I give them an A for honesty:
Now, it seems some Hawaiian lawmakers have introduced a resolution calling for a repeal of the Second Amendment.
BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Thirtieth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2019, the House of Representatives concurring, that the United States Congress is urged to propose and adopt a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution pursuant to article V of the United States Constitution to clarify the constitutional right to bear arms; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the United States Congress is requested to consider and discuss whether the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution should be repealed or amended to clarify that the right to bear arms is a collective, rather than individual, constitutional right; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to the President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Members of the Hawaii congressional delegation, and the Governor.
So there you have it. At least some lawmakers are clear about their intentions. They want to see the complete and total repeal of the Second Amendment.
Go here to read the rest. Increasingly the Left in this country is at war with what Americans have viewed as rights of the citizen. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms are only some of the rights the Left regard as dispensable, at least for their enemies. We are entering dire times.
Some time ago, I predicted that there would be some sort of uprising, perhaps a violent one, in this nation. The Left is unhinged, increasingly radical, and obtuse to the world. If there is a second Civil War, it will be urban versus rural, Middle America versus the coasts, elitists and welfare recipients against everyone else.
Our modern Leftist Elite thinks it is immune. So did the enemies of Cromwell and Robespierre.
So far, the Left generates noise out of proportion to it’s relative strength. Nationalist and traditional values populism is gaining ground in many places. In Canada, the scandal involving the corrupt Montreal engineering firm may finish the empty suit Trudeau and give sufficient backbone for English speaking Canada to stand up to their chauvinist Quebec countrymen ( or not, that is Canada, eh).
The long term Outlook is that the Left will lose…..but not until after they have created much greater damage.
Hawaii is stupid. I will not go there.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson with his book. 12 Rules for Life an antidote to chaos is enlightening many of our people especially in Canada. Let us hope and pray that it is not too little too late. Pray the Rosary and consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in our privacy. People as laity can bless each and every one.
and remember to send your very own Guardian Angel
If the Second Amendment is changed, the change will need three fourths of the states to ratify the change, but worse than that, the change will affect our Armed Forces who are American citizens who are called to carry weapons. We, the people are the “militia” always have been and always will be. Perhaps they will next ban pitchforks, rakes, tar and feathers and rails. They cannot ban the mind of man.
What’s interesting about the 2d Amendment is that in the last generation our appellate judiciary has reclaimed a fidelity to the text that hadn’t been there previously. I cannot think of another constitutional provision for which this has been true. That’s completely incongruent with the spirit of the legal academy. On this issue, history faculties have been selectively willing to countenance fraud in the service of their preferences. See some of the brickbats between Saul Cornell and Clayton Cramer.
The other interesting thing is that liberals are generally indifferent to law enforcement if not hostile to it. (Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch were notable exceptions). Michael Dukakis was the modal type among liberal politicians of his vintage. I don’t think you’re going to find a longitudinal or cross-sectional study of any rigor which will demonstrate that the regime in gun law is anything but a minor vector in influencing crime rates.
You’ve had fantastically successful efforts to restore public order in NYC, something liberals ignore or make deceptive attempts to explain away (Michael Massing, I’m looking at you). Instead, they hand you the issue of their cargo cult mentality. They fancy that if we had Britain’s gun laws, we’d have Britain’s crime rates. (1) No, we wouldn’t and (2) they’re misrepresenting Britain’s crime statistics to boot.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the gun control discourse (on the part of Barack Obama in particular) is just another Democratic Party / media complex wedge issue. It’s a way to stick the blame for slum crime on classes of people who are despised in and among the bourgeois guilds who make up the Democratic Party. The people slated to take the rap are hobbyists who live in exurbs, small towns, and rural areas. That violent crime is unusual in such areas (and house burglaries a modest fraction of what similar areas in Britain suffer) is something you’re not supposed to remember.
Only the dimmest of dimwits would fail to realize that the left has but one goal in its long-sought agenda to disarm the populace, and that goal is easy conquest and total control of all free people, just as it has been by every totalitarian entity since the gun was invented.
The response, if inadequate, is probably the very last issue a free America will face.
In the video at 3:50 Madison says “placing the sovereignty into the hand of the people instead of the state” The sovereign personhood endowed to man by God institutes the sovereign state. The state must acknowledge as it does in The Declaration of Independence that the sovereign personhood of man institutes the sovereign state. The state must absolutely acknowledge the sovereign personhhood of its citizens to be instituted.
“the right to bear arms is a collective, rather than individual, constitutional right”
What Is a “collective right”? Can someone give some examples? I’ve tried to think of some but they always ended up being used by individuals.
USCCB will joyfully, prayerfully embrace this sick change to the US Constitution.
In fact, pew sitters will be chastised if they resist this change.
Bet on it.
Lock and load.
I don’t care what any of those progressives say about their commonsense gun control. Any restriction is a step to gun banning. Period. I don’t believe one lying liberal when they say “we do not want to ban your right to bear arms.”
Ask a liberal if they feel they and their children have a right to live out their lives in peace. They will say yes. Then ask them if they should have the right to defend their lives or those of their children. Of course they’ll say. Ask them if they believe complete strangers have the right to restrict and control when and in what way to defend themselves. At this point they pause and tentatively will shake their head and say no that no one should determine how another human being should defend their lives. Then….ask them this last question: Why are you trying to tell me how to defend myself then?
My liberal adult son still has not answered my question when I asked 3 years ago.
Ah…one last question. If the law abiding citizen obeys the law and turns over all his guns should a future law be enacted, ask an anti-gun liberal if they will guarantee that criminals will also turn all their guns into the police and not leave us defenseless.
I am not really a gun person. I never owned a gun until the year Obama took office and then I bought a mini-14 rifle only because his election constituted a threat to our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. I have actually shot my rifle only once – at a rifle range. Again, guns don’t hold any fascination for me. After all, I was a nuclear submariner, and we used torpedoes and Subroc nuclear missiles. But I will say this. If the Democrats continue, then we will have to do what Mattathias and his sons did in opposing the evil Seleucid overlords in 1st Maccabees chapter 2. Frankly that scares me. Only a fool would want that outcome. But we have a right to keep and bear arms to defend ourselves and our families. It’s a God-given and Biblical right no matter what the effeminate sodo-clerics in the USCCB or the Vatican say.
LQC there are several things clerics say that are not in harmony with our Catechism though they try to vocalize their opinions with authority. For a long time now I have felt as if I haven’t had an Ecclesial shepherd to guide me in the Truth.
I also bought guns when Obama was elected more for defense against the raging left than the government at this point. I have familiarized myself with them and have bought enough ammo to defend my wife and I if need be. However that thought also scares me LQC. I do not want any of this but feel we are not left with much of a choice.
President Trump should go Full Dad on this: “Hawaii, we brought you into the Union in 1960. We can take you right back out again!”
You should take that Ruger to the range more often Lucius. It’s a fun gun to shoot.
Hell hath no fury as that of a woman scorned. The Constitution is written for the individual sovereign person who institutes the sovereign state. Justice and Truth will be served.
You know what? I at least applaud them for trying to go about it honestly and by the rules rather than with some sneaky, underhanded trick.
I’d vote against them but let them bring forth the arguments and have the debate fair and square.
I have been a shooter, hunter and small budget gun-collector since I was a kid. My predilection apart, the right is inherent to self-defense and to being part of a free society, and an essential guard against tyranny.
“President Trump should go Full Dad on this: “Hawaii, we brought you into the Union in 1960. We can take you right back out again!”
It is not Hawaii. the people backing this ought to be exiled.
Maryland House passed a Right To Die bill today. If the Senate passes it, there’s hope Gov. Hogan(R) will veto it. Hogan has been diagnosed with cancer. Believe he is in remission.
Thank you CAM. Sen. Andy Harris will be heartbroken.
People who stop willing to live do die. The newly begotten infant must actively will to survive or he becomes a miscarriage. To redefine the human person as having or needing a RIGHT to die is a lie and a path to legalizing homicide. The right to die is the usurpation of a consummate power over another human being by the state. The all powerful state does not have a “right to die” to give to any citizen, no more than the state has the power to give to any person to end human life at any stage. The sovereign state is instituted by the sovereign personhood of its people to govern in Truth and Justice. There is no Justice in denying any person the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, human needs before all time. Self-defense dictates that all persons sublimate their will to “their Creator” to live in Truth and Justice. To impose a “right to die” on the people is Satanic, below and beneath the dignity of the state. A “right to die” is a lie.
John F Kennedy asked: “What Is a “collective right”? Can someone give some examples?”
Yes, the right of a University to confer degrees, the right of the Faculty of Advocates to admit and expel members, the right of a board of directors to appoint a manager or declare a dividend, the right of commoners to make bylaws for the common grazings…
Yes, the right of a University to confer degrees, the right of the Faculty of Advocates to admit and expel members, the right of a board of directors to appoint a manager or declare a dividend, the right of commoners to make bylaws for the common grazings
Those aren’t rights. Those are franchises.
Correct. Additionally, for a right to be a collective right it would have to be used collectively. The closest that I can think of this is the “right” of revolution set forth by Mr. Jefferson in the Declaration. Of course any “right” you can only assert by toppling the existing government is not a right that is legally established. Of course, the same could have been said about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
1) Isn’t it true that the Miller case expressed the opinion (probably only as dicta) that repeal of the 2nd Amendment would simply remove the power of Congress to enable militia regulations (i.e. pass gun control) and so devolve that poser solely to the states?
2) Can the militia as a legal institution actually be abolished? It sounds a lot like abolishing the citizenry. Aren’t there some things that are so basic to law that the law cannot do without them?
power, not poser. Freudian slip, sorry
Militias are creations of government and can be abolished. However, the people would retain the right of revolution set forth in the Declaration of Independence. It is beyond the power of any government to take that right away. Governments may seek to make the right impossible to exercise, but the right remains nonetheless, as even a cursory study of history reveals.
“1) Isn’t it true that the Miller case expressed the opinion (probably only as dicta) that repeal of the 2nd Amendment would simply remove the power of Congress to enable militia regulations (i.e. pass gun control) and so devolve that poser solely to the states?”
I don’t see that in the Miller decision issued in 1939 by the Supreme Court.
Someone —probably Wayne LaPierre or another NRA spokesman— once snarked that if liberals treated the 2nd Amendment the same way they treated the 1st, you’d be required to own a gun even if you didn’t want to.
But that was a long time ago. Liberals have “evolved.” Now they treat the 1st Amendment more or less like they treat the 2nd.
“I don’t see that [that repeal of the 2nd Amendment would simply remove the power of Congress to enable militia regulations] in the Miller decision issued in 1939 by the Supreme Court.”
From Miller:
The Constitution, as originally adopted, granted to the Congress power —
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; 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.
With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such forces, the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.
“Militias are creations of government and can be abolished. However, the people would retain the right of revolution set forth in the Declaration of Independence.”
Isn’t that a contradiction? As you pointed out, Don, the right to revolt is a collective right. To exercise it the people must be free to assemble with their arms. To exercise it effectively they would have to have some kind of institutional structure. What else could they legally be called once they did that?
The Miller decision relied upon bad history to turn the Second Amendment into being about regulation of militia rather than granting an individual right to bear arms. It does not say that the repeal of the Second Amendment would strip Congress of the power to regulate the militia, since Congress possessed the power to call forth the militia from the body of the Constitution and had the power to regulate the federalized militia thus called forth. Congress passed a Militia Act of 1792 based upon the authority granted under the Constitution, and it was first exercised during the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794.
“To exercise it effectively they would have to have some kind of institutional structure.”
Spartacus begs to differ. Institutional structures will appear in times of revolution. Prior to the Revolution the militias of most states were moribund institutions, the Indians only being a threat on far away frontiers. It was the Revolution that breathed life into the militias and not vice versa.
The right to revolt is more like the right to collectively resist an oppressive tyranny and restore ordered liberty. That needs to be kept firmly in mind when talking about the right to revolt (n.b. not saying anyone doesn’t hold that understanding here). Otherwise, you end up shrieking about the patriotism of dissent and murmuring darkly about collusions and about refusals to accept the will of the voters.
The right of revolution must always be read along with this passage in the Declaration:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Trump’s uncouthness, bullying and braggadocio are clearly insufferable.
Crybullies and Wokescolds unite! Subscribe to the Bulwark today and receive a 10% discount when you reserve a cabin on our next cruise!
Donald R McClarey wrote, “for a right to be a collective right it would have to be used collectively. The closest that I can think of this is the “right” of revolution.”
Or a right of assembly?
“Of course, the same could have been said about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” About them being a collective rights? If they are defined in that manner then the left already treats them as collective rights. Only some “persons” have a right to life as the left celebrated recently in NY. Ask some bakers and photographers about liberty and their pursuit of happiness. In today’s USA only some people are allowed these rights.
No, they are like the right to revolution in that they exist independent of governments, and are thereby unalienable.
i.e. “Natural” rights, as they used to say.
Hogan has been diagnosed with cancer. Believe he is in remission.
The ratio of annual deaths to new diagnoses is about 0.27 with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Apparently he’s had an unusually aggressive case of it. You can tell the treatments were an ordeal physically for him.
Don is correct. Miller’s reasoning was ahistorical. My constitutional law professor — a truly honest liberal — authored the most erudite article ever written on our Second Amendment — below. I hope all of you will take a moment to download it and read it. He writes with uncommon clarity and economy.
https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol43/iss6/5/
I should note that the article’s author, Wm. Van Alstyne (or V A — as he was known by all his students), passed away last month at the age of 84. Like all men he was flawed, but his intellectual power and honesty were irrepressible, as was his kindness and patience with his students. His willingness to publicly address, with uncommon honesty, the most difficult and contentious legal issues of his era might well have cost him a Supreme Court seat, but his scholarship always trumped his ambitions.
“Or a right of assembly?”
An assembly is composed of one person at a time. An assembly is an aggregate of sovereign persons all bringing their sovereign personhood with them. A revolution may consist in one single solitary individual like the tank man in Tiananmen Square.
“franchise” is a good name for the legally artificial person of the corporate…the state or government and the militia, all comprised of individual sovereign persons. It is important to remember that the Constitution is written for the individual sovereign person who is a citizen and who institutes the government. (The government may be instituted by a single individual sovereign person… on a desert island)