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It’s Open Season on The Second Amendment: Part I

constitution in the croiss hairs

In 2010, after 234 years, the United States Supreme Court finally recognized the Constitution’s Second Amendment as the law intended for citizens to protect themselves.  Despite the high court ruling, if the Left gets it’s way, and Progressives are determined, not only will Americans lose their rights to keep and bear arms, left-wing leaders and anti-gun lobbyist will have the Second Amendment shot to death.

Americans fought for decades in order to get the high court to concede to the Second Amendment and allow states to exercise individual rights to bear arms. Second Amendment proponents met with opposition and enacted bills making firearms purchases difficult, enforcing strict waiting periods and background checks.

Opponents asserted such regulations must be enforced because:

…handguns are the principal instrumentality responsible for the increase in homicides in the country.

Second Amendment supporters disagree, affirming the rights of all citizens to keep and bear arms is, and always has been, constitutionally intended as a clearly written fundamental right: The right of the people to keep and bear arms to protect themselves from a tyrannical government, as well as violent criminals.

After decades fighting and challenging progressive legislation, the United States Supreme Court faced two infringement rights cases: one in particular– McDONALD ET AL, v. CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, ET AL –was the kicker. McDonald forced the court to translate Second Amendment specifics.  In doing so, the court deemed the Second Amendment lawful unto citizens, providing individual rights for owning and carrying concealed firearms.

What is The Second Amendment?

The Second Amendment does not in any way specify withholding firearm rights from the people, nor is the Amendment vague and difficult to understand. It’s specific in its wording: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to secure a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Furthermore, look at Jefferson’s original Virginia draft: “No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.”

Jefferson intended that all Americans have rights to protect themselves with firearms.

The final framed and signed Constitution has the double clause: 1) “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,”  2) “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

In other words, the Second Amendment is not written for hunters and target shooting, nor is it solely for law enforcement and the National Guard, or Diane Feinstein’s right to carry a sidearm while demanding everyone else use pepper spray and rape whistles.

Certainly states must never leave citizens unprotected, but all too often citizens are unable to wait for law enforcement to save them from rapists and murderers. Citizens must be able to defend themselves in such cases. The Second Amendment provides such protection.

Furthermore, the right to own firearms should never be violated or contravened by state or federal government.

British legal scholar St. George Tucker backed up Madison’s words in Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1803):

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty… The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible.  Whenever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.  In England, the people have been disarmed… under the specious pretext of preserving…the landed aristocracy…their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants…interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun…for the destruction of game…

 

Founder William Rawle also backed up Madison and Tucker, stating:

The prohibition is general. No clause in the constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give congress a power to disarm the people.  Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.

 

Justice Story, a Madison appointee noted:

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.

The Founders were unambiguous.  They knew what they enacted into law.  They purposely granted privileges and rights protecting individual persons.  “Well regulated” is specific for legal-bound lawmen, but the amendment does not take the right to bear arms out of the citizens hands and dispense that birthright-by-Constitution over to law enforcement. Yet, despite a very well thought-out, framed and signed law, anti-gun lobbyists are seeking every avenue to ban guns completely—except to violent criminals whose rights must never be infringed.

Guilt By Criminal Abuse

The double clause has been at the gun debate forefront for decades with legislators, activists, and justices’ arguing the Second Amendment does not hold for civilians, claiming guns kill more people, and if guns are banned there will be less violent gun crimes.

gun arrested

The Second Amendment does not sit well with opponents.  Challengers insist the Amendment does not apply to citizens, only military and police. And Brady Bill supporters proclaim America the most violent country on earth because of the Second Amendment:

…the United  States citizens kill each other with firearms at a rate of 14.8 per hundred thousand.

This statement speaks of criminals who bypass laws, purchasing weapons illegally no matter what bills the U.S. has in place.

Research proves gun deaths occur mainly due to criminal activity via illegal guns sales, not abiding by the Second Amendment.

False data and the Brady Bill have made it difficult for obedient citizens to purchase firearms.

Don’t Count You Bullets Before They’re Allowed to be Loaded

It took 234 years and the entire twentieth century fighting anti-gun bills for the United States Supreme Court to finally accept and established the Second Amendment as the right of all United States citizens.  Still, the 2010 ruling does not mean individual states, legislators, activists, and governors fighting against firearm ownership will not enforce tougher restrictions on gun purchasing.

Progressives do not concur with the 2010 high court ruling, preferring the Second Amendment be placed before a firing squad.

Anti-gun activists will continue pushing for a nationwide federal ban on all guns, because many legislators, citizens, and President Obama and his anti-gun pushers want United States citizens disarmed.

 

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Lisa Richards

Lisa Richards is a life-long Conservative Republican with a capital "C," fighting leftist progressivism like a hyped-up hormonal verbal paper-shredder on over-drive. A writer of politics and history, Richards believes in upholding an defending the Constitution and American Exceptionalism without apologies. Lisa Richards Holds a Bachelors of Science in Political Science from Sacred Heart University. She resides in her native state of Connecticut with her family and an assortment of rescued animals

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