Robertson v. Baldwin declared “the carrying of concealed weapons” (presumably, handguns and knives) to be an exception to the Second Amendment. 165 U.S. 275, 281-82 (1897). The exception proves the rule: that a ban on all handguns in the home violates the Second Amendment. Similarly, Justice Holmes’ opinion in Patsone v. Pennsylvania upheld a state statute against legal aliens possessing long guns for hunting, because the statute “does not extend to weapons such as pistols that may be supposed to be needed occasionally for self-defence.” 232 U.S. 138, 143 (1914).
David B. Kopel
Brief of The International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA), The International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI), Maryland State Lodge, Fraternal Order of Police, Southern States Police Benevolent Association, 29 Elected California District Attorneys, San Francisco Veteran Police Officers Association, Long Beach Police Officers Association, Texas Police Chiefs Association, Texas Municipal Police Association, New York State Association of Auxiliary Police, Mendocino County, Calif., Sheriff Thomas D. Allman, Oregon State Rep. Andy Olson, National Police Defense Foundation, Law Enforcement Alliance of America, and The Independence Institute as amici curiae in support of respondent. D.C. v. Heller
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So, if
‘Robertson v. Baldwin declared “the carrying of concealed weapons” (presumably, handguns and knives) to be an exception to the Second Amendment.’
is true, then it should naturally follow that the carrying of unconcealed weapons should be protected by the second amendment. Right?
Don’t you just love it when a hideous hoard of statist hatchetmen get together to “discuss” the Second Amendment? The debate over concealed or open carry of weapons is an artificiality purposefully presented so that the audience will be distracted from the fact that the absolute barring of the carrying arms is the topic of discussion. I suppose that if one is presented with two options, he’d be compelled to chose one over the other, but wouldn’t take offense such as if a complete restriction were clearly presented, without invented–and basically irrelevant–conditions of carry.
The right to keep and bear arms is an indivisible atom of a right to defense. The right to carry is of no use when one is barred from immediately taking possession of a weapon, and the weapon is of no use when one is barred from having it within reach when needed. The constitutional novice squints at the page containing the Bill of Rights in a futile attempt to defend his God-given rights, yet he won’t find the words recited by judges. The novice therefore has no hope of defending his rights when the state claims that there are invisible words which change depending on the case (or legislation), and the words always support the state’s efforts to disarm the people.
The Second Amendment can’t be “extended” to handguns, or retracted to exclude “assault weapons”; it remains silent on matters of magazine capacity, bore diameter and method of carry. In fact, it doesn’t mention “guns” or “firearms” at all, settling for the broad term “arms” instead. It also doesn’t mention “permits”, priors or “prohibited persons”. That’s because the Second Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with specific restrictions on the citizenry or restrictions on specific arms! It exists solely for the purpose of restricting the government. To ask whether or not the amendment allows a certain person, a certain weapon, or a certain condition of defense is exactly the wrong question; if the question is pondered by agents of the state, then they are participating in an activity that is clearly PROHIBITED by the Second Amendment.
Regardless of the illegal, unconstitutional nature of infringement, we don’t pay our public servants to discover invisible words. The disarmament movement has produced reams of government documents that comprise an enormous work of speculative fiction so wasteful and pointless that it would never sell, even if it was on the shelves of a college bookstore and required by a course. We’ve endured over a century of “gun control” and seventy year’s worth of the federal government’s attempts to make it work–just think of the amount of resources, the food alone, consumed by thousands of public servants over the years, whose job it was to ponder the limits of the state’s (imaginary) power to disarm the people. It has produced nothing of value. It has had no effect on human behavior, or crime, or any measurable effect on safety. The result of this expenditure of effort has a quality not unlike the eventual product of the food consumed by those public servants.
The practitioners of disarmament are no closer to answering Joe’s “Just One Question” than I am to actually seeing the invisible words with my own eyes. There is word for something that is present, all-powerful and invisible to the eyes of mere mortals. There is also a word for those who worship it.
TheGunGeek,
That’s the way I read it.