Random thought of the day

Suppose we momentarily accept the premise of the gun control advocate that guns being used in violent crime is sufficient justification for the government to forcibly remove them from the general population. Then we, of necessity, must arrive at the conclusion that since guns are used more frequently for defensive use than offensive use that the government has sufficient justification to force the general population to acquire, train themselves, and carry guns for self-defense.

The government did the analog of that by requiring, by law, that everyone obtain health insurance. So, by whatever constitutional loopholes they pushed Obamacare through the same loopholes should be available to push a similar package of gun laws through which demand you own and carry self-defense “insurance”.

Of course such laws would be immoral as well as illegal under the constitution—if the constitution were actually observed.

Share

7 thoughts on “Random thought of the day

  1. The Constitution is observed regularly in its display case over at the Smithsonian, just as the “Star Spangled Banner”, the flag from Fort McHenry that prompted the national anthem is observed there, and the Fonz’s leather jacket from the television series “Happy Days”.
    Precedent? As Robert Heinlein said, “Precedent is the idea that someone at another time and another place, under circumstances completely different from those you face now, knows better than the man on the spot.”*
    Read it? Reading’s so old fashioned.
    As we’ve agreed before, the rule of law is at best a fond memory.

    *I say that precedent is the only thing that keeps petty officials from ruling as they damned well please, facts be damned.

  2. Congress explicitly has the authority to force everyone to get a gun and learn how to use it. US constitution, article 1, section 8, “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”
    http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html

    • Congress explicitly has the authority to force everyone to get a gun”

      ??

      That is so risible that it barely qualifies for any kind of response, least of all a reasonable one.

      But just for you, since sometimes it’s necessary to puncture holes in a hot air balloon:

      Congress was given the power to ‘provide’ for a militia, which means they can ‘provide’, as in issue, funds, arms, ordnance, subsistence, uniforms and a syllabus for training to a standard (that’s “disciplining” by the way, in the quaint verbiage of the day), if they desire.
      That last part about governing by Congress only applies when the militia is employed, that is called to duty, in National Service.
      There’s nothing in that clause that I can read about any authority Congress has otherwise to ‘force’ arms on anyone.

      • You’re wrong Miles: Congress passed The Militia Acts of 1792 that provided that every able-bodied white male between the ages of 18 and 45 had to enroll in a militia unit, and that he had to provide and keep in good condition certain equipment and supplies, including either a musket or a rifle, and a certain minimum amount of ammunition.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Acts_of_1792

        Those two acts were replaced by the nearly identical Militia Act of 1795, which wasn’t subsequently changed until 1862, when it was modified to allow Blacks to serve in the militias, and they weren’t completely removed until the Dick Act of 1903, which established the formal National Guard.

        So yeah, Congress absolutely *DOES* have the authority to make you purchase a firearm through legislation, at least, if you’re an able-bodied male between the ages of 17 and 45, which according to 10 U.S. Code § 311 makes up the bulk of the Militia of the United States.
        https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/311

        • Like I said. I should have learned to not give any attention to posts like yours that only tend to give encouragement.
          This isn’t “giving up” (as in acceding to your argument, I’m not.
          I simply don’t engage in online purse fights.
          We disagree.

  3. Well, they do now, where the power is the explicit power to provide for the imposition of a tax or a fee or a penalty or a levee or whatever the digestive state of five of the Supreme Court Justices say it is, and if the Congress has arrogated to itself the power to make the citizenry buy something for its own protection, why not protection from two-legged viruses and bacilli?
    If the equal protection clause can mean equal protection in manners not contemplated by the parties to the agreement, and whatever the reason for finding the power to impose a tax for health insurance among the delegated powers, why not also require the purchase of something besides insurance for protection from some other hazard?
    Joe is thinking pretty lawyerly here, with a natural extension of existing law. Miles has to come up with some lawyerly reasons for why the extension made for health insurance cannot be extended as Joe has described. There has to be some reason, otherwise it is like Kosinsky’s dissent in the Ninth Circuit Case I can’t be troubled to find at 20 to 1 in the morning, in which he said that judges can decide broadly when they want to and narrowly when they want to, and still use the same constitution as authority, which isn’t jurisprudence.

    • Windy;
      It is pretty much as Kozinzki wrote:

      “Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet, and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths.
      When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases–or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text.
      But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

      It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as spring-boards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us.
      As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions.
      If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny.
      If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope.
      Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences. . . . “

      But, the same fault was written about much earlier, by someone a lot of people think has much greater authority:
      “You blind guides! You filter out a gnat, yet swallow a camel!”

      Recently St George Tucker’s writings have come again to notice.
      http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/tucker-view-of-the-constitution-of-the-united-states-with-selected-writings

      Some feel that he found that people were trying to work around the restrictions of the Constitution almost before the ink was dry. In fact, he had some interesting views on “judicial review” that some find disturbing as we see now how the Supreme Court has become politicized.

      It may have been apprehended differently, but Joe’s last sentence:
      “Of course such laws would be immoral as well as illegal under the constitution—if the constitution were actually observed.”
      makes a point.

Comments are closed.