Constitutions have been viewed with so much reverence, for rejecting the construction.
Defendants summarize: Whereas we have a right to arms, which is clearly reserved to us under the Constitution of the United States, and whereas that right is invaded by this statute, the Constitution annuls this statute.
Mr. Justice Sutherland, Dissenting Opinion, emphasis added.
A provision of the Constitution, it is hardly necessary to say, does not admit of two distinctly opposite interpretations. It does not mean one thing at one time and an entirely different thing at another time.The true rule was forcefully declared in Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wall. 2, 120-121.
Those great and good men foresaw that troublous times would arise when rulers and people would become restive under restraint, and seek, by sharp and decisive measures, to accomplish ends deemed just and proper, and that the principles of constitutional liberty would be in peril unless established by irrepealable law. The history of the world had taught them that what was done in the past might be attempted in the future.And then, in words the power and truth of which have become increasingly evident with the lapse of time, there was laid down the rule without which the Constitution would cease to be the "supreme law of the land," binding equally upon governments and governed at all times and under all circumstances, and become a mere collection of political maxims to be adhered to or disregarded according to the prevailing sentiment or the legislative and judicial opinion in respect of the supposed necessities of the hour:
The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism. . . .Chief Justice Taney, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, 426, said that, while the Constitution remains unaltered, it must be construed now as it was understood at the time of its adoption; that it is not only the same in words, but the same in meaning,
and as long as it continues to exist in its present form, it speaks not only in the same words, but with the same meaning and intent with which it spoke when it came from the hands of its framers, and was voted on and adopted by the people of the United States. Any other rule of construction would abrogate the judicial character of this court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day.And in South Carolina v. United States, 199 U.S. 437, 448-449, in an opinion by Mr. Justice Brewer, this court quoted these words with approval, and said:
The Constitution is a written instrument. As such, its meaning does not alter. That which it [meant] when adopted, it means now. . . . Those things which are within its grants of power, as those grants were understood when made, are still within them, and those things not within them remain still excluded.The words of Judge Campbell, speaking for the Supreme Court of Michigan in Twitchell v. Blodgett, 13 Mich. 127, 139-140, are peculiarly apposite.
Constitutions ... remain binding as the acts of the people in their sovereign capacity, as the framers of Government, until they are amended or abrogated by the action prescribed by the authority which created them. It is not competent for any department of the Government to change a constitution, or declare it changed, simply because it appears ill-adapted to a new state of things.. . . [W]here evils arise from the application of such [Constitutional provisions], their force cannot be denied or evaded, and the remedy consists in repeal or amendment, and not in false constructions.
The provisions of the Federal Constitution, undoubtedly, are pliable in the sense that, in appropriate cases, they have the capacity of bringing within their grasp every new condition which falls within their meaning. But their meaning is changeless; it is only their application which is extensible. See South Carolina v. United States, supra, pp. 448-449.
The distinction [between an evolving common law and a constitution] is clearly pointed out by Judge Cooley, 1 Constitutional Limitations, 8th ed., 124:
A principal share of the benefit expected from written constitutions would be lost if the rules they established were so flexible as to bend to circumstances or be modified by public opinion. It is with special reference to the varying moods of public opinion, and with a view to putting the fundamentals of government beyond their control, that these instruments are framed, and there can be no such steady and imperceptible change in their rules as inheres in the principles of the common law. ... [A] court or legislature which should allow a change in public sentiment to influence it in giving to a written constitution a construction not warranted by the intention of its founders, would be justly chargeable with reckless disregard of official oath and public duty, and if its course could become a precedent, these instruments would be of little avail. . . . The meaning of the constitution is fixed when it is adopted, and it is not different at any subsequent time when a court has occasion to pass upon it.The whole aim of construction, as applied to a provision of the Constitution, is to discover the meaning, to ascertain and give effect to the intent, of its framers and the people who adopted it. Lake County v. Rollins, 130 U.S. 662, 770. The necessities which gave rise to the provision, the controversies which preceded, as well as the conflicts of opinion which were settled by its adoption, are matters to be considered to enable us to arrive at a correct result. Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U.S. 41, 95. The history of the times, the state of things existing when the provision was framed and adopted, should be looked to in order to ascertain the mischief and the remedy. Rhode Island v. Massachusetts, 12 Pet. 657, 723; Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet. 410, 431-432. As nearly as possible, we should place ourselves in the condition of those who framed and adopted it. Ex parte Bain, 121 U.S. 1, 12. And if the meaning be at all doubtful, the doubt should be resolved, wherever reasonably possible to do so, in a way to forward the evident purpose with which the provision was adopted. Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S. 581, 602; Jarrolt v. Moberly, 103 U.S. 580, 586.
Defendants note the intent of the Second Amendment: To prevent disarmaments, to keep the people capable of checking their government; and the enduring effect of the Second Amendment: A well regulated militia is still necessary to the security of a free state, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is still uninfringeable.
What Mr Justice Sutherland said once, needed saying again. Three of his brethren on the Court agreed, as do the Defendants. Emphasis added.
Mr. Justice Sutherland, Mr. Justice Van Devanter, Mr. Justice McReynolds, Mr. Justice Butler, dissenting:
The words of Judge Campbell in Twitchell v. Blodgett, 13 Mich. 127, 139-140, apply with peculiar force.
Constitutions cannot be changed by events alone. They remain binding as the acts of the people in their sovereign capacity, as the framers of Government, until they are amended or abrogated by the action prescribed by the authority which created them. It is not competent for any department of the Government to change a constitution, or declare it changed, simply because it appears ill-adapted to a new state of things.
. . . [W]here evils arise from the application of [constitutional provisions], their force cannot be denied or evaded, and the remedy consists in repeal or amendment, and not in false construction.The principle is reflected in many decisions of this court. See South Carolina v. United States, 199 U.S. 437, 448-449; Lake County v. Rollins, 130 U.S. 662, 670; Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U.S. 41, 95; Rhode Island v. Massachusetts, 12 Pet. 657, 723; Craig v. Missouri, 4 Pet. 410, 431-432; Ex parte Bain, 121 U.S. 1, 12; Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S. 581, 602; Jarrolt v. Moberly, 103 U.S. 580, 586.
The judicial function is that of interpretation; it does not include the power of amendment under the guise of interpretation. To miss the point of difference between the two is to miss all that the phrase "supreme law of the land" stands for, and to convert what was intended as inescapable and enduring mandates into mere moral reflections.
If the Constitution, intelligently and reasonably construed in the light of these principles, stands in the way of desirable legislation, the blame must rest upon that instrument, and not upon the court for enforcing it according to its terms. The remedy in that situation -- and the only true remedy -- is to amend the Constitution. Judge Cooley, in the first volume of his Constitutional Limitations (8th ed.), p. 124, very clearly pointed out that much of the benefit expected from written constitutions would be lost if their provisions were to be bent to circumstances or modified by public opinion.
[A] court or legislature which should allow a change in public sentiment to influence it in giving to a written constitution a construction not warranted by the intention of its founders would be justly chargeable with reckless disregard of official oath and public duty, and if its course could become a precedent, these instruments would be of little avail. . . . The meaning of the constitution is fixed when it is adopted, and it is not different at any subsequent time when a court has occasion to pass upon it.
Defendants summarize: The preceding elevates the Personal Right to Arms above the words of Congressmen, Presidents, and Judges. Some may think the individual Right of Arms to be some anachronism from a bygone age of savages, but until it is lawfully amended, judicial duty is to uphold it to it's fullest extent.
This is a case that had to do with the 1st Amendment striking down a law that required a speaker to register and get a permit before addressing an assembly. We think it Writ applicable to the notion of requiring registration and permits prior to possessing handguns. Emphasis added.
If the exercise of the rights of free speech and free assembly cannot be made a crime, we do not think this can be accomplished by the device of requiring previous registration as a condition for exercising them and making such a condition the foundation for restraining in advance their exercise and for imposing a penalty for violating such a restraining order. So long as no more is involved than exercise of the rights of free speech and free assembly, it is immune to such a restriction. ... We think a requirement that one must register before he undertakes to make a public speech to enlist support for a lawful movement is quite incompatible with the requirements of the First Amendment.
Defendants query: What difference is there is between registering to speak or assemble, and registering to buy or possess a handgun? Now: substitute the Right of Keeping and Bearing Arms for the Right of Freedom of Speech and Assembly, and you have shown the statute at bar unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. Also, this language conjoins right and immune is a way that sheds needed light upon the 14th Amendment "Privileges and Immunities" clause (vide infra)
While this Court has had little occasion to interpret the Ninth Amendment, "[i]t cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 174. In interpreting the Constitution, "real effect should be given to all the words it uses." Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52, 151. The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution may be regarded by some as a recent discovery, and may be forgotten by others, but, since 1791, it has been a basic part of the Constitution which we are sworn to uphold. To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep-rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment, and to give it no effect whatsoever. Moreover, a judicial construction that this fundamental right is not protected by the Constitution because it is not mentioned in explicit terms by one of the first eight amendments or elsewhere in the Constitution would violate the Ninth Amendment, which specifically states that "[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." (Emphasis added in Griswold.)
Defendants summarize the applicability and effect of Griswold thus: Whatever part of the Right to Arms (as we held it to be in 1791) is deemed NOT shielded from the legislative and police powers of the states by the Second Amendment, automatically resides under the shelter of the Ninth. Repeal the Second Amendment, and everything thereunder is still reserved out of the powers of government under the Ninth Amendment. Whereas the first 8 Amendments do nothing but make portions of the 9th explicit, this judgement, showing Amendment 9 to be binding upon the states, compels acknowledgment that Amendments 2-8 are also binding upon the states. Amendment 14 makes Amendment 1 also binding upon the states.
Simply put: Laying aside for the moment any mention of arms in the hands of the citizenry as is found at present in the Constitution, and therefore laying aside for the moment their import whatever that is, the rage of debate in the Public on the subject of arms in the hands of the citizenry would best be settled by an Amendment to the Constitution. Supposing an Amendment were to be passed, say, in 1900, either prohibiting arms from private possession, or completely exempting peaceable arms ownership from government control; whichever Amendment would be the larger change to our commonly held liberty, is a clear indicator that the Right of Arms is the other way. From 1900 to now we have seen arise a rampage of disinformation and denial regarding the Right to Arms, but no change to the Constitution itself touching upon the Right of Arms. Therefore, what rights we owned in 1900 we own now, but for invasion by legislative squatters and vandalism by judicial hooligans. Betrayal, by any other name, is still betrayal.
When votes are taken on the question of amending the Constitution, the Courts and their Judges are without suffrage. Their beliefs are irrelevant to the proceedings. They are not invited to make speeches or propound opinions, they are given Marching Orders. If they cannot carry them out fully and completely, they owe it to their Oath and to the People to whom they have given that Oath, to vacate their benches.
Having shown the words of the Supreme Court, that interpretation is not an alternate term for amending, which show therefore how the Second Amendment is to be read, let us now study the Constitution in the light of those words.
It has been well said, "It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect, and therefore such construction is inadmissible unless the words require it." Marbury v Madison, 5 U.S. 137,174 (1803). Let it be so of the Preamble, as of Congress' power to regulate Commerce among the several States.
We The People of the United States, in order to
Of these 6 stated purposes, none is expendable. Acts carried out under this Constitution, by the federal government or any state constituted thereunder, must not break any of these principal principles: to exalt one at the expense of any other breaks them all. The absurd may assert that only the federal government must observe this preamble, and that the states are free to do as they please. These preachers of absurdity may also require of parents to be disciplined, and tolerate riot from their children. Worthy of note is that Law is not supreme, rather, Justice is the objective and law is a method to achieve it. Therefore, where law and justice collide, law must yield. Also worthy of note is that if the Blessings of Liberty are compromised, the purpose of Justice has also been compromised. If this breach against the blessings of Liberty occurs because of a law, the law was the transgressor, not the people who contemned it. The statute at bar renders the Blessings of Liberty less secure by disarming us, reducing our ability to resist crime or tyranny, casting stigma upon skill in arms, and increasing the points under which the power of the state may come against us who have committed no crime but to move to New York with our handguns.
This statute is in contrast with the preamble, acts to frustrate the preamble, and is generally repugnant to the preamble. It is unconstitutional.
Art 1 § 8: "The Congress shall have power..."
11: "To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;"
A Letter of Marque is wherewith a citizen of the United States, and not a soldier of the Army or sailor of the Navy thereof, may sail forth with an armed ship, and engage shipping of the nation named in the Letter of Marque, whether to sink or to capture; to engage warships of that nation as another warship; and in general to make reprisal against a foreign power, as if at war, up to the limits Congress shall set in the general rules concerning Captures and the specific Letter of Marque and Reprisal in hand.
Obviously, a Letter of Marque is useless without a warship.
There is no Constitutional limit to the size or power of the warship a citizen may own with which to carry out the powers of a Letter of Marque. Congress was given no power to set any such limits. Thus, considering the Constitution only, Mr. Bill Gates may own a fully functional 55,000 ton Iowa class Battleship and fly the Microsoft flag on it's masthead. Letter of Marque and Reprisal, Mr. Gates could render software piracy a high-risk occupation, no? New York's law about citizen ownership of handguns mirrors the Constitution's law about New York ownership of warships, but the Constitution allows Citizens that they may own warships and armaments of any degree without permission of any degree. --> Meanwhile, absent Consent from Congress, New York may not own as much as a small gunboat, for Art 10 ¶ 3 prohibits it ("No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace,..."). Such consent may be revoked as easily as granted.
Warship internal security personnel and Officers carry handguns for sidearms. For New York to forbid handguns while neither New York nor the United States can prohibit private possession of an armed warship is akin to acknowledging that one may raise and train herds of elephants freely, but threaten a year in jail and a $1000 fine for keeping a mouse.
This statute obstructs the capacity of the people to carry into effect a letter of Marque and Reprisal, (which Letter requires that our keeping and bearing of arms be an individual right, and that said right include handguns), reducing the effect of the Power of Congress to grant such Letters, and is therefore unconstitutional.
Art 1 § 8: "The Congress shall have power..."
15: "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections, and repel Invasions;
16: "To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress."
Whereas (as has been shown above) Militia means the whole body of the people, an armed Citizenry, without regard or requirement of past or current enrollment in any formal or official organization, state sanctioned or otherwise, therefore, these clauses put into the hands of Congress power to provide for arming the whole body of the common people.
In Maxwell v. Dow (176 US 581) the majority opinion cites Presser v. Illinois saying
It was therein said, however, that as all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved militiary force of the National Government, the States could not prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the General Government.
Defendants observe that this doesn't name the Second Amendment, but declares the meaning thereof: States have no power over our guns.
This is no philosophical polemic, rather, the power of state legislation over what weapons we may own (which none of the states presumed it had, regarding its free citizens, at the time of the ratification of the Constitution of the United States) is, by these clauses, surrendered by each of the states to the Congress. It appears that no power to obstruct armament of the people, by the Congress or by the people themselves, is left to the states. This section therefore invalidates EVERY state statute putting a criminal penalty on the ownership, by any of the people, of any of the "terrible implement of the soldier". Congress may provide for arming the Militia, but not even Congress has power given to it to disarm the Militia.
Naturalization Laws requiring a willingness to bear arms are upheld in these words United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644 (1929):
5. That it is the duty of citizens by force of arms to defend our Government against all enemies whenever necessity arises, is a fundamental principle of the Constitution. P. 650.We think it obvious that ignorance of arms and destitution of skill in arms "tends to lessen the willingness of citizens to discharge their duty to bear arms", ergo laws that intimidate us from possession of or practice with handguns accomplish precisely this unconstitutional objective.6. Whatever tends to lessen the willingness of citizens to discharge their duty to bear arms in the country's defense detracts from the strength and safety of the Government.
Whereas disarmament of the Militia by the state would render the power of Congress to define the method of organizing them, arming them, training them, or calling them forth, nugatory, therefore the state has no authority to disarm the the people. "[T]he state has [no power to] invade the exclusive field of national governmental powers;" Steward Machine Co. v. Collector of Internal Revenue, 301 U.S. 548, 611 (1937).
New York's statute is unconstitutional as an invasion of Congressional prerogative to provide for arming the people.
"The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;"
We think it obviously pretty silly to call us out "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections, and repel Invasions" (Art 1 § 8 cl 15) if our States have disarmed us. This is a dead giveaway that our States cannot disarm us. In Cities such as Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago, the President, attempting to exercise this power, could do little more than convene a parade. This section indicates that the Laws of Congress should provide for our obtaining ownership and possession of the latest generation and best quality Police and Military equipment and the corresponding training, so that burglars, drug runners, murderers, and violent gangs fought not a professional police of a few thousand in the largest cities, but the whole population of a few millions. They in uniform are Police Officers. We, who would gladly leave our desks and machines upon a call to arms, would be Police Infantry. Thus would we put down the contempt the predators have for us.
As the States have no power to frustrate the prerogatives and powers of the President, this statute is unconstitutional as undermining the power of the Presidency of the United 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."
The 27 words appear in two clauses of 13 and 14 words, respectively.
In greater detail:
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A |
'A' indicates we are talking in the abstract. 'The well regulated...' or 'Our well regulated...' would have referenced existing organizations. This declaration addresses the general case, and in the abstract, about militia in general. |
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well regulated |
Today's meaning, strangled with red tape and felony statutes, and hamstrung with overseers wherever not flatly prohibited, did not apply to anything on this continent in the 1790's. 'Regulated' meant a clock that kept time, a keyboard instrument that played the same as others of it's type, finances and accounting put in good order, or a militia that could function on it's own: drill, march, bivouac, engage and destroy an enemy, take casualties and stay in the fight, without dependence on overseers and controllers. |
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militia |
Common usages: 1990's: Hired & paid internal security troops e.g. National Guard; or paranoiac gangs of the right-wing-lunatic-fringe-gun-nut flavor; 1790's: The whole citizenry, armed, trained, and equipped. Excluding the numerically insignificant 'fringies', Militia, today, is a state-owned, state-operated, state-equipped group of state-selected, state-paid people, with loyalty first to the state. Thus today it is nonsensical to refer to a militia acting against the state, but in the Framers time, the militia, arising from the people, being the whole people, having it's loyalty first to the people, was in fact expected to act against the state, should the state act against the freedom and peace of the people. That's what the militia did in opening fire on their own King's police troopers. The doctrine of a readiness to rebel against tyranny is part and parcel of our being governed by our consent. |
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being necessary to the security of a free state |
This is the twist of grammar that shows this clause to be a statement of understanding, a declaration of belief, and not a commandment or restraint. It does declare, we should note, that a state without a militia, or, a state without an armed, trained, equipped citizenry, is here not considered a free state, or is a state whose free state is not secure. It bears belaboring at this point that a state can be secure with it's neighbors and subjects/citizens held in check. This requires an army and police, respectively. The security of a free state requires that the government also be restrained. The Constitutional plan was that the armed citizens were part of the system of checks and balances to this end. |
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the right |
This is not a privilege subject to licensure, it is a right. As it is a right, then all laws making a crime of the peaceable exercising that right are invasions, by the law-making body, against the right. In the Framer's times, Rights were a gift or endowment from that God whose existence was not questioned (however much the details of doctrine and worship were ample food for contentions). Thus, in the Framers view, Rights could no more be made subject to legislative prohibitions than God himself could be made outlaw. Oppression of rights by a State make that State outlaw. States could arise, change, fall, merge or divide, but Rights were discovered, not made. From this confluence of Right and God in the minds and intentions of the authors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, any encroachment by law, executive order, department policy, or judgment, against a Right, was as wrong as robbery or murder. Governments with a stubborn streak about destroying the enjoyability of rights, merited annihilation, unless they repent of their ambitions, upon the petitions of the people. Defendants do not seek to cram any religion down anybodies throat, this shows how seriously the word right, where used in the Constitution or Bill of Rights, should be taken. |
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of the people |
Who are the people? Everybody with residence in, and affection for, their community, county, state, and the United States. U.S. vs Verdugo-Urquidez 494 U.S. at 265 (1990, emphasis added). Contrary to the suggestion of amici curiae that the Framers used this phrase "simply to avoid awkward rhetorical redundancy"...the term "the people" seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution. The Preamble declares that the Constitution is ordained and established by "the People of the United States". The Second Amendment protects "the right of the people to keep and bear arms," and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments provide that certain rights and powers are retained by and reserved to "the people." See also U.S. Const., Amdt . 1, ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble"); Art I, Sec 2, cl. 1 ("The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States"). While this textual exegesis is by no means conclusive, it suggests that "the people" protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community. See United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U.S. 279, 292 (1904). Justice William Brennan, in his dissenting opinion in U.S. vs Verdugo-Urquidez (494 U.S. at 287, 110 S.Ct. at 1072), wrote that: [T]he term "the people" is better understood as a rhetorical counterpoint to "the government," such that rights that were reserved to "the people" were to protect all those subject to "the government." Note, his dissent states the 4th Amendment should apply to Sr. Verdugo-Urquidez, as he is not the government, without disputation to the point asserted here by Defendants (and raised by the majority of the Court) that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" addresses individuals, not organizations, state sanctioned or otherwise. |
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to keep and bear arms |
Note that this is not limited to firearms, nor rifles & shotguns, but includes any battle-quality militiary killing tool. Reference the "Letters of Marque and Reprisal" above, and the words of Tench Coxe from the Ratification Debates: "The power of the sword, says the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for the powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of america. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared to any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? are they not ourselves. Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." (Pennsylvania Gazette, 20 Feb 1788). Note also, that the scope of what we reserved out of the Police powers of the Government is not only to keep arms, but to bear them as well. |
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shall not be infringed. |
From Webster's New World Dictionary, third College Edition: Infringe vt. Break, break off, impair, violate; fail to observe the terms of; trespassed against. Thus, we own a Right Patent to arms, to use a term of Heraldry. The right shall not be encumbered, made empty or without effect. This is a prohibition on prohibitions on ownership or carrying of knives, swords, handgonnes, handguns, rifles, shotguns, assault rifles & assault weapons, machine guns, etc. If the device be useful to troops, or warships, against enemy troops or warships, it's our birth right. Please note this amendment ends with a period, not a comma. It is not a midpoint of a discussion, but the closure thereof. |
"Let us now consider whether we may not be able to defend ourselves by well-regulated militias against any foreign force, though never so formidable: that these nations may be free from the fears of invasion from abroad, as well as from the danger of slavery at home" (emphasis added).
Here it is relevant to note, that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights arose from separate works. The Constitution is the fruit of the debate on the subject of good government, the Bill of Rights is the fruit of the debate on bad government, or, more precisely, government gone bad. Therefore,
The impact of the difference is crucial:
Unlike Amendment 1, the prohibition in Amendment 2 "shall not be infringed" is not addressed to the Congress, nor to the states; it would be nonsensical to do so. If either state or federal power could rightfully disarm us, restraining only the other accomplishes nothing. Conversely, if there is a Right, that the federal government cannot invade it, then for the state to invade it is a wrong.
"[T]he security of a free state" requires both protected organs of a free government and liberties protected from crime and bad government (where bad government often resembles organized crime).
The Right of Arms declared in the Second Amendment is not made dependent on the existance of such organizations as are called Militia, rather, the purpose of this declaration of this right is to assure that, should it ever, in any future time, be decided to instantiate such organizations, an armed citizenry will exist so that they can be constituted, without government assistance if necessary. Indeed, as is belabored elsewhere, this militia may have cause to act against the government, not for it. Who's declaring that there will never be Tyranny arising from Washington D.C., or Albany, New York, or even Mayville, Chautauqua County, which will be worse than what King George did to us?
To recap: The Second Amendment has a clause declaratory of a principle, and a statement of effect. Anything that either compromises the principle or the effect violates this Amendment.
The declared principle: That a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.
The effect: No law shall be made or enforced that shall abridge the immunity of the people in keeping and bearing their arms.
Any law that reduces the efficiency of the Militia, or that reduces the capability of the people to keep or bear their privately owned arms, violates this Amendment.
This statute infringes the right to Keep and Bear Arms, and is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
As mentioned briefly above with the quote from Griswold v. Connecticut, whatever portion of the Right of Arms, such as we claimed and openly held in common amongst us in 1791, that is deemed (by whomever) to not be part of the Second Amendment, is by such deeming, put into the coverage of the Ninth Amendment. Whereas Griswold holds the Ninth Amendment to be binding upon the States, and whereas the whole Bill of Rights does nothing but make portions of that Grand Continuum of Liberty explicit, therefore holding the Ninth Amendment to be binding upon the states makes Amendment 2-8 binding also.
Take 8 coins, numbered 1-8. Toss them onto a clear floor. The floor is our commonly held rights, liberties, privileges and immunities as of 1791. The part of the floor covered by each coin is the part of that great general liberty covered by each correspondingly numbered amendment. The expanse of floor remaining uncovered is the Ninth Amendment. Pick up any one coin, or all 8, representing a repeal of the corresponding amendment(s), and you only increase the coverage of Amendment 9. The Right of Arms was ours, excepted completely out of the powers of government, state and federal. Whether we put the government on notice not to invade the Right of Arms with the Second Amendment or the Ninth, there is no difference: the right is ours to keep and ours to defend, and the statute at bar is unconstitutional.