Posted on 06/21/2014 9:04:11 PM PDT by ForYourChildren
How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment
The Founders never intended to create an unregulated individual right to a gun. Today, millions believe they did. Here’s how it happened.
By MICHAEL WALDMAN
May 19, 2014
"A fraud on the American public.” That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.
Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.
Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.
{excerpted}
Try +P. Get a few Safariland speed loaders.
Only hits count. One can miss a lot with a wonder 9, or hit with a “lowly” 38 revolver.
93. ABRAM BEVIER WHOSE HOUSE STOOD HERE, HAD
A SMALL CANNON, WHICH THE INDIANS FEARED, AND WHICH MADE HIS HOME OF FORT FOR SETTLERS IN RAID OF 1781.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_State_Historic_Markers_in_Ulster_County,_New_York
People owned cannons, the largest arms of their time, during the founding of this nation. So much for this idiot’s article.
"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end, a uniform and well digested plan is requisite: and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent on others for essential, particularly for military supplies."
George Washington - First Annual Message to Congress, January 8, 1790.
Speak English, libtards?!?
This one fact, just blows the smithereens the idea that the 2nd Amendment authorizes States to have militias. All this is without a smidgeon of corruption or needing to get all wee-wee-ed up.
I wouldn't count on that — given its money-grubbing nature, and some of the positions/rulings it's pushed for in courts, it seems like they're not really interested in achieving much in the 2nd Amendment arena. Or, to put it another way, why should they push for a correct rendering of the 2nd Amendment when they get money/influence by having gun-control and restrictions as ever-imminent dangers? (Much like the a social-worker's doing a good job would put them out of business.) — Or, to phrase it another way: when was the last time the NRA pushed for repeal of the GCA or NFA?
Politico’s creed is if you can’t back up a position with facts then substitute distortions and lies.
Historical references about James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Justice John Marshall, and John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, all clearly indicate that the Founding States had rejected Madison's idea of requiring the states to respect the Bill of Rights. In other words, only the feds had to respect the personal rights protected by the BoR. (The 14th Amendment later changed the scope of constitutional privileges and immunities to include the states.)
In fact, regardless what FDR's activist justices wanted everybody to believe about "atheist" Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation" in conjunction with the Establishment Clause for example, the real Jefferson had clarified the following about the scope of 1st Amendment (1A) protections. Jefferson had indicated that that the Founding States had made the 10th Amendment to uniquely reserve government power to regulate religion to the state governments, regardless that the Founders had also made 1A to prohibit such powers to Congress.
"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed [emphasis added]; …" --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.
Also, John Bingham had read the first eight amendments, including 2A, to the House of Representatives as examples of constitutional statutes containing privileges and immunities which 14A applied to the states. See 2A in top half of 2nd column of the following page from congressional record.
Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 42nd Congress, 1st Session
As a side note about original scope of 5A-protected eminent domain rights for example, please consider the following. Note that Bingham referenced the Supreme Court case of Barron v. Baltimore (1833) in 1st column of the page referenced above. In that case, citizen John Barron had found out the hard way that his 5th Amendment protected eminent domain rights did not protect him from his state, only from the feds. (14A changed this.)
Finally, in earlier days of the country, people were probably expected to take a firearm with them when taking a trip down the dangerous dirt road to visit grandma.
Very disturbing, I guess we’re on our own.
He’s wrong and he knows he’s wrong.
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