Saturday, April 28, 2018

Florida to espouse States Rights v The Constitution?

In an Opinion Article published in the Miami Herald, the author suggests that:
The NRA suing the Florida Legislature is like a parent suing the children. That’s Mom and Dad taking Johnny to court because he won’t eat his broccoli.
(Link and full quote below the fold)

(The reference is to Florida's attempt to limit the rights of its citizens to own firearms; the state has more "rigorous" restrictions on just who, when and why its citizens may possess guns.)

I have no idea what point the author was trying to make in the above quote; but I quite comprehend the rancor which is illustrated in the following quote:
Of course, the NRA picked as its target a patsy who probably won’t fight back too hard. It doesn’t have the guts to go after its real enemy, the courageous children of Parkland.
The NRA, as a representative organization of sportsmen and other legal firearms owners, is unlikely to "go after its real enemy" identified by the Author as "courageous children".   The NRA is all about civil and constitutional rights, and its members demand that it protect the First Amendment as assiduously as the Second Amendment.

The very idea that this membership would continence an attack on patriotic teenagers ... even those who (wrongly) accuse the NRA of fomenting firearms violence ... is anathema.    The author of this article has a private agenda, and has resorted to distortion of the truth and condemnation of strangers in an attempt to paint them with a bloody brush.

In point of fact, the Federal Government does have the power to impose Constitutional Rights on states which have historically denied them.  Witness SELMA ( do your  homework), where President Dwight David Eisenhower sent troops into Alabama to protect the rights of African-American children to get the SAME educational opportunities as white children ... as opposed to the "Separate-but equal" sham (which was far from equal, but certainly separate) acts of southern states who tried to maintain their apartheid restrictions on many of their citizens.
(The ACLU is great on protecting the First Amendment, but few rights supporters stand up for the Second.   That's why Americans rely on the Constitution, instead of the sometimes-misguided efforts of states.)
It's not about "GUTS", and the author is wrong (and knows he's wrong) to suggest it.
The NRA's only enemies are those who would undermine or deny Constitutional Rights to its citizens.   That's the reason for its existence, and the reason why over five million (that's 5,000,000 to those who are unfamiliar with, or don't understand the Bill of Rights) law-abiding American Citizens accept the National Rifle Association as their representatives in combating anti-constitutional laws at the local, state and national level.  

 April 26, 2018 10:06 PM The NRA suing the Florida Legislature is like a parent suing the children. That’s Mom and Dad taking Johnny to court because he won’t eat his broccoli.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott has never been shy about advocating for “state’s rights.” He refused to comply with Obamacare even after the Supreme Court upheld it; and he blocked federal stimulus funds for a high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando. Now we’ll see how hard he resists the NRA’s challenge to Florida’s right to regulate handguns.
 If the Second Amendment were to be read literally, that would be pretty easy. The language clearly provides that states have the right to regulate the arming of its own citizens: “a well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The most natural reading of those words would seem to imply that the several states have the right to maintain their own militias, and therefore the federal government cannot interfere with the state function of arming (or disarming) its citizens..
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1 comment:

Mark said...

It was Little Rock Arkansas that DDE send the troops to.