Supreme Court Declines to Affirm Second
Amendment Rights
--For American
Thinker--by Robert Arvay
The United
States Supreme Court has declined
to affirm the constitutional, Second Amendment rights which are guaranteed
to citizens. They did so by rejecting an
appeal from a lower court. That court
had ruled that the state of California can impose severe restrictions on
issuing permits to carry firearms.
In refusing to hear the appeal, the lower
court ruling remains in effect.
Only two justices,
Clarence Thomas and the newly seated Neil Gorsuch, dissented. Quoting them from Fox News, “The Court’s decision … reflects a distressing
trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment as a disfavored right,” they
wrote.
The court’s ruling seems to be in conflict
with two earlier Supreme Court Rulings, in 2008 and 2010, that Second Amendment
rights apply to individuals, not to the government alone—as in police and
military.
Of course, you and I know that the Bill of
Rights is entirely for protection of the individual from government
excess. Few on the left understand the
individual empowerment theme of the first ten amendments, or if they do, they
disagree with it.
There may, however, be a bright side to
this. First, it is now clear that we
need more justices like Thomas and Gorsuch.
It would have taken only two more to grant certiorari, requiring the
court to hear the appeal. Pressure on
President Trump, to appoint such justices, will now increase
However, as the leftist liberals discovered
to their horror in 2008 and 2010, taking a case to the court might
backfire. The court can always rule
against those who feel assured they will prevail. Therefore, it is important not to file an
appeal until all the pieces are in place.
Failure to do so can result in a precedent that might take a lifetime to
overcome.
Therefore, it behooves us to tread
carefully.
That said, it remains amazing that basic
Constitutional rights could possibly be so easy to suppress. While some rights that are not even in the
Constitution are enforced, there seems to be significant antipathy regarding
the right to keep and bear arms—a right that “shall not be infringed.”
A common argument used by the misinformed
is that the Second Amendment applies only to muskets, the firearm commonly in
use at the time. However, there is no
mention of firearms. In fact, a very
common weapon in the 1700s was the sword.
If the misinformed opponents of firearms were honest in their claim that
only flintlock muskets are permitted, then why are there so many jurisdictions
where six-inch knife blades are prohibited?
Surely, the Second Amendment authorizes them as carry weapons.
A more reasonable argument, but not a
truly reasonable one, is that if everyone is allowed unrestricted access to guns,
that one could never feel safe in public.
Indeed, even in the Wild West of yore, Dodge City required cowboys to
hand over their weapons before patronizing the local drinking establishments.
However, subsequent American history lays
that fear to rest. In the 1920s, my
father carried his gun to school each day.
So did all the boys in his rural community. After school, on the way home, they hunted
for food. Interestingly, although there
were numerous fights with bullies, no one ever used, nor even brandished, a
weapon. Black eyes, bloody noses, and
the humiliation of having to say, “uncle,” were the worst of it.
True, today in certain inner cities, there
is an abundance of violent gun crimes.
But a number of factors, not individual rights, is the culprit. Those cities are run by liberal Democrats who
are far too lenient with brutal criminals.
There is a sick joke in which a judge releases a murderer because it was
only his first offense. A degenerate
culture that makes excuses for recalcitrants, and considers as normal all
manner of perversion, has undermined respect for others, and for the law.
Perhaps the most fearsome clause in the
Second Amendment is not the phrase, “the right of the people to keep and bear
arms shall not be infringed.” The phrase
just before that is the one that terrifies big government advocates. It says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security
of a free State . . .”
This phrase, using the definitions of the
1700s, does not refer to a government-regulated militia, but rather, to a well-trained
organization of citizens, able at a “minute’s notice” to take up arms against
any force that threatens liberty, which in 1776, included the ruling
government.
Combining this with the Declaration of
Independence, which says, “… it is the Right of the People to alter or
to abolish it, and to institute new Government,” and, “it is their right, it is
their duty, to throw off such Government,” it is easy to see why progressive
liberals despise the right of people to be free, and to be empowered to defend
liberty.
For those
who say that only right wing loons today believe in the Second Amendment, here
is a quote from one of their icons, John F. Kennedy:
"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen,
citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the
preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are
willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."
It should
greatly concern us, then, that , “The
Court’s decision … reflects a distressing trend: the treatment of the Second Amendment
as a disfavored right.”
It is somewhat ironic that it is the
people who threaten to blow up the White House, who depict the beheading of the
President, who celebrate gun violence directed against Republicans—and who riot
to prevent speakers from speaking against rioters—that it is they who oppose
your right to defend yourself.
We must also bear in mind how thinly the
government itself supports that right.
Thank God for Donald Trump, but we are going to need more.
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