Posted on 05/16/2002 12:45:18 PM PDT by 45Auto
The Second Amendment is back.
Rejecting six decades of the government's head-in-sand approach to the Second Amendment, Attorney General John Ashcroft now says the founding fathers meant what they said and said what they meant. The Second Amendment confers an individual's right to keep and bear arms.
"Horrors!" say anti-gunners. This exposes John Ashcroft as the extremist opponents called him. After all, during the Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., voted against him saying, "This is not a man who treats people kindly." Michael D. Barnes, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence said, "This action is proof positive that the worst fears about Attorney General Ashcroft have come true: His extreme ideology on guns has now become government policy." On "This Week" with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, Roberts said, "Anything that makes it easier to get guns is a bad thing."
Those who argue the Second Amendment applies to the "collective," rather than individuals, face a daunting task – taking on the founding fathers. Anti-gunners must argue that "the people" in the Second Amendment does not refer to individuals, despite this interpretation everywhere else in the Bill of Rights when the founding fathers referred to "the people."
Anti-Second Amendment people like Rosie O'Donnell argue that the reference to "the militia" in the Second Amendment means National Guard. And, goes the reasoning, since states possess National Guards – our "militia" – why do individuals need a right to keep and bear arms? This shows profound ignorance of the purpose of the amendment. The founding fathers intended the amendment to serve as a bulwark against tyranny by government. How, then, can the National Guard – an arm of government – protect citizens against the very government for which the National Guard works?!
U.S. Code Title 10 defines militia as: "All able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard. The classes of the militia are (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia." This means we – the citizens – are the militia.
George Mason, called the father of the Bill of Rights, said, "What is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." James Madison, called the father of the Constitution, said of tyrants, "[They were] afraid to trust the people with arms," and lauded "the advantage of being armed, which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation."
Thomas Paine said, "The peaceable part of mankind will be overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defense. [Weakness] allures the ruffian [but] arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order in the world. Horrid mischief would ensue were [the good] deprived of the use of them. The weak will become a prey to the strong."
Even some noted liberal professors admit the obvious. Harvard's Laurence Tribe says, "The 14th Amendment, which makes parts of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, reflected a broad agreement that bearing arms was a 'privilege' of each citizen." Fellow Harvard liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz agrees, and scolds fellow liberals for twisting the words of the Second Amendment in a way that could come back to haunt them. "Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming that it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard," said Dershowitz, "don't see the danger of the big picture." He added, "They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."
Even Cokie Roberts seems unsure about the Second-Amendment-serves-the-collective argument. "I have read through these debates of the Constitution on this subject," said Roberts, "and don't think it's at all – it's actually not clear either way, but it's certainly not clear that it is – only means the militia. And if you look at the state constitutions of the same time, many of them word it the other way around. So that assuming that they are all meaning the same thing, the state constitutions put the right to bear arms before the militia. So it's – it's really hard to say that this is the only meaning of that – of the amendments."
Roberts says, "It's actually not clear either way." Well, expect the Supreme Court to clear it up. And the Brady Center folks won't like what they see.
And to those who think these old guys were just BS'ing, we have a living laboratory of exactly this process going on right now - England. Those idiots at HCI and their sycophantic allies in politics and the press would like to see the whole country turned into a playground for miscreants, a total victim disarmament zone, while they sit smugly in gated communities and penthouses guarded by armed men who they hired. They are the worst kind of hypocrits when it comes to the RKBA - they are gun owners by proxy.
Or is it just the old Marxist/Communist concept that the truth doesn't matter as long as you arrive at the approved conclusion?
I've often commented that the newsmedia no longer employs a camera it's it's portrayals of the RKBA, but a microscope. A very narrow and inordinately magnified field of view, making the proverbial mountain out of a molehill. All this while actual cases of violence have diminished over 30% in the last 8 years, media coverage of same is up 700%. So the bias is quite apparent to anyone who study such things.
The very fact that the term of art, "The People", in the Bill of Rights could possibly be miscontrued to mean something other than each individual citizen, as it plainly does in the 1st, 4th, 9th and 10th amendments, is a sad testament to the intellectual dishonesty of our day."
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What part of "...SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED..." do these people not understand?
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Why should I trust a government that doesn't trust me to carry a gun?
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Homeland Security =
CITIZEN CARRY FOR ALL 50 STATES
RECIPROCITY IN ALL 50 STATES
After all, during the Senate confirmation hearings, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., voted against him saying, "This is not a man who treats people kindly."
I am not sure how Ashcroft can live with himself after that kind of criticism (/sarcasm)
Actually what Cokie Roberts says is encouraging. I also feel that if one looks at state consitutions, one finds that people tried to restate what they thought were their rights to futher guarantee what was importants to make democracy last. A read of the relevant sections of many of the state consitutions talks about how bad standing armies are and how having arms in the hands of citizens is much better and how having arms in the hands of citizens is important for not only the citizen's self defense, but he defense of the state. I think that the arguments for RTKBA is much stronger at a state constitution level in many states than at the federal level, although I concur that it is an individual and absolute right.
Hey, Larry Elder called it right. They didn't hold it was a collective state militia right. They held it as a government right to stick their head in the sand and mumble. It was the grabbers and recently the klintonistas that uttered the ridiculous collective right nonsense.
WRONG!
Since the government didn't give me my rights, it has no power to codify them.
Amendment II
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.
Cokie is experiencing cognitive dissonance. She knows what she wants to believe, and feels is right. But that doesn't square with all the facts and documentation that she has dug up.
Anti-Second Amendment people like Rosie O'Donnell argue that the reference to "the militia" in the Second Amendment means National Guard. And, goes the reasoning, since states possess National Guards – our "militia" – why do individuals need a right to keep and bear arms?Yeah... after all, average citizens are not her (or her kids') bodyguards.
O'Donnell is a hypocrite of the highest order. She could give a rat's furry (__)__) about the rest of us, so long as she has her private merc army.
Actually, using the (non)logic of the libs, it only applies to hand-cranked flatbed presses. Not to those new-fangled motorized and computerized monstrosities.
Why, if they could have foreseen the danger posed by modern print and electronic media, they would have never approved the First Ammendment, even in its limited degree. :)
L
If the INS was run like the BATF, every illegal alien in America would be arrested, deported or shot in less than one month."
Whoops, Mr. Elder. The Second Amendment doesn't confer anything. It states what the Constitutional Government cannot do, namely infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Let's not muddy the water anymore than it already is.
And my copy of the Constitution has 3 commas in the 2nd Amendment as well.
Do you have a comment to make about the article, or are you just going to nitpick?
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