Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Nice Try: No Cigar!

John McClaughry (Ethan Allen Institute) offers some thoughts about ...
McClaughry: Gun Control Ideas that Won’t Work :Times Argus Online:
" The difficulty the Democrats face is that, stripped of the emotion and politically driven posturing, their legislative demands either flagrantly violate the Constitutional rights of law abiding citizens, or are hopelessly ineffective and unenforceable against would-be terrorists and mass murderers."
There's nothing really 'new' about this: you've read it a hundred times and, if you're a legitimate firearms owner, you've thought it a thousand times.

 J.D. Tuccille, writing at Reason.com, points out that a California law to register “assault rifles” (sic) in 1990 resulted in 7,000 registrations, out of an estimated 300,000 semiautomatic rifles in private hands. In New Jersey, out of more than 100,000 firearms affected, a similar law brought in 947 people who were target shooters, 888 who rendered their guns inoperable, and four who surrendered them to the police.

Simply stated, people who own guns Will Not Comply with unconstitutional 'firearms control laws'.   More: historically, they "have not complied" with such laws.

Liberals and other "Gun Control Advocates" (eg: "Gun Grabbers") are grabbing at straws when they think to undermine the Second Amendment rights of Americans.
It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. Barack Obama
These people simply do not understand the determination of Americans to demand the that their constitional rights be not only accepted, but revered!  

The Constitutional Amendments were reluctantaly accepted by The Founding Fathers; at the time, they thought that the Declaration of Independence and the Constition were suffecient: they did not think that the Individual Rights needed to be enumerated, but they were outvoted by those who thought that there needed to be some commentary to specifically point out the 'minutia' which exemplified the constitution.

Thus, the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the constitution), which at the time were thought to be almost parenthetical.

After all, they had already made the point of "Don't Tread On Me".  What else needed to be said .. it was obvious!

Thankfully, they took the time to enumerate the issues which were protected for the people 
(EVERYTHING was denied to The State, except for specific duties and powers .. just in case).

And so, we find ourselves engaged in a debate about what each amendment means.

It was not meant to be so complicated;  what's so hard to understand about "SHALL NOT BE ABRIDGED"?

It's so much simpler to say "NO!  UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!" than it is to say "Well, sometimes ... " and go into great detail about exceptions.

There are no exceptions to the Second Amendment.  Even the NSA exceptions are unconstitional, even though nobody cares/dares to argue against it. 

Americans gave up the right to own full-automatic guns.

Then they gave up the right to own .... well, it's a long litany of rights which firearms owners have allowed to be restricted, and what have we received in return?

Nothing.  Someday, it would be nice if the Gun Grabbers among us would seem to be willing to concede that the Second Amendment had some justification, some meaning.  

But unless we fight for it, that will never happen.   Unless we just fall back on the "Will Not Comply" thingie.  And then what well 'they' do about it?  Raid our homes and confiscate our legally owned firearms?

We might as well have Full Automatic guns;  eventually, everything we own will be conflated as 'as dangerous'.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Constitution and Bill of Rights means exactly, and only, what the Supreme Court tells us it means. If one or two progressive justices are appointed, we can expect great changes.