Article: Gun-Grabbers Crank Up Anti-Second Amendment Propaganda

[Zedicus]

http://www.truthnews.us/?p=983

Gun-Grabbers Crank Up Anti-Second Amendment Propaganda

Kurt Nimmo
TruthNews
November 26, 2007

Now that the Supremes have agreed to rule on the Second Amendment, the corporate media has launched a full-court press to convince America it does not have a right to bear firearms.

“Activists on both sides of the steaming debate over guns ought to be able to agree, at the very least, on two things. The first is that the language of the Second Amendment is, grammatically speaking, incomprehensible. The second is that the time has come for clarity from the Supreme Court about whether the “right to bear arms” is an individual or collective one,” writes Andrew Cohen for CBS News.

In fact, the Second Amendment is quite explicit: “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.”

Cohen and other gun-grabbers concentrate on “the three, jarring, comma-spliced clauses of the amendment,” that is to say they attack the grammar of the amendment and would have us believe our forefathers were indecisive and “were no more willing or capable of making tough decisions about contentious issues (like gun rights) than are their modern-day counterparts,” that is to say a gaggle of appointed statists determined to dismantle the Constitution.

Cohen is a postmodern apologist for state power over the individual. The Supremes, he declares, “should chart a course that does to the Second Amendment what we long ago did to the First Amendment; identify a strong individual right but allow for that right to be trumped from time to time by certain kinds of regulations.” In other words, the state should agree in principle that the individual has a right to bear firearms but that principle should be “trumped,” that is to say denied, by the exigencies of state power. Put another way, you may have a right to bear arms, at least on paper, but in practice the state will “regulate” (deny) that right.

“So we would then get a Second Amendment that both recognizes our right to own and possess guns and recognizes the government’s ability to restrain that right in certain, yet-to-be-determined ways.”

Nonsense. The founders realized that the individual had a natural, indivisible right to possess firearms precisely because of the nature of state power. It has nothing to do with “certain, yet-to-be-determined” exigencies of the state.

In regard to grammar and the trickery Andrew Cohen has in mind, founder George Mason, who co-authored the Second Amendment, wrote during Virginia’s Convention to Ratify the Constitution in 1788: “I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

That should resolve Cohen’s grammatical problem, but it will not, of course.

In Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic, Richard Henry Lee wrote: “A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves.”

Zachariah Johnson, arguing in The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, wrote: “The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.”

“And that the said Constitution be never 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,” declared Samuel Adams in the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, August 20, 1789.

George Washington understood well what Cohen and the gun-grabbers do not: “Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”

Thomas Paine knew that “horrid mischief” would ensue if the people were denied their right to arms. “The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside.”

Thomas Jefferson: “Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not.”

In fact, Jefferson considered it not only a right for the individual to be armed, but a duty. Predictably, Cohen and the gun-grabbers do not make mention of this philosophic attitude, preferring instead to tell us the founders were conflicted and, absurdly, wanted to postpone the debate “for another day.”

Cohen and crew believe Congress, after a Supreme Court “decision,” has the right to regulate our firearms out of existence. Patrick Henry had something to say about this: “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 having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”

Finally, Thomas Jefferson explained precisely why there is a Second Amendment: “What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms.”

Indeed, let them… before it is too late.

I Know it's an Alex Jones site and some people may have a problem with that, but it's still a good Article.

 

[legaleagle_45]

The Washington "liberty teeth" quote is bogus. ...

 

[Zedicus]

you sure about that?

according to my research it's only worded a little different.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

you sure about that?

Pretty sure. Where does your research indicate Washington said or wrote those words?

http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndbog.html

 

[K-Romulus]

Cohen responds (sort of)

Today's column is about how he is being demonized for expressing an analysis:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/benchconference/2007/11/post_79.html

Sense and Sensibility on Guns

Whenever I write about particularly controversial topics -- like, say, the Second Amendment -- some readers insist on not taking what I write at face value. Instead, they either accuse me of advancing some hidden agenda or they read into the column their own beliefs, values and agendas. In pyschotherapy this is called "projection." In academia it's called "cognitive dissonance." In journalism, I don't know what to call it.

I recently wrote a column about the looming Supreme Court battle over the Second Amendment. My point was that it is possible, and maybe even likely, that the justices could both identify an "individual" gun right and also endorse the government's ability to regulate guns in some fashion.

Hardly a controversial point, I thought. I was wrong.

In the column, I noted that the text of the amendment was a well-documented (but rather cowardly) compromise by the Founders who themselves had differing views of the scope of the right to "bear arms." To me, this was a fairly undramatic position. Likewise, my conclusion that the text of the Second Amendment is grammatically atrocious seemed to me to be so far beyond dispute that I used it as a starting point in the analysis. I'm no English major, but I can recognize a comma splice when I see one.

Reaction to the column wasn't immense. I got more comments when I wrote about Barry Bonds. But two of the responses I received illustrate my point. These two chaps didn't simply read the text of my column and agree or disagree with my conclusions. They knee-jerked it as an assault on their view that the Second Amendment clearly recognizes an individual right to bear arms. They assumed I was part of some vast conspiracy to undermine their freedoms. They were unable, in other words, to understand that reasonable people can discuss the scope of the Second Amendment without making some grand pronouncement about its merits.

One fellow called me "treasonous" and said he would "choose liberty over [my] brand of control and tyranny." He declared himself incredulous that I would so eagerly give up my freedoms to the state. "Let some great unseen collective tell you what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. But don't you dare -- ever -- try to persuade people that gun rights need to be regulated by a government run amuck, and that the founders of our country couldn't even decide what to do about gun control," he wrote.

Another reader wrote this: "What makes them or anybody else an expert on this. Nothing. People can call themselves experts on anything they want to, and if I can make you believe I am an expert at what I say I am, then I must be. The simple fact still remains, none of us were around when this was written. It is NOT up to the Supreme Court for interpretation, they weren't there. We can look at the text long and hard, we can say because there were comma's separating the text they must have meant this or that. But the reality is, we are not experts, we didn't write it, and unless they wrote some secret code to decode the text, we have to take it for it's literal interpretation. To do anything else is pushing someone else values, beliefs on others."

Like I said, people read into columns what they want to, and never more so than when a controversial issue -- guns, abortion, religious freedom, etc. -- comes to a flashpoint. But sometimes a column is just a column and not a crusade; an analysis is just an analysis and not a directive; a prediction is just a prediction and not a hope. And for those who are interested in seeking it, there is plenty of middle ground in the gun debate.

By Andrew Cohen | November 28, 2007; 8:03 AM ET

Comments are up, and are unanimously anti-RKBA. . .

 

[charon]

My response to one of the follow up posts:

ghostcommander, you raise a few issues that I feel compelled to address.

You start with: During the period when the Constitution and Bill of rights were written, those that were armed only had muzzle loading guns. Our forefathers could not foresee handguns, or automatic rifles.

Of course, the same can be said for the 1st Amendment. Could the founding fathers have anticipated the Internet? The Internet that is used to recruit new members to hate groups, facilitate contact between pedophiles and minors and support radical terrorism? Should we work to restrict the Internet?

What about the mass media? When Cho killed those students at Virginia Tech he used a firearm, but he also sent his own press kit to NBC, which was duly publicized. Did the gun make him kill, or did his desire for national attention facilitated by a pliant media? Why were such incidents so rare before the mass media age?

Also, the "muzzle loaders" of the day were contemporary military weapons. Wars were fought, won and lost with muzzle loaders. Since the purpose of the second amendment is to provide us with a hedge against the government, and since the government's police and military no longer use muzzle loaders, for the 2nd Amendment to work the population has to have some parity in the type of firearms we can possess.

You then add: Yes, let everybody have a muzzle loader for their homes but make guns on the street illegal and a felony. Register all hunters and issue a license and test fire and save the ballistic data from their guns. If there are hunters that live in a city have an armory for storage and when they desire to go hunting, in season, re-issue the rifles to them and after the season is over the guns must be returned. No hunter needs an automatic rifle with more than two rounds.

As noted earlier, the 2nd has noting to do with hunting. Hunting is simply along for the ride. But, FWIW, the types of weapons typically used by criminals are cheap pistols/revolvers and usually involve, according to the FBI, about 3 shots fired on average. The top scary "boogie men" of weapons -- so called "assault rifles" (real assault rifles are capable of fully automatic fire and are heavily regulated) -- are only used in about 1-2 percent of all fiream homicides (again, FBI data). As noted magazine capacity is a non issue in practical terms.

Also, most of the guns used "on the street" are illegal, used by people with a previous criminal background who buy them on the black market. Just how, exactly, would even a full ban on guns keep them out of the hands of criminals, anymore than the full ban on crack cocaine keeps that drug out of the hands of those same criminals?

You conclude: Is it true that 30,000 people are killed each year by guns?

Well, about half those are suicides. The USA, for all its guns does not lead the world in suicide. In fact, Japan, with almost total firearm restrictions, is ahead per capita. Will someone who is serious about suicide use a gun? Sure. Will they step off a ledge, or in front of a train or go for a drive in the garage if a gun is not available? Sure.

The other half typically involves one criminal killing another one over gang turf, "disrespect" whatever. Incidents like Virginia Tech are very rare statistically, in spite of the media circus they each receive.

In fact, the carnage caused by alcohol far eclipses that caused by firearms. Perhaps we should bring back prohibition first? Of course, a lot of us like to drink and we have decided that it's best to punish those who misuse the substance rather than place draconian bans on the ability to purchase a 12 pack of beer or bottle of fine wine. Why should firearm ownership, which also benefits potential crime victims, be treated so differently?

Legal gun owners are not the problem. If you want to solve the issues faced by the inner city poor then I suggest that focusing on the tool -- the gun -- is shortsighted. However, it does provide an easy scapegoat for urban politicians and activists who lack the guts to address the real issues.