Tag Archives: freedom

A Thought on Gun Control

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Recall that last November the 2nd Circuit upheld a New York law requiring those who want to carry handguns to show “a special need for self-protection.”

There is an underlying problem with this.  The Federal Constitution does not allow the Federal government to decide the purposes for which it will permit citizens to “keep and bear arms.”  The Constitution requires the Federal government not to infringe citizens’ right to keep and to bear, period.  There is no “except for when the government deems otherwise” caveat; the clause reads the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

This also is clear from the authors’ understanding of the terms of relevance here: from the 10th edition of Johnson’s Dictionary we have: Infringe: 1. To violate; to break laws or contracts.  2. To destroy; to hinder.  That definition has not changed much, if at all, in the intervening more than one hundred years since the Constitution was written.

Additionally, the right to keep must mean the right to bear anywhere, else the keeping has no import.  Moreover, the right to bear is as explicitly stated in the Clause as is the right to keep, and that right has no limit on where stated, and so there is no limit.

On top of that, in A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, “State” refers to the constituent States of the United States, not to the United States itself.  Again, the Federal government has no say.

Finally, Heller and McDonald made explicit the extension of these 2nd Amendment clauses to the inside of the individual States—all of them.

It should be clear, then, even to a New York-based 2nd Circuit, that the government has nothing to say on the purpose a private citizen, of any State or of the United States, might have for possessing or carrying about his privately owned weapon.  Indeed, as Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit notes, a citizen’s need can be acute everywhere, and with particular reference to “a special need for self-protection,” Posner had this in his opinion in Moore v. Madigan:

Twenty-first century Illinois has no hostile Indians.  But a Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower.  A woman who is being stalked or has obtained a protective order against a violent ex-husband is more vulnerable to being attacked while walking to or from her home than when inside.  She has a stronger self-defense claim to be allowed to carry a gun in public than the resident of a fancy apartment building (complete with doorman) has a claim to sleep with a loaded gun under her mattress.

It’s certainly true that some reasonable State-level (but not Federal) limits on the where might be applied.  It’s reasonable, for instance, to uphold the right of a private business owner to bar weapons from his establishment.  It’s reasonable for a State to bar private citizens’ weapons from a courtroom.  It’s reasonable for a State to bar the bearing anywhere (and so to bar the keeping) by those convicted of violent crimes.  It’s reasonable for a State to bar the bearing in public by any other citizen absent that citizen’s possession of a license demonstrating his understanding of the handling and maintenance of his weapon.

But there’s very little else that a government might do to inhibit those 2nd Amendment rights.

Gun Control…Ignorance

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…or outright dishonesty.  As one demonstration, we have a breathtakingly ignorant claim from the Congresswoman who’s pushing a gun control bill in the House of Representatives.  Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D, CO) actually said this, out loud and in public, about firearm magazines and the usefulness of banning them:

These are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available[.]

For another demonstration, we have Barack Obama’s similarly ignorant (or, in his case, deliberately distorting) claim about the weapons used in the Sandy Hook massacre—the latest crisis this Progressive is trying not to let go to waste.  It’s interesting to note, also, that he made this remark at one of his campaign stops in in San Francisco [emphasis in the original].

…it is possible for us to create common-sense gun safety measures that respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country and hunters and sportsmen, but also make sure that we don’t have another 20 children in a classroom gunned down by a semiautomatic weapon—by a fully automatic weapon in that case, sadly.

Leaving aside his arrogance in presuming—contra the 2nd Amendment—that the Federal government has authority to determine the permissible purposes for owning weapons, Obama knows two things about this: he knows that that Lanza killed his victims with a semi-automatic rifle, not a fully automatic one, and he knows the difference between a semi-automatic rifle and a fully automatic one.

More Government Arrogance

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This time on the immigration front, and it brings to mind the dark-of-night ram-through of Obamacare.  And that’s working out well, isn’t it?

Recall that Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) wrote to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D, VT) about upcoming immigration reform legislation and urging a “make haste slowly” process with open hearings and an opportunity for all Senators, and through them all Americans, to see and debate the matter.

Leahy wrote back saying he’d give hearings some thought, and maybe hold one.  After all,

The Judiciary Committee is capable of swift and thorough action.

And

I…remain mindful of the urgent need for us to actually get to the work of debating and considering amendments without unnecessary delay….

Yeah.  Just like Obamacare.  No need for petty Republican argument.  We already know the answer.

A copy of Leahy’s letter to Rubio can be seen here.

Why are Progressives always so afraid of open debate?

The Arrogance of Government

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Here is an example of why we have a Constitution that explicitly limits the power of the Federal government and within that Constitution a Bill of Rights that both explains those limits and explicitly reserves the infinity of remaining rights and powers to the people and to the states.

This example, though, is by one of those state governments, the government of Maryland which also says it’s legal for approved gangs to commit trespass and terrorize children inside their own homes.  State Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D, Dist 27) said this in all seriousness:

We’ve allowed them to manufacture.  We’ve allowed them to sell, and we’ve cut back on their paperwork.

Notice that: government has allowed.  Because government will make these decisions, because what a manufacturer—or anyone—can do is only what a government will permit.

Never mind that the Maryland Constitution says this in Article I of its Declaration of Rights:

That all Government of right originates from the People, is founded in compact only, and instituted solely for the good of the whole….

In other words, government works for the people, and what government can do is what the people will permit, not the other way around.

Oh, wait, this is just Progressives disregarding yet another Constitution that’s more than 100 years old, confusing, and not binding on anything.

The Supreme Court and Prop 8

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In California, the people—right, wrong, or indifferent—have spoken.  What the Supreme Court needs to think about as it considers California’s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage in that state, is whether the people are sovereign or the Court presumes to be.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, in questioning lawyers defending the Proposition, pointed out that the children of gay parents have voices that ought to be heard.  And so they should.  When they’re adults, those 40,000 children (compared with the 10 million, or so, adult Californians who already have spoken in that referendum) can spearhead a new Proposition that would reverse Prop 8.  The people, after all, can change their minds.  That’s also easier to accomplish than getting the Supreme Court to reverse itself, even on an opinion with which they’ve interfered with the 10th Amendment.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, also questioning lawyers defending Prop 8, asked why California had an interest in denying gay couples the right to marry.   But this is to misunderstand the role of the Federal government in a Republic whose social compact has a 10th Amendment.  The Federal government—and so the Supreme Court as the pinnacle of a branch of that government—has no interest in why a state wants to do a thing, a thing that does no harm to its neighboring states or to the United States, within its own borders.

The only legitimate ruling for the Court is to let the people’s decision stand.  And leave California, in competition with those other states whose citizens have determined otherwise, to live with the consequences of its choice.  That’s simply an application of Saul Alinsky’s Rule 4.