December 8, 2015
Liberals are outraged by the inability of Congress to pass meaningful gun control. They are quick to point out that 30,000 are killed annually by guns (most by suicide)and that since the 1960’s more Americans have died of gun violence than in all our wars combined. Appalling mass shootings of innocent victims by terrorists or crazed individuals occur on a monthly basis. Yet, Congress refuses to act and the New York Times recently took the rare step of putting a pro-gun-control editorial on its front page. The die is now cast. It is now the job of liberals to elect Hillary Clinton and stack the Supreme Court with judges who will overturn the Second Amendment since the hoi polloi refuse to do so.
Those who oppose gun control will quote the Second Amendment which states the following:
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.
But regardless of one’s position on gun control, this amendment is somewhat vague. Does it mean that anyone has the right to bear arms? Does it mean that only those in militias have the right to bear arms? Does it mean that if militias are no longer necessary, the right to bear arms no longer exists? Does it mean one has the right to own a bazooka, a hellfire drone, a Mac-10 that shoots twenty rounds per second or even a Stinger missile launcher?
With a patchwork of state, city and federal laws, the American people have spoken. New York City makes gun ownership a felony except for law enforcement officials and the politically-connected. In Wyoming and Montana, it is still the Wild West. Regular citizens, because of federal law, are not allowed to own automatic weapons (meaning a gun that keeps firing as long as the trigger is depressed) thus suitably-equipped Mac-10s are verboten.
But liberals do not believe in democracy and have a dim view of the Constitution – a “living document” as liberal legal scholars say – meaning that it is meaningless. Opponents of gun control will be quick to point out that the recent Supreme Court decisions Heller vs. the District of Columbia (2008) and McDonald vs. Chicago(2010) struck down local laws that infringed on gun ownership. But what was the vote on both of these decisions? It was 5-4. One Hillary pick, and the law changes.
Opponents of gun control will point out that both these decisions merely stated that elected representatives can’t take away the right to bear arms. With the lobbying power of the NRA (the National Rifle Association), they are confident that most localities will not elect politicians that will prohibit gun ownership.
Au contraire. The liberals have contrived a new legal theory. The Fifth Amendment has the clause: “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” This means that a person who owns a gun is risking the lives of others, thus depriving them of their Fifth Amendment rights. In fact liberal Supreme Court justice, John Paul Steven, in his dissent in the McDonald vs. Chicago case stated:
Your interest in keeping and bearing a certain firearm may diminish my interest in being and feeling safe from armed violence. And while granting you the right to own a handgun might make you safer on any given day—assuming the handgun’s marginal contribution to self-defense outweighs its marginal contribution to the risk of accident, suicide, and criminal mischief—it may make you and the community you live in less safe overall, owing to the increased number of handguns in circulation.
What Steven’s is saying is that the Fifth Amendment supersedes the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court can not only allow politicians to ban guns, but interpret the Fifth Amendment to mean that gun ownership is unconstitutional. The skeptical reader who finds this to be a stretch is invited to read the Constitution and find the right to abortion or gay marriage. Yet liberals manipulated our judicial system to legalize both when the hoi polloi refused to do so.
Hillary will probably be President from 2017 to 2025, meaning she will have three to six Supreme Court picks. Our Supreme Court has been mandating social policy in this country for the past two generations. Of course any decision to outlaw the Second Amendment will have enough legalese to protect the powerful. After New York City banned handguns for the masses, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger managed to obtain a permit to carry one. Who was he? The publisher of the New York Times.
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