This editorial is brought to you by a staff writer for Law Enforcement Today.
EVERYWHERE, US – Since the Supreme Court ruled in the NYRPA vs. Bruen case, left-leaning gun-grabbers have rekindled their desire to make us all painfully aware that the founders and framers of our Constitution didn’t mean what we think they meant when they wrote the 2nd Amendment.
Democrat Sen. Mazie Hirono claims it’s ridiculous to refer to the Founding Fathers when interpreting the Constitution: "Who the heck would know what our Founding Fathers meant?" pic.twitter.com/10DiyknTVc
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 12, 2022
(One could argue that some, like Pelosi, Schumer and Waters may have been there when it was ratified.)
Here is what the text says.
“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.”
Now, give me just a moment to work on my condescending liberal voice. OK…here goes.
<liberal on>”It is only meant to be about the militia, or today’s National Guard, and we have that in every state, and all states are free. We have written laws around the governance of the Guard. So, it is well-regulated. And the people who join it, once eligible, will have arms, as we make sure to provide them with the latest and greatest used weaponry that the regular Army has handed down once they get new stuff.
We would never infringe on the scenario above, because that is what the founders meant when they wrote this. They could never envision high-capacity clips, and rifles that can fire 900 rounds per second and weigh as much as 10 moving boxes.
These dreaded assault weapons like the AR-15 that shoots .50 caliber bullets. No, no, no. The founders weren’t talking about stuff like this. They didn’t want a 9mm pistol in the hands of civilians. They didn’t anticipate all these crazy, right-wing fanatics that would form clubs and associations. They were never thinking of giving anyone outside of the militia, military and law enforcement, the ability to carry and conceal weapons on their persons everywhere they go. Oh, and also, our personal security whom we will allow to be heavily armed.
But everyone else, we need to make it virtually impossible for them to have weapons especially outside their homes, unless they are hunting of course. But who needs 30 rounds to kill a deer? So, we need to infringe the hell out of their “rights.”
If only we really knew what those guys were thinking when they wrote the Bill of Rights, and when it was ratified in 1791.<liberal off>
Wow!
Even pretending to be liberal enough to hate the 2nd Amendment made my skin crawl and my head hurt.
But they do bring up an interesting point. What if we could get into the minds and conversations of a group of men back in the 1790’s. Then we could find out just what they meant when they wrote a 26-word sentence, with its three commas and weird sentence structure.
Then we could put this entire debate to bed.
How cool would that be if we ever got to hear what was going through their minds?
Turns out we can.
Numerous men, who were a part of that effort and were in government at that time, told us what the 2nd Amendment really meant.
Fresh off his “give me liberty or give me death” speech, Patrick Henry discussed the ratification of the Amendments in Virgina.
“The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun.”
Turns out, Samuel Adams makes more than just a really good lager. He also makes a valid point.
“That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience [religion]; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
Trenche Cox was a Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress. In February 1788, he wrote in the Pennsylvania Gazette:
“Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
Yes, he referred to swords, but he also said, “every other terrible implement of the soldier,” meaning that Americans should have access to the same things our military has access to.
Thomas Jefferson himself said:
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
George Washington, while navigating the Delaware River on a jet ski, stated:
“A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined…”
Washington was talking about individual gun owners who follow the law instead of acting recklessly.
Noah Webster, who made a living defining things, discussed the reality of the 2nd Amendment as it pertained to tyranny.
Before a standing Army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power [government] in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops.”
James Madison wrote the following in the Federalist Papers (#46):
“Besides the advantages of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.”
Huh…it is almost as though the Democrats leading the charge on infringing on the uninfringable right didn’t know that they had access to this information.
It could be that their researchers are spending too much time trying to do feasibility studies on men using women’s restrooms or whether to legalize pedophilia as a sexual orientation.
We have heard recently from Congresswoman Mazie Hirono that the Constitution does mention “AR-15”.
And she is correct. Ironically though, she sits and stammers on about the constitutional right to an abortion, which is also never mentioned in the Constitution.
The difference between the two exclusions? One is a right carved out by the founders and framers. The other, well, it is just murder.
Joe Biden just said the 2nd Amendment is not absolute. The words of the amendment prove otherwise.
WASHINGTON, DC – In addressing the mass casualty shooting at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school, President Joe Biden declared that a very specific section of the United States Constitution was limited, amiss, bad, censurable, defective, faulty, flawed, or imperfect.
What he actually said was, “The 2nd Amendment’s not absolute.”
Joe Biden: “The 2nd Amendment is not absolute. When it was passed you couldn’t own a cannon.”🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 pic.twitter.com/8XYQkU5GjA
— Airiel Hicks (@AirielHicks) May 26, 2022
The list in the opening sentence are all antonyms of absolute.
So he must have been referring to one of those words when he said that it was not absolute.
One should have confidence the words of the Amendment itself make it absolute.
“…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
That sounds absolute to most people.
It doesn’t say that it shall not be infringed, until the government finds a way to make it infringeable.
The President went on by regurgitating his often debunked talking points that the 2nd Amendment has always had limitations.
“When it was passed, you couldn’t own a cannon, you couldn’t own certain kinds of weapons,” he falsely stated.
He doubled down.
“The idea that an 18-year-old can walk into a store and buy weapons of war designed and marketed to kill is I think just wrong,” Mr. Biden said. “Just violates common sense. Even the manufacturer, the inventor, of that weapon, thought that as well. You know, where’s the backbone?”
Biden is correct: the purpose of AR-15 & similar weapons is not to kill deer, but people. If the 2nd Amendment means anything, it guarantees citizens the right to bear a basic light infantry weapon, so as to rapidly form a militia to guard against tyranny, should the need arise. https://t.co/ABGg3jlWIF
— Martyr Made 🦉🪓 (@martyrmade) May 25, 2022
When it was ratified on December 15, 1791, not only was there no law preventing private ownership of cannons, the Constitution actually carved out provisions for private ownership of cannons. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 allows Congress to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.”
Mr. President, perhaps you would benefit from a quick history lesson and some Constitutional perspective.
The War of 1812 began on June 18, 1812, almost 21 years after the ratification of the 2nd Amendment you frequently prove to know nothing about. President James Madison issued approximately 500 letters of Marque.
These letters allowed private citizens to legally commit acts of piracy. They did so by the individual citizen purchasing cannons and arming their vessels with cannons. The letter only made legal the acts of piracy. It did not do anything to open a temporary loophole for private citizens to purchase cannons…because they could already do so.
During that nearly three-year war, American naval forces had roughly 1,200 cannons spread across 65 ships. The privateers, on the other hand, deployed more than 15,000 cannons.
Ok, well maybe you could own cannons, but not other weapons of war, right?
The President certainly seems to think so.
Reality, however, showed that private citizens could and did own the same types of weapons that the US military had access to, at least until the National Firearms Act of 1934. Private citizens were permitted to own Gatling guns if they could afford to buy one. In fact, they still can, as it is not classified as a machinegun.
In short, the arguments being thrown about by the President, Hollywood, the hosts on The View, and countless blue-check Twitter accounts, that we were never meant to have military grade weapons are patently false.
Their go-to statement of “the founding fathers never intended…” just do not pass the logic and common-sense filter.
Sadly, so many people blindly believe much of what they read because they refuse to do a little research on a topic.
But, hey, Joe Biden has been in politics forever and done absolutely nothing worthwhile. So, he must know what he is talking about, right?
On the topic of how long Joe Biden has been at it, there was less time between Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration and Biden’s birth than there was between Biden’s birth and his own inauguration.
The man spent two years working as a lawyer before entering politics. Aside from those two years and Donald Trump’s four years in office, he has been in politics his entire professional life. You would think that somewhere in those 49 years in office, he would have learned that what he is spouting about the 2nd Amendment is blatantly false.
Or maybe he has and just doesn’t care.
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