Sunday Los Angeles Times [Gun case likely to be landmark ruling by David Savage ] misses the point. Our Supreme Court will take up the case of McDonald v. Chicago, a case about a man whose civil rights have been denied by way of a local gun ban. McDonald wants a gun for personal protection, and the City says more guns will only make the matter worse.
Did anyone ask gun owners what they know that anti-gun organizations hide? This article doesn't seem to have consulted gun owners, but only anti-gun organizations. (Assumption of gun rights positions isn't consulting gun owners, the people most affected by gun bans.)
The issue is city rule versus self-rule, at its heart. Public servants write laws which may go generations without objection, but silence isn't an imprimatur of governing by consent. It has been governance by intimidation. There are tons of laws found to be unconstitutional every year, concepts I call unc laws.
Unc laws are regulations, public laws, bills, administrative findings, rulings, dicta, disciplinary actions, penalties, taxes and other legalese which go against the Constitution either at the time against a righteous citizen protest or later found to be unconstitutional. Unc laws operate outside of due process actually, and operate by fiat and not a love of the law. Gun bans are unc laws backed by the force of the state in a nation where the citizen was declared to be sovereign, which sovereignty is backed by our own lethal force over the servant. (This is why such unc laws are written: to dispute just who is the sovereign under our system!)
David Savage writes, "On the other side are prosecutors and police who say the city's ban on handguns gives them a legal basis for confronting gang members and drug dealers."
Unc law. What legal basis is that? Sounds more like fruit of the poisoned tree to me.
It's also that "On the other side" perspective of opposing this right that gets 90 million gun owners. As I said, the issue at its heart is city rule versus self-rule.
Law enforcement has many tools it can use to fight crime and violence without interfering with the right of the very people they serve. Other states manage without banning guns. In fact, it's common to hear that where they have more guns, they have less crime.
Savage frames the issue as the language of 2A giving the states the power to control armed militias. No, wrong again. The Bill Of Rights does not grant citizens rights, it puts Government on notice as to what it may not legally do, and recognizes a pre-constitution right of the sovereign. The First Amendment cited by Savage is not absolute. It shouldn't be. The Second Amendment is absolute because it is the lethal force which backs our sovereign authority over the very people who take guns.
Had Mr. Savage consulted gun owners, he would have learned that the term Militia within the meaning of the Second Amendment was the everyman, and that today's meaning of the term even harkens back to that by keeping the concept alive in U.S. Code Title 10, Section 311. This is because there was no one else at the time of the framing era, and Savage should have learned that the concept of National Guard hadn't even been contemplated for another 130 years.
But he didn't ask. He noodled it out. And readers receive a slanted viewpoint that is against guns. This cheats readers out of information they need to make their best informed decisions for which they turned to newspapers. Interpreting the Constitution is not to be done in modern terms, but in framing-era terms on issues that are unchanging for every generation. Freedoms do not change because the servants say so; rights and liberty remain unchanging because the sovereign says so.
It's not that gun ownership is a crime in gun ban locales – it is that it was made a crime in the twentieth century by the very people who are limited to being servants and certainly not the sovereign.
Unc laws don't make our streets safer, they make them unsafer. .jpg)
Reporters turning in an article on gun control should be consulting private gun owners if they're going to consult anti-gun owners. A reporter could get an education that way.
Yes, McDonald could very well become a landmark ruling. And it very well could, as Savage writes, ".. open the door to gun rights suits nationwide".
Absolutely. America has shown the world that with every affirmed right, more unc laws fall away, and when unc laws fall away, the entire nation benefits with... you guessed it: safer streets.
Be sure to register for my Safer Streets Newsletter.
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Longenecker's book - Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry of Handguns - is also available as an e-book and as a special Limited Edition 2 GB USB flash drive with added commentary.
Comments
I disagree that he is uneducated on the subject. He is a reporter. He has been exposed to the history of the issue, he has been exposed to principles involved. He rejected them. He made a choice for evil. You are far too merciful toward him when you intimate that if he were educated on the subject he would have written a more honest article. We need to quit assuming those who would enslave don't mean to enslave us, they are just uninformed. That dog just won't hunt.
They are enemies. It really isn't any more complicated than that. Once we accept that we can beat them. But, not so long as we continue to treat and accept them amiable dunces.
"as" insert third to last word in above. Damn fingers.
I believe that two out of three non-gun owners may be educatable, and that the remaining one of three are absolute communists with no blood in their veins.
Today, I wrote a piece acknowlsedging the Times for its arrival at the very same thing that is the second amendment. How could they not and still be honest. Today, they were honest in seeing how 2A protect 1A, and I give them the credit for that. No matter what they say from now on, this is on the record.
The thing to understand now is that 2A must be absolute in order to protect anything, and that means no gun control anymore.
In fact, that's another article!!
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