As I said earlier: When what is legal has completely usurped what is constitutional ... then truth has become treason and we are left with doing what is constitutional, but what the government will brand as illegal.
Now, with respect to your quote ...
Our founders were forced into just this quandry ... before there was a constitution ... but it was written on their hearts and they went forward with faith.
Like I say, I pray and work to avoid it ... I do not desire it, but will not give up those rights. There are fates worse than death ... there are things worth fighting and dying for. It is the American way IMHO. A small group of farmers in Klamath understood this last year and risked all to right just such a wrong. "Get back to work lest I start a petion to Jim Robinson to have you banned until Vol III is published."
LOL! I hear you loud and clear sir and will comply!
Thanks for those kind words and please consider a review on Amazon and Barnes & Noble reflecting the same if you are so inclined regarding Volume II. Did you like the way the nation responded in the abject circumstances of the story-line as regards the 2nd Amendment in Volume II? That's how it ought to go IMHO.
Best FRegards.
One may cite all manner of Supreme Court decisions regarding the Second Amendment (U.S. v. Cruikshank, Presser v. Illinois, Miller v. Texas, U.S. v. Miller, Lewis v. U.S. .... ) and point to any one, or all, of those decisions as proof of whatever one chooses to prove.
The ability, and the penchant -- by lower courts, the media, academia, or gun-control or pro-Second-Amendment organizations -- to (1) misinterpret, (2) quote out of context, or (3) incorrectly cite any or all of those five decisions has evolved into a modern American artform.
Call me simplistic if you like (you wouldn't be the first to do so :), but the Supreme Court decisions that have been handed down since 1876 simply set legal precedents. And they are precedents that are (supposedly) based on one foundation: the original intent of the Framers when they penned the Constitution.
So, to answer the question, 'Do the states have a right to regulate the ownership or use of arms?' one needs simply to look to the words, and the intent, of the Second -- and Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth -- Amendments.
To the Constitutional purist, every American lives under a very simply fabricated umbrella: a handful of 'natural' freedoms which are to be enjoyed by the citizens of this republic, and an even smaller handful of duties which are to be shouldered by the federal government. Anything other than those delineated freedoms, and delineated federal government responsibilities, is to be addressed by the people themselves, or the state governments under which they live.
Among that small handful of sacrosanct, 'natural' freedoms, which are not up for negotiation or regulation, and are not under the purview of government, is the right of the people to keep and bear arms (or, perhaps better put: the right to self defense). To say that the Constitution places states' right above the handful of enumerated 'natural' rights which are cited as untouchable amounts to believing that the Constitution is meaningless, and this republic is, in effect, a weak conglomeration of fifty sovereign, disparate entities (emphasis on the word weak).
The purpose of the Constitution's guarantees was to enumerate (not create!) a small (but eternally important) set of guaranteed rights that may not be infringed upon by any branch of government (federal, state, or otherwise). And in that way a Constitutional right differs from a right conferred by statute or by common law. It is sacrosanct.
Robert Dowlut (Deputy General; Counsel for the NRA) wrote in his essay (1989), 'Federal and State Constitutional Guarantees to Arms': While bright boundary lines cannot always be drawn, this [establishing the protected boundaries of a right] is a more principled approach to constitutional interpretation than merely paying no attention to plain words or history and applying elastic labels of 'valid exercise of the police power' or 'reasonable regulation' whenever a constitutional challenge is made, or even denying the existence of a right by interpreting it in such a fashion that it becomes an intangible abstraction.
The Constitution in general, and the Second Amendment in specific, are fast becoming just that ... intangible abstractions. Legal manipulators (legislators, attorneys, lobbyists) are using court decisions (and the myriad of interpretations they imply) as the basis upon which to argue for or against Constitutional violations. The Second Amendment itself, and the original intent of those who penned it, have somehow found themselves lost in the shuffle.
The key words in Dowlut's quote above are: 'paying no attention to plain words or history' .... and 'reasonable regulation'.
The words of the Second Amendment could not be more plain. The intent of the Founders in penning it could not be more plain. (If their intent is viewed as nebulous, all one needs do is read their writings as quoted in innumerable other sources, or personal letters).
And, where the Second Amendment is concerned, reasonable regulation is the ultimate example of an oxymoron. One (or the state or federal government under which one lives) does not regulate, reasonably or otherwise, a natural, God-given, (Constitutionally-guaranteed) right.
< /simplicity >