Enforcing the Second Amendment

I have been advocating this for quite a while and I’m glad to see someone else is advocating for it as well:

We have this legal tool on our side to arrest and prosecute anyone, of any office, who violates our constitutional rights. The time is now. Enforce Title 18, USC, Section 241. We just need to agree now on an orderly procedure for carrying this out.

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13 thoughts on “Enforcing the Second Amendment

  1. friends:

    good idea.

    by petition? it would be interesting to launch such a criminal action by petition.

    after all, in shipping arms to the syrian rebels, obama has violated two international embargoes on shipment of arms to that country, …. , one a u.n. arms embargo, the other imposed by the euro union.

    look it up. it’s true. you can also google it at http://www.wintersoldier2008.typepad.com, if you wish. yes, i am the proprietor of the blog, and i hope i don’t violate any rules here by posting the link. if i do, please take this post down.

    but, i think it is something that needs to be more widely known, and thus far, the issue seems ignored everywhere.

    john jay

    • P.S. If you haven’t read this, he rakes both Bundy and Sonia Sotomayor over the coals for being “political Lance Armstrongs” who must win at any cost.

      I looked over his website and he doesn’t seem to write many opinion pieces but this was so well-written, it left me wanting more.

      • To fight monsters, we created our own. What else is new?

  2. Amendment IIC is redundant at best. It assumes restrictions on the keeping and bearing of arms, while any and all such restrictions are clearly prohibited. And for that matter there are those who would not mind limiting police armament if it meant the entire populace could be disarmed along with them. Just redefine “police” and you still have a heavily armed force for keeping the slaves in line.

    Also; let’s not make the mistake that the founders are accused (wrongly) of making, by limiting the definition of “arms” to firearms, as is done in the essay. We don’t know what technologies will be available 200 years from now. The second amendment says nothing of firearms, per se, as you all know.

    As has been discussed here already, no mere words on paper (or any other media) can in and of themselves protect liberty. The second amendment, and the others, worked fairly well for a while, but the whole constitution has been eroded slowly and in some case imperceptibly. That’s the way of it. That’s the Progressive method, and it’s always worked.

    No constitution can hold up without a conscious, moral people. The author admits that we are not a conscious, moral people, and so again, words on paper are worth the value of the ink and paper, or a little bit less. They’re as powerful as a candy wrapper or a square of toilet paper when it comes to protecting liberty. They’re as potent a protection of liberty as a “gun free zone” sign is capable of stopping a determined killer.

    It is very well understood that a demoralized society is a society in decline, one way or another toward eventual deadly calamity. It that simple. Meeting lawyer-speak with lawyer-speak my be entertaining for a while, though in the end it does nothing but encourage the lawyers.

  3. Lyle, having been a cop for 25 years, I’m here to tell you that it’s not the guns that make the police. It’s not even the uniforms. It’s the mindset in the citizens that the police MUST.BE.OBEYED. because it’s impossible that they’re wrong.

    If half the folks who rail in support of the 2A were to shift their sights and criticize unconstitutional actions of police, particularly 18 USC 241, we could sort out a Constitutional society quickly.

    No other Amendment in the Bill of Rights is emphasized as the Second is. The phrase, “shall not be infringed” appears nowhere else. This tells me and every cogent person out there that the Founders were placing additional emphasis on the literal meaning of the 2A when they wrote and voted in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Now that SCOTUS has affirmed the Individual Right, and that it subtends outside the home, it’s time to apply “shall not be infringed” and begin to reject the 20 or 30 thousand infringements which have un-Constitutionally crept into our lawbooks.

    • When did SCOTUS rule that “it subtends outside the home”? I must have missed that ruling….

      • The text of the opinion states that it does not purport to address the entirety of the right, but lists restrictions that are not presumptively unlawful. If laws on carry in sensitive places are not such, then laws on all carry must be by extension. Similarly, if the need to keep and bear (defined as “carry ready for defense” in the opinion) a handgun is particularly “acute” in the home, then it must exist, but be less acute to some degree, outside of the home.

        Thus the right to carry in public definitely exists per Heller, but its limits are as of yet undefined.

        http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html

        “Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment , nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”

        “The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute.”

  4. The problem I see with those federal laws is: how can you get anyone charged under those laws? A DA could bring the charges, but obviously no federal DA will do so. But is there any way for a normal person to activate that law? If not, then it’s really just a dead letter, or perhaps something kept around for selective enforcement against the current enemies of the government.

    • That’s the rub. The Feds clearly won’t enforce laws that restrict the power of government … Them, or anyone else for that matter unless it’s a level of government that’s challenging the Feds’ power.
      Until the people realize … And firmly assert … That they are in fact the government, not some lawyers and bureaucrats, nothing will get better. It will almost certainly require that the lawyers and bureaucrats be restrained by force because they will not willingly give up the power to rule everyone else.

    • I have been told by someone purporting to be an attorney that a civil rights interpretation of RKBA tied to 18USA241/242 is “novel” and, requiring as it does, action on the part of a U.S. Attorney in deciding to prosecute such crimes, the probability of which is nul (based on the scarcity of resources to engage in such prosecution), this ain’t gonna happen.

      Which leads me to ponder… They say, “You can’t fight City Hall.” Based on the notion that City Hall has WAY more resources than the individual citizen to engage in court. But does it? When you go up against the government, are you not facing an individual bureaucrat, with a limited budget and a mission he must fulfill in order to justify his budget? Can you not fight him through attrition and wear him down until his budget is exhausted?

      Standing? Include the judge denying you standing in your suit. Demand he recuse himself. And so-forth.

      M

      • I’m no legal tactician. Far from it. Frankly the whole process disgusts me to the core.

        Still, 241 & 242 are sufficiently broad in language, and since they are tied to the “civil rights” issue, and since the civil rights issue was specifically tied and specifically referenced to RKBA, there’s no reason why 241/242 can’t be applied to the second amendment.

        Copied from 242;
        “Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights…”

        Emphasis mine. It’s right there in black and white, just waiting for someone with some balls. It is by design not even the slightest bit vague or ambiguous.

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