>It’s an interesting connundrum that is being played out all over the United States right now. I think Walter Williams said it best. I heard him say that you can always violate the law and stand up for your individual rights. However be prepared for the consequences of your actions. Something like that.
>Anyways, the right to keep and bear arms is spelled out in a lot of state and federal constitutions and is a widely recognized natural right. The power of one state to secede from the United States I don’t find anywhere as a right or power.
Actually it’s a specific instance of a general principal which is integral to the argument of the validity of secession: either the Constitution [federal and/or State] are legally binding to that government or they are not. If they are not, then using them as references or [legal] defense is worthless. {IOW, you cannot use them as the basis/foundation for any sort of reasoning.} But if they *are* legally binding then they are necessarily superior to the laws passed by that [level of] government as they are the basis and authority for the formation of the respective legislature; in which case such Constitutions have every right to exclude from the legislature any particular aspect (such as the right to keep and bear arms by forbidding abridgment of that right via law).
By using the Constitution as a point of reference for authority you are implicitly rejecting that it is a “feel good document” or a “living, breathing [ever-changing] document” (which can, without warning, mean something completely different than it did five minutes/days/years/decades ago). It is extraordinarily important that you and I and every other Citizen know a) which the Constitution is and b) which the *government* says the Constitution is.
As a small example, I’ll refer back to my State Constitution; in its bill of rights there is the following section:
Every man shall be free to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and no person shall ever be molested or denied any civil or political right or privilege on account of his religious opinion or mode of religious worship. No person shall be required to attend any place of worship or support any religious sect or denomination; nor shall any preference be given by law to any religious denomination or mode of worship.
If my state government *can* [legitimately] “abridge the right of the Citizen to keep and bear arms” (contrary to its constitution) like in the referenced prohibition at universities OR [say] at courthouses then there is no guarantee that the above cited section cannot also be violated. The State could prohibit Baptists, Catholics, Muslims, and/or Buddhists [etc] from voting [or handing out literature “of a political nature”].
It is the same with the Federal System; though pointing it out may label you as a “crazy.”
Read post 78 from the writer of the constitution. See what he thought about this “power” of secession...