All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington.
President Barack Obama
April 17, 2013
Senate Votes to Block Expanded Background Checks for Gun Sales
[Yes. It was shameful that so many people put so much effort into attempting to infringe upon a specific enumerated right. This forced millions of other people to put their own effort into stopping that attempt. The entire country, especially the politicians, had important other things to do and we had to take time out to fight the statist scum.
When they spend so much time, stealing our time and resources in the process, on such a destructive task It is hard to imagine that our political opponents want anything other than the destruction of our entire country.
Shameful doesn’t even begin to describe it. Criminal and treasonous come much closer.
But this just might have been their last stand.—Joe]
It’s good to remember that it’s not just a specifically enumerated right.
The right to keep and bear arms does NOT originate in the 2nd amendment. The most that does it to state the right explicitly. A number of people at the time it was proposed objected to it, not on the grounds that the right should not be protected, but because the 2nd amendment is redundant. As I recall, a substantial minority in MA voted against it for that precise reason.
Instead, point out whenever you can that there are at least THREE reasons why federal laws limiting the right to keep and bear arms are unconstitutional. The 2nd amendment, of course. The 9th amendment, which would protect it if the 2nd didn’t exist. And Article 1, Section 8, which would suffice even if the 9th amendment didn’t exist either — because nothing in that article authorizes any gun control laws of any kind. And this is exactly the argument that people like James Madison made at the time.
The reason it’s critical, beyond even the protections of the 9th and 10th Amendments, that the 2nd is a specifically enumerated right is simple.
Specifically enumerated rights cannot be logically denied to exist, even if people disagree about the extent of the right in question — after all, they are written down.
Unenumerated rights require a consensus that they, in fact, exist, before you can expect official recognition and protection.
It’s like verbal versus written, witnessed, notarized contracts — even in situations where a verbal contract is legally valid and enforceable, if you cannot convince others of the existence of the contract, it’s unenforceable. Only after your establish the existence of the verbal contract can you even attempt to rebuff claims that the contract is somehow legally invalid.
With the written contract, you just produce the contract — to wiggle out of it, the person trying to get out of it has the burden of establishing that it is either forged or legally invalid.
The 2nd Amendment is a written “contract” on liberty (and one which, in our and SCOTUS’s view, was written to underscore an unwritten “contract” on liberty.) The 9th & 10th Amendments protect the wholly unwritten “contracts” on liberty.
The Article 1, Section 9 argument ultimately FAILED — that’s why the promise of a Bill of Rights was necessary to get the Constitution ratified in the first place.
The Founding Fathers of the several states simply did not TRUST the protection of Article 1, Section 9, to preserve certain specific liberties — they DEMANDED they be enumerated to eliminate any doubt of their existence.
Yes, I certainly agree with the previous two comments that the 2nd amendment (and others in the Bill of Rights) exist because the anti-federalists didn’t trust the promise of limited government. And they were right, though it took longer than they might have expected for it to become really obvious.
By the way, just because the right is specifically enumerated doesn’t protect it from being claimed to be nonexistent — all those claims that the 2nd amendment protects the existence of the National Guard illustrate this.
My point was only that the right to keep and bear arms is protected three different ways in the Constitution. The 2nd amendment is clearly the best of these, but not the only one.
No, EXACTLY wrong — the statists pushing the “collectivist” argument AGREE that the 2nd Amendment exists. . . they just claim it is a right of the states, not the people. (Yes, governments CAN have rights, particularly in relation to other governments. That old canard of “government doesn’t have rights, only authority” needs to be treated like the old, and proven false, Hitler gun control quote.)
Any day the government is in section is a shameful day in Washington
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Sadly, it won’t be their last stand. And they won’t be “coming back” either. They aren’t going anywhere. They’ll regroup and try again under new leadership (Bloomberg, perhaps) and with new resources (Bloomberg, perhaps).
I’d say I’ll miss them, but it’s hard to miss them when they won’t go away.
If you miss them, it just means you need more range time.
“It was shameful that so many people put so much effort into attempting to infringe upon a specific enumerated right. This forced millions of other people to put their own effort into stopping that attempt.”
Exactly. I resent that I have to keep aware of politics in self-defense, because so many ignorant busybodies want government to fund their pet project, prohibit their pet hate, or enact mandates for whatever fad they’re caught up in.
I have better, more useful and fulfilling things to do with my time, but unless I devote some of that time to keeping an eye on the various levels of government, I may not be ABLE to do those things.
Yet you know…you just KNOW…that if the vote had been exactly reversed it would be trumpeted from the very steps of the Capitol Building and the White House that “the people have spoken!”
The fact that you don’t like what you heard does NOT mean that the people HAVEN’T spoken.
Exactly. The president got on his high horse during the State of the Union, with his whole “They Deserve A Vote! (TM)” spiel. The victims deserve a vote. The would-be victims who stop their attackers, *mumble* not so much *mumble*, but the victims and their families, by golly, deserve a vote!
Well, they got a vote. It didn’t go the way he wanted, but all he was asking for was a simple vote, and he got it. By all logic and common decency, he should be leaving us and the issue alone.
But, because the will of WE THE F@#$ING PEOPLE, didn’t agree, he’s going to continue to push failed policies. Mark me, we’re going to see executive orders; re-hashings of the same tired proposals; and vindictive, arbitrary enforcement of victimless, previously-ignored gun laws.
We won a major battle, to be sure, but the war rages on.
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AFAIC, Washington’s most shameful day was 01-19-2013.
But that’s just me.
We should also be careful to point out one critical fact whenever statists whine about the 60 vote threshold somehow being “undemocratic” or “unConstitutional”:
It didn’t require 60 votes because the Republicans instituted a filibuster.
It was the DEMOCRATS who instituted the 60 vote threshold. NOT to invoke cloture, but because it was a deal to avoid an open debate under normal rules, and to stop the threat of additional (and stronger) amendments being proposed.
Harry Reid “deemed” unanimous consent to suspend normal rules that:
A. Limited the possible amendments to nine (all agreed in advance) amendments.
B. ELIMINATE the 30 hours of debate that would normally happen for each and every amendment.
C. Because normal debate and amendments were to be limited so Republicans couldn’t get open debate and open amendments, a 60 vote threshold was set.
Remember, the 60 vote requirement was a tactic, agreed by the Democrats, in order to give them the best chance possible to run a gun grab bill through.