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Liberals Offended By Second Amendment

by Da King on June 27, 2008

in second amendment,Uncategorized

constitution

The conservative wing of the Supreme Court prevailed in the D.C. gun ban case. In yet another of those 5-4 rulings that prove swing voter Justice Anthony Kennedy is the most powerful man in the country, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment says what it says, that the people's right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Liberals were predictably outraged. In their view, when the Second Amendment says "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", it means that right SHOULD be infringed in any way liberals want. Hey, no worries, that's a mistake any blind ideologue could make. The reason liberals believe something so illogical is because they could care less about what the U.S. Constitution says. They just want what they want, and if the Constitution gets in the way, they will twist and/or discard it. How else can you explain liberals belief in a Constitutional right to, say, abortion, of which the Constitution speaks nary a word, and then their belief that there is no individual right to bear arms, which is explicitly stated in the Bill Of Rights ? Go figure.

The crowd who wishes to grab guns from law-abiding American citizens uses a selective reading of the Second Amendment in an attempt to usurp this basic civil right. The full amendment reads as follows:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed".

The gun grabbers focus on the "well regulated Militia" part, and try to ignore the "shall not be infringed" part. I have a question for the grabbers. If you take away the guns from We The People, how are we going to form that militia ? We can't. There would just be a bunch of guys standing around, maybe armed with broomsticks, shovels, and steak knives, virtually helpless against whatever enemy we needed to fight. Therefore, the "shall not be infringed" part is of utmost importance. Only a liberal could miss something so obvious.

"Wait just one minute !' shout the grabbers, "We have the government to do our fighting for us".

Yes, but what if it's the government we need to fight against ??? Surely liberals, who have been calling Bush a fascist criminal dictator for 7 1/2 years now, can see how our government might get out of control, no ?

Another grabber argument is that guns can't be used for self defense, only for use in that militia (even though the militia itself would be for SELF DEFENSE. I doubt we'd use the militia for bake sales). This is another bogus argument. The law recognizes self defense as valid, and the law recognizes the right to bear arms as valid. So, how can using arms in self defense NOT be valid ? It's nonsensical.

Liberals are making all kinds of wild predictions about blood running in the streets due to the D.C. gun ban ruling. They ignore the fact the violent crime in D.C. went UP after the gun ban, or that violent crime tends to decrease in places where gun laws are less restrictive. I heard one guy on MSNBC make the ridiculous claim that this ruling would bring about a return to the days of the Wild West. That was pretty nutty, but the guy did unwittingly prove that gun ownership is a traditional right in this country, because everybody had a gun back in the Wild West, and they weren't only used for militias either. Nevermind the fact that the Wild West was far LESS violent than D.C. under the gun ban today.

The liberal media is almost unanimously referring to the the D.C. gun ban decision as "the first time the Supreme Court has ever ruled in favor of an individual's right to bear arms". This is profoundly dishonest, since individuals have owned guns from the days of the Founders forward, for the entire history of the country. If you had tried to take away the guns of our Founding Fathers, you'd most likely have gotten yourself shot, no pun intended.

My advice to the gun grabbers is this – Stop trying to tell people the Second Amendment doesn't say what it says, and doesn't mean what it means. That's silly. If you really want to disarm the citizenry, you have to amend the Constitution to remove the right to bear arms. I think that would be a pretty bad idea, but that's what you should try to do. Or, you can stack the Supreme Court with more Justices like the four liberals in the D.C. gun ban case, who could care less what the Constitution says or what it's intent was.

P.S. – ALL the rights enumerated in the Bill Of Rights are INDIVIDUAL rights of the people. Don't let some gun grabbing liberal try to buffalo you into thinking the Second Amendment is somehow different.

P.P.S – I'm NOT a gun fan, a member of the NRA, or anything like that. It's just that the facts are the facts.

  • The Reverend

    Scalia's "historical narrative" is so lame, so ridiculous….this ruling shouldn't even be taken seriously.

    Democrats do not want to grab anyone's guns…..that's another ridiculous assertion by King without merit.

    The issue here is whether, face value, the 2nd Amendment grants immutable rights to all citizens to own handguns. Or whether violent crime-laden city's mayors or councils can limit handgun ownership.

    Scalia's unacceptable "historical narrative" excuse is not worth the paper it was written on.

  • frank

    Mr. King,
    The Second Amendment is probably the most difficult to interpret. The right to keep and bear arms has been infringed upon for a long time. Certain arms are unavailable to the public. Many of the Constitution's signers also wanted no standing army and preferred an armed citizenry to call upon at times of war. This hasn't turned out either.
    Were those "liberals" confiscating weapons in New Orleans after Katrina?

  • http://politics.ohio.com/ ben keeler

    Frank, I agree, the 2nd Amendment is probably the hardest to interpret today.

  • Tom

    Up until the Supreme Court was filled by the appointees of the installed Cheney/bush government, it was decided by the Supreme Court that the 2nd Amendment applied to militias.

    Organized militias.

    Rotund Tony Scalia and his coterie were "legislating from the bench". They were writing into the Constitution meanings that were there. They can hardly be called "strict constructionists"

  • Tom

    Tim Zaun interviews Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson

    Tim: In a city looking to promote itself in a positive light, via the Cleveland Plus Campaign, how can we rise above national notoriety for poverty and violence?

    Mayor Frank Jackson:

    Frist, you can't deny problems. If we have a problem, then we have a problem. Our problems mirror similar urban centers throughout the United States, particularly in the midwest, where there's an upsurge in firearms crimes. Cleveland trumps many other comparably- sized cities, regarding lower violence statistics.

    Violent, Par One crimes in Cleveland, are down by 13% to 15 %, but based on media reports, that's incredible. Homicides, however, have increased. That's directly attributable to several factors, including Organized crime, drugs, and easy availability of high powered guns in the hands of our youth. We continually challenge Ohio's Gun Laws.

    Organized crime is buying and selling drugs, guns and sex in certain city neighborhoods. Cleveland interlopers are patronizing these crimes. Organized crime, not unlike legitimate neighborhood businesses, employs neighborhood kids. We need to understand those dynamics.

    The City of Cleveland confronts Organized crime in collaboration with the US Attorney General's office, the District Attorney's office, the FBI, the US Marshalls Office and the Alcohol, Tobacco and Fire Arms (ATF) Agency. Over the last 20 months, we've arrested and indicted approximately 200 people involved in Organized crime, originating from Mexico, Texas, and Chicago. They're supplying drugs and guns to our urban center, and attracting our children. Seventy percent of Cleveland's homicides involve guns. Seventy percent of our crimes with guns involve 15 to 27 year-olds.

    http://www.coolcleveland.com/index.php?n=Main.TimZaunInterviewsMayorFrankJackson

  • roysoldboy

    I so well remember the stories from liberalss concerning what the "right to carry" law would cause in Kansas. Wholesale murder, blood running in the streets and tne whole thing. I think that the stats since its passage shoe nothing of the kind and that, in fact, just the opposite has happened.

    Rev Red why don't you explain the 5 – 4 decision those conservatives made in 2000 concerning the election in Florida. Oh that's right, you can't the vote was 7 -2. A couple of libs voted wrong on that one, huh?

  • larry d.

    I'd bet a vast majority of those guns being provided to Cleveland's youth by 'organized crime' were sold illegally and would have been no matter how the Supreme Court ruled.

  • roysoldboy

    Frank, what do you suppose most of the Framers would think today about a standing army? Somehow, I think that if they were around and had lived through the World War or the Second one as I have they may well see the need for a standing military today.

    Darn it there I go defining the Constitution as a living thing when I don't believe that about it at all.

  • frank

    Mr. roysoldboy,
    I don't object to a standing army. I only mentioned it in pointing out how removed the Second Amendment is from today's realities.

  • Aleks

    frank thinks the Second Amendment is so far removed from today's realities….that's the point…the Second Amendment is part of our Bill of Rights and without The Bill of Rights Frank would not be able to say what he thinks because there would be no First Admendment, no Fourth Amendment, no Sixth or Seventh. Our Founding Fathers declared the Second Amnedment necessary to defend our other freedoms provided under The Bill of Rights. Without The Second Amendment, I would hate to see what today's realities would really be like!

  • Alexander D.

    What a victory for the victims of the DC shooting gallery. I'm only wondering when the leftist radicals will bring another grievance to the supreme court, argueing that this decision constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. After all, how will the criminals make a living since it is our society that has left these poor folk no choice in life? Paaaaaaaleeeeeeze!

    I cannot wait till the first thug becomes an example. At that point in time, the crime rate will take a turn for the better. In the name of John Wayne, Chuck Conners, and Charlton Heston……………..this ones for you!

  • UA2SC

    I am a liberal. Liberalism is a political ideology that states that citizens should have their rights and opportunities protected from government restraint. That would leave me without a party because it seems like Republicans and Democrats just listen to a few guys with a TV show or a newspaper article and they get their instant ideology

    Sadly, bans on guns create the opposite of their desired effect. If an individual is a gang member, murderer, drug dealer, or rapist, chances are that they aren't particulary concerned about the legality of their weapon or the tag on their mattress. Banning handguns only disarms the law-abiding population. This makes them easier targets for criminals.

    In the immortal words of Chris Rock,"Don't go to parties with metal detectors. Sure it feels safe on the inside, but what about all those people with guns outside? They know you ain't got one."

    In the

  • Da King

    UA2SC,
    Exactly right about the gun ban. If you are a liberal, there's hope.

  • balladeer

    Only an idiot would believe that denying law-abiding citizens the means to protect themselves from criminals is a bad thing.

    Frank Jackson is a good example of this type of idiot. Hey Jackson, enforce the laws already on the books. If your primary "weapon" against the availability of guns on the street is to make sure law-abiding citizens are not allowed to possess them, you don't have much of a plan.

    There's no shortage of guns available to the ill-breds, and there hasn't been for years.

    The only thing in short supply in the urban centers of the United States is virtue.

  • da truth

    The most interesting thing about this discussion is that you all are suddenly saying how smart this Court is when just a few weeks ago you were telling us how stupid they were…….interesting. And you continue to call us hypocrites? More conservative doublespeak.

  • frank

    Mr. Aleks,
    I did not object to the Supremes' ruling. My views are similar to Mr.UA2SC. I merely pointed out that the right to bear arms has been infringed upon for a lond time, and that the prefatory remarks about militia, indicating the desire to not have a standing army, are difficult to reconcile with today's environment.
    I sincerely hope that you place equal importance to the rest of the Bill of Rights. If so, welcome to the fight against this administration.

  • roysoldboy

    frank,

    Would you please write down all the rights you have from the Bill of Rights that have been taken from you by "this administration"? I always wonder when you people get wound out just which of your rights have been removed and always get nothing but generalities in answer. I want to know just which of them you don't have now.

  • Gallifrey

    I just wanted to tell you that I absolutely LOVE your blog. You're not afraid to point out the craziness inherent in *both* parties. As a reformed liberal, I can truly appreciate that both sides of the fence have aspects that are, well, stupid.

    Don't sweat it that people get up in arms because you don't agree with them. Liberals and conservatives are both bad about that, which is why we have each other. I think. Either that, or just to be each other's mosquitos in life.

  • frank

    Mr. roysoldboy,
    Under the 1st Amendment, we are allowed to peacefully assemble. When protesstors try to do this under this administration, they are often placed in a holding pen far from where the president might see them. The 1st Amendment also guarantees a free press. Coverage of the Iraq war is limited to "embedded" or hand picked journalists who are allowed to regurgitate the official line.
    The 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. Tell that to the citizens of New Orleans who had their guns confiscated after Katrina.
    The 4th Amendment allows us to be free in our persons, property, and effects. It also protects against unreasonsable searches and seizures. This administration and its corporate allies have gathered all internet and telephone traffic since before 9/11. Bush has also claimed through executive order that he can seize the assets of anyone whom he deems an "enemy combatant".
    The 5th Amendment prevents coerced testimony against oneself. The administration has claimed the right to coerce confessions through torture, violating the Geneva Convention and the War Crimes Act. Once again, this applies to citizens and non-citizens alike, all it takes is for the president to declare one a "enemy combatant".
    The 6th Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy and public trial, the right to be informed of charges against him, the ability to confront opposing witnesses, bring friendly witnesses to testify, and the right to counsel. The administation has claimed that these rights do not belong to "enemy combatants".
    The 7th Amendment guarantees right to a trial by jury. Once again, if the president designates one as an "enemy combatant", the administration holds that the Amendment does not apply.
    The 8th Amendment provides freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Certainly torture is excluded.
    The point here, Mr. roysoldboy, is that this president has claimed the exclusive right to name people as "enemy combatants" whether they are citizens or not. He further claims that these people are ineligible to these rights.
    Surely you are intelligent to realize that the abrogation of an individual's rights are an offense against all. You and I have lost a degree of our freedom.

  • roysoldboy

    Frank,

    Unlike you son, I have never been declared an enemy combatant so I have lost no rights you mention. If you haven't been aiding and abetting terrorists or foreign governments I don't think you have done so either.

    Apply this part of the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America to the things you have mentioned and then tell me all about those enemy combatants being abused.

    ***We the People of the United States to form a more perfect union . . . . . . . . . . . . .

    How many citizens can you name that have been declared enemy combatants and that haven't aided them some way? You can't just take the word of liberal dissidents for things like this. Also you can't just take the words of liberal enemies of Bush. Too many of them have been his enemies since just before Christmas in 2000 and have never slacked off

    You say that protesters are kept from protesting in places that they want to use. I looked and looked in the Constitution and just can't find where the words, location of protest, are listed. To protect the lives and persons of the protesters sometimes they have to be held back. You seem to forget that there are always more of us than there are of them.

    You talk about a free press and I just don't remember the media holding back anything in Iraq as long as there was lots of bad news to make Bush look bad. Now that the country has stabilized a bit and there isn't much destruction and killing they just don't report it at all. I wonder if many of those reporters you say weren't allowed wer afraid to go there because it was a dangerous place to be.

    I guess you failed to see any of those gun toting people in New Orleans threatening others with their guns or using them for other illegal activities. Our government is supposed to protect us from ourselves just as they are to see that we can carry our guns and use them to take things away from others. I guess your liberal sources just don't report any unlawful activities among those people. I am sure they don't.

    I will have to have you name all the citizens that have been tortured as a violation of the 5th Amendment. I have heard lots of liberals talk that way but they seem never to be able to name names, just make noises.

    I guess you have become convinced by people like the good Rev Red that the Geneva Conventions are something they just aren't. I don't know of one terrorist organization that is a signatory of that document. See, a group of nations got together and made up all these rules but they extend to only signatory nations and these terrorists in Gitmo just weren't wearing the uniforms of any nation. They weren't citizens of the US, and if so, were with terrorists who were trying to kill our soldiers.

    You people have to get it through your heads that only citizens of the United States are guaranteed all the rights in the Constitution and its Amendments. Non-citizens just have to hope and they are not guaranteed the use of our courts. Those who have been living at our expense on Gitmo all these years have been given rights by judges that weren't there until this little thing came about. These people have been extended privileges that other aliens don't have according to the Constitution. You need to read that thing sometime and stop taking the word of what people like Rev Red say about it.

  • da truth

    Frank,

    That was an absolutely brilliant post where you went through the bill of rights for roy. Thank you for doing so. As you can see, he's only interested in those rights when they work in favor of his view on things.

    As the election gets closer, it is interesting to see that the conservative free thinkers on this blog are turning more and more into the "compassionate conservatives" they formerly detested.

  • roysoldboy

    da truth,

    I wonder if you and Frank would like to use the protests of the South Koreans replete with weapons of destruction they are carrying to their "peaceful" protests. Somehow, I don't think many of our founders had that kind of "peaceful" protest in mind. It alwlays sounds so good to talk about things like that but it seems that they usually degenerate into what South Korea is experiencing now.

    Put a liberal with a "right" and watch him go wild talking about what happens when he oversteps the right and government has to penalize him in some way.

    It is always so fine to see someone of you list all those rights that you seem to think you have earned through the activities of others.

  • Da King

    frank,
    I congratulate you for listing those rights that Bush has allegedly taken away. You are the first person I've seen attempt it. Roy addressed most of it quite well, but I have a few things to add.

    The one about the First Amendment was pretty silly. We still have the right to assemble and demonstrate. You know we do. Go to D.C. any day and you'll see protesters, just like always. Protesters are not allowed to disrupt the activities of others, however. Protestors aren't the only ones with rights. The rest of the citizens have them too.

    Also, the press is as perfectly free as always (actually more free than ever before), which leads me to that stuff you said about the Second Amendment. If the best example you can come up with of Bush taking away that right is Katrina, that is REALLY weak. If you remember, that was brought on by the FREE PRESS making up wild stories of gangs shooting up the city and looting, and I'm not sure Bush even had anything to do with it at all. Liberals have been responsible for vastly more infringements of the Second Amendment than Bush ever dreamed about.

    I'm in agreement with you that the Fourth Amendment has been greatly weakened, it's just that you got the timeline wrong. That happened decades ago. Bush's contribution was to go after terrorists and enemy combatants, which addresses ALL the rest of your accusations against Bush. As Roy pointed out, wartime enemy combatants are not entitled to the full rights of american citizenship. They never have been, and they aren't now. Oh, wait a minute, I forgot the Boumediene ruling. Enemy combatants now are given more rights than our own soldiers are, thanks to the liberal wing of the Supreme Court.

  • frank

    Mr. roysoldboy,
    If you think your freedom is not affected by what the government does to others, then I truly feel sorry for you. I know of two American citizens, Lindh and Padilla whom our government tortured. In Lindh's case, he was convinced by religious zeal to join the Taliban's fight against the Northern Alliance before we entered Afghanistan. The US tactical alliance with this group is what made him an enemy combatant. Had we not entered Afghanistan, he wouod have been like the Americans who went to Spain in the 1930's to fight fascism. Although wounded, he has bound and tortured after his capture. Padilla, who did not even possess a high school diploma was somehow arrested for being part of a conspiracy to detonate a "dirty bomb". He was held incommunicado and tortured for three and a half years before receiving any legal counsel. Apparently his mind has been destroyed by the experience.
    And no, none of this has affected me personally. But then, neither did 9/11. I suppose by your reasoning I should say So What, I've got no beef with Al Qaeda. However, go back to the Preamble which you quoted. It says WE the people, not I roysoldboy.
    Mr. King,
    What I was talking about was the predilection of the Secret Service of protecting the president from hearing the protests by rounding up protestors and removing them to caged areas where they could protest to chain link fences. Bush and his father have not allowed the press free access during their wars. Compare the coverage of these wars to that of the Vietnam War. My comments about gun confiscation after Katrina were meant to show that this right is no more sacrosanct than the others which have been violated. Enemy combatants are either POWs or international criminals. What the administration has attempted is to create a legal black hole designed to eliminate any legal restriction.

  • larry d.

    Comparing Lindh with those who went to Spain to fight fascists is laughable, frank. Unless those fascists wound up being American troops at some point.

  • Da King

    frank,
    I just read an article about how they are going to keep protestors at the DNC inside a fenced area, just like they did in 2004.

    http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_9744092

    Enemy combatants are POW's, or at least they should be. They are not american citizens and should not be granted habeas corpus. POW's are not generally released while the war is ongoing, though Bush HAS released many of them, including some he shouldn't have. Many others were in process of being tried by military tribunals, so your black hole theory has a lot of holes in it, no pun intended.

  • frank

    Mr. King,
    Thanks for the tip on the article. Whenever this is done, it sacrifices freedom for expediency, whoever does it. I thought it noteworthy that the Post chose to include quotation marks around free speech zones. After all, isn't our country supposed to be one big free speech zone?
    If enemy combatants are POWs, then aren't they entitled to Geneva protections? In the past, people captured on the battlefield were given battlefield tribunals where their claims could be more easily investigated given the proximity of witnesses, supporters, etc. The military tribunals you cite are a response to a Supreme Court ruling. However, the detainees have no practical access to exculpatory evidence. Also, many of these people were not captured on the battlefield but turned in for a hefty bounty. The administration created the euphemism "detainees" to describe prisoners who are being held as neither POWs entitled to Geneva protections nor incarcerated criminal suspects entitled to due process of law. I think this is accurately described as a legal black hole.

  • Da King

    Even if I accepted your "black hole" description (which I really don't), when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in 2006, it addressed that issue. That is another reason why the Boumediene ruling was so outrageous. In their previous Hamdan ruling, the Supreme Court allowed that Congress could find a remedy to the enemy combatant situation, and Congress did exactly that. Then the Supremes pulled the carpet out from under Congress and Bush anyway. What a travesty, and it was unprecedented.

    I'd also like to ask you when prisoners of war/detainees/enemy combatants/terrorists or whatever we want to call them, have ever been released in the middle of an ongoing war ? In order to give those prisoners access to civilian courts, we'd have to pull our soldiers and intelligence personnel off the battlefield to come and testify in court in the middle of the war. That borders on the insane. Another huge problem with trying the Gitmo prisoners in civilian courts is the necessity of exposing classified information in order to try the cases, which could damage the war effort and endanger the lives of those who are helping America in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  • frank

    Mr. King,
    The Supremes ruled that Congress' effort at closing the black hole was unconstitutional. The problem stems from the fact that bounties were paid without proper screening to discover whether those turned in were in fact plausibly responsible for any act. Every war has had a battlefield procedure for separating legitimate prisoners and those simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The administration's lack of battlefield tribunals, use of bounties, and torture suggest to me that it was more interested in developing a cache of prisoners who could be coerced into providing whatever information it desired.

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