Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

Concord Monitor:

… an individual’s right to bear arms was not clearly stated in the Constitution. It was the Supreme Court in a 2008 decision that decided that the right goes beyond “a well regulated militia” and that it also belongs to an individual (District of Columbia v. Heller). But the Supreme Court also made it very clear in that same decision that this right was not so “absolute” that the federal, state or local government could not make and enforce restrictions. Those like Baldasaro who say their right cannot be “infringed” need to read the Supreme Court’s decision.

The majority decision was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote: “Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on the longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions or qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms.”

The language is a little awkward for a non-lawyer like myself and Justice Scalia obviously cannot be asked for any clarification, but I believe Scalia is saying that a law to prevent firearms in schools is “constitutionally permitted.” In other words, there is no constitutional guarantee of your right to go into a school with a gun. You definitely could lose this “right” simply by walking into a school, if a restriction on this exists. And I would add, this would also apply to guns at polling places, which would be considered sensitive places in our communities.

One clever commenter cites John Cockrum v. State, but he has the quote slightly wrong and misses a few words, important words.

The right of a citizen to bear arms, in the lawful defence of himself or the state, is absolute.  He does not derive it from the state government, but directly from the sovereign convention of the people that framed the state government.  It is one of the “high powers” delegated directly to the citizen, and is “excepted out of the general powers of the government.”  A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the law-making power.

This is strong tea, but not strong enough for my tastes.  First of all, we do not derive our authority to bear arms from the sovereign convention of the people, but rather, from God Himself because man is made in God’s image and it is his duty to protect that image.

Moreover, while this statement does pertain to the state of Texas, it doesn’t go to the federal government because it got the very genesis of our rights and duties wrong.  Regular reader Frank Clarke does better when he turns the conversation to what the constitution does.  Our rights are not based in the constitution, but rather it enumerates them in order to prevent the federal government from trespassing those rights.  It delineates what the federal government cannot do, not what we can do.

Finally, I’m uncomfortable with the notion that the constitution or any judicial action or decision “secures” our rights.  It simply isn’t true.  Our rights are secured in heaven, and on earth two things obtain.  First of all, if the covenant(s) within which we live do not reflect God’s laws, they are an abomination and dishonor God.  They are null and void.  Second, to the extent that they do, when we fail to live within the framework of that covenant, man’s covenant itself broken and therefore null and void.

Our rights are secured by the fact that we are armed.  Only armed men can protect themselves from wicked governments intent on doing harm to those men by making them unable to defend themselves or their loved ones.  That’s why men can never wait on judicial action to arm themselves, and can never disarm.  Disarmament is wicked, whether personally or nationally.

David Codrea:

True gains will depend on the effectiveness of the caucus. Much of that depends on who its members are, and if gun owners make their continued expectations known. To that end, the following table lists each member along with two important grades they’ve earned: one for gun owner rights as assigned by Gun Owners of America, and the other for their immigration rating by Numbers USA.

David’s done a very good job of outlining their views on two issues that will most affect the work on the second amendment.  Go read his table for the context to the money quote.

Bottom line, it looks like a pretty good team (although team leader Massie could use some work on immigration). The task now is for them to actually do something so they continue earning those high marks. Let’s hope we don’t see preemptive true due-process surrenders on “mental health” and “no fly/no buy.” Let’s hope we see “Enforce existing gun laws” replaced with “Repeal existing gun laws.”

He took the words right out of my mouth.  We need not words, but action.  We’ve already outlined what it will take for starters: (1) national carry, (2) suppressors taken off of the NFA items list, (3) SBRs taken off of the NFA items list.  That’s just for starters.

As for grass roots advocacy, I’ll leave that to you.  While it may not seem like it, blogging like this – finding the interesting issue that doesn’t overlap with what everyone else is talking about, creating good analysis to assist the reader in understanding the context, advocating world view and framework of understanding, pushing the number of visits by pimping your articles to contacts – is all very exhausting and sometimes even embarrassing.  Not all of your contacts want to be bothered by the constant pimping of your content.

There are good men to work with.  I’ve known about Jeff Duncan and Dave Brat for a while now.  They will listen to you.  Get busy.  If you do nothing else, you can send the URL of this article to them and recommend that the read and implement the ideas.

Nelson Lund has a very interesting article at Heritage concerning the second amendment.  It’s a very lengthy article, and here is one sample.

With respect to arms, however, there was a special problem. The federal government was given almost plenary authority to create a standing army (consisting of full-time paid troops) and to regulate and commandeer the state-based militias (which comprised most able-bodied men). Anti-Federalists strongly objected to this massive transfer of power from the state governments, which threatened to deprive the people of their principal defense against federal usurpation. Federalists responded that fears of federal oppression were overblown, in part because the American people were already armed and would be almost impossible to subdue through military force.

Implicit in the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists were two shared assumptions: All agreed that the proposed Constitution would give the new federal government almost total legal authority over the army and militia, and nobody argued that the federal government should have any authority to disarm the citizenry. Federalists and Anti-Federalists disagreed only about whether the existing armed populace could adequately deter federal oppression.

The Second Amendment conceded nothing to the Anti-Federalist desire to sharply curtail the military power of the federal government, which would have required substantial changes in the original Constitution. Instead, it merely aimed to prevent the new government from disarming American citizens through its power to regulate the militia. Congress might have done so, for example, by ordering that all weapons be stored in federal armories until they were issued for use in performing military or militia duties.

Unlike many people in our time, the Founding generation would not have been puzzled by the text of the Second Amendment. It protects a “right of the people”: i.e., a right of the individuals who are the people. It was not meant to protect a right of state governments to control their militias; that right had already been relinquished to the federal government. A “well regulated Militia” is, among other things, one that is not inappropriately regulated. A federal regulation disarming American citizens would have been considered every bit as inappropriate as one abridging the freedom of speech or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The Second Amendment forbids the inappropriate regulation of weapons, just as the First Amendment forbids inappropriate restrictions on speech and religion.

The only place where I have real disagreement with Lund is his ensconcing the ideological basis for the American war of independence in John Locke.  I’ve made my position clear on that, i.e., it has more basis in the continental Calvinist view of covenant than it does John Locke.  This is especially true of the constitution, and more true of the constitution than it is of the Declaration of Independence.

I’ve also discussed some of these things in Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense, where I rehearsed the historical and cultural context of firearms in colonial America at the time of the war of independence.

That having been said, I commend this paper to you.  Lund has done some meaningful research that will be helpful in how you think about these issues.

NRA Blog:

• Circa 1650 – The Kalthoff Repeating Flintlock: As Mike Blessing explains, the Kalthoff Repeating Flintlock came into production in the 1650s, seeing combat in the Siege of Copenhagen in 1659 and later during the Scanian War of 1675 to 1679 — 132 and 116 years, respectively, before the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. While manufacturing and repair costs kept the Kalthoff out of mass production, it represents the reality that “high capacity” firearms are not a contemporary concept, as some models of the Kalthoff boasted magazines of up to 30 rounds – the same number of rounds in a true standard-capacity AR-15 magazine of today.

• Circa 1750 – The Cookson Volitional Repeating Flintlock: A lever-action breech-loading repeater, is one of many similar designs to make an appearance on the world stage beginning in the 17th century. The revolutionary mechanism at the heart of the Cookson repeater dates from 1680 and was originally known in Europe as the Lorenzoni System, named for Italian gunsmith Michele Lorenzoni of Florence. Long arms utilizing this system were produced in other European nations and in the United States until about 1849. The Cookson rifle dates from 1750 and features a two-chamber horizontally mounted rotating drum. After firing the rifle, the cycling process could be repeated until the two magazines, with their seven-shot capacities, were empty. Although other breech loading rifles were introduced in later years, the Cookson-type long arms were unique in their ability to fire multiple shots without reloading.

• 1777 – The Belton Repeating Flintlock: Philadelphian Joseph Belton’s repeating flintlock design reportedly boasted a 16-to-20 shot capacity, using the superposed load mechanism. Sources indicate there was correspondence between the inventor and the Continental Congress in 1777, as the he had reportedly been commissioned by the Congress to build 100 of his repeaters for the U.S. military, with the order being dismissed solely for cost purposes. This discussion presents strong evidence that the founding fathers were perfectly able to conceive of “high capacity” repeating firearms.

• 1782-1804 – The Nock Volley Gun: The close quarters of Naval warfare demanded a powerful, yet compact firearm that could provide abundant firepower. The Nock Volley gun fired seven shots all at once from seven clustered bores. This powerful rifle was issued nine years before the dawn on the Second Amendment.

They left out the wonderful Girandoni air rifle.

This is a wonderful and interesting rundown of the semi-automatic firearms available prior to and immediately after the war of independence.  Go read the NRA Blog article for more detail, as well as the context.  But I’ve explained the second amendment properly interpreted before (at least in my own view).

The second amendment discusses the right to bear arms and be free of federal interference in the context of the states’ desire to keep that interference from happening.  That is the historical milieu in which it was written.  The founders only needed one excuse to prevent federal government interference with the states on firearms, and they chose the most likely and obvious choice, i.e., the militia.  The second amendment is not a treatise on the foundation of liberty.

It’s an illogical jump to cast that as the only reason for the right to own and bear arms.  If you had discussed regulation on the right to own and use a tool of their trade to protect their families, hunt, and ameliorate tyranny with a colonial man, he would have buried you under the remotest prison.  God gave us our rights based on man being created in His image and the expected duty to work and subdue the earth to His glory.  The militia was a convenient excuse for a certain clause in one part of the constitution.  Limiting our rights to our understanding of that clause is a mistake.

And there’s more.

We don’t “hide behind” the second amendment.  It doesn’t grant us the right to own weapons.  God does that Himself.  The constitution is a covenant between men for how they will live together.  Like all covenants, there are promises and curses.

Look folks, if our wise founders had wanted the citizenry armed with inferior weapons to the king, they would never have said the things they did, fomented a revolution, or hid behind trees and killed, only to melt into the woods and mountains to kill another day, fighting a war of insurgency like none which had gone before it.

The founders ensured a covenant that codified man’s rights to firearms for the purpose not only self defense (which is assumed but left unaddressed by the second amendment), but for the second amendment remedy against tyranny.  There is no other sensible way to see it.

From Matt Bracken.

According to Todd Hubbard:

GUNS are awesome machines.

Built with great precision, advanced over generations, they are powerful tools for their purpose. Practicing with them brings the pleasure and satisfaction that comes with honing difficult skills. The enforcers of our laws use them to stop the criminals who threaten our lives and property. Our military uses them to kill and contain the violent enemies of our nation. As with any fine machine, looking at a gun, possessing one or working with one is exciting and empowering.

This is what guns are not:

In the hands of civilians, they are not protection from crime. Unless you wear a uniform with a badge or a service patch on it, the gun you carry is more likely to kill you or someone you know or love than it is to kill anyone who threatens you or your loved ones. The “good guy with a gun” who will protect us, rather than threaten us, is the man or woman who has been screened, trained, authorized and empowered by us to do the job. Anyone else, no matter how well-intentioned, is an amateur at best and a hazard to the rest of us at worst. The past 40 years in the United States has been a massive experiment in the theory that a highly armed citizenry will make us safer, and the experiment has been an abysmal failure.

In the hands of civilians, guns are not a bulwark against tyranny. If you believe that guns are a remedy against an oppressive government, then you are on the side of the black man who perceived “his” people being abused by government agents and chose to strike back with a gun. You are on the side of the troubled white man who, 52 years earlier, wanted to bring down the elected government he viewed as corrupt. Dallas is what Second Amendment remedies look like in practice: dead police officers, a dead president.

Many of you, my friends and family, own firearms. I do not want you to surrender your guns. I do not want the government to confiscate them. But I do want you to help address the problem of so many deaths caused by these awesome machines. An informed, engaged electorate is what protects us from tyranny. Stop pretending this problem does not exist or that the only solution is more guns. Do not hide behind “originalist” arguments about the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

Oh good heavens.  So let’s cover this one more time for the dense or stolid listener.  Mr. Hubbard, who apparently is an attorney, is engaging in lying, and any considered assessment of his behavior would conclude that it approaches malfeasance because he knows better.

In the 1981 decision in Warren v. District of Columbia the D.C. Court of Appeals concluded that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.”  In Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005), the Supreme Court declined to expand any requirements for protection and ruled that the police cannot be sued for failure to protect individuals, even when restraining orders were in place.

Mr. Hubbard knows these decisions, and also knows that even if it was commonly accepted that the police were required to protect individuals, it would be impossible.  They cannot be there all of the time, and they cannot even promise any particular timely response to your calls.  The police can literally eat popcorn and watch while a woman is raped, as long as they effect an arrest after the fact.  They may be fired for failure to follow a department procedure, but they will not be charged with a crime.  “To protect and serve” is a sweet campaign slogan for Sheriffs who are running for office, but it’s a lie – it’s always a lie – and Mr. Hubbard knows it.  The police are there for stability operations and security of the government.  Understand that.

You must be your own protection, and if you are a morally righteous man who cares about his own life and the lives of his loved ones, you will have means of effecting that self defense.  If you don’t you are negligent in your God-given duties.  By negligent, I mean more than that you simply don’t know better.  I mean you know better and willingly choose to neglect your duties.

We know that it’s claptrap to say that it’s impossible to effect this self defense, just like we all know that the rate of crime hasn’t gone up as a result of guns.  But we also suspect that Mr. Hubbard knows about fourth generation warfare, and that guns are indeed means of amelioration of tyranny, and that genocide is always preceded by gun confiscations.

We don’t “hide behind” the second amendment.  It doesn’t grant us the right to own weapons.  God does that Himself.  The constitution is a covenant between men for how they will live together.  Like all covenants, there are promises and curses.  Mr. Hubbard doesn’t want to endure the curses of failure to live according to the covenant to which we are all bound, including the second amendment.  Mr. Hubbard would do well to ponder that fact.

WLFI.com:

WOODBURN, Ind. (WANE) — The chief of the Woodburn Police Department pledged to never take away city residents’ guns in the improbable event martial law would be declared.

In a Facebook post late Monday, Chief Randall Duhamell posted on the Woodburn Police Department’s Facebook page that his department has fielded requests for information about martial law.

“LET ME BE CLEAR….We Will NEVER take your weapons…no matter who tells us too!” Duhamell wrote in the post.

“All of our officers swore an oath to protect our community against all enemies. We may use those citizens that legally carry as helpers in times of emergency.”

As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, the post was shared more than 2,200 times.

[ … ]

“We will never come and take your guns from your house or your vehicles,” the chief told News 18’s sister station, WANE, in an interview. “That’s not what we’re about, and I just wanted to share that with the community and let them know that we support the Second Amendment.”

I want to state up front that I appreciate the sentiment, and I also appreciate Chief Duhamell’s stated commitment to the second amendment.  I also appreciate the fact that he came out and said something to the community when he knew it was a salient issue and needed to be addressed.  I don’t want to be a jerk in the things I’m about to say.

The second amendment doesn’t justify my right to own weapons.  It is a covenant by which men agree to live together under certain stipulations.  They presence or absence of bearing arms in that covenant doesn’t affect in its essence the real basis for my bearing of arms.

That comes from God alone.  Furthermore, the intended use of carriers for times of emergency by the Chief is affirming, but irrelevant.  If gun owners are never any use to anyone but themselves and their families, that doesn’t affect one iota the real justification for the bearing of arms.

Finally, while I note that the Chief was probably speaking about intent rather than action, I would rather he had said that he and his officers would never attempt to confiscate weapons because that would be immoral.  Or more to the point, no sir, you never will take my weapons, and you don’t get the last say-so in the matter.

I would have been more affirmed and much more approving if the Chief had said not only would his officers never attempt to confiscate weapons, he would expect justified resistance if his officers attempted to do so.

Boise Weekly:

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter signed SB 1389 into law in March, and on July 1, it officially became legal to carry concealed firearms without a permit in Idaho—but during at a July 1 rally on the Capitol Mall, Idaho Second Amendment Alliance President Greg Pruett said there’s more work to be done.

Pruett told the crowd of 75-100 people the next step is lobbying lawmakers to remove the residency requirement from the permitless—or constitutional—carry law and strengthen Idaho’s “castle doctrine,” the law which defines homicide as justifiable if it is, among other things, “committed in defense of habitation or property.”

“When someone breaks into your house, that should be the end of it for them,” Pruett said. He went on to express disappointment at the years of work it took to enact the law and at the lack of credit given to ISAA for the rise of strong Second Amendment advocate candidates in the Republican Primary.

In his remarks to the crowd, U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) praised the group for securing legislation in four years and suggested not to turn against lawmakers for a single vote.

“I don’t want you to leave disappointed because it took four years,” Labrador said. “You need to judge politicians based on their body of work.”

Pruett wasn’t having it.

“For us, you’re either all in or you’re not,” he said.

This is a strange article and I don’t understand it.  Perhaps an Idahoan can help interpret what we’re reading here.  First of all, it takes a very long time to work the collectivist system down to something more tolerable.  If the man named Labrador was saying that the entire system should be exonerated because they finally did something good, then I have to disagree.

But on the other hand, if Pruett is disparaging the very one who helped to secure that bit of legislation that makes the system more tolerable, then I have to wonder if the collectivists are our betters when it comes to strategy.  I’ve pointed out before that they are very good incrementalists and we’re not.  They will accept something that isn’t to their liking in order to work towards the end result that is to their liking.

Are we as strategically savvy as that?  I doubt it.

SSI posted a very interesting guest article from a former AFT agent on why the “Us versus them‘ mentality?  I have to confess that I’m in the camp that doesn’t see the constitutionality of federal gun laws or the ATF to begin with, but the former agent has an answer for that.  The comments are also very interesting.  I commend this article to your reading.

On a somewhat unrelated topic, SSI has a piece up remembering Mike Vanderboegh’s participation in a “we will not comply” rally.  It’s touching and also worth your time.

Remember when we said this:

They will go after you by the terrorist watch list, the no-fly list, and any other assortment of executive powers and decisions and regulations and rulings.  They will never confiscate your guns.  They will prevent you from renewing your driver’s license, your hunting license, your fishing license, your professional license, your bank cards, your concealed handgun permits, and in short, all the framework you have built your entire life as a law abiding, peaceable citizen.  Then they will go after your wife and children and their ability to enroll in education.  They will go after what matters most to you.

Scott Shackford and Jacob Sullum reporting at Reason do some very good investigative work on this very subject.

Under Feinstein’s 2015 bill, the attorney general can stop the transfer of a firearm if he “1) determines that the transferee is known (or appropriately suspected) to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, or providing material support or resources for terrorism” and “(2) has a reasonable belief that the prospective transferee may use a firearm in connection with terrorism.” The amendment Feinstein introduced last Wednesday, by contrast, lets the attorney general block a sale if he “determines, based on the totality of the circumstances, that the transferee represents a threat to public safety based on a reasonable suspicion that the transferee is engaged, or has been engaged, in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, or providing material support or resources thereof.”

In the revised version, there is no additional requirement that the attorney general have reason to believe the weapon the suspect is trying to buy will be used in a terrorist attack. Hence an old lady who cut a check to a Hamas-affiliated charity (thereby “providing material support” to terrorism and arguably threatening public safety) could be stopped from buying a handgun for self-defense even if there was no evidence that she planned any sort of attack with it. Feinstein’s amendment also expands the dragnet beyond the FBI’s so-called Terrorist Watchlist, which is believed to include more than 1 million people, to cover anyone who was under investigation for “conduct related to a federal crime of terrorism” during the previous five years. The Justice Department would be notified of attempted gun purchases by people who fit that description, giving it a chance to block the sales.

Frankly I’m not concerned about the little old lady who wrote a check to a Hamas-affiliated charity.  What concerns me much more is that there is no due process, no chance for trial by jury.  The federal executive is the only sovereign, the singular potentate behind these decisions.

That means that if you’re an NRA member, or a patriot, or you believe in the second amendment and your God-given rights to own firearms, or believe that gun ownership is the best surety against tyranny, the executive might just label you a terrorist or low-level extremist, and prevent gun purchases.  He might also garnish your wages, prevent driver’s license renewal, prevent renewal of your professional license, or remove your children from the home and place them in the custody of DSS.

Do you get the impression that someone wants you to be disarmed and controlled?