Posted on 04/17/2015 8:02:22 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Yesterday, TalkingPointsMemo reported that Texas Senator Ted Cruz sent an email to supporters urging them to send him money to make him president so that he could, as president, protect their right to violently overthrow the president.
As the email read:
The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn’t for just protecting hunting rights, and it’s not only to safeguard your right to target practice. It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny — for the protection of liberty
Cruz’s assertion was so absurd that Lindsey Graham — sporting an A rating from the NRA — not-so-subtlely compared Cruz to Jefferson Davis, pointing out that as far as armed rebellions go, “we tried that once in South Carolina. I wouldn’t go down that road again.”
The email is a reprisal of a meme normally reserved for NRA forums and first year government seminars at Liberty University, trotted out by gun activists once they’ve run out of arguments for why they so desperately need to keep an arsenal of high-caliber weapons stockpiled in their toolshed.
How historically nonsensical and utterly baseless Cruz’s claim is shouldn’t bear repeating, but if a US senator and declared presidential candidate is taking the argument seriously, it does. Here are just a few reasons why it makes absolutely no sense to say that the Constitution protects your right to revolt:
Citizens have guns to fight for the government
The Second Amendment states, in full, that “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.”
“Being necessary to the security of a free state” doesn’t mean “being necessary to the citizens’ ability to shoot government officials if they don’t like paying taxes.” When the Constitution was ratified, the United States was an extremely weak country. Having just come off the heels of the Revolutionary War and the disorganized disaster that was the Articles of Confederation, the country had little standing army to speak of and not a whole lot of money available to raise one. With Spain occupying Florida and a number of potentially unfriendly great powers — most notably Great Britain — running trade routes nearby, the country desperately needed to arm itself.
So the Founders deputized the citizens, guaranteeing their right to keep arms for the purpose of organizing into militias that could fight off invaders, as they had done during the Revolutionary War.
As long as you actually read the first 13 of the 27 words in the Amendment, this should make perfect sense. The most definitive answer to this comes from linguist Dennis Baron, who has apparently read the Constitution a bit more carefully than Ted “Nullify the Supreme Court” Cruz.
As he argued in an amicus brief filed for the DC vs. Heller case, the Second Amendment was meant to be read according to the grammar used at the time in which it was written. And in the 18th Century, if you opened your sentence (like this one) with a clause and a comma, everything after that clause pertained only to that clause. So “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” refers only to “a well regulated militia,” and probably only to the extent that a well regulated militia is an essential component of our national security. If we were to rewrite the Second Amendment in 21st Century English, it would read something like this:
A well regulated militia is essential to the security of a free state. Therefore, the right to keep and bear arms for the purposes of maintaining a well regulated militia shall not be infringed.
So, no, Ted Cruz, the Constitution doesn’t say you can keep your gun in case one too many people sign up for affordable health insurance and you decide that that’s the last straw. It says you can have a gun if the United States Army falls apart and we need to rely on citizen brigades of militiamen to stave off a British re-invasion. That isn’t going to happen for the next ever, so you don’t get to keep your semi-auto just because it makes you feel like more of a man.
Wouldn’t you need a bigger gun?
But let’s say I’m wrong, and the Constitution does give citizens the right to fire on the police. Why are there any gun restrictions at all?
America’s standing army in 1787 wasn’t exactly intimidating. By contrast, America’s standing army in 2015 is, and I’m sure Ted Cruz would agree, not to be messed with. An AR-15 doesn’t hold a candle to your local police force; starting beef with the full firepower of the American military with nothing more sophisticated than a semi-auto is like bringing a ham sandwich to a gun fight. If citizens really did rise up and revolt with the guns currently available, they would lose and lose badly.
But under Ted Cruz’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, this shouldn’t be a problem. As far as he’s concerned, he’s got the right to the same firepower the military has.
It’s the logical conclusion of his argument. If you really can ignore the whole first half of the Second Amendment, and the Constitution does really guarantee citizens the right to keep and bear arms in case there’s a need for an armed insurrection, then why not Uzis? Why not RPGs? Why not frag grenades and anti-tank missiles and M24 Sniper Weapons Systems (the M24 is a sniper rifle so powerful that apparently the military doesn’t think calling it a “rifle” does it justice)? Hell, why not your own Black Hawk attack helicopter? I’m sure Sikorsky Aircraft, the company that makes them, would sell you one if you could afford it.
As soon as you say that any gun new gun restrictions are off the table because Americans have a universal, comprehensive right to bear arms, you’re also saying that all existing gun restrictions are off the table because Americans have a universal, comprehensive right to bear arms. There is no gray area as to which arms are and aren’t allowed. Combine that with an anti-government itch, and why wouldn’t you be filibustering bills over your God-given Constitutional right to play with your Call of Duty weapons in real life?
Dennis Barron didn’t get his way in DC vs. Heller. The court ruled that citizens have a right to a personal handgun for self defense at home. That may lead to more gun deaths than it saves, but I can at least understand the thought process behind the practical — if not Constitutional — argument for that right. The world has changed a lot since 1787. We don’t rely on militias for national security, and your over the counter handgun can do a lot more damage than the best muzzle loader ever could.
There are gray areas to be ironed out with respect to who should be allowed to own what kind of gun. Those are debates worth having. But we can start by all agreeing that, as an American, we aren’t going to give citizens the right, or the ability, to overthrow America.
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Jon Green graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. in Political Science and high honors in Political Cognition. He worked as a field organizer for Congressman Tom Perriello in 2010 and a Regional Field Director for President Obama's re-election campaign in 2012. Jon writes on a number of topics, but pays especially close attention to elections, religion and political cognition. Follow him on Twitter at @_Jon_Green, and on Google+.
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LOL...this guy obviously didn't pay attention to what a couple of Eastern Europeans with pistols did to the entire Boston police force. Imagine a squad-sized element with ARs and actually motivated to take the fight to the cops?
Great post for the snips and your comments as well. I do wonder what actual percentage of the populace can even understand the propositions so eloquently set forth and explained.
Nice try.
He’s an idiot. But I do agree with one thing he said:
“then why not Uzis? Why not RPGs? Why not frag grenades and anti-tank missiles and M24 Sniper Weapons Systems (the M24 is a sniper rifle so powerful that apparently the military doesn’t think calling it a “rifle” does it justice)? Hell, why not your own Black Hawk attack helicopter? I’m sure Sikorsky Aircraft, the company that makes them, would sell you one if you could afford it.”
M24 “sniper weapons system”. Humph..”They” don’t call it a rifle because the military is very fond of hyperbole.
When I worked in the 1980’s as civilian state security at an Air Guard base we either carried Air Force M-16s (120 rounds) or S&W Model 15 K frame .38s (18 rounds) depending on our assignment. The police in that state capitol city walked mighty small around us, as I remember it. They had pistols and maybe a shotgun in their patrol cars.
From the Declaration:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Agree with what?
If 3rd world “peasants” in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere can figure out how to build bombs, does he think that tens of millions of “insurrectionists” in a first world nation won’t? Can he be that dumb?
2ndDivisionVet comments
Are we sure these two cases represent the same ideology?
2016 Republican Presidential Nomination
| Poll | Date | Bush | Walker | Cruz | Paul | Carson | Huckabee | Rubio | Christie | Perry | Santorum | Jindal | Kasich | Spread | |
| RCP Average | 3/13 - 3/31 | 16.5 | 15.3 | 10.5 | 9.8 | 9.0 | 8.5 | 7.3 | 5.5 | 2.8 | 1.7 | 1.3 | 1.3 | Bush +1.2 | |
| FOX News | 3/29 - 3/31 | 12 | 15 | 10 | 9 | 11 | 10 | 8 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Walker +3 | |
| ABC/Wash Post | 3/26 - 3/29 | 21 | 13 | 12 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Bush +8 | |
| PPP (D) | 3/26 - 3/31 | 17 | 20 | 16 | 10 | 10 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 3 | -- | -- | -- | Walker +3 | |
| CNN/ORC | 3/13 - 3/15 | 16 | 13 | 4 | 12 | 9 | 10 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Bush +3 |
Oh, I see. So do I.
It is clear from these writings that the Framers expected the federal government to respect the sovereignty of the states, and treat them as partners in governing the nation.
Not so much today.
-PJ
I think our left is more fascist/Nazi than the South American, which skews Maoist.
LMAO
Can we be Frank here? LOL
There is no honor among those who seek to change America; to divorce this generation from the American heritage; to impose restrictions on liberty, which go against the whole warp & woof of the Constitution, intended to protect that liberty.
For a better appreciation of just how far afield the writer is, The Right & Duty To Keep & Bear Arms. Note, especially, George Washington's support for adopting the Swiss system for American youth, and consider just how beneficial he understood that such would be.
Mao armed the entire Chinese population? Why didn't they shoot him?
Do our Maoists want to arm us???
“then why not Uzis? Why not RPGs? Why not frag grenades and anti-tank missiles and M24 Sniper Weapons Systems (the M24 is a sniper rifle so powerful that apparently the military doesn’t think calling it a “rifle” does it justice)? Hell, why not your own Black Hawk attack helicopter? I’m sure Sikorsky Aircraft, the company that makes them, would sell you one if you could afford it.”
Yes, there should be no restrictions on which weapons I choose to have. I wish that I could afford a nuke but even if I could afford a nuke the government will not let me have one.
I think you are being naively generous. The biographic note at the end indicates that he was an active supporter of Obama. That could, of course, mean misinformed: but given the complete ignoring of the actual history involved, coupled with that active support for one pledged to "change" America, I would not give him that pass.
You may be focused on the wrong variable. In Latin America, the Armies tend to intervene when the politicians move so far to the Left as to endanger the stability of the State. Obama has been removing Officers from our Military, who might sense a similar duty.
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