Posted on 12/28/2012 11:17:53 AM PST by servo1969
My friend Brett Joshpe has published an uncharacteristically soft-headed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle arguing that in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook, conservatives and Republicans should support what he calls “sensible” gun-control laws. It begins with a subtext of self-congratulation (“As a conservative and a Republican, I can no longer remain silent . . . Some will consider it heresy,” etc.), casts aspersions of intellectual dishonesty (arguments for preserving our traditional rights are “disingenuous”), advances into ex homine (noting he has family in Sandy Hook, as though that confers special status on his preferences), fundamentally misunderstands the argument for the right to keep and bear arms, deputizes the electorate, and cites the presence of teddy bears as evidence for his case.
Brett, like practically every other person seeking to diminish our constitutional rights, either does not understand the purpose of the Second Amendment or refuses to address it, writing, “Gun advocates will be hard-pressed to explain why the average American citizen needs an assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine other than for recreational purposes.” The answer to this question is straightforward: The purpose of having citizens armed with paramilitary weapons is to allow them to engage in paramilitary actions. The Second Amendment is not about Bambi and burglars — whatever a well-regulated militia is, it is not a hunting party or a sport-clays club. It is remarkable to me that any educated person — let alone a Harvard Law graduate — believes that the second item on the Bill of Rights is a constitutional guarantee of enjoying a recreational activity.
There is no legitimate exception to the Second Amendment for military-style weapons, because military-style weapons are precisely what the Second Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to secure our ability to oppose enemies foreign and domestic, a guarantee against disorder and tyranny. Consider the words of Supreme Court justice Joseph Story — who was, it bears noting, appointed to the Court by the guy who wrote the Constitution:
The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
“Usurpation and arbitrary power of the rulers” — not Bambi, not burglars. While your granddad’s .30-06 is a good deal more powerful than the .223 rifles that give blue-state types the howling fantods, that is not what we have a constitutional provision to protect. Liberals are forever asking: “Why would anybody need a gun like that?” And the answer is: because we are not serfs. We are a free people living under a republic of our own construction. We may consent to be governed, but we will not be ruled.
The right to keep and bear arms is a civil right. If you doubt that, consider the history of arms control in England, where members of the Catholic minority (and non-Protestants generally) were prohibited from bearing arms as part of the campaign of general political oppression against them. The Act of Disenfranchisement was still in effect when our Constitution was being written, a fact that surely was on the mind of such Founding Fathers as Daniel Carroll, to say nothing of his brother, Archbishop John Carroll.
The Second Amendment speaks to the nature of the relationship between citizen and state. Brett may think that such a notion is an antiquated relic of the 18th century, but then he should be arguing for wholesale repeal of the Second Amendment rather than presenting — what’s the word? — disingenuous arguments about what it means and the purpose behind it.
If we want to reduce the level of criminal violence in our society, we should start by demanding that the police and criminal-justice bureaucracies do their job. Massacres such as Sandy Hook catch our attention because they are so unusual. But a great deal of the commonplace violence in our society is preventable. Brett here might look to his hometown: There were 1,662 murders in New York City from 2003 to 2005, and a New York Times analysis of the data found that in 90 percent of the cases, the killer had a prior criminal record. (About half the victims did, too.) Events such as Sandy Hook may come out of nowhere, but the great majority of murders do not. The police function in essence as a janitorial service, cleaning up the mess created in part by our dysfunctional criminal-justice system.
We probably would get more out of our criminal-justice system if it were not so heavily populated by criminals. As I note in my upcoming book, The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome, it can be hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys:
For more than twenty years, NYPD detectives worked as enforcers and assassins for the Gambino crime family; in 2006 two detectives were convicted not only of murder and conspiracy to commit murder but also on charges related to such traditional mob activity as labor racketeering, running illegal gambling rings, extortion, narcotics trafficking, obstruction of justice, and the like. This was hardly an isolated incident; only a few years prior to the NYPD convictions more than 70 LAPD officers associated with the city’s anti-gang unit were found to have been deeply involved in gang-affiliated criminal enterprises connected to the Bloods street gang. Their crimes ranged from the familiar police transgressions of falsifying evidence, obstructing justice, and selling drugs seized in arrests to such traditional outlaw fare as bank robbery — they were cops and robbers. More than 100 criminal convictions were overturned because of evidence planted or falsified by officers of the LAPD. One scholarly account of the scandal concluded that such activity is not atypical but rather systemic — and largely immune to attempts at reform: “The current institution of law enforcement in America does appear to reproduce itself according [to] counter-legal norms . . . attempts to counteract this reproduction via the training one receives in police academies, the imposition of citizen review boards, departments of Internal Affairs, etc. do not appear to mitigate against this structural continuity between law enforcement and crime.”
The Department of Homeland Security has existed for only a few years but it already has been partly transformed into an organized-crime syndicate. According to a federal report, in 2011 alone more than 300 DHS employees and contractors were charged with crimes ranging from smuggling drugs and child pornography to selling sensitive intelligence to drug cartels. That’s not a few bad apples — that’s an arrest every weekday and many weekends. Given the usual low ratio of arrests to crimes committed, it is probable that DHS employees are responsible for not hundreds but thousands of crimes. And these are not minor infractions: Agents in the department’s immigration division were caught selling forged immigrant documents, and DHS vehicles have been used to transport hundreds (and possibly thousands) of pounds of illegal drugs. A “standover” crew — that is, a criminal enterprise that specializes in robbing other criminals — was found being run by a DHS agent in Arizona, who was apprehended while hijacking a truckload of cocaine.
Power corrupts. Madison knew that, and the other Founders did, too, which is why we have a Second Amendment.
Yes, but Hamilton wrote what he expected to see of those who call themselves a militia.
Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.
It is a bit quaint to see Hamilton's next expectation, given that the towns were much smaller then.
Where in the name of common-sense, are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens? What shadow of danger can there be from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits and interests? What reasonable cause of apprehension can be inferred from a power in the Union to prescribe regulations for the militia, and to command its services when necessary, while the particular States are to have the SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE APPOINTMENT OF THE OFFICERS?
So back to my first post in this thread, regardless of who the militia is or what arms they may bear, Hamilton still expected that they gather once or twice a year for inspection by officers of the state, or they cannot consider themselves to be "well-regulated."
If a state were serious about doing this, it would be more practical to have a unit of a state's national guard travel from region to region and hold weekend "boot-camps" at a reserve army base for volunteers to attend. Make it a program that someone has to register and pay for. Make it fun for gun owners who want to provide a volunteer civic duty, just like hams and CERT. Make it like a convention, but with target practice, proficiency tests, seminars, and some physical education. Have a social event on Saturday night for participants to mingle and get to know one another.
I'm sure there are many bitter-clingers who would love to sign up for a weekend getaway to practice being a militia once or twice a year.
-PJ
BTTT!
Except for folks who can’t be trained, we’re all part of the potential militia. That’s where the Agency gets such a large number for our possible military strength (able bodied men, re. CIA World Factbook).
Little admission here. The Army didn’t teach me to do well with weapons, although I fired much on Army ranges. Hillbillies previously taught me (more than a decade earlier) to excel over nearly all other soldiers on ranges and in fire-and-maneuver (more than a decade later). That’s no general negative toward the Army, because the Army did have much of good value to teach. Hillbillies and many other rural folks like them are our real strength, IMO, given some extra training, and also have much to teach.
Yes. By “arms” in the Second Amendment, our founding fathers obviously intended for Americans in peacetime to keep and bear what most infantryman would have: basic rifles, ammunition, suitable clothing, etc.
Heavier weapons were secured by those few who were responsible for securing them in suitable places. I suspect those who want to inject nuclear weapons and/or other artillery into the topic. Such commenters are apparently trying to contrive visions of insane/moronic/evil neighbors aiming contemporary artillery at other neighbors. Early Americans had enough common sense to keep weapons from such incompetents (insane/moronic/evil). For example, sodomites of the effete were executed by hanging.
Why do we conservatives continue to try and use logical arguments as a weapon in a fight against the animals demanding white men be unarmed and exterminated? When will we realize that writing a well worded SA does nothing to further their goal of rape and genocide, therefore they simply won’t read it?
>> “The “state” is not as much a threat as the criminals that it coddles and enables. <<
.
Bullcrap!
The rogue state is the only threat we face.
Without them in the way, we could easily dispose of the rest.
This sounds to me like a job for the State Defense Forces. If one can find Governors and State Adjudant Generals who have the vision and the will to initiate and carry it out. My state’s Military Department backed away from firearms training for the State Guard even when the local Military Reservation was willing to lend us the Firing Range. They also refused an offer from our own State Police to give us training, and to assign surplus firearms to be issued to us in case of our being called up for civil disturbances. It was as if they were afraid that the State Guard might become an effective militia.
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