First I must apologize for the length of time between posts, but this story had to be told in its entirety for it to make sense. That story, of course, is the story of the United States Supreme Court case D.C. v Heller, and how we as Americans may have been granted a privilege were a right once stood.
The Second Amendment of the Constitution 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.”
The Heller case is the much-publicized case that questioned the constitutionality of the comprehensive Washington D.C. handgun ban that also insisted upon any weapon in the home being unloaded and disassembled. In the 26 June 2008 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States “benevolently” found that the right outlined in the Second Amendment was indeed an individual one for the purposes of self-defense within one’s home, and that such a ban would preclude citizens from exercising said right. Justice Antonin Scalia, in his extensive and in-depth exegesis of the verbiage within the amendment, proved this rather evident assertion using the context and common intent behind the specific wording of the amendment in the colonial era in which it was written.
Scalia was so meticulous and diligent in order to prove once and for all that the amendment was not intended solely as a provision guaranteeing the rights of the people to maintain a militia, and was thus not only a community right enjoyed by such citizens who participate in militia activities. That position was espoused in the 1939 case of United States v. Miller, which, to most familiar with the normal proceedings in juris prudence, was all but orthodox in its argumentation, delibration, and finding.
The case involved the ownership and transportation of a sawed-off shotgun by two admitted criminals, Miller being one. Miller asserted a right to ownership of the shotgun under the second amendment. This claim eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. However, as the initial briefs were submitted to the courts prior to the oral arguments, Miller’s attorney informed the Court that he could no longer locate his clients and had subsequently not been supplied with sufficient funds to submit a brief. He thus waived his right to submit a brief and encouraged the Court to render their decision based entirely upon the state’s brief. This turn of events provided the rather “progressive” Court at that time a blank canvas upon which to frame their decision. Their decision itself was, for all intents and purposes, a total departure from any semblance of an originalist interpretation of Constitutional verbiage and intent. It, in effect, rendered the final clause of the Second Amendment, “…[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” as surplus and thus meaningless language.
The Court made their decision predicated upon the recently-enacted “National Fire-Arms Act” (1934) and the vastly-extended “Commerce Clause” of Article One of the Constitution. The Court asserted that the ownership of such a weapon was in no way germane to the presence or function of a well regulated militia, and that ownership of such a weapon could therefore be prohibited/infringed upon. Through this decision, the Court inexorably bound the clearly individual right of fire-arm ownership, and ipso facto the right to defend oneself, to the common societal right toward defense of the state, i.e. militias. Up until last month, Miller was the only case in the Court's history dealing with the Second Amendment.
Mr. Justice Reynolds wrote in the actual decision on the Miller case :
“In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense…The Constitution as originally adopted granted to the Congress power- 'To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress. U.S.C.A.Const. art. 1, 8. With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.”
Scalia asserts in his 2008 decision, some seventy years later, that, contrary to the finding in Miller, the rights asserted in the Second Amendment did in fact refer to both the militia and the individual as having rights to both firearm ownership and self-defense within one’s home. To many, this was the best of all possible outcomes for Second Amendment advocates and represents the penultimate blow struck for gun owners throughout the U.S.
However, to those paying close attention, the Heller ruling represents a metamorphosis of the Second Amendment from the assertion of a right whose nature and meaning were up for further discussion, to a governmentally allowed and regulated privilege whose nature as such had now been precedentially cemented. The fact is, despite doing his due diligence as to the verbiage of most of the Amendment, Scalia seemingly avoided the meat of the Amendment for gun-owners, and what seems to be the crux of the case with reference to the ability of the state to regulate ownership of firearms. Say, like the D.C. gun ban.
Once again, I am referring to the “shall not be infringed” clause of the Amendment. Scalia instead asserts the compelling interest of the state in “reasonable” regulation of the right. So, in all likewise “reasonable” assessment of the Court’s treatment of the Second Amendment, one can only conclude that “inalienable” right of every individual to own a firearm is reduced to nothing more than a government-regulated and granted privilege. Consequently, the Heller decision represents very little change from the Miller decision, in that they both allow for restriction of the right. The substituted privilege, by even the most optimistic conceptualization, gives the state the opportunity to “regulate” and thus mold the right to bear arms into something that by no means resembles what the founders seemed to have in mind as the provocation behind the right's assertion. The reason behind the right, at its root, is to provide opportunity for the people to sluff off tyrannical government. The availability of palpable resistance to a tyrannical government was, and is, at the core of the successful continuation of a free state. At least according to the founding fathers of this nation, as this belief is echoed continually throughout their writings.
Could Scalia’s apparent apprehension to address this pivotal verbiage within the amendment be due to the Bush administration’s rather ambivalent Amicus Brief presented to the court? Said brief can only be described as less then friendly to those who believe in either true fidelity to the actual verbiage of the Constitution, or to those who hold dear their right to own firearms without governmental restriction. A right which such patriots believe is articulated quite clearly throughout the Second Amendment as a whole, and the “shall not be infringed" clause in particular.
The Court’s decision that the government can “reasonably” regulate the ownership of firearms is tantamount to a slippery slope to tyranny, in that, government's definition of "reasonable," as born out in myriad examples in the past, is one that is all but narrowly tailored. The "infringement" on the right by government is what the amendment explicitly precludes. Thus, the Heller decision is anything but a victory, and simply represents a legal precedent for the government's ability to "regulate" a right they are explicitly barred from restricting in the Constitution. Can anyone tell the difference between regulation and restriction in the governmental paradigm?
The ability to “reasonably” restrict gun ownership has already proven itself an open door to quasi-removal of the right altogether. On 16 July 2008, Washington D.C. city council and Police Department released the latest incarnation of the D.C. handgun ownership policy. They seem to have simply disregarded the Heller decision totally, as they now require that, once again, all handguns be stored disassembled and unloaded or with trigger locks. They also require the jumping through of other Orwellian hoops by citizens simply trying to exercise their right as Americans. These hoops include ballistics tests, fingerprinting, background checks, fees, waiting periods, etc. President of the Gun Owners of America, Larry Pratt, who has been critical of the ruling since its announcement, was all the more critical of this latest attempt to restrict the right. He stated, "It is no wonder that the District is awash with lawlessness. The contempt for the law starts in the city council chambers." The new D.C. regulations allowed for the main plaintiff in the Heller case, Dick Heller to register only a 22-caliber revolver in the district, as all semi-automatic handguns are forbidden. In all estimations, Heller's "fight for freedom," was rendered a farce.
Does this come as a surprise to any of us? I can answer for myself with an unequivocal NO. D.C. officials know that under the new regulations, those who would have standing before the court to contest the laws, would have to be convicted under them, and would thus be fighting to stay out of jail. This is tantamount to restriction from not only ownership of a weapon, but from rdress of grievances as well. Conversely, the government has unlimited resources to defend its own tyrannical policies, and will do so according to D.C.'s mayor Fenty.
“Citizens should only be allowed to own guns if they are given a government permit, and the permit should only be issued if there is a "good reason" for possession or or "genuine need." In particular, permits to own guns for self defense should not be issued unless the applicant proves that he is in immediate danger.”
Is this a quote from Scalia’s decision or from some arcane Huxley- created fictional character? Eerily it is neither. It is rather a quote from the United Nations Disarmament Programme's publication, How to Guide: Small Arms and Light Weapons Legislation. The publication expresses the dire necessity of international "harmonisation" of gun laws. Could this have been the source of Scalia’s apprehension to address the pivotal clause? For all intents and purposes, the opinions of the U.N. and Scalia differ only negligibly. The U.N. simply states bluntly what Scalia allows the government to achieve, the licensing of a privilege.
The fact is the agenda has been set on a global scale, and that the incremental approach to the stripping of the last holdouts, American public, of their only avenue to resist tyranny is not a new tactic. Aside from the myriad incremental restriction in the American past, like the above-mentioned National Firearms Act etc., recently government and those who "own" (please click on that link if no other) it have ramped up their attacks on the Second Amendment right.
This point merits the discussion of some less-publicized activities toward that end.
Perhaps the most clever example of these incremental and covert tactics is the apparent purchase and subsequent stemming of production of and “outsourcing” of ammunition producers by the Carlyle group. Consequently, the price of ammunition in the U.S. has risen exponentially in the past few years. As I have articulated above, governments bent on curtailing the right of gun ownership will not stop simply at the law, and will move around it when all else fails. This ammunition coup exemplifies this contention expressly. Ironically enough, the Carlyle Group is a secretive investment group in which both the Bush and Bin Laden families are heavily involved. Once again, the "conservative" paragon proves himself less than friendly to the orthodoxy he so vehemently espouses to export to other countries.
Think about it, without ammunition what good are guns? This seems to be a pattern, however, these are by far not the first examples of Bush administration officials going after Second Amendment rights. In 2007 OSHA attempted to brand ammunition as “explosives” and severely limit the amount of ammunition that any citizen could store.
The historical record of tyrannical government proves that one of the initial steps toward enslaving a people is the removal of their ability to defend themselves. Nature rarely presents armed sheep, in fact, often being unarmed is what designates one as a sheep.
The sad truth is, that in a fallen world, the ability to defend oneself is the ability to inflict one’s will on any given situation. Thomas Hobbes put it best when he wrote, "A man cannot lay down the right of resisting them that assault him by force, to take away his life." If one cannot defend oneself in any meaningful way, then, by definition, one cannot prevent another from inflicting his will on whomever he chooses. Logically, those who would abuse others often choose those who can offer the least resistance, namely the unarmed. This concept is at the root of all sociological, economic, and even psychological thought, i.e those impaired in any way from repelling or atleast competing with the advances of another are rendered as less effective actors. In fact, it is the basis for having law in the first place. Hobbes continues, "During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man." Self-preservation is an inherent instinct that only a government intent on abusing it station as such would seek to subdue.
Despite the above-elaborated instances of governmental infringements on our ability to defend ourselves, perhaps the most prolific example of this habituation to sheephood takes the form of psychological warfare. The use of phrases in the “lame-stream” media like “gun violence” and “gun deaths” encourage one to associate acts of violence that happen to be perpetrated with a firearm as a direct result of the presence of said firearm. This assertion totally ignores that people have been killed in heinous manners since the beginning of time. Ask Abel. The advent of firearms is simply a step in the evolution of man’s ability to better kill one another. Within the paradigm explained above, to remove an actor’s ability to defend oneself effectively, that actor’s effectiveness is inhibited. It’s like bringing a knife to gunfight, and, even then, if one were dispatched at the end of a blade, one could not blame the blade for it's deadly point. Neither can one blame a firearm for being the harbinger of death. Man is the most deadly weapon of all. All the more reason that every man should be afforded the opportunity to repel another man with nefarious intent.
Conversely and unfairly, reality shows us that in conflicts throughout the world in which governments participate, deaths caused by firearms are not called “gun violence” but rather casualties. The state does not bar itself from the use of “deadly” firearms, only its citizens. Instead, being well armed is instead often posited as the definition of a nation’s strength. Despite the fact that, when one looks at the historical record, individuals, especially free individuals, act far more rational than the state and have taken far less life. Yet we are saturated with media images demonizing the "irresponsible" civilian with a gun.
Take the story of Joe Horn for example. Mr. Horn is a law-abiding citizen of the state of Texas. Texas law allows the use of deadly force in the defense of property. Mr. Horn, against the advice of a 911 operator, shot two men in his own back yard in suburban Pasadena Texas. He was later called a “cold-blooded killer” by the widow of a man Horn shot and killed.
The man was in Horn’s yard, in the process of absconding with Horn’s neighbor’s property, and could have been armed. The man was also a felon, drug-runner, and had been deported several times back to his native Colombia. Despite these facts, Horn was vilified rabidly by those in the media for his violent behavior and his lack of compliance with local law enforcement. All the while the same media liars ignored the dead man’s same disregard for the law. In short, Horn was convicted in the "media court" of not remaining the victim he was instructed to be by agents of an edifice that has a vested interest in his remaining in such a role. Law enforcement agencies need victims, or who will they be protecting? All that would be left in the absence of victims is draconian tyranny and needles intervention in our lives. Without the illusion of safety, the interest of the state in controlling every aspect of our lives would become abundantly clear. If we were rendered bold and stripped of our fear, our minds would not be as malleable and accepting of our gradual enslavement.
In such an instance as Horn's, the media ubiquitously ignores the fact that the police are, by design, a reactionary force. They investigate committed crimes and cannot actually stop most from happening. In short, they show up to pick up the bodies or console the rape victim. Consequently, the only effective force against the actual committal of crime is the armed citizen. Not vigilantism as some would assert, but the free and autonomous individual defending his own life, family, and property. Just as the founding fathers envisioned from a “just citizenry." Just as Horn did.
Mr. Horn was brought before a Grand Jury, harassed and called a racist by activist, protested by anti-gun advocates, and made out to be a monster. Despite no charges ever having been brought against Horn, the message sent to the citizenry of the U.S. is clear. “Do not defend yourselves, depend on government for your well-being, and hope that the criminal that intends you harm observes your state’s gun laws.”
In fact, the exact opposite bears itself out to be true, as evidenced by the effectiveness of the Washington D.C.’s handgun ban to deter violent crime, or Virginia Tech’s “Zero Tolerance" zone’s effectiveness in deterring that massacre (rather large wink). Further, those states that allow their citizens to defend themselves in all instances by allowing open or concealed carry of weapons tend to have far lower instances of violent crime. So, in essence, it is not factual and analytical thought which determines societies perception of firearms and government’s regulation of them, but rather it is simply the specious psychological arguments. Once that conclusion is excepted, one may begin acepting the implications of the fact that the first step toward mind control is the separation of the victim from rational thought.
We must insist that the rights given by God and articulated in the United States Constitution are respected. Also, we must stem the incremental degradation of them. We must be vigilant, and open our eyes to these tactics. If nothing else, we must refuse to be the generation who gave away what so many died to keep, our freedom. Vote, campaign, write letters to the editor, protest, and refuse to let our God-given rights be lost in a sea of apathy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
