That was one of the most ignorant, meandering screeds on the history of the Second Amendment I have read in some time.
When Scalia gets his hands on this, it ain't gonna be pretty.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Posted on 12/09/2002 6:07:58 PM PST by FreedomCalls
You may not have been aware of this, kids, but words have magical powers. We're not talking about ordinary, run-of-the-mill words here like "please" and "thank you" and "[DELETED]," but extra-special words like "gun" and "semiautomatic" and "Second Amendment." Mention these words, and, like a bad Stephen King movie starring a St. Bernard, ordinarily civilized people start foaming at the mouth.
Take, for example, the recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of California to uphold that state's ban on "assault rifles," which (to simplify the matter beyond all recognition) are defined as semiautomatic weapons that hold more than 10 bullets per magazine. This means that if you pull the trigger on one of these guns and fire off one bullet, the gun will, for your killing convenience, put another bullet in the chamber for you, ready to fire—and then repeat the procedure until you run out of bullets! Modern technology truly is wonderful isn't it?
Apparently, not everyone thinks so. Much like those filthy hippies who think we should do filthy hippie things like recycling instead of just cutting down more trees, the California Ninth doesn't think we should be allowed to use modern conveniences like assault rifles. Once the judge handed down his decision, patriotic defenders of our right to own high-powered machines of destruction like assault rifles and SUVs and McDonald's coffee and Barbara Streisand albums began comparing him to the Nazis—and rightfully so, since the Nazis were noted for their enthusiasm in taking guns away from people and giving them to other people who used them to shoot Jews. We look forward to Jerry Bruckheimer's execution any day now.
"But without my assault weapons, how will I hunt those flak-jacket wearing deer?" asked a good American armed with the latest deer-destruction hardware and a 6-pack of Coors. "The Second Amendment gives the people the right to own weapons to protect themselves against the government!" e-mailed another patriot from the security of his Nevada bunker. "My loaded handgun that I kept hidden in the cookie jar killed my baby!" replied a distraught mother, whose dirty filthy long-haired hippie dead baby probably shot itself just to get her to change her mind about gun control. "Guns don't kill people, corporations do!" shouted another filthy hippie from a passing Volvo. "Get your hands off my MAC-10, you damn dirty apes!" mumbled Charlton Heston, wandering, disoriented, along Ventura Boulevard. You get the idea.
Obviously, we can't all be right about what the Second Amendment means. Let's try to solve the problem by going back to grade school and diagramming the sentence, "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." What the heck do all these big words mean?
The first part of the sentence is, "A well-regulated militia." Simple enough. This tells us that what we're discussing is a militia, or a part-time civilian military organization like the Marine Corps Reserve or the Knights of Columbus. Note the compound adjective "well-regulated." This implies that the militia is subject to the rule of law, that is, military discipline—some sort of structure of officers and enlisted men with penalties for disobeying orders, something that Billy Joe and his buddies shooting their AR-15s at woodchucks most certainly do not have, unless you count the influence of Captain Morgan.
The second part of the sentence is "being necessary to the security of a free state." This is what we grammar Nazis call a "subordinate clause." This particular subordinate clause sets up a conditional sort of situation, saying that what comes next depends on something having happened before: "Bobby, because he picked up his toys, was entitled to dessert." "Barbara, because she was a very naughty girl, received a thorough spanking." Even John Ashcroft can explain what the word "security" means, so the other important word for us to direct our attention to in our little subordinate clause is the word "state." A "state" is a territory and its occupants organized under a recognized government—that is, not Charlton Heston, not your Counterstrike clan, and not a bunch of guys in camouflage hiding out in a bunker with enough cases of Bud Light to last the Apocalypse. So, what we're clearly talking about is a militia set up to keep the state, that is, the government, safe.
The third part, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms," gets kind of complicated once you understand the history behind the thing. "Right," "people," and even "keep" and "bear" aren't that difficult words, and "arms" means "weapons," like "swords" and "knives" and "whack-a-mole mallets" and, of course, "guns." Of course, it's the "guns" part that makes this difficult.
At the risk of stating the obvious, we no longer live in a society where the ordinary individual has a reason to carry around the latest military hardware. In the eighteenth century, the most sophisticated piece of personal armament was the Ferguson breech-loading flintlock, of which only about 200 were ever made. Most people had muzzle-loading smoothbore muskets. Though the top-of-the-line civilian weapon, the Kentucky long rifle handmade by Pennsylvania craftsmen, differed considerably from a mass-produced British military musket, the difference wasn't so great that one had a decided advantage over the other. It certainly wasn't as great as, say, the difference between a deer-hunting rifle and a shoulder-fired antitank rocket.
Plainly, things have changed considerably between the eighteenth century and the twenty-first. In those days, rather than a standing army, we had amateur militias (like the minutemen) that provided their own weapons—and, despite the fact the citizen-soldier was a much-vaunted ideal of the Roman Republic that was revived in the Renaissance by Machiavelli, the American militias got their asses kicked in set-piece battles until Von Steuben taught them disciplined drill. (Machiavelli's Florentine militia got its [butt] kicked by Spanish professionals, too.) Today, rather than having citizen-militias as we did in the early years of the Republic, we have a very modern and very professional military that makes the idea of amateur armed resistance ludicrous. Heck, if we relied on citizen militias today, Canada could take us over.
However, what the Second Amendment, a relic of the early Republic, undeniably says is that, because national security depends on a well-organized militia, people have the right to own weapons.
Funny how one little clause on a 200-year-old piece of paper can cause so much trouble. The thing is, the Constitution is just that: A 200-year-old piece of paper with words on it—words written by people, like the Bible or the script to the pilot episode of Family Ties. It's no more holy or infallible than the latest issue of Cosmopolitan or the Nicean Creed. The Founding Fathers weren't divinely inspired geniuses; they smelled bad in Philadelphia summers and [DELETED] just like everyone else did. Putting libertarian black-helicopter-conspiracy theories in their aristocratic, plantation-owning [DELETED] mouths, or assuming that they wanted the American people to have the capability of overthrowing the government that they had spent a long, hot summer putting together, borders on the ludicrous (especially considering how they quickly put down the first challenge to the Federal government, Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts.) Therefore, defending gun ownership while wearing an NRA pin and a bracelet saying "WWJD" ("What Would Jefferson Do?") is worse than illogical; it's ignorant.
Since the Second Amendment is just words, all the constitutional scholars in the world sitting around trying to apply its antiquated terminology to our modern world is like a bunch of well-armed rabbis trying to interpret the precedent of God's smiting Onan for spilling his seed to modern techniques of in-vitro fertilization, or the Catholic Church disallowing birth control based on something Thomas Aquinas wrote. The Constitution ain't perfect, and it's had amendments repealed before—just look at Prohibition.
So what are we going to do?
It seems that we have two choices. We can either literally do what the Second Amendment says and establish Swiss-style well-regulated militias and allow the people who join them to have all the damn machine guns they want—and face military discipline if their weapons are misused—or amend the Constitution to either do away with the Second Amendment or make it more relevant to our modern world.
Obviously, we can't do away with guns in America. The first and most obvious reason is that since we poisoned all the wolves, there remain an awful lot of deer in the woodlands and on the highways of America that desperately need to die. Also, besides the fact that this ain't Merrie Olde England and people in rural areas actually have to defend themselves against things like bears and mountain lions and wild pigs and Marlon Brando, I also believe people have a right to defend themselves and their property from human predators, as well. (Unfortunately, they don't seem to have the right not to be sued afterwards.) Furthermore, many people, who are undoubtedly somewhat insane but who are entitled to their opinions, find shooting guns to be fun. (We, personally, hate loud noises and prefer the whisper of steel on a fencing strip.) In any case, there is no reason people shouldn't be able to own lever-action, small-magazine rifles, shotguns, and even (well-regulated, registered, and controlled) handguns.
But should the right to own them be in there with our right to free speech and the right of women to vote? Nuh-uh.
What we need is a sane and non-dogmatic way of looking at guns in America—and we need to recognize that owning a firearm may be, like driving a car, a privilege and a responsibility, but it is not, and should not be, a right.
Late addendum: Leaving aside, for the moment, the fact that Waco shows you what happens if you try to "resist" the government, guns aren't the problem so far as the crime rate goes. Thats more a social and economic, and even a geographical, issue. And calling us liberal pinko tree huggers ain't gonna help with anything.
That was one of the most ignorant, meandering screeds on the history of the Second Amendment I have read in some time.
When Scalia gets his hands on this, it ain't gonna be pretty.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
It is a Right and is enumerated as such in the Bill of Rights.
If this particular "domestic enemy of the Constitution" has a problem with it, he should relocate to China, Russia, or Mexico.
If he persists in attempting to overthrow the Bill of Rights, he should be arrested by federal agents, and swiftly put to trial by a jury.
If so, he'd be much better off in Red China, where they don't have a Bill of Rights but do have a lot of butt-burglars due to the murderous abortion policies of the illegitmate communist dictatorship over there, which has produced a 60/40 ratio of men to women.
Such a worthless piece of sh!t is not deserving of citizenship in America, especially when he is trying to overthrow our Constitution and the legimate portions of our government. The bastard is hiding behind the Rights that several generations of Americans fought and died for, so that he can deprive the future generations of these same Rights. There should be legal sanction for his action, as well as the actions of those who join in his sedition.
Expelling the "domestic enemies of the Constitution" would certainly be cheaper than the 'arrest, trial, and punishment route', but the latter would certainly be more fun.
At this point in the game, I'd take either to preserve our Republic and the Constitution.
~~George Mason, father of the Bill of Rights, during the Virginia convention to ratify the Constitution, on the meaning of "militia" in the second amendment.
Now the fedgov only wants "a few public officials" (FBI, BATF etc) to be armed with "militia weapons" as defined in Miller 1939.
Hmmm, maybe the government should pick up my beer tab at the local tavern so I can be part of a well regulated militia. Damn, owning a firearm could be fun!
Every word worth repeating.
These bastards want to 'update' the Constitution?
Here's a little 'update' we need...
We need an expeditious means to arrest, try and put to death anyone whose words and/or actions have the intent of altering, limiting or abolishing any of the Bill of Rights.
Subsequent amendments to the Constitution are, of course, not part of the Bill of Rights, and are subject to considerably less protection from 'political' debate.
And if we can't overhaul the legal system sufficiently to put these traitors to death (after trial and conviction, of course) then we need -at a minimum- to strip them of citizenship and assets and banish them to the turd world piss-hole of our choice.
A struggle is clearly coming to a Republic near you.
When it does, no matter how old and boogered up you may be, make every second of your participation count.
With a little luck and skill we might just be able to take advantage of the situation to reduce the incidence of the 'Traitor Gene' in the American gene pool to mid-18th Century levels.
Until then, be on the lookout for unconstitutional 'laws' whose intention is to undermine the Constitution and respond to them accordingly.
Do not be seduced by those who promote themselves as authority figures, who demand actions, or restraint from actions, in a manner inconsistent with the Constitution.
The duty of Patriots in these difficult days is clear...
Until these traitors can be crushed they are to be skillfully ignored.
It's good to know that this archive exists.
Thanks for the heads up.
The 2nd ammendment which the author so despises, protects his first ammendment right for him to write such drivell. Such a hypocrite.
Don't you understand? This writer is a leftist. He is not interested in preserving your First Amendment protections, only his own.
Remember, if you scratch the leftist, you get the brownshirt. First they take your guns, then they take your freedom.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
He stands on the shoulders of giants, then proceeds to p!ss on their heads.
Just another clown who can look at things like antibiotics, modern medicine, running water, electricity, and the constitutional republic and be ignorant that we ever lacked such things and what the world was like when we did.
Liberals are so fixated on their utopian dreams that they would blunder right back into the hell we spend mellenia working to escape.
We're making a list, and checking it twice. Gonna find out who's naughty....
The idea is not to generate a Christmas Card list, however....
-archy-/-
Well they damn sure ought to see to it that there are ranges available to practice and ammo at cost.
Then they take your life.
Every time...
Without fail.
When they come for your guns, your freedom and your life is already forfeit.
You have absolutely no incentive to comply as instructed.
When they come for your guns make them work for them, give them reason to value them.
But remember...
When they come for your guns give them as much of your ammunition as you are able to first.
I'd bet a hundred bucks this bozo's never bothered to read The Federalist Papers: Hamilton's already explained the Second Amendment.
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