Posted on 02/27/2008 8:42:10 AM PST by .cnI redruM
It took a grandiose gesture on the part of Senator Barack Obama to admit that the US Constitution included a 2nd Amendment. This makes the Junior Senator from The Land of Lincoln more historically well-versed than Michael G. Bellisiles, but still doesn’t make him the man we want as America’s next President.
Barack Obama’s execrable views on the regulation of gun ownership are bad for individual liberty without any additional context provided. The Senator seems to believe that the State’s necessary coercive monopoly extends so far that individuals should not own firearms for the purpose of self-protection. His website offers the following brief explanation of where Candidate Obama stands.
Millions of hunters own and use guns each year. Millions more participate in a variety of shooting sports such as sporting clays, skeet, target and trap shooting that may not necessarily involve hunting. As a former constitutional law professor, Barack Obama understands and believes in the constitutional right of Americans to bear arms. He will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns for the purposes of hunting and target shooting. Barack Obama
Even the fundamental premise behind Obama’s willingness to acquiesce on this issue and actually admit that gun rights exist in The Bill of Rights smacks of tyrannical overreach and implicit social engineering. Our overlords have no business granting us conditional constitutional rights. We are allowed to speak, practice our religions, own guns or plead the 5th without reference to why we engage in any of these activities.
Like much of Barack Obama’s agenda, so much remains unspoken. How does Senator Obama know why I may choose to own an anti-tank weapon? I may be an Anti-American terrorist. I may just shoot it at oil-tankers for target practice and recreation. The same could be true of anyone who owns a .22 Caliber handgun and who just happens to live near the intersection of Pico and Union.
In apology for Obama, an argument exists that this precludes pretty much any regulation of firearms. Wayne LaPierre should endorse this guy before this opportunity gets away. Yet the candidate himself dispenses any notion that any such libertarian impulse will impede his desires to husband the power of a central government athwart the liberties of wayward individuals. His further thoughts on the limitations a reasonable state actor can bracket our rights with follow below.
"There is an individual right to bear arms, but it is subject to common-sense regulation, just like most of our rights are subject to common-sense regulation."
In case we didn’t know yet what was good for us, he shows us the way to change and hope a little more. "the protections of the Second Amendment are subject to the same sort of reasonable restrictions that have been recognized as limiting, for instance, the First Amendment."
Like too many of our political debates, we are now forced to parse the definitions of what “is” is. The Obama standard by which a central authority is empowered to abjure the exercise of an individual right rests upon the gravamen of the legal realism originally espoused by American Jurist Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr.
At first glance, Barack could do a far worse as a legal scholar than to base his opinions on the doctrines originated by his fellow Harvard Law School alumnus. Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. is rightly considered by many to be a champion of American academic jurisprudence. His influence effects the decisions made in hundreds of American courts every day.
Where Senator Obama errs badly is when he attempts to hold the bedrock principals of the US Constitution to Oliver Wendall Holmes’ legal standards. A key tenant of legal realism is the indeterminancy of law. This school of belief espouses that a good lawyer can make the law say anything that is needed to justify a specific desired decision, at a given point at time.
Therefore, there isn’t any bedrock standard to interpret what the law actually says. You can read the polysyllabic words all you want, but that doesn’t really explain what the law says this week. Nor does it guarantee what the law will say next week.
Electing to disregard the US Code isn’t fatal. The USC itself derives from prudent extrapolation beyond the US Constitution. These laws are rules of the road, but not the final standard to conduct the arbitration of difficult problems.
The US Constitution is the final source of arbitration. If Barack Obama finds the US Constitution to be indeterminate, I can only question the wisdom of conferring upon his person a degree in law. American Law cannot work without the Constitution as bedrock. There is no possible prudent interpretation of Constitutional Rights, if you believe them to be indeterminate straight from Jump Street.
So when Barack Obama tells us he will prudently determine the rights we will continue to enjoy after his election to the White House, no sane audience member should chant back “Yes, We Can!” There is no prudent interpretation of the indeterminate. That is why no candid mathematical meteorologist will offer you an eleventh day forecast on weather.com. That’s also why the thought of Barack Obama appointing any Federal Judges should scare far more people than just the ones who collect hunting bows and firearms.
If the preamble phrase in the 2nd Amendment (”A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ...”) means anything, it means that the right of people to keep and bear arms is a function of defense of self and of the State, not of hunting and recreation.
We need to constantly remind the people what the militia in the 2nd amendment is REALLY for..... A citizen body organized for military purposes and by extension, logically equipped with weapons of military utility. Just consider that the founders of our nation had just finished defeating the greatest military power on the planet, thanks in no small part to a citizen militia, armed with military weapons such as the smooth bore Brown Bess musket, and often technologically superior rifled muskets. It is the height of absurdity to think that the second amendment in the Bill of Rights is primarily concerned with shooting bunny rabbits.
If we don’t constantly emphasize the constitutional reasons for the Second Amendment than we shall surely lose it, because hunting, while a worthy enterprise, is too trivial a reason to maintain it has a constitutional protection. We need to emphasize to our hunting bretheren that maintenance of the second amendment’s constitutional rationale serves to protect their rights to continue to own firearms for hunting. But that pupose is subordinate and incidental to it’s primary purpose, quite literally the final check for the preservation of our republic from the depredations of untrammeled tyranny.
Sen. Obama, when seconds count the police are only minutes away. Do you protect the right of law-abiding Americans to own and use a gun for the purpose of self-defense?
Let me answer for Obama, if I may. The answer is, if you have to ask, means you aren't paying attention. Obama has no idea WHY the 2nd Amendment is in the Constitution, and if he does, it means he's treating us like we're idiots.
First of all, we are all idiots. The Gov't has NO right to regulate firearms but let me list the ways they do.
Obama will do more.
I hope the disjointed reply is as clear as Obama's position. While you try to figure out where he stands, he will finish destroying any rights you now have.
I would agree, wholeheartedly. Our hunting brethren should also be made aware that the guns, ammo and accessories purchased by non-hunters (i.e. target shooters and those interested in self defense and defense of liberty) help to spread the fixed costs and lower the cost of their hobby, and also results in more dealers being available to sell to them.
IOW (to quote Ben Franklin), either we all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately.
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