Progressives are searching far and wide to make a case to disarm the American public and leave guns only in the hands of Government. Adam Winkler’s whole view is based on quoting Antonin Scalia
(Daily Beast) In 2008 the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment did secure the right of law-abiding, responsible adults to have handguns in their homes for protection. Yet the court went out of its way to acknowledge that most forms of gun regulation remain constitutionally permissible. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,†Justice Antonin Scalia, explained. In a sentence the NRA and many gun-rights extremists apparently missed, Scalia wrote that the Second Amendment is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.â€
Let’s say that again: Justice Scalia, hero of the most intransigent conservatives in the country, stated unequivocally that restrictions of Second Amendment rights are constitutional.
I think most of us can agree that The People do not really need to carry machine guns, .50cal sniper rifles, bazookas, and background checks should be performed to attempt to keep guns out of the hands of people with the serious potential for violence. Of course, what Liberals want is everyone (else) disarmed. They want guns banned period.
Indeed, Scalia’s opinion in Heller warned that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt†on a wide range of gun laws, including bars on felons and the mentally ill from possessing guns, restrictions on guns in “sensitive places such as schools and government buildings,†or laws “imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.†These categories capture the vast majority of gun laws in America.
Well, now, that doesn’t seem like he is saying there should be draconian restrictions on gun ownership. And, I think we can see that he’s wrong when it comes to “gun free zones”, also know as places that murderous people can go and kill people without fear of someone firing back.
Here’s where it gets really funny
Gun advocates are right that this language was not designed to limit the right to people serving in military organizations like the National Guard; the framers repeatedly said the “militia†was composed of we the people, ordinary citizens with our own guns. Yet it’s also clear that the framers thought that the people who make up the militia should be “well regulatedâ€â€”trained, disciplined, and properly instructed by the government to use arms effectively, safely, and properly.
Um, no
In a draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.†Fellow Virginian George Mason addressed the militia question during a debate by saying, “I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”
Even John Adams, in countering this benign view of armed militias, defended in passing the right of citizens to use guns for purposes of “private self-defense.â€
The Founders and Framers thought very much of private ownership of guns for home and country defense, since they just went through a time where the British government attempted to take guns away.
In other words, the American right to bear arms has always co-existed with gun regulation. The Founding Fathers had gun laws so restrictive that today’s NRA leaders would never support them: broad bans on possession of firearms by people thought to be untrustworthy; militia laws that required people to appear at musters where the government would inspect their guns; safe-storage laws that made armed self-defense difficult; and even early forms of gun registration. The founders who wrote the Second Amendment did not think it was a libertarian license for anyone to have any gun anytime and anywhere they wanted.
The people that were untrustworthy were those who refused to swear loyalty to the Revolution. The requirement for militia’s was for those who were part of a militia, not everyone. Safe storage laws were for those who lived in areas with high Indian activity, to keep them out of their hands. I’m thinking Adam got his info from this Atlantic article, rather than any history books. The Founding Fathers were not banning guns, nor other arms, such as swords and knives. Let’s wrap this up
Judge Ginsburg understands what the Second Amendment extremists don’t. The Second Amendment, while securing an individual right to have guns for personal protection, is not offended by gun laws designed to make it harder for the most dangerous people to obtain the most dangerous weapons.
Except, the vast majority of laws being proposed currently by Democrats at the state and federal levels, along with their un-washed and un-thinking supporters, are aimed at restricting law abiding citizens, not criminals, which show where their minds are at, which is simply disarmament.
Read: Daily Beast: “You Know, The 2nd Amendment Is Really About Gun Control” »
