Free In Idaho!

Barack Say What They Want To Hear Obama released this statement today, in response to the Supreme Court Heller decision.  Let’s take it point by point, shall we, kind of read between the lines, and fill in the “rest of the statement”.?

I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms,

Except when they live in a state with a big city, or in D.C., or Illinois, and except for the time I didn’t believe it.

but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues

Oh yeah, it’s for the children.  Works for about 45% of Americans on everything else, so let’s use it for gun control too.

that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures.

Like the complete ban on handguns that has proven to be so effective everywhere it has been tried, like D.C. and Chicago.

The Supreme Court has now endorsed that view,

And they have agreed with me, Barack The New Politician Obama.

and while it ruled that the D.C. gun ban went too far,

which is just wrong, but that @#!^ Kennedy let us down

Justice Scalia himself acknowledged that this right is not absolute and subject to reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe.

Which is just the kind of thread I as President need to hang on to, upon which to hang a renewed effort to roll back this awful miscarriage of hope and change.

Today’s ruling, the first clear statement on this issue in 127 years,

which lack nobody I know saw any problem with

will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country.

and create a full employment situation for armies of attorneys for decades to come.

As President, I will uphold the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun-owners, hunters, and sportsmen.

And you can trust me on that because I have a clear record, and you can believe what I’m telling you.

I know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne.

Will security please take that “gentleman” from Idaho who is laughing hysterically out of the room, please?  Now, as I was saying, it works so well in Chicago that we need to expand the programs to other cities where they will work equally as well.

We can work together to enact common-sense laws,

The lawyers, my friends in the Democrat majority, and my patrons George and MoveOn, we’re all about common-sense.

like closing the gun show loophole

because we can’t have private citizens buying and selling legal guns from other private citizens now, can we?

and improving our background check system, so that guns do not fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals.

We also intend to prosecute every gun dealer in America, because even if the criminals and terrorists don’t get their guns directly from the dealers, untrained citizens are allowing their unsecured guns to be stolen, and that has to stop.  You can count on me to stop it.

Today’s decision reinforces that if we act responsibly, we can both protect the constitutional right to bear arms and keep our communities and our children safe.

And I promise to appoint the right kind of judges that will accomplish all that I intend to do to the Constitution, in order to get it just the way I want it.  Thank you for believing in me.  Sleep tight.

Some excellent quotes in this morning’s Heller decision, a couple of which I’m happy to put up here.  No doubt I and most of the other folks who write and blog about guns, freedom, and rights will be replaying these for years to come.  Share them with your families and your friends.  It’s not gloating, it is simply the truth, and the heritage we have been entrusted with.

The words mean something, and they  mean what they say

In interpreting this text, we are guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.” United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S. 716, 731 (1931); see also Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 188 (1824).  Normal meaning may of course include an idiomatic meaning, but it excludes secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation.

………

Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad.

Self defense is a pre-existing right, not granted by the government

Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment.  We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed . . . .”

That’s good stuff.  And if you need further proof that Justice Scalia and the rest of the majority “get it”, there is this

We reach the question, then: Does the preface fit with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms? It fits perfectly, once one knows the history that the founding generation knew and that we have described above. That history showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the ablebodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to suppress political opponents. This is what had  occurred in England that prompted codification of the right to have arms in the English Bill of Rights.  The debate with respect to the right to keep and bear arms, as with other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, was not over whether it was desirable (all agreed that it was) but over whether it needed to be codified in the Constitution.  During the 1788 ratification debates, the fear that the federal government would disarm the people in order to impose rule through a standing army or select militia was pervasive in Antifederalist rhetoric.

I should leave it to you to discover your own special nuggets.  And you should also read the dissenting opinions, if for no other reason than to look in the faces of four people who would tear down two centuries of liberty and take away your individual, unalienable rights, for their own political vision and goals.  The faces of tyranny, alive and well.  5-4… that was close.

I’ve read some commentaries that are concerned about the Federal vs States aspect of the Bill of Rights and today’s ruling.  Not all state constitutions are created equal, but Idaho’s is good on gun rights

Idaho Constitution Article I

SECTION 11.  RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. The people have the right to keep and bear arms, which right shall not be abridged; but this provision shall not prevent the passage of laws to govern the carrying of weapons concealed on the person nor prevent passage of legislation providing minimum sentences for crimes committed while in possession of a firearm, nor prevent the passage of legislation providing penalties for the possession of firearms by a convicted felon, nor prevent the passage of any legislation punishing the use of a firearm. No law shall impose licensure, registration or special taxation on the ownership or possession of firearms or ammunition. Nor shall any law permit the confiscation of firearms, except those actually used in the commission of a felony.

So, let me ask you, how are you going to sleep tonight?  Think it’s over?

Me either.

Did you sleep well last night, waiting for Heller?  Were you nervous that five  black robed “living Constitutionalists” might pretend to have the power to remove from you an unalienable right that was  ”endowed by their Creator”?  Did you stay awake thinking about the Brits, who long ago gave up their guns (and their rights), and even now are losing their knives?  Or did you dream of  that pounding on your door in the middle of the night?  Perhaps the Life Flight helicopter flew over you house, and you awoke with a start, thinking it was… what?  Paranoid?  Perhaps.  Then again, no less than the Left’s own Saint Thomas warned us 

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

-Thomas Jefferson

Gun? What gun?

Hole? What hole?

I’m just mindin’ my own business. You mind yours, ok?