Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

David Codrea:

Ironically, or not so much if you think about it, the same parties that petitioned the Court to hear the matter en banc oppose the motion to reconsider the order staying the case. After years of doing everything in his power to use the system for redress of grievances against a state with comparatively unlimited resources, Young wants his day in court, but the government is in no hurry to give it to him.

The progs love the courts only as long as the black-robed tyrants rule like they want.  Otherwise, they’re just a hurdle until they can be replaced with court packing or manipulated.  FDR would be proud.

I have been following this closely although not writing about it.  I travelled to Hawaii once (probably not again), and was astonished at the anti-2A sentiment there.  I hope the government’s case eventually goes down in flames.

The Guardian:

In Washington state, a freshly implemented ballot initiative and a raft of new bills may produce some of the tightest firearms regulations in the US. But standing in the way is a group of rural law enforcement officers who say point blank that they won’t enforce any of it.

The Klickitat county sheriff, Bob Songer, is one of them. He told the Guardian that the initiative passed last November “is unconstitutional on several grounds. I’ve taken the position that as an elected official, I am not going to enforce that law”.

Songer also cited ongoing litigation by the National Rife Association gun industry lobby and others which aims to demonstrate the laws violate both the second amendment and the state’s constitution. He also said that if other agencies attempted to seize weapons from county residents under the auspices of the new laws, he would consider preventively “standing in their doorway”.

In November, the state’s voters handily passed an initiative, I-1639, which mostly targeted semi-automatic rifles. As of 1 January, purchasers of these weapons must now be over 21, undergo an enhanced background check, must have completed a safety course, and need to wait 9 days to take possession of their weapon. Also, gun owners who fail to store their weapons safely risk felony “community endangerment” charges.

Feeling the wind at their backs after the ballot, gun campaigners and liberal legislators have now gone even further in the new legislative session. Bills introduced in the last week to Washington’s Democrat-dominated legislature look to further restrict firearms. Some laws would ban high capacity magazines and plastic guns made with 3D printers. Others would mandate training for concealed carry permits, and remove guns and ammo during and after domestic violence incidents.

Washington’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, who proposed several of the bills, said in an email: “Now is the time to act. Washingtonians have made it clear that they support common-sense gun safety reforms.”

Kristen Ellingboe, from Washington’s Alliance for Gun Safety, which has long campaigned for more firearms restrictions, said that “for a long time our elected officials thought that gun violence protection was somehow controversial, but they have been behind where the people of Washington are on this issue”.

But like other west coast states, Washington exhibits a deep cultural and political divide between its populous, coastal cities and its more sparsely populated rural hinterland.

I-1639 passed on a roughly 60-40 split; in the big, blue counties west of the Cascade Mountains, such as King county, where Seattle is located, the margins were even bigger.

However, 27 of Washington’s 39 counties rejected the ballot measure. Many of those counties are in the state’s more rural, sparsely populated districts.

It is in these counties that many – including sworn officers – are promising to resist the laws.

In Ferry county in eastern Washington, more than 72% of voters rejected I-1639. In the county’s only incorporated city, Republic, the police chief Loren Culp asked the council in November to declare the city a “second amendment sanctuary”. That vote has been delayed until March, but in the meantime, like Songer, Culp says he will not enforce.

The sheriff in Ferry county, Ray Maycumber, told the Guardian that he would not be enforcing the laws either, at least until the NRA’s litigation is completed.

“There’s a window of time when I get to make the assessment”, he said. Should the NRA not succeed, he said, he would “consider if I want to go on in the job”.

The “sanctuary” idea has caught on with other rightwing activists. Matt Marshall is the leader of the Washington Three Percent, a patriot movement group which has held several open carry rallies in downtown Seattle in the last year.

Marshall is attempting to persuade rural Washington counties to adopt local second amendment sanctuary ordinances. Next week, together with the Patriot Prayer founder and former Senate candidate Joey Gibson, he is addressing a meeting of Lewis and Pierce counties to try to persuade them to adopt resolutions which would mean that the gun laws were not enforced.

The refusal of law enforcement officers to enforce the new restrictions plays into a longer history of so-called “constitutional” sheriffs resisting the gradual tightening of gun laws. There are also hints, in the stance, of the doctrine of “county supremacy”, long nursed on the constitutionalist far right, which holds that county sheriffs are the highest constitutional authority in the country.

Oh no.  Please, not more of the nullification crap that’s never going to happen?  I don’t really care if there are Sheriffs who refuse to enforce these laws.

Here is my question for those Sheriffs: “When hard times come, and the state police, or the ATF, or some other agency, comes to enforce those unconstitutional laws, will you then use the power of your office to arrest those trying to enforce the laws and throw them in jail?”

Actually, I have two other pragmatic and related questions.  “Do your direct reports all support you in this project?”  And “Do you have an understanding with the local judges to keep them in prison so that your project doesn’t get scuttled on the legal system?”

Tell me those things, and then I’ll make up my mind on your project.

Yahoo:

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to jump back into the national debate over gun rights after nearly a decade on the sidelines.

The justices agreed to consider a petition backed by gun owners’ groups asking them to strike down New York City’s strict rules for carrying legally owned guns outside the home.

[ … ]

City officials argued that more liberal transporting policies in effect until 2001 were abused. While the policies were intended to allow gun owners to take unloaded guns only to target ranges outside the city, some guns were found loaded, or far from ranges, or on airplanes.

“Unlike golf clubs and musical instruments, firearms present public safety risks that the city has a legitimate interest in protecting against,” their brief to the court said. “Limiting their possession and use in public minimizes the risk of gun violence.”

Slate:

There are good answers to these questions. Right-to-carry laws, like those in Texas, appear to contribute to violent crime and increase homicide rates. Individuals carrying a weapon are more likely to escalate incidents of road rage and domestic conflicts into fatal shootings. Cities and states have a strong interest in curbing individuals’ ability to bring deadly weapons into the streets.

The bolded sections indicate the naïve belief in myths and fairy tales.  The myth is that prohibition effects law-abiding citizens in people who would otherwise be criminals.  The entirety of history runs counter to this myth, but myths and fairy tales die hard.

But the perpetrators (cops) don’t believe the myths.  They just don’t want to give up their “only one” rights.  The real believers are folks like the author at Slate, who must be mistaking the law abiding – who rarely will use firearms due to the knowledge that most prosecutors put another notch in the belt for every law abiding gun owner they can prosecute – for the real danger, i.e, cops.

Cops, who shoot Chihuahuas, invade the wrong home, pull guns on people for no good reason, kill each other in the line of duty, shoot the wrong person, routinely lose their guns, discharge firearms at moving vehicles in a busy intersection, engage in more wrong home raids, aim poorly, shoot unwisely and kill the wrong person, shoot people who are not the intended targets, fight with lawful gun carriers, cause negligent discharges, engage in more wrong home raids, engage in rolling gun battles where they discharge 600 rounds in crowded streets, shoot innocent people, burn toddlers in SWAT raids, lose their guns in dance floor moves, shoot innocent children, engage in more wrong home SWAT raids, have more negligent discharges, shoot heroes who stop shootings, shoot more heroes who stop shootings, shoot kidnapping victims, engage in more wrong home SWAT raids, use their guns like hammers, shoot more innocent people, shoot an innocent man during a SWAT raid, lose machine guns, shoot themselves, pull guns on the wrong people, engage in more negligent discharges, shoot photographers, shoot each other, violate the rules of gun safety, shoot innocent victims, unholster guns in road rage incidents, shoot dogs, kill more innocent people, shoot each other, point guns at each other, shoot more innocent people, engage in more rolling gun battles, have more negligent discharges, throw grenades at babies, shoot people with dementia, shoot their own children, shoot into day care facilities, shoot each other, engage in more wrong home raids, pull guns on seven year olds, shoot more dogs, engage in more wrong home SWAT raids, point guns at each other, violate the rules of gun safety and shoot each other, shoot more dogs, engage in more negligent discharges, shoot more dogs, point guns at each other, engage on more negligent discharges, shoot each other, engage in more negligent discharges, engage in more negligent discharges, kill more dogs, engage in more negligent discharges, engage in more negligent discharges, shoot each other, engage in more negligent discharges, kill more dogs, kill more dogs, engage in more wrong home SWAT raids, kill more dogs, point guns at politicians, fire guns in court, kill more dogs, engage in moe wrong home SWAT raids, engage in more negligent discharges, lose more machine guns, engage in more wrong home raids, engage in more wrong home raids, lose more machine guns, kill disabled war veterans in their own home, shoot each other, shoot more dogs, and I could go on for hours more.

So I don’t want to hear another damn word about gun safety.  Can you grok that?

And by the way just to reiterate what I’ve said so many times before, my rights come from the Almighty maker of heaven and earth, not the constitution.  The constitution is a covenant between men, nothing more.

Via WiscoDave, this observation from Selco:

I see here something which is much more dangerous than the fear of communism.

It is how people react to news or new laws about any weapon limitation. It’s how they talk about what the majority of them are planning to do.

Government at its core has the urge to control people in whatever way they can.  If you are more armed that means you are less controllable.

But if you are acting in a way that you are screaming from the rooftops how you “will defend your right to have (whatever) weapon (contrary) to the newest law” and how you’ll “be proud to own i, and to show it”  you eventually are not doing yourself any favors.

Do you really think that when the time comes that the government will send two pale clerks to search your home looking for whatever weapon?

Nope.

Here is how it might actually go down. This is one possible scenario:

First, you’ll be labeled as a terrorist, some weird guy who wants to overthrow the government. Maybe your photo will be posted somewhere stating that you are very sick, and that you pose a danger to society.

If you are a member of some group, let’s say a prepper group, you all will be labeled as terrorists first, and through the media, you can be portrayed as a domestic terror cell, to the point that your next door neighbor will help police to get you.

Do not underestimate the power of the government machine. You may truly be a fighter for constitutional rights and a real patriot, but in 3 days you can become a crazy terrorist that citizens will actually hunt down and shoot like a mad dog.

The point here is there is no point of publicly “yelling” about what you own and what are your rights to own.

Of course, you need to own weapons that you think it makes sense to own.

But why does everybody else need to know that, including government and government services?

The 2nd Amendment is very cool, and I like it very much, but here is the ugly truth:

It works only if the government wants it to work.

One day, when the government does not want it to work anymore it will be out of order, illegal, or even terrorist to practice it.

Sorry, it is not your inalienable right. The government lets you THINK  it is your inalienable right.

Here are two quick observations from me, not complete by an stretch and with many blanks that could be filled in, and then I have to be off to other things because of the busy season.

First of all, I’ve always believed that a wise man is measured in his words and tailors them for his audience, especially the words he speaks in public or writes for public consumption.  That’s all I’ll say about that.

Second, ownership of the means of self defense is certainly an unalienable right because it comes from God, not the state.  We’ve been through this many times before so there is no reason to rehearse it again now, but the constitution is a covenant between men.  The more important covenant is between God and man, and when man breaks it, he is in for trouble.

Preventing men from properly defending themselves, home, family and hearth is wicked, once again, because the right (and duty) come from God and His immutable nature, not mankind, government or any document.

That Selco doesn’t understand that taints his analysis, hollows it out and makes it vacuous.

Via WRSA, MHN has a very interesting and riveting take on what forcible confiscation of guns would look like in America.  Actually, I think it would be much worse, and I’ve said so and described it before.

However, take this with a grain of salt.  This is what unrestricted warfare against American gun owners would look like.  As I’ve said many times before, this isn’t how it will go down.

It will be a gradual drip, drip, drip of increasing infringements, all codified and substantiated by the court system as legitimate, mind you, but all designed to target gun manufacturers and gun owners with increasing difficulty.  Consider this.

The Detroit City Council approved a “Bullet Bill” gun control resolution Wednesday with a unanimous vote.

The resolution limits ammunition amounts that can be bought while requiring a mental health background check on buyers of ammo in Wayne County. Commissioner Reggie Reg Davis of the 6th district spearheaded the resolution.

I recently covered this, and at least some readers guffawed.  But my prediction has been proven out.  Then consider this.

S9191 “requires a person applying for a license to carry or possess a pistol or revolver or a renewal of such license to consent to having his or her social media accounts and search engine history reviewed and investigated for certain posts and/or searches over a period of 1-3 years prior to the approval of such application or renewal,” the draft bill states.

If the bill passes, investigators would be able to look for posts or searches that contain threats to the health or safety of others; intentions to carry out an act of terrorism; or commonly known profane slurs or biased language describing the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person.

Then consider this.

Neither Dantos nor any other official at the hearing on Baatz’s petition to recover the pistol ever told Baatz, who represented himself, that he had to provide some sort of evidence of ownership, Lazarus observed.

Instead, she wrote, Dantos “abruptly” ended the hearing by telling Baatz, “There is no way I’m giving you that gun back. Not happening. Your petition is denied.”

You’d better have records, boys.  You’d better not ever have to use your firearm in self defense.  You’d better register your weapon with the state, and you’d better watch what you say and how you say at all times, even in private.

Gun manufacturers had better never issue public stock or their stockholders could shut them down.  The banks are another story, and gun manufacturers had better never take out a loan for expansion or building of any kind.

You get the point, I think.  From money, to driver’s licenses, to professional licenses, to statements made in the workplace or over the internet, FedGov is watching you (as is the local government, apparently).

The intent is to boil the frog, not go to war with him.  Do you understand?  Don’t be stolid.  Be thinking men and women.

David Codrea:

The walk commenced with troopers leading the way, crossing the street to enter the main campus. There, “counterprotestors” began converging, walking quickly, looking for all the world like stalking predators preparing to attack. I saw black hoodies and bandanas. The troopers picked up the pace.

Funny that.  When I’m openly carrying, no one has ever rushed up to me wearing a hoodie or bandana.  This would be the wrong place for that anyway.  This is not welcome terrain for such foolishness.  Something might go down that’s not to your liking.

David did a nice job of covering the event.

Reuters:

When Missouri Senate Bill 656 was introduced in 2016, it was relatively modest legislation that proposed capping the amount county sheriffs could charge for a concealed handgun permit.

By the time it passed, with both houses of the state legislature overturning the governor’s veto, it had become one of the most expansive gun-rights laws in the country.

The gun lobby fought hard to pass the bill. The group some lawmakers credited with providing crucial momentum was not so much the National Rifle Association, the powerful national lobbying organization, but rather the Missouri Firearms Coalition, an aggressive grassroots operation founded in 2015.

With major gun-rights legislation stalled in Washington, much of the action has shifted to the states, where self-described “no compromise” groups such as the Missouri Firearms Coalition have mobilized activists in favor of pro-gun laws, according to Reuters interviews with gun-rights groups in more than a dozen states, lawmakers and NRA supporters.

These groups have become increasingly active in promoting a pro-gun agenda in many states, unafraid of alienating lawmakers who waver on gun rights. In many cases, they say they would rather lose a legislative fight on principle than compromise and support a watered-down bill.

At times, this can put local groups at odds with the NRA, which some see as too willing to give ground on the most aggressive pro-gun laws in state legislatures, said Greg Pruett, president of the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance, which formed in 2012.

“It’s always kind of interesting when you see a lot of people in the gun control community talk about how radical the NRA is,” said Pruett, whose group organized an email and telephone campaign to pass a 2016 Idaho law allowing people to carry concealed handguns without a permit, also known as “constitutional carry.”

“There’s an entire movement on the other side of the NRA … We’re done compromising,” he said.

Missouri Firearms Coalition political advisor Aaron Dorr says the NRA fought against constitutional carry for years, considering it too much of a longshot, and only came on board once passage was certain. The Missouri law not only authorized constitutional carry, it made Missouri a “stand your ground” state, extending the right to lethal self-defense outside the home, even when retreating is an option.

“It was the Missouri Firearms Coalition that was on the ground first with this,” said Jered Taylor, a Missouri state representative. “Eventually the NRA came on board, but the Missouri Firearms Coalition was the one that pushed it.”The NRA contended that it supported Senate Bill 656 from start to finish. The NRA assesses legislation across the states and sometimes opts for incremental victories, spokesman Lars Dalseide said.

“While the all or nothing approach may sound noble, the fact is you usually end up with nothing,” Dalseide said. “The other groups may have called for the passage of these bills in the past but they are largely fundraising organizations … None of these legislative initiatives moved an inch until the NRA got involved.”

[ … ]

The most uncompromising among them say the NRA has become too timid and too willing to back measures such as removing firearms from people deemed dangerous.

“I call it pre-emptive concession,” said Paul Valone, president of Grass Roots North Carolina, which has helped expand concealed carry rights and a “stand your ground” law.

That the NRA would trot out a spokesman who would say something like that, making them sound like crying little girls, says more than anything the spokesman could ever do or say to harm the NRA.

The NRA has harmed not only gun rights in America (with its support for the GCA, the NFA, the connection of mental health to crime, and the bump stock ban), but they have marginalized themselves in the process, becoming nothing more than a money grabbing organization.  It’s a shame, really, as it could have been different.

But it’s nice to see people waking to this reality and working at the state and local level.  As they do that, it can always be expected that the NRA will claim the credit for it.  As I’ve said before, I consider the NRA to be the largest, most well funded and well connected gun control organization on earth.

ZeroHedge:

Through landmark Supreme Court decisions, gun controllers could have anti-gun judges re-interpret the Constitution in a way that disregards the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court has a long history of re-interpreting the Constitution as a way of justifying government overreach in matters traditionally belonging to the states. This has been the case with the Supreme Court’s acceptance of New Deal legislation and its creation of a federal “right” to abortion.

It also does not help that the Second Amendment’s original decentralized militia model has been gutted, thus exposing several chinks in the Second Amendment’s armor. The militia’s original concept—locally-controlled military units designed to keep federal standing armies in check—has been effectively neutered.

Okay, this is a pregnant bit of prose and needs a little unpacking.  First of all, rights come from the Almighty and are always safe.  As we’ve discussed many times before, the second amendment is a covenant between men and before God, for blessings upon obedience and curses upon breakage.  Reinterpretation of the second amendment only means that men are preparing for war.  It has nothing to do with our rights.

Second, as we’ve also discussed many times before, the notion of the militia must be soft in the interpretation of the covenant of the second amendment.  The founders didn’t write the second amendment because of the militia, as if the sole reason for the second amendment was that a militia must function.

The proper function of the unorganized militia is only one of many reasons, and the founders only needed one.  That the many others aren’t specifically called out in the Bill of Rights doesn’t mean they weren’t taken as axiomatic during the time of confirmation of those rights.  As we’ve observed before:

… all the founders needed in order to object to federal control over such God-given rights is to find a single example of such an infringement that would be found unacceptable.  The militia served as this example.  That doesn’t mean that it is, would have been, or must have been, the only example or reason for the amendment.  The amendment clearly states what the FedGov shall not do, not what it can or may do or the sole reasons for its existence.

So a man has a right to the ownership of weapons if he is a paraplegic and unable to serve in the militia.  A people have the right to overthrow their government whether there is such a thing as a militia or not.  I can tell the militia (whatever that is in this context or any future context) to go pound sand and that I refuse to join, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with either [a] my God-given rights to keep and bear arms for self defense or the amelioration of tyranny, or [b] the fact that that right is recognized in the constitution, which is a covenant under which we have agreed to live.

My rights (and duties) flow from the Almighty, the very fountain of liberty.  The constitution is a mere covenant.  The Bolsheviks should tread carefully.  Breakage of that covenant means more than they think it means.

Finally, anyone who thinks that a civil war in America will go down with great armies lining up in fields of battle with tanks, aircraft and artillery, is foolish beyond belief.  4GW will be the order of the day, and few people in America are prepared for such a thing.  Neither is the FedGov.

Nothing and no one has been “neutered.”  Only the form has been changed.

Mises Institute has an analysis up on why we can’t ignore the militia clause of the second amendment.  It’s interesting reading, and I recommend you turn your attention to it for a few minutes.  But I want to issue some warnings nonetheless.

As I’ve pointed out many times before, the context and theoretical framework for understanding the American revolution was and always will be continental Calvinism and covenant theology.  God manages His created order in terms of covenant.

We are all in covenants in every aspect of our lives, all of the time, from marriage, to church, to state and then economics.  If you choose to be unfaithful to your wife and violate the marriage vows, there are consequences and curses for that.   These consequences happen in time and space and also in eternity.

In time and space, your wife will divorce you.  If she doesn’t, the consequences befall her, in time and space.  She has decided to live with an unfaithful man, refusing to avail herself of the remedy God has given her.  In eternity, the unfaithful man will answer for what he did, and so will the woman if she refuses to avail herself of the remedy.

In economics, if you steal you will go to prison.  If a country refuses to avail itself of the remedy for theft, believing that it can rehabilitate criminals to make them better when God has said that is His responsibility, not yours, the country will suffer, as there are consequences in time and space.  Ultimately, the men who made the decisions on national policy will answer to a sovereign God for their recalcitrance.

So too with tyranny.  Tyrants will answer to their people for their tyranny, and if they don’t, the people will suffer in time and space for their recalcitrance, and both will answer to God in eternity.  God will not be mocked.

Turning to the foundations for the revolution, recall that I explained the Christian roots of covenant and its role in the theoretical framework for the war.

In terms of population alone, a high percentage of the pre-revolutionary colonies were of Puritan-Calvinist background.  There were about three million persons in the thirteen original colonies in 1776, and perhaps as many as two-thirds of these came from some kind of Calvinist or Puritan connection.

[ … ]

… by 1776, nine of the thirteen original colonies had an “established church” (generally congregational in New England, Anglican in New York, Virginia and South Carolina, “Protestant” in North Carolina, with religious freedom in Rhode Island, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Georgia) … While this did not necessarily mean that a majority of the inhabitants of these colonies were necessarily committed Christian believers, it does indicate the lingering influence of the Calvinist concept of a Christian-based civil polity as an example to a world in need of reform.

[ … ]

Their experience in Presbyterian polity – with its doctrine of the headship of Christ over the church, the two-powers doctrine giving the church and state equal standing (so that the church’s power is not seen as flowing from the state), and the consequent right of the people to civil resistance in accordance with higher divine law – was a major ingredient in the development of the American approach to church-state relations and the underlying questions of law, authority, order and rights.

[ … ]

It was largely from the congregation polity of these New England puritans that there came the American concept and practice of government by covenant – that is to say: constitutional structure, limited by divine law and based on the consent of the people, with a lasting right in the people to resist tyranny.

I say all of this to set the stage for a reiteration of my observation on the second amendment and the militia.

… all the founders needed in order to object to federal control over such God-given rights is to find a single example of such an infringement that would be found unacceptable.  The militia served as this example.  That doesn’t mean that it is, would have been, or must have been, the only example or reason for the amendment.  The amendment clearly states what the FedGov shall not do, not what it can or may do or the sole reasons for its existence.

So a man has a right to the ownership of weapons if he is a paraplegic and unable to serve in the militia.  A people have the right to overthrow their government whether there is such a thing as a militia or not.  I can tell the militia (whatever that is in this context or any future context) to go pound sand and that I refuse to join, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with either [a] my God-given rights to keep and bear arms for self defense or the amelioration of tyranny, or [b] the fact that that right is recognized in the constitution, which is a covenant under which we have agreed to live.

My rights (and duties) flow from the Almighty, the very fountain of liberty.  The constitution is a mere covenant.

This understanding in the antecedent to the constitution and the second amendment, not vice versa.  Never forget that.  The militia doesn’t justify the second amendment – among other things, the second amendment justifies the militia, both organized and unorganized.

And neither has anything whatsoever to do with the justification of the right of resistance to tyranny.  That flows from the Almighty.

I don’t often cite, link or quote Charles C.W. Cooke because he’s an atheist and often at odds with my world and life view.  It isn’t so much that I won’t link to someone who doesn’t agree with me in every aspect of life, so much as it causes a fundamental difference in the framework in which we operate and I end up having to qualify, caveat, and explain the subtle or not-so-subtle differences.

This is an exception.

Given the way the Second Amendment is written, it is perhaps unsurprising that the confusion came to pass. Indeed, in 1880, the great scholar Thomas Cooley all but anticipated it in what was likely the most widely read legal textbook of the era. “It may be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia,” Cooley noted in his General Principles of Constitutional Law. “But this,” he explained, “would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent.”

The militia, as has been elsewhere explained, consists of those persons who, under the law, are liable to the performance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon. But the law may make provision for the enrolment of all who are fit to perform military duty, or of a small number only, or it may wholly omit to make any provision at all; and if the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the action or neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms, and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose.

[ … ]

Indeed, to be cognizant of the history is to arrive at one clear and unmistakable conclusion: that the “collective right” theory is just nuts. As a 1982 Senate report on the meaning of the Second Amendment concluded bluntly, it is “inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.”

That word, “inescapable,” is a good one, for it is simply impossible to review the post-Revolution era and come away with the impression that the Second Amendment protects some convoluted state-led right. Even if we ignore that the word “people” is used in the self-evidently individual protections that surround the Second Amendment — and even if we ignore that James Madison proposed to insert the “right to bear arms” next to the other individual rights listed in Article I, Section 9, and not next to the militia clause in Article I, Section 8, clause 16 — a brief audit of contemporary interpretations tells us all we need to know.

It may seem remarkable to modern sensibilities, but it was not at all unusual in the 19th century to read politicians and scholars openly worrying that the people might be left unable to remove their government should the course of human events run sour. In Letters from the Federal Farmer 53, Richard Henry Lee proposes that “to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.” You will notice, I assume, that Lee’s purpose in hoping that “the whole body of people always possess arms” is “to preserve liberty” rather than, say, to “defend the country” or to “prevent domestic insurrection.” That matters a great deal, demonstrating as it does that we are talking here about something other than a proto–National Guard.

Lee’s view was neither outré nor limited to his particular anti-Federalist worldview. On the contrary: His assumptions were echoed across the political spectrum and throughout the century that followed. Explaining the unamended Constitution in the Pennsylvania Gazette in February 1788, the Federalist Tench Coxe celebrated that “the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.” A year later, in the course of endorsing the proposed Bill of Rights, Coxe confirmed that the Second Amendment was designed not to protect the nation, the states, or the federal government, but to protect the people: “Whereas civil-rulers,” he wrote, “not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.” It would, of course, be preposterous to suggest that such a rebellion would be carried out under the auspices of a federal government that enjoyed plenary power over the militias

He begins with the usual focus on militia (usual for most commentators on the second amendment) and the utility and uses of peaceful carry.  But eventually he reaches the apex of his argument, and I am in total agreement with it.

We need to see the use of the term militia in the context of the time in which this was written.  The notions that a man had a right to weapons, or that he also had the right to overthrow his government if it was guilty of tyranny, were so widely accepted as to be pre-theoretical.  Thus, the notion that the right had to be codified in order for it to be understood or accepted is preposterous.

On the other hand, all the founders needed in order to object to federal control over such God-given rights is to find a single example of such an infringement that would be found unacceptable.  The militia served as this example.  That doesn’t mean that it is, would have been, or must have been, the only example or reason for the amendment.  The amendment clearly states what the FedGov shall not do, not what it can or may do or the sole reasons for its existence.

So a man has a right to the ownership of weapons if he is a paraplegic and unable to serve in the militia.  A people have the right to overthrow their government whether there is such a thing as a militia or not.  I can tell the militia (whatever that is in this context or any future context) to go pound sand and that I refuse to join, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with either [a] my God-given rights to keep and bear arms for self defense or the amelioration of tyranny, or [b] the fact that that right is recognized in the constitution, which is a covenant under which we have agreed to live.

My rights (and duties) flow from the Almighty, the very fountain of liberty.  The constitution is a mere covenant.  The Bolsheviks should tread carefully.  Breakage of that covenant means more than they think it means.  To them I say, be careful what you ask for.