Quote of the Day
Why are there small lifeboats on gigantic steel ocean liners? Why do we spend thousands equipping our vehicles with airbags? Why do we wear seatbelts and place our infants in safety seats? Why do we build storm shelters under our homes? Why do we install ground-fault interrupter outlets by sinks and bathtubs? Why do we get painful inoculations? Why do we voluntarily undergo sickening chemotherapy? And why do we protect ourselves with firearms?
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Sadly, there are those who seek to usher in a sort of post-Constitution era where the citizens’ individual rights are only as important as they are convenient to a ruling class. Seeking ancient laws that may partner well with a present-day infringement on a right proclaimed in the Bill of Rights without reading it in conjunction with the aforementioned history is nonsense. The Statute of Northampton cannot in the least bit be used to vex the rights of Illinois citizens in the 21st century to keep and bear arms. The oft-quoted phrase that “no right is absolute” does not mean that fundamental rights precariously subsist subject to the whims, caprice, or appetite of government officials or judges.
Stephen P. McGlynn
U.S. District Judge of the Southern District of Illinois
November 8, 2024
Barnett v. Raoul
McGlynn writes some great stuff in declaring “assault weapon” bans illegal. But his “permanent” injunction was stayed upon appeal. It will probably take SCOTUS to put an end to this nonsense. For now, it is just words and not the force of law.
Another aspect is that it’s very hard to overcome an entrenched narrative or paradigm on how something works, or should be done. Clearly mainstream modern cancer theory is trash, because the treatments are trash, but it -is- very profitable, so it continues. Critical theory and DEI is pushed because it’s politically useful and very profitable to those who push it, not because it’s truth/reality based. Etc. But anyone who challenges some of those mainstream narratives gets ostracized (at best) or de-banked, deplatformed, unemployed, and possibly killed (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno ). Sometimes it’s just the ego of the current elites who don’t want to admit they are wrong. Every try explaining that the evidence doesn’t support anything like 6,000,000 to someone, or that many/most of them were tossed in the camps because they were communist, and not simply for ethnicity? They immediately want to to say you deny ANYTHING happened and dismiss everything else you say about it, no matter what the verifiable facts are.
“Sadly, there are those who seek to usher in a sort of post-Constitution era where the citizens’ individual rights are only as important as they are convenient to a ruling class.”
Thus, it has always been, and thus it always will be. It’s just human nature expressing itself in this time frame. 2A reminds us were to stand ready and guard against what will always be with us.
” Seeking ancient laws that may partner well with a present-day infringement on a right proclaimed in the Bill of Rights without reading it in conjunction with the aforementioned history is nonsense.”
Nicely put. But maybe another way to look at it is that our forefathers were creating something new from the old.
2A was put in place to control the past attitudes as well as future ones.
Seeking laws pre-constitution is just as faulty a premise. Constitutional law was written as a controlling factor on all governmental behavior from that time forward.
” The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Is the only controlling factor. Period, end of story, done.
Everything else is just government trying to get out from under that control. And is a CRIME.
And trying to get us to look at it any other way is just a criminal trying to divert blame away from themselves.
I’m not too disappointed. The stay on a ruling is typical to let the other side appeal, and then if the appeal is denied, the ruling takes effect.
It would be better, however, if the standard regarding enumerated rights is: once the judge determines that a protected enumerated right is implicated and has a chance of succeeding on the merits, a ruling in favor of liberty/constraining government action is entered and not stayed until the next stage in the appeals process is resolved.
All court rulings are only words. And have zero force behind them unless violence is used to either enforce or nullify said ruling. The ugly reality of life is the only Rights you have are the ones you are willing to fight for, die for and most importantly kill for. If you refuse to do violence to those who refuse to recognize your Rights then you have none.