Chicago Tribune Calls For Repealing the Second Amendment
June 30th, 2008 | by Sqotty |Leave it to the Chicago Tribune to issue a call to repeal the Second Amendment and to not understand what that Amendment is all about. The Chicago Tribune:
If the founders had limited themselves to the final 14 words, the amendment would have been an unambiguous declaration of the right to possess firearms. But they didn’t, and it isn’t. The amendment was intended to protect the authority of the states to organize militias.
They are incorrect.
The Second Amendment states:
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.
Sometimes it is printed without the commas after “militia” and “arms.” Both versions are accepted as correct.
People have argued for decades about the meaning of those words, some claiming it is a state right while others assert that it is an individual right.
The Founding Fathers were very precise in their choice of words when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Nowhere in the entire Constitution and its several amendments does it mention state rights. The F.F. talk in great length of the powers granted to the Federal Government, or to the several states, and are entrusted to them (governments) by the People, and that the People also have powers that have been retained. Rights belong to the People. This is most notable in the Ix and X Amendments where it states:
IX - The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
X - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This makes it clear that the People, as individuals, have rights and powers. Some of the powers that the People posses have been entrusted to their governments. An example of that is taxation. We have (foolishly) granted the power to our State and Federal governments to tax us without limit. At the local level, townships in Minnesota, the power to levy a tax resides with the People; the community votes to determine how much the township can levy in order to cover its operating costs, road and building maintenance, and other infrastructure. The town board has been entrusted with the power to determine how to spend what is levied.
As for the Second Amendment being an individual right, the intent of the F.F. is made clear by reading the text of the Amendment as it was originally proposed:
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person
As you can see, in the original proposal :the Right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” is right up front and in your face.
Add to that statements like “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” that was Patrick Henry, and, blast it, he is absolutely right. In every country where the citizenry has been denied the right to keep and bear arms, they have been treated like slaves: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China, Cambodia, Cuba, and a host of others. Other countries where the right to own guns have been severely restricted, crime rates have escalated, like in South Africa and Washington D.C.
It is clear that the Founding Fathers intended the “Right of the People to keep and bear arms” to be an individual right, not just in the language they used, but also in the intent recorded in the historical record. It was put into the Bill of Rights so as to enable the people to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. Without the right to bear arms, none of our other rights, including “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” has a chance of surviving the future.
Tags:
Seond Amendment Guns Constitution Bill of Rights
Tags: Civil Liberties, Guns, Second Amendment
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