Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
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Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights Springfield, Illinois |
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 2nd Goes to the Supremes by Jim Butler, President Sangamon County Rifle Association January 2008 GunNews The Supreme Court said it will decide whether the District of Columbia can ban handguns, a case that could produce the most in-depth examination of the constitutional right to "keep and bear arms" in nearly 70 years. The case is District of Columbia v. Heller, 07-290. The Supreme Court probably starting in March 2008, will address the question "Whether [The laws] violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?" While the District of Columbia does allow "possession of rifles and shotguns," its storage laws make these weapons useless for self defense. Despite the city's handgun ban, which was enacted in 1976, gun violence has remained a problem in the District. Records of the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner show that of 6,895 homicides in the city from 1982 to 2002, firearms accounted for 5,071 deaths. The idea of banning firearms in self-defense from law-abiding people has proven to be a failure in Washington, D.C., and everywhere else. It has only made the law-abiding more vulnerable by outlawing protection. The anti-gun advocates whose perception that the Second Amendment guarantees a "collective right" or a "right of states to form militias" rather than an individual right, is a totally inaccurate Twentieth-Century invention. If anyone entertained this belief in the period during which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1798 states such a thesis. Those thoughtless people who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it is not an individual right or that it is too much of a public safety hazard, fail to see the danger in what they are doing. They are courting disaster by encouraging others to do the same thing to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't want or agree with. The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, was added to the Constitution as a charter of basic human rights the federal government could not infringe under any circumstances. It was not about government rights. It is the responsibility of the government to protect those rights. The Constitution is a mechanism designed to restrict and constrain the power of the federal government. Our three branch government system is engineered to ensure that expansion of power of any branch, and even two branches together, can be restrained by the remaining one. The National Guard formed in 1903 is, according to the anti-gunners, the modern equivalent of the state militia, It should be noted here that arms, records and ultimate control of the National Guard today lie with the federal government, so that it clearly is not the "militia" protected from the federal government as envisioned by our Founding Fathers. If the National Guard had existed in Revolutionary times, King George probably would have activated it under an emergency war act, thereby placing it under his control and ending the Revolutionary War before it could begin. The Bill of Rights doesn't grant rights to the people. Instead the Bill of Rights is a list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that explains what it means to be a free and independent people and the rights necessary to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people. That is why no reputable legal scholar even argues the states' rights position, for to do so is to claim one of the ten amendments comprising the Bill of Rights exists to delegate the government power rather then recognize individuals rights. Over 120 law review articles have addressed the Second Amendment since 1980. The overwhelming majority affirm that it guarantees a right of individual firearm owners. With hardly any exception, the few articles to the contrary have been written by gun control advocates, mostly by people in the pay of the anti-gun lobby. As I See it Index Return to SCRA Home Page |