A federal judge in Maryland, speaking for the appeals court in a ruling on the Second Amendment, said something so spectacularly ignorant that I actually had to check that the report was really from NBC news and not some satire site posing as NBC news.
In a 10-4 ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, said the guns banned under a recent Maryland law (such as AR-15s) aren't protected by the Second Amendment.
Now are you sitting down? Here is the statement...."Put simply, we have no power to extend Second Amendment protections to weapons of war," Judge Robert King wrote for the court.
"Weapons of war" is precisely what the second amendment was specifically written to protect. That is why it starts off by saying "A well-regulated militia......". Numerous well-known quotes from the founders indicate they thought that the populace should be sufficiently well-armed to discourage any government from using its own army to oppress them. And the second amendment was written just a decade after the successful secession from the British Empire known as the American Revolution occurred. This revolution was started by private citizens using their private arms as "weapons of war" against the British army.
The statement by Judge King sounds like something from a person who could not pass a high-school civics class, not a sitting federal appeals-court judge writing for the court. It is utterly unconnected to the history of our nation or even the text of the amendment itself. We need federal courts with credibility in the eyes of the people. Sometimes they are our best protection against Executive and Legislative over-reach. But decisions like this one, especially backed up by asinine statements like that one, squander the public credibility of our federal courts. It is a statement taken out of context.....from reality.
Now people are upset about the recent school shootings, and we should be. But the problem is the school shootings, not our emotional distress about the school shootings. If all we are trying to do is reduce our emotional distress about the shootings and not the shootings themselves, this is the sort of delusion people will resort to. If we are trying to reduce innocent people being killed by guns, we will take a more careful approach which appreciates what has historically happened to the populations which have been disarmed by their governments over time and what has really changed since the character of mass-shootings has changed. But all that is too thoughtful for the person who is only trying to relieve their emotional distress over the shootings by demanding that the government "do something".
And of course, what is necessary for Chicago may be unnecessary and even oppressive for rural Arkansas. Yet when all decisions are made at the federal level, there will be pressure to interpret law so as to allow government to act in the worst case scenario. If some population somewhere has lost the virtue to carry powerful guns then the feds will feel pressure to let all governments everywhere restrict access to them. If some family somewhere has abused the freedom to homeschool then the feds, if they are the ones deciding, will feel pressure to let all governments everywhere intervene.
Here is where localism- decentralization of political power- ties into all this: It is not that government at any level should be powerless to restrict guns. I don't even say for sure that Maryland had no legal grounds to pass the law that they did. I only say that the original intent of the second amendment, indeed the entire Bill of Rights, was to limit the federal government only, not the state governments. The Federal Government should have no power to ban the possession of any personal weapon, even if they are identical to the weapons carried by their own soldiers. If state governments want to do so the second amendment is not applicable to them- but the amendments in their own state constitutions are.
Most states, including mine, have something similar to the second amendment in their state constitutions and that is what should be applied to the states. The feds should stay out of it. This is the original intent for the whole Bill of Rights, but as all power was directed toward the central government the truth of this knowledge was lost over time. The blue book below starts off by showing how this was the original intent of the Bill of Rights. From there it shows the ways in which control of our lives was lost over time to a vast and growing central state. It also shows what kind of policies we should be pushing for instead.
Now people are upset about the recent school shootings, and we should be. But the problem is the school shootings, not our emotional distress about the school shootings. If all we are trying to do is reduce our emotional distress about the shootings and not the shootings themselves, this is the sort of delusion people will resort to. If we are trying to reduce innocent people being killed by guns, we will take a more careful approach which appreciates what has historically happened to the populations which have been disarmed by their governments over time and what has really changed since the character of mass-shootings has changed. But all that is too thoughtful for the person who is only trying to relieve their emotional distress over the shootings by demanding that the government "do something".
And of course, what is necessary for Chicago may be unnecessary and even oppressive for rural Arkansas. Yet when all decisions are made at the federal level, there will be pressure to interpret law so as to allow government to act in the worst case scenario. If some population somewhere has lost the virtue to carry powerful guns then the feds will feel pressure to let all governments everywhere restrict access to them. If some family somewhere has abused the freedom to homeschool then the feds, if they are the ones deciding, will feel pressure to let all governments everywhere intervene.
Here is where localism- decentralization of political power- ties into all this: It is not that government at any level should be powerless to restrict guns. I don't even say for sure that Maryland had no legal grounds to pass the law that they did. I only say that the original intent of the second amendment, indeed the entire Bill of Rights, was to limit the federal government only, not the state governments. The Federal Government should have no power to ban the possession of any personal weapon, even if they are identical to the weapons carried by their own soldiers. If state governments want to do so the second amendment is not applicable to them- but the amendments in their own state constitutions are.
Most states, including mine, have something similar to the second amendment in their state constitutions and that is what should be applied to the states. The feds should stay out of it. This is the original intent for the whole Bill of Rights, but as all power was directed toward the central government the truth of this knowledge was lost over time. The blue book below starts off by showing how this was the original intent of the Bill of Rights. From there it shows the ways in which control of our lives was lost over time to a vast and growing central state. It also shows what kind of policies we should be pushing for instead.
