A Time for Change

I recently posted about a very nasty mass murder in Miami and stated that I think there should be an assault gun ban.  Due to a personal experience and my own personal beliefs, I was expressing my opinion. I think too many lives are lost due to guns each year and the line must be drawn and loopholes in gun laws closed.  Along came someone named “Demensio” who takes comments to the length of harassment due to length and frequency, along with a bevy of his NRA- frat brothers and sisters. Some were rude on my blog, others less so, but they never revealed that they NRA shills and that they blog to promote NRA  gun propaganda.  In fact, most use phony email addresses when they leave comments. However, I received a pingback about a post on one of their blogs about my post and comments:

So, here’s some background: I was over at a blog, commenting on another “ban assault weapons” post. There was some good back and forth, the pro-ban crowd was represented by the blog’s writer, Catherine, and to some extent Skyewriter.

COMMENTS:

Mike W. said…

wow that woman was delusional (the author of the original blog post.)      

I can’t help but feel sorry for folks like that.

January 30, 2009 10:35 AM

Rustmeister said…

Yeah, she was one step away from fingers in ears, lalalala      

Ya know what I mean. =)

 

 This is their banner.  

I do not belong to any such “propaganda” group for gun control advocates. Apparently, if someone has a different opinion, they are “delusional.”  Well, I am a lawyer, with over a quarter of a century of education at some very good schools.  I make a good living and do the things I am supposed to do as a member of society, including contributing through charitable works.  I am certainly not delusional.

I suppose the hard core gun right wingnuts think I am because I never bought their ludicrous argument that the Second Amendment is intended to allow people to overthrow the government if the government gets out of line.  Well, Timothy McVeigh, here we come.  And they say that I am delusional?  LOL!

For those who are interested, that is not what the Second Amendment was intended to do.  I cite below text from the Brady website interpreting the second Amendment as I did in my replies to their comments on my blog:

The concept of a “well regulated Militia” is somewhat foreign to 20th century America, but it is central to the meaning of the Second Amendment.

At the time the U.S. Constitution was adopted, each of the states had its own “militia” — a military force comprised of ordinary citizens serving as part-time soldiers. Most of the adult male population was required by state law to enlist in the militia. The militia was “well regulated” in the sense that its members were subject to various legal requirements. They were, for example, required to report for training several days a year, to supply their own equipment for militia use, including guns and horses, and sometimes to engage in military exercises away from home.

The purpose of the militia was expressed in the Second Amendment — to assure “the security of a free State” — against threats from without (e.g. invasions) and threats from within (e.g. rebellions, riots, etc.).

The “militia” was not, as some gun control opponents have claimed, simply another word for the armed citizenry. It was an organized military force, “well regulated” by the state governments. Noah Webster’s Dictionary of 1828 defines “militia” as: “…the able bodied men organized into companies, regiments and brigades, with officers of all grades, and required by law to attend military exercises on certain days only, but at other times left to pursue their usual occupations.”

When the Constitution was sent to the states for ratification in 1787, the continued viability of the state militia was a central issue. The new Constitution established a permanent army composed of professional soldiers and controlled by the federal government. The “Anti-Federalists,” who sought changes in the newly proposed Constitution, were fearful of the federal standing army authorized by the Constitution. The use of troops by George III as an instrument of oppression was still fresh in their memories.

The Anti-Federalists saw the state militia as an effective counterpoint to the power of the standing army but they were concerned that the federal government had excessive power over the militia. They argued that the Constitution left the arming of the state militia exclusively to the federal government. During the Virginia ratification debates, Patrick Henry asked: “When this power is given to Congress without limits or boundary, how will your militia be armed?”

The Second Amendment was written in response to this Anti-Federalist concern. The Amendment affirms that the keeping and bearing of arms in a “well regulated Militia” of the states is a “right of the people,” not dependent on the whim of the federal government. The original intent of the Second Amendment, therefore, was to prevent the federal government from passing laws that would disarm the state militia.

The Second Amendment in the Twentieth Century

The Second Amendment has become an anachronism, largely because of drastic changes in the militia it was designed to protect. We no longer have a citizen militia in which a large portion of the population is enrolled for part-time military service and required by the government to maintain private arms for such service. As the nation grew, it became unworkable and unduly expensive for the states to impose military training and service on that many Americans.

The modern “well regulated Militia” is the National Guard — a state-organized military force of ordinary citizens serving as part-time soldiers, like the early state militia. However, unlike the early militia, the National Guard is of more limited membership and depends on government-supplied — not privately owned — arms. Whereas in 1787 federal restrictions on privately owned guns may have interfered with the “well regulated Militia,” this is not the case today. Gun control laws have no effect on the arming of today’s militia, since those laws invariably exempt the National Guard. Therefore, they raise no serious Second Amendment issue.

“The purpose of the Second Amendment is to restrain the federal government
from regulating the possession of arms where such regulation would
interfere with the preservation or efficiency of the militia.”

U.S. v. Hale, 978 F.2d 1016 (8th Cir. 1992)

The Second Amendment in the Courts

As a matter of law, the meaning of the Second Amendment has been settled since the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). In that case, the High Court wrote that the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment was “to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness” of the state militia. The Court added that the Amendment “must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.” Since Miller, the Supreme Court has addressed the Second Amendment in two cases. In Burton v. Sills, 394 U.S. 812 (1969), the Court dismissed the appeal of a state court ruling upholding New Jersey’s strict gun control law, finding the appeal failed to present a “substantial federal question.” And in Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55 (1980), the Court upheld the federal law banning felons from possessing guns. The Court found no “constitutionally protected liberties” infringed by the federal law.

In addition, in Maryland v. United States, 381 U.S. 41 (1965) and Perpich v. Department of Defense, 496 U.S. 334 (1990), cases not involving the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court has affirmed that today’s militia is the National Guard.

Since Miller was decided, lower federal and state courts have addressed the meaning of the Second Amendment in more than thirty cases. In every case, the courts have decided that the Amendment guarantees a right to be armed only in connection with service in a “well regulated Militia.” The courts unanimously have rejected the NRA’s view that the Second Amendment is about the self-defense or sporting uses of guns. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit wrote, the courts “have analyzed the Second Amendment purely in terms of protecting state militias, rather than individual rights.” United States v. Nelson, 859 F.2d 1318 (1988).

The Second Amendment and the Gun Control Debate

The National Rifle Association spends millions of dollars every year to foster its myth that the Second Amendment guarantees a broad, individual right to be armed that precludes virtually every restriction on private ownership of guns. The gun lobby’s efforts have had a profound influence on the gun control debate. Public opinion polls show that, although more than 60% of Americans erroneously believe that the Constitution gives them a right to be armed, only a minority of Americans believe that it should grant that right. It is time for the American people to know the truth about the Second Amendment and for the NRA’s systematic distortion of our Constitution to stop.

As Former Harvard Law School Dean Erwin Griswold put it, “to assert that the Constitution is a barrier to reasonable gun laws, in the face of the unanimous judgment of the federal courts to the contrary, exceeds the limits of principled advocacy. It is time for the NRA and its followers in Congress to stop trying to twist the Second Amendment from a reasoned (if antiquated) empowerment for a militia into a bulletproof personal right for anyone to wield deadly weaponry beyond legislative control.”

Now they want you to believe that they need to cling to high powered military-style rifles so that they can protect this country from an evil government that they may need to overthrow?  

Bellevue anyone?  

No wonder the NRA is getting its butt kicked in court and in the court of public opinion.  People don’t want anymore of these private militias ala Waco ( or Whacko as I call it).

On another post on the NRA shill’s blog I found the following which is intended to advocate on behalf of gun owners.  It is completely disingenuous and not well founded in fact, but it is telling.

Well, by now you’ve seen it. The part that was first noticed on Obama’s website has moved, part & parcel, to Whitehouse.gov (emphasis mine)

Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

So, how do we get the message out? How can we get people to realize they’ve been hoodwinked (bamboozled!) on this issue? I was meditating on this very issue this morning, and this is what I’ve come up with.

First, the “don’t” list:

1. Don’t start out by telling them they are stupid. That includes phrases like “Do you know what an “assault weapon” is?”  (Don’t say they are stupid, just go back on your blog and say when you think that they don’t know about it or laugh at them behind their back after you talk to them at how stupid they really are).
2. Don’t get technical. Don’t even get into the difference between automatic and semi-automatic. They don’t care.
3. Don’t start out by claiming the politicians are lying. They are, but saying so isn’t a good way to start.
4. Don’t, please for the love of all that is good in the world, don’t tell them the Second Amendment was written so we could oppose our government once it became corrupt. No matter how true it is, don’t say that. They’ll think you’re nuts.

As to number 4, yes, I think they’re nuts and they know not what the Second Amendment is all about.