Ignoring the Constitution...
Jan 31, 2013 | 459 views | 0 0 comments | 2 2 recommendations | email to a friend | print
There’s a lot of chatter in Washington, D.C., these days centering on proposed gun control legislation. Some legislators reluctantly concede that we should be allowed to keep our guns for hunting and home defense. After all, they posit, that’s what the Second Amendment is all about.

Well, of course. Doesn’t the Second Amendment begin, “A skilled band of deer and duck hunters being necessary to the security of a free state …”

No, that’s not it. I know I have a copy around here, somewhere. Does it start out, “The ability of Americans to defend themselves in their homes being necessary to the security of a free state …”?

No, that’s not it. Wait, here it is: “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 ...”

In 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed a landmark case: United States v. Miller. The question the Supreme Court justices wanted answered was, “Is a sawed-off shotgun like that possessed by the moonshiner Miller of any military usefulness?” Even though the prosecutor lied through his teeth in stating it was not ­– sawed-off 12-guage shotguns were the weapons of choice for trench warfare during World War I – the court ruled that the Second Amendment argument from Miller was not valid as his shotgun was not a military weapon; ergo, the only ones afforded Second Amendment protection.

So, actually, the one kind of firearm we know the government absolutely can’t infringe our right to keep and carry around is the “military designed weapon.” 

Interesting. I wonder if Sen. Feinstein and her gun-grabbing cronies ever considered that. Of course, it wouldn’t matter because they, as the President, summarily choose to ignore, “…that pesky piece of paper.”

—Ron Regehr

Moab
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