The New York Times is starting to believe that this Barack kid? May not be the second coming. Because of the ongoing changiness. Which, as it turns out, may well be a mixed blessing. There’s the public money thing. And the telecom immunities he supports in the FISA re-write. And his support for faith based charities (*shudder*). And his support for the death penalty. Not to mention his heterodox position on gun control.
Which is where, if it hadn’t been noticed before, the newspaper ventures off into fantasy land:
Mr. Obama endorsed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. We knew he ascribed to the anti-gun-control groups misreading of the Constitution as implying an individual right to bear arms.
Em… This is technically known as MSU (making stuff up). Because unless all nine supreme court justices are also misreading the Constitution, the Second Amendment does in fact imply an individual right to bear arms. However grudgingly in certain cases. An enumerated right as they say. Right there in the text. Unlike certain “discovered” rights that emanate into the penumbra, and which the Times has no trouble considering settled law.
(H/T TigerHawk)
Well,
I suppose it would be interesting to see how the Old Lady would feel if the 1st Ammendment was treated in the same manner as they would like the 2nd to be (and already is, in some areas).
Can you imagine the hue and cry if the right to speak freely was restricted to those who had a permit to do so? To those who had attended mandatory “speech safety” courses, and who had undergone a background check?
How would they feel if free speech was forbidden in certain areas, or within a certain radius of public buildings or government offices?
Free men should find onerous any law(s) whicj restrict, to any extent, the exercise of their God-given liberties. Anyone with a mocidum if education, or a simple understanding of our own Constitution, should weep at the way that certain portions of the populace, and a large portion of the media are so willing to abrogate their liberties and instead trust to government to shackle them with velvet chains of serfdom.
Our Constotution does not GRANT us any rights at all. WE already HAVE those rights. That great document simply tells the fovernment what powers IT may weild in order to accomplish the three tasks it is charged with: The common defemse, the regulation of inter-state commerce, and the support for the general welfare of the people.
One can’t help but note the extent to whicj such a corpulantly aufust body as our Federal Government had seen fit to engorge itself through slurping at the public trough, all the while complaining about the commestibles and those who have provided them.
Alcohol, Tobacco & firearms belonf on store shelves, not as a government agency.
Saw this a TH … great posting there, and the comments are a riot.
Hope you had a great Fourth, Me? Out to the park for some fireworks with the wife and boyz. Love patriotism in the summer.
Back later…
Well, Tim, even the laziest, most corpulant politician in Sodom on the Potomac knows that Congress derives its many powers, not from the main body of the Constitution; but from their intrepretation of the Commerce Clause of that August Document. Why intelligent seeming people have not attacked a free spending and taxing Congress through a challenge upon their weak spot has always been something of a mystery to this Beached Chief.
Now I read Justice Scalia’s affirmation, and the dissents and the many blog statements pro and con. To be honest, I can’t see anything that directly come out and says firearms should be sold on the same shelves as alcohol and tobacco. I do, however, agree with your sentiment, firearms should be available to citizens for protection, hunting and self defense of personal property.
That last phrase ‘personal property’ will become the next battle field in the never ending attempt by the Socialist/Marxist/Maoist cabal called the Democrat Party to make the State all powerful and their Elites our new rulers. If guns are for protection of personal property, then take away the personal property then no one will have any need for firearms.
I still like Wil Rogers proclamation: ‘No one is safe while Congress is in session’
The pervasiveness of that twisted view of the 2nd Amendment is what has me fear for the future of lawful American gun ownership.
Oh, and after a lengthy session at the range, I went with the Sig P220. Even got a “Celebrate Heller” discount on it.
The Sig 220 is a fine weapon. I’ve had mine for 11-12 years, though one of my Glock .45 autos, a Mod 21 and a Mod 30 is most often what I carry. Due to capacity for the former, concealability for the latter. May I suggest the Hogue grips? They only add to the overall shootability of the pistol IMO.
Lex, AW,
hear, hear
They choose also to ignore significant historical positions by the likes of Chief Justice Story almost 175 years ago.
“The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic…”
-Justice Joseph Story-
I love his use of the word palladium — the armed guardian…
This is how you fall out of love. He looked good when you first met him-and now, horror of horrors you discover that he’s been running around on the other side of town and is not as faithful as you thought. He doesn’t even like your friends anymore! What’s a nice girl like the New York Times to do?
Signed, “Despairing in New York”
Just a few small edits, and I think I have a 1st Amendment result the NYTimes would have no problem with:
Can you imagine the
hue and cryNYTimes celebration if the speech of those on the political right to speak freely was restricted to those who had a permit to do so?I believe it was H.L.Menken who said something to the effect that “Freedom of the Press only belongs to those who actually own a press”.
The Multi-Vulty udiots and the PC Police are already making attempts to stifle speech and free expression through their “Hate Crimes” legislation, and other falderal.
The plain, naked truth that stands openly like the Emperor’s New Clothes, is that the Liverals in the great nation know full well that the only way they can fain full power is through diminishing, if not restricting, all of our rights. They nip away at it as a gardner prunes a plant, only their shears are laws and the plant is our Tree of Liberty.
AW1 Tim makes a point that I also made here. No right granted by a government is a right.
Put Tim makes one small misinterpretation about the general welfare. The preamble to our constitution says the the purpose of our government is to PROVIDE for the common defense, and PROMOTE the general welfare, not to support it. It’s pedantry, but parsing it is important.
Brad, you are correct, and i should have caught that bit. It all descends from the simple vonvept that givernments are created by societies to do those things that the individual is incapable of doing. For example, building and manning a Navy.
I also believe that it was Henry Clay who said that “A man with a rifle is a citizen. A man without one is a subject”.
“…Love patriotism in the summer.” says Americaneocon…..which is nice, but I like it all year ’round myself – there’s no season for something so important is there?
XBrad and Tim, I think I get the point you’re trying to make, but those first Amendments to the Constitution were never known as the Bill of Privileges.
On Geraldo’s daytime show some years ago, he had Sarah Brady and an ex-cop as guests. The ex-cop tried to make the statement that gun ownership is a privilege and not a right. Hogwash!
We start accepting the half-assed notion that any part of the Constitution is a privilege and we are screwed. The part that I love most is that it truly is a living document, one that ‘We the People’ still very much do own.
To me ‘of the People, by the People, for the People’ isn’t just a catchy phrase. We the People just have to make it work by raising a voice to the self-important elected ones.
Sometimes I think that were more of us to spend as much time writing our Congress pukes as we do writing in blogs (looking in the mirror here), we’d start to get a real feel for what’s really being thought of and decided on our behalf on Mt. Olympus. Letters back from the Washington Senators and Congressman have been very revealing of late, and leave me resolved to keep after them. In some respects the more they respond, the more ammunition they give me to use to get them elected out of office.
Lamentably, as one comedian put it, too many people are more interested in American Idol these days than they are in American Freedom.
Finally, and then I’ll go back into my corner, the right to own a gun didn’t end up as the Second Amendment by chance, and only missed being in first place because freedom of speech is paramount to all other freedoms. Tim’s quote of Henry Clay is certainly appropriate. We Americans never were very good subjects.
Semper Fi
Mongo, (love the nick, btw)
That’s my point. These are rights. They come to us by birth. The only way for someone to be deprived of a right is by conviction following a trial by a jury of our peers.
As I’ve not been so convicted, how can someone claim the power to take away my gun, both in its Second Amendment sense, and as a matter of property being taken without due process.
Mongom
And my points as well. As our forefathers so eloquently proclained, “we hold these truths to be self-evident”
Governments derive their power by consent of the governed. They have no power, no right, to repress or otherwise limit, the rights of the people outside of die process.
It is time that we the people reaffirmed the limits of our government, and that process must begin in the education of our youth. We must demand that those entrusted with the public schools be held accountable for a proper education og their charges, an education based upon the Constitution and what it actually says, rather than the wishes of a self-appointed elite.
We, the People, are responsible for the actions, as well as inactions, of those we elect to represent us. We must needs also hold them to account for their actions taken on our behalf.
respects,
XBrad and Tim,
It’s nice to know I’m in good company, and I appreciate the responses. Onward we go! Apologies if I came across as derisive.
RE. the nick, handed to me straight out of Blazing Saddles. Still don’t know if it was the chocolate or the food scene. “No Mongo, I don’t want your food!”
Question for the masses: if we have a right to X, and X can be used for good or ill, is it justified to deny X to a felon? He or she may have committed a crime, but unless it was a crime against humanity or society in general have they broken that societal bond?
Likewise, having served their productive years in prison and being let out just in time for retirement, have they served their debt and deserve these rights back?
Just asking — I don’t have an answer.
– Max