Supreme Court Tackles Unconstitutional Laws

J.J. Jackson* | March 20, 2008

Filed Under Second Amendment, The Constitution

The unconstitutional D.C. gun ban is now in the hands of the Supreme Court.

A majority of the Supreme Court indicated a readiness yesterday to settle decades of constitutional debate over the meaning of the Second Amendment by declaring that it provides an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.Such a finding could doom the District of Columbia’s ban on private handgun possession, the country’s toughest gun-control law, and significantly change the tone and direction of the nation’s political battles over gun control.

During oral arguments that drew spectators who had waited for days to be in the courtroom, there was far more skepticism among the justices about the constitutionality of the District’s ban on private handgun possession than defense of it.

Justices balanced the commands of a Constitution written more than 200 years ago with the modern-day questions presented by a gun ban that, it was argued, either prevents the law-abiding from a means of self-protection or keeps more guns off the streets of the nation’s capital.

The court seemed swept up in the historic nature of its endeavor, examining a part of the Constitution that most believe has never been clearly defined. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. encouraged the lawyers to keep talking well beyond the scheduled 75 minutes.

Really? Who are these people that believe the second amendment has never been clearly defined? I’d love to meet them and provide them with some clear cut evidence as to what exactly the founders meant when they said that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Perhaps they are people like Walter Dillinger who said of the ban:

“What is reasonable about a total ban on possession is that it’s a ban only on the possession of one kind of weapon, of handguns, that’s considered especially dangerous,” Dellinger said.

The problem with this “logic” is that the second amendment does not say that the people only have the right to keep and bear arms that the government approves of them to have. It says the right “shall not be infringed”. It doesn’t say “shall not be infringed except when the government deems fit.”

Perhaps he should read simple and easily verifiable quotes like these to understand that the founders did not think his explanation was indeed “reasonable”:

“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual State. In a single State, if the persons entrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair.
– Alexander Hamilton (federalist 28)

“Whereas civil-rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”
– Tench Coxe

“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”
– Alexander Hamilton

“[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
–James Madison (federalist 46)

“That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms … ”
– Samuel Adams (please note that amendment 14 to the Constitution also prohibits all subservient governments from infringing on the rights and privileges of the people such as this one)

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe.”
–Noah Webster

And with regards to the right of the government to regulate what arms the citizens may have:
“Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American”
–Tenche Coxe

Or how about these? Notice that they say “arms” not “arms that the government deems fit”.
“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”
– Patrick Henry

But wait, there is more!
” … to disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
– George Mason

“The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.”
– Zacharia Johnson

“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally … enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
– Joseph Story

So I ask again, who are these ignorant fools who think that the second amendment has never been properly defined?

I’ll tell you who. They are Marxists who seek to control and know that only when the citizens are convinced they do not have a right to keep and bear arms can they gain such control.

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