Cuda2020

Yes well, do you think these protections are guaranteed without Congress or the workings of our government? To clarify for you, the Constitution is the working aperatice of our American principles put in place so that we may GOVERN.

Cuda2020

" the dependency on government over the rule of law is part and parcel of leftism."
Another lie, the left is intelligent enough to decipher the difference between the rule of law governing... and a government over the rule of law, apparently you and your cohorts do not.

jwrevagent

OK, so lets take red flag laws, for instance. The idea that the government can confiscate a weapon without due process, because some one thinks or suspects that the person "may" have evil on his/her mind is the beginning of the end, so scratch those laws, please. Freedom requires that there be risk. You can have your "safe zones", trying to make sure people who shouldn't have guns do not have them, which action you cannot guarantee will work, or you can have freedom. The more you expect the government to do for you, the less free you are-there is always a price-grow very suspicious when the government says they are going to give you something for free. First off, the government only has money it has taken from some one. Next, please get a really detailed and fine definition of an assault rifle-so far I have not heard any of these gun control nuts talk about what an AR actually is, or is not. Until that is settled, forget it. Next, background checks are necessary, but who is going to do them and how far back and deeply into my background will they go before it becomes invasion of privacy. And who will see the results of the background checks? As to private sales, I do believe we need to tread very lightly here. How many of the guns used in all the murders were purchased in a private transaction? We all know that the lawless among us will not give a fig about background checks or AR definitions or anything else for that matter.

What we need is some respect for human life, we need some discipline in our education system, and do away with this mentality that says everyone must be a winner-nonsense-I have lost more games of cards and Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit, tag, other board games, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune in my home than I can count. I have lost out in an audition for a piano recital, lost out on an audition to play a part in a play, and lost out at job applications and it simply made me look at what my skills actually are, and focus on honing them, studying more and harder, to win the game, boost my grades, or whatever. It is important to remember that failure is an event, not a person, that we are not all endowed with the same gifts or talents, thankfully, and that is good. These same people who shake in fear at the thought of the word "loser", are the ones who keep talking about how diversity is such a good thing. If that is so, then let us recognize the differences in abilities and talents and pursue excellence in those things for which we have the gift.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Yeah, we know. You are special, you are perfection personified, you know everything, you never get confused or forget anything. Self-deification is a gift, isn't it?


So, where do our rights come from? Who or what has endowed us with the right to Life, Liberty and Happiness?

James Madison, Property
29 Mar. 1792 Papers 14:266--68

This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual."

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.

In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandise, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.

According to this standard of merit, the praise of affording a just securing to property, should be sparingly bestowed on a government which, however scrupulously guarding the possessions of individuals, does not protect them in the enjoyment and communication of their opinions, in which they have an equal, and in the estimation of some, a more valuable property.

More sparingly should this praise be allowed to a government, where a man's religious rights are violated by penalties, or fettered by tests, or taxed by a hierarchy. Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right. To guard a man's house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man's conscience which is more sacred than his castle, or to withhold from it that debt of protection, for which the public faith is pledged, by the very nature and original conditions of the social pact.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest. A magistrate issuing his warrants to a press gang, would be in his proper functions in Turkey or Indostan, under appellations proverbial of the most compleat despotism.

That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called. What must be the spirit of legislation where a manufacturer of linen cloth is forbidden to bury his own child in a linen shroud, in order to favour his neighbour who manufactures woolen cloth; where the manufacturer and wearer of woolen cloth are again forbidden the oeconomical use of buttons of that material, in favor of the manufacturer of buttons of other materials!

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.

If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence [inference?] will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.

If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.

Oldsalt

You poor dumb bastard. If they ban one gun because it looks scary, they will ban them all. There is no such thing as a compromise with these a$$holes. They won’t stop until we are disarmed. As for background checks, we already do that and they lied when they sold us that bill of goods. Supposedly every time a purchase was turned down local law was to be contacted and prosecutions were to be had...that didn’t happen. As for “Red Flag Laws” they are blatantly un Constitutional and everyone knows it. There have already been two deaths that I know of because of those laws. Magazine size limitation laws are just pure BS. The whole point of the 2nd Amendment was to keep the civilians on par with any force that might try us on...foreign or domestic. So no, there is no compromise with these a$$holes, only win or lose.

Ricktloml

Arrogance wedded to ignorance

alabuck Loc: Tennessee

For those of you who think your “God-granted right to own a gun” was an absolute since our country’s beginnings, think again.


Contrary to the popular imagination, bearing arms on the frontier was a heavily regulated business.
Smithsonian Magazine, February 5, 2018

It's October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, and Arizona is not yet a state. The O.K. Corral is quiet, and it's had an unremarkable existence for the two years it's been standing—although it's about to become famous.

Marshall Virgil Earp, having deputized his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and his pal Doc Holliday, is having a gun control problem. Long-running tensions between the lawmen and a faction of cowboys – represented this morning by Billy Claiborne, the Clanton brothers, and the McLaury brothers – will come to a head over Tombstone's gun law.

The laws of Tombstone at the time required visitors, upon entering town to disarm, either at a hotel or a lawman's office. (Residents of many famed cattle towns, such as Dodge City, Abilene, and Deadwood, had similar restrictions.) But these cowboys had no intention of doing so as they strolled around town with Colt revolvers and Winchester rifles in plain sight. Earlier on this fateful day, Virgil had disarmed one cowboy forcefully, while Wyatt confronted another and county sheriff Johnny Behan failed to persuade two more to turn in their firearms.

When the Earps and Holliday met the cowboys on Fremont Street in the early afternoon, Virgil once again called on them to disarm. Nobody knows who fired first. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne, who were unarmed, ran at the start of the fight and survived. Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers, who stood and fought, were killed by the lawmen, all of whom walked away.
The “Old West” conjures up all sorts of imagery, but broadly, the term is used to evoke life among the crusty prospectors, threadbare gold panners, madams of brothels, and six-shooter-packing cowboys in small frontier towns – such as Tombstone, Deadwood, Dodge City, or Abilene, to name a few. One other thing these cities had in common: strict gun control laws.

"Tombstone had much more restrictive laws on carrying guns in public in the 1880s than it has today,” says Adam Winkler, a professor and specialist in American constitutional law at UCLA School of Law. “Today, you're allowed to carry a gun without a license or permit on Tombstone streets. Back in the 1880s, you weren't.” Same goes for most of the New West, to varying degrees, in the once-rowdy frontier towns of Nevada, Kansas, Montana, and South Dakota.

Dodge City, Kansas, formed a municipal government in 1878. According to Stephen Aron, a professor of history at UCLA, the first law passed was one prohibiting the carry of guns in town, likely by civic leaders and influential merchants who wanted people to move there, invest their time and resources, and bring their families. Cultivating a reputation of peace and stability was necessary, even in boisterous towns, if it were to become anything more transient than a one-industry boom town.

Laws regulating ownership and carry of firearms, apart from the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment, were passed at a local level rather than by Congress. “Gun control laws were adopted pretty quickly in these places,” says Winkler. “Most were adopted by municipal governments exercising self-control and self-determination.” Carrying any kind of weapon, guns or knives, was not allowed other than outside town borders and inside the home. When visitors left their weapons with a law officer upon entering town, they'd receive a token, like a coat check, which they'd exchange for their guns when leaving town.

The practice was started in Southern states, which were among the first to enact laws against concealed carry of guns and knives, in the early 1800s. While a few citizens challenged the bans in court, most lost. Winkler, in his book Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, points to an 1840 Alabama court that, in upholding its state ban, ruled it was a state's right to regulate where and how a citizen could carry, and that the state constitution's allowance of personal firearms “is not to bear arms upon all occasions and in all places.”

Louisiana, too, upheld an early ban on concealed carry firearms. When a Kentucky court reversed its ban, the state constitution was amended to specify the Kentucky general assembly was within its rights to, in the future, regulate or prohibit concealed carry.

Still, Winkler says, it was an affirmation that regulation was compatible with the Second Amendment. The federal government of the 1800s largely stayed out of gun-law court battles.
“People were allowed to own guns, and everyone did own guns [in the West], for the most part,” says Winkler. “Having a firearm to protect yourself in the lawless wilderness from wild animals, hostile native tribes, and outlaws was a wise idea. But when you came into town, you had to either check your guns if you were a visitor or keep your guns at home if you were a resident.”
Published in 1903, Andy Adams’s Log of a Cowboy, a “slightly fictionalized” account of the author’s life on the cattle trails of the 1880s, was a refutation against the myth-making dime store novels of the day. The book, which included stories about lawless cowboys visiting Dodge City firing into the air to shoot out lights, has been called the most realistic written account of cowboy life and is still in print today.

Adams wrote of what happened to the few who wouldn't comply with frontier gun law: “The buffalo hunters and range men have protested against the iron rule of Dodge's peace officers, and nearly every protest has cost human life. … Most cowboys think it's an infringement on their rights to give up shooting in town, and if it is, it stands, for your six-shooters are no match for Winchesters and buckshot; and Dodge's officers are as game a set of men as ever faced danger.”

Frontier towns with and without gun legislation were violent places, more violent than family-friendly farming communities and Eastern cities of the time, but those without restrictions tended to have worse violence. “I've never seen any rhetoric from that time period saying that the only thing that's going to reduce violence is more people with guns,” says Winkler. “It seems to be much more of a 20th-century attitude than one associated with the Wild West.”

Aron agrees that these debates rarely went on, and if they did, there's scant evidence of it today. Crime records in the Old West are sketchy, and even where they exist the modern FBI yardstick of measuring homicides rates – the number of homicides per 100,000 residents – can exaggerate statistics in Old Western towns with small populations; even one or two more murders a year would drastically swing a town's homicide rate.

Historian Robert Dykstra focused on established cattle towns, recording homicides after a full season of cattle shipments had already passed and by which time they'd have typically passed firearm law. He found a combined 45 murders from 1870-1885 in Kansas' five largest cattle towns by the 1880 census: Wichita (population: 4,911), Abilene (2,360) Caldwell (1,005), Ellsworth (929), and Dodge City (996).

Averaged out, there were 0.6 murders per town, per year. The worst years were Ellsworth, 1873, and Dodge City, 1876, with five killings each; because of their small populations, their FBI homicide rates would be high. Another historian, Rick Shenkman, found Tombstone's (1880 pop: 3,423) most violent year was 1881, in which also only five people were killed; three were the cowboys shot by Earp's men at the OK Corral.

As Dykstra wrote, frontier towns by and large prohibited the “carrying of dangerous weapons of any type, concealed or otherwise, by persons other than law enforcement officers.” Most established towns that restricted weapons had few, if any, killings in a given year.

The settlements that came closest to unchecked carry were the railroad and mining boom towns that tended to lack effective law enforcement, a functioning judicial system, and firearm law, says Aron, and it reflected in higher levels of violence. Like Bodie, California, which was well-known during the 1870s and 1880s for vigilantism and street violence.

“The smoke of battle almost never clears away completely in Bodie,” wrote a young Mark Twain on assignment for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Historian Roger McGrath found that from 1877 to 1882 there were 31 homicides in Bodie which, according to the 1880 census, had only 2,712 residents. As the contemporary paper Sacramento Union called it a “shooter's town,” Bodie by 1880 had acquired a national infamy. Even as far as New York, a dangerous man was euphemistically called “a bad man from Bodie.”

The one-man law seen of TV and film Westerns is how we remember the West today. It was a time and place where rugged individualism reigned and the only law in the West that mattered was the law on your hip – a gun. Most “cowboy” films had nothing to do with driving cattle. John Wayne grew his brand as a horseback vigilante in decades' worth of Westerns, from his first leading role in 1930's The Big Trail to 1971's Big Jake, in which the law fails and Wayne's everyman is the only justice.
But as the classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance tells us, “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

As the West developed, towns pushed this mythos of the West as their founding ideology. Lax gun laws were just a part of an individualistic streak that manifested itself with the explosion in popularity of concealed carry licenses and the broader acceptance of openly carrying firearms (open-carry laws) that require no permit.

“These Wild West towns, as they developed and became more civilized and larger, there was an effort to promote their Wild West heritage very aggressively, and that became the identity of the town,” says Winkler, “but that identity was based on a false understanding of what the past was like, and wasn't a real assessment of what places like Tombstone were like in the 1880s.”

So the orthodox positions in America's ongoing gun debate oscillate between  “Any gun law is a retreat away from the lack of government interference that made this country great” and “If we don't regulate firearms, we'll end up like the Wild West,” robbing both sides of a historical bedrock of how and why gun law developed as America expanded Westward.

alabuck Loc: Tennessee

—————
Oldsalt,
“You poor dumb bastard,” certain kinds of guns have been banned many time in our history and most recently since the 1930’s. Try buying a machine gun, a bazooka, an operational tank, armed jet fighter, armed naval craft, a mortar, or even a hand grenade. You can’t. So, don’t go “shooting off at the mouth” when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Currently, any firearm that is “automatic” is banned for sale to the general public without special permits and approval from the ATF.

If you want to compromise, tell the NRA to STFU and let some calm, sane discussions happen. 85-90% of the entire population wants stricter background checks, a closing of gun-show loopholes, a ban on high capacity magazines and more in the way of mental health checks. You and yours refuse to allow any discussion on those topics for FEAR of your losing any access to any kind of firearm. You’ve let the NRA scare you into believing their LIES.

And, YES, FEAR is what the NRA uses to promote the sale of guns in order to get people to buy guns. FEAR of people of color (Hispanics and blacks, mostly), and FEAR of your own government. For those of you who think the 2nd Amendment protects you from the government, your knowledge of the Constitution is evident.

In case you and your fellow “gun nuts,” think the federal government doesn’t have the right to defend itself from misguided people who want to use force to keep their precious guns, read the following and weep.

U.S. Constitution:
Article 1; Section 8

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

“To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

“To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

“To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

“To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

“To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

“To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

“To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

“To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

“To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

“To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

“To provide and maintain a Navy;

“To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

“To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

“To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And

“To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”


14th Amendment, Section 4:
“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

The Insurrection Act of 1807:
ß 331. Federal aid for State governments

Whenever there is an insurrections in any State against its government, the President may, upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened, call into Federal service such of the militia of the other States, in the number requested by that State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to suppress the insurrection.

ß 332. Use of militia and armed forces to enforce Federal authority

Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.

ß 333. Interference with State and Federal law

The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it–

(1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or
(2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.
In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.

ß 333. Major public emergencies; Iinterference with State and Federal law

(a) USE OF ARMED FORCES IN MAJOR PUBLIC EMERGENCIES.

(1) The President , by using the militia ormay employ the armed forces , or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to, including the National Guard in Federal service, to–
(A) restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that–
(i) domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; and
(ii) such violence results in a condition described in paragraph (2); or
(B) suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if it– such insurrection, violation, combination, or conspiracy results in a condition described in paragraph (2).
(2) A condition described in this paragraph is a condition that–
(1) (A) so hinders the execution of the laws of a State or possession, as applicable, and of the United States within that State or possession, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State or possession are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or
(2)(B) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.
(3) In any situation covered by clause (1) paragraph (1)(B), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.
(b) NOTICE TO CONGRESS.

The President shall notify Congress of the determination to exercise the authority in subsection (a)(1)(A) as soon as practicable after the determination and every 14 days thereafter during the duration of the exercise of the authority.

ß 334. Proclamation to disperse

Whenever the President considers it necessary to use the militia or the armed forces under this chapter, he shall, by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.

ß 334. Proclamation to disperse

Whenever the President considers it necessary to use the militia or the armed forces under this chapter, he shall, by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents or those obstructing the enforcement of the laws to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.

ß 335. Guam and Virgin Islands included as "State"

For purposes of this chapter, the term "State" includes the unincorporated territories of Guam and the Virgin Islands.



“The Insurrection Act of 1807 is a United States federal law (10 U.S.C. §§ 251–255) (until 2016, found at 10 US Code, Chapter 15, §§ 331–335, renumbered to 10 USC, Chapter 13, §§ 251–255) that governs the ability of the President of the United States to deploy military troops within the United States to put down lawlessness, insurrection, and rebellion. The general purpose is to limit presidential power, relying on state and local governments for initial response in the event of insurrection. Coupled with the Posse Comitatus Act, presidential powers for domestic law enforcement are limited and delayed.”

The Insurrection Act of 1807’s Relation to Posse Comitatus Act:
The entire text of the Posse Comitatus Act (as amended in 1956), is as follows:

18 U.S.C. § 1385 – Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

Accordingly, actions taken under the Insurrection Act, as an "Act of Congress", have always been exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act.

IF, you took the time to read all of this - which I doubt, please show me where the mention of our “personal right to bear arms” is located. Show me where, in the Constitution, the words relating directly to our personal right to bear arms, are. You can’t because they aren’t there. Recent rulings of the SCOTUS, allowing citizens the right to carry firearms are simply the interpretations of “activist, CONSERVATIVE justices.” Funny how you guys disparage liberal justices for their rulings yet applaud the conservative justices for doing the very same thing, “interpreting the Constitution.” So much for the GOPTP concept of “Constitutional originalism.”

alabuck Loc: Tennessee

Constitutional Myth: The Second Amendment Allows Citizens to Threaten Government.
GARRETT EPPS
JUN 30, 2011

The "right to bear arms" is not a right to nullify any government measure a "sovereign citizen" finds irksome.

In 2008, the Supreme Court recognized--for the first time in American history--the "right to bear arms" as a personal, individual right, permitting law-abiding citizens to possess handguns in their home for their personal protection.  Two years later, it held that both state and federal governments must observe this newly discovered right.

Curiously enough, the far-right responded to these radical victories as if the sky had fallen.  During hearings on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions direly warned that the two gun cases--Heller v. District of Columbia and McDonald v. City of Chicago--were 5-4 decisions.  "Our Second Amendment rights are hanging by a thread," he said. The idea that the rights of ordinary gun owners are in danger is a fallacy.

A second, and more pernicious, fallacy is embodied by this quotation from Thomas Jefferson, America's third president: 
When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Wait a minute, Epps! Who could argue with Jefferson?  Well, not me, to be sure.  But there's a problem with this quote, as there is with so much of the rhetoric about the Second Amendment.  It's false.

 After decades of intense, scientific research, scholars have deduced that Jefferson never said it.  Monticello.org, the official website of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, says, "We have not found any evidence that Thomas Jefferson said or wrote, 'When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny,' or any of its listed variations." The quotation (which has also been misattributed to  Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, and The Federalist), actually was apparently said in 1914 by the eminent person-no-one's-ever-heard-of, John Basil Barnhill, during a debate in St. Louis. However, that hasn’t stopped the gun-nuts from repeating the lie, ad nausium, to anyone who’s willing to listen to them.


The Pittsburgh Gunman Embraced Conspiracy Theories. He’s Not the First. As bogus as the quote is, the idea that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to create a citizenry able to intimidate the government, and that America would be a better place if government officials were to live in constant fear of gun violence.  If good government actually came from a violent, armed population, then Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Somalia would be some of the best-governed places on earth.  As we saw from the 2010 shootings in Tucson, Arizona and the 2017 shooting of the Congresspeople in D.C., the consequences for democracy of  guns in private hands, without reasonable regulation, can be dire--a society where a member of Congress cannot meet constituents without suffering traumatic brain or bodily injury, and where a federal judge cannot stop by a meeting on his way back from Mass without being shot dead.

But, that image of a Mad Max republic lives on in the fringes of the national imagination.  It is what authors Joshua Horwitz and Casey Anderson call "the insurrectionist idea," the notion that the Constitution enshrines an individual right to nullify laws an armed citizen objects to.  Its most prominent recent expression came from Senate candidate Sharon Angle, who predicted that if she was unable to defeat Democratic Sen. Harry Reid at the ballot box (which she couldn't), citizens would turn to "Second Amendment remedies"--in essence, assassination.  President Trump, during his 2015-16 campaign alluded to “Second Amendment people” taking care of his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

He said, “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment,” said Trump, eliciting boos from the crowd. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is” he said smerkishly smiling. “I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.” This was Donald Trump at one of his lowest points, yet; a man hinting at assassinating his political rival.

Rand Paul also likes to hint that the remedy for rejection of his libertarian policies may be hot lead. Deathandtaxesmag.com quotes him as saying, "Some citizens are holding out hope that the upcoming elections will better things. We'll wait and see. Lots of us believe that maybe that's an unreliable considering that the Fabian progressive socialists have been chipping at our foundations for well over 100 years. Regardless, the founders made sure we had Plan B: the Second Amendment." 

The history and meaning of the Second Amendment are a murky subject.  A fair reading of the entire text of the Constitution suggests that the most prominent concern of the its framers was protecting states' control of their militias.  Under Article I § 8 of the Constitution (read above), the states transferred to Congress the power "to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel Invasions" and "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia." This was one of the most radical features of the original Constitution; under the Articles of Confederation, states had complete control of their militias. Opponents of ratification suggested that the new federal government might proceed to disarm and dissolve the state militias and create instead a national standing army.  The Second Amendment most clearly addresses that concern; and that has led a number of historians to suggest that the Amendment really has no relation to any personal right of individuals to "keep and bear arms."

Crayons Loc: St Jo, Texas

This ain't yer Personal Leftist Blog 'sunshine' and in response to yer previous diatribe...No Cowboy or Rancher
would Ever consider dischargin a firearm anywhere near a herd of cattle or a livery stable
Now Move Along

Kickaha Loc: Nebraska

Today its the ARs and AKs, tomorrow it will be other semiautomatic rifles. The day after that it will be bolt actions, pump guns, and lever action guns. Then they will come for the single shot guns. They won't stop until all law abiding citizens are disarmed.

Tug484

They already have a bill ready that says they can take away pistols and rifles if they have a certain thing on them.
It was only described as a round thing.
The barrel?

Kickaha Loc: Nebraska

Some people claim that the second amendment only applies to the military and paramilitary groups, i.e. police and national guard. Others claim that it is an individual right. Both are right and wrong. At the time the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written, it was understood that the individual was responsible for their own safety and the safety of their community. People between the ages of 18 and 45 were considered the militia. The Constitution also provided an exemption for what we now call consciencent objectors.

PeterS

So when the asshole shot up the Walmart why didn't 90% of the police side with him? What you guys aren't taking into consideration is that to protect your guns you are going to have to attack something or someplace and when you do how are the police going to know that you are the good guys with a gun and not the bad guys? And something else you aren't considering is that when polled the majority of the police want semi-auto's banned because they are tired of going up against assholes with semi-automatic weapons.

So go ahead and start your silly little war and see what it gets you because the police won't be able to tell the difference between a "freedom-loving" patriot and just a regular right-wing terrorist.

Oldsalt

Though you have copied and pasted sections of the Constitution very well, you have no idea of what you write. Go back to the writings of the men who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights about what exactly they meant. “The right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED “. Who do you think the people are? Do you think it is the Government? Are you really so foolish that you think the Federal Government is above corruption? Lord above man, look at what is happening in DC right now. We are two steps away from a second revolution right now.