But if you want Congress to impose gun restrictions, the only truly constitutional way of doing so is by repealing or altering the Second Amendment, not reinterpreting its meaning to contradict everything the people who passed it into law believed. [More]
He had me going "Right on!" up until the last line. That would still not end the right, just its recognition, and it would be up to each of us to accept that or reject it.
[Via DDS]
I'm again, or should I say repeatedly, shocked by the number of people, on both sides of the debate on gun rights vs gun "safety", who are not familiar with US v Cruikshank. Its as if you came up on an abortion rights advocate who had never heard of Roe v Wade. As "The Sicilian" in one of my favorite movies might say "It's inconceivable." (No pun intended.)
ReplyDeleteIn essence, what SCOTUS said in Cruikshank was that 2A didn't grant anyone anything. It merely recognized that RKBA was one of those rights that Jefferson mentioned in The Declaration of Independence, and 2A merely forbid Congress from messing with it. Jefferson further said that just governments were instituted to preserve the rights of the governed, not to take them away. I'll leave it up to the reader to research what Jefferson said the governed should do if their government slid into the "unjust" category, and further decide, post 1934 NFA, post 1968 CGA, post Lauternberg, and post Hughes, in which category FedGov has placed itself.