Free In Idaho!

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, July 6, 1775

We are reduced to the alternative of chusing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force. — The latter is our choice. — We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. — Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable. — We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather thanto live slaves.

Would there were more who felt so today, unwilling to submit to the “voluntary slavery” of politicians seeking to control every aspect of of our lives, to control every dollar we make or spend, and to control every action, every thought and word. Would there were more who were unwilling to stand by and eat brats, drink beer, light a few sparklers, and give meer lip service to the words “freedom” and “patriotism”, all the while bitching about the government not doing enough to fix their problems.  And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

Being a citizen is more than being a member of the largest public welfare system on earth, being a patriot is more than a flag pin on your lapel or the right bumper sticker on your car.  And being free is more than just being in agreement with a few Founders’ quotes.  Do you live free?   Really?  When you say “liberty” do you know what it means?  Do you know what it costs?  Do know know what others paid so that you might hold it?  Will you be there when the next payment is due?

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
- Thomas Jefferson

Today is a great day, not just for the history but for the reminder that we still have that choice to make, and we’re called to make it, and guard it, every day.  What choice do YOU make?

Happy Fourth of July. Be free!

“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.”

                  -Samuel Adams

The Chicago Tribune on Friday called for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment.

“No, we don’t suppose that’s going to happen any time soon. But it should.

The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is evidence that, while the founding fathers were brilliant men, they could have used an editor.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

If the founders had limited themselves to the final 14 words, the amendment would have been an unambiguous declaration of the right to possess firearms. But they didn’t, and it isn’t. The amendment was intended to protect the authority of the states to organize militias. The inartful wording has left the amendment open to public debate for more than 200 years. But in its last major decision on gun rights, in 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found that that was the correct interpretation.

On Tuesday, five members of the court edited the 2nd Amendment. In essence, they said: Scratch the preamble, only 14 words count.”

Here is a classic case of letting your own personal belief system get in the way of facts, history, and even a simple reading of the documents involved.  And it is exactly the kind of thinking that the 2nd Amendment was put in place to limit, and which this Supreme Court ruling was intended to sort out and answer.  “The amendment was intended to protect the authority of the states to organize militias. “  Did you even read the Court’s decision?  The Court just buried that argument, for good, and it is about time!

History.  It actually happened, and in the case of the American Revolution, it was not only not that long ago, it was thoroughly documented.  You can look it up, and you don’t need to rely on the Chicago Tribune.  Facts.  What really happened, in what order, and who really said what.  Again, not depending on the Chicago Tribune.   Words.  They mean something, and they are included in a statement (or an Amendment) for a reason.  You don’t get to make any of this up as you go, or change the meaning to suit you, and if you try, there are plenty of witnesses to correct you.  And in this case, it is the editors of the Chicago Tribune who need help, and not the Founders of the United States of America.

The first phrase of the 2nd Amendment is not ambiguous, as this editor wants you to believe.  It is actually the guiding principal behind why the Founders felt it necessary to include the right to arms in the first place.  Remember your history… how appropriate for the week of our upcoming holiday.  At the time before the Declaration of Independence, America was not a sovereign country, and there were no “citizens of America”.  They were British subjects, under the rule of the British king.  There was no “American military”.  There was no “free state”.  The people had no rights, at least not as far as the British king was concerned.  The militia was not, strictly speaking, a governmental entity and it existed before the United States was formed.  It was made up of able bodied, and willing, citizens.  British citizens.  I add “willing” to that sentence, because many were not willing to leave the British crown.   Tories.   What our Founders risked was simply everything they had, including their lives, for the idea of liberty, the dream of freedom.  Many men refused to join, preferring instead the easy status quo, or some priviledge they enjoyed.  Many were simply timid, or afraid, or unwilling to put everything on the line for something so nebulus, and dangerous, as freedom.

It is the militia, not the military, that guarantees the security of a free state.  Ask the men and women of Lexington and Concord what they thought about the British military marching into their towns to make arrests and confiscate all the weapons.  Do you think the government’s military made them  feel secure or free? 

History says that no, they did not.  And they fought the British military all the way back to Boston.  It cost them something.  It was the militia, with their own personal weapons, that brought about the nation’s independence.  It is that militia which secures the free state, when the government oversteps its bounds, overgrows its authority, and becomes oppressive of, rather than supportive of, the rights of free citizens.  How else but by arms can a citizenry throw off an oppressive State and be free?  And what does an oppressive State do keep its subjects in bonds, but take away their means of defending themselves? 

But the Chicago Tribune editors either don’t know these things, or they are choosing to ignore them, telling instead a revision of history in support of their bastardised reading of the Constitution.  But the Court itself recognized these things

“The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.”

Note the words, for they are music

The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.

Chicago Tribune, you and the rest of the anti-liberty movement in this country don’t have enough fast talking lawyers to get by that.  No wonder you’re reduced to whining about repealing the 2nd amendment.  But not even that will change history, or facts, or the words.  And it certainly will not change the ideal of liberty.   And while today’s Justices couched this week’s Heller ruling primarily in self-defense language as it applies to crime, more than once they recognized the very real threat of government power, and the need for self defense from that too, to wit, “when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.” 

The Supreme Court spelled it out for all to see, codifying what 2nd Amendment proponents and liberty loving free citizens have been saying over two hundred years.  Unlike the Chicago Tribune editors, the majority opinion of the Supreme Court takes page after page to make the case, and tie the first part of the Amendment together with the second part, in a way that makes clear what the Founders were doing in codifying what they also knew was an “unalienable” and ancient right of a free individual to keep and bear arms, not just in defense against crime, but against a tyrannical state as well.

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.

How interesting that the press in a city famous for fraud, violence, repressive gun laws and dirty machine politics should decry the Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.   How interesting that a famous progressive Democrat candidate for President, who just happens to come from Chicago, should also be “challenged” both conceptually and honestly, by this decision.  How interesting that a Chicago Tribune writer (Eric Zorn) can write such a blatantly wrong article which mischaracterizes the decision to the point that one wonders if he even read the decision at all?

The U.S. Supreme Court’s majority opinion in District of Columbia vs. Heller last week effectively—and I would say mercifully—lops the first 13 words off the 2nd Amendment.

The 5-4 majority decreed that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” amounted to little more than so much constitutional throat-clearing.

And that those words have little bearing on the 14 words that follow: “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

When you read the whole decision however, you find that is not what it says at all.  But when the Chicago Tribune suggests that the Founders need an editor, what they are really saying is that you and I, free citizens, really don’t have the rights we think we do, and that given time they will find a way, or a sympathetic judge or two, and one day they will make it say what they want it to say.  Something like this?

“The right of the people to keep but not necessarily bear some but not all kinds of arms in public (and certainly not in all public spaces) shall not be infringed, though by that we don’t mean that guns can’t be regulated in many ways.”

But this kind of arrogance and willful pissing on the rights of citizens is typical of many progressives.  Chicago is just in the spotlight right now (San Francisco and New York are close behind), so allow me to point out the response of the city to the 2nd Amendment rights lawsuit just filed against its own firearms ban. 

Chicago is ready to defend its ban, said Jenny Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city’s law department.

“We will be prepared to fight that battle at the Supreme Court level if necessary,” she said.

Previous rulings are on the city’s side, Hoyle said.

“There are three prior Supreme Court cases that have found that the Second Amendment does not apply to state and local government and today’s decision … did not change that,” she said.

Calling on prior Supreme Court cases?  Careful there, that might not work as well as you think it might.  Sound rather like a bunch of Tories, or English Redcoats, wouldn’t you say?  And the fact that the poor citizens of Chicago subjects of Mayor Daley not only aren’t “allowed” guns, but are going to be forced into paying taxes to defend the city’s abuse is criminal. But our unalienable rights cannot be infringed or taken away by state and local governments either, and taking this to the Supreme Court will only delay the inevitable (regardless what some future court decides).  Argue about it all you want.  But when those fireworks start going off next Friday Jenny Hoyle and Eric Zorn, I want you to ask yourself, just what are they celebrating anyway? 

Some of us know what it is.  We aren’t Englishmen.
 

Saw this at Kevin’s and I’ll plug it as well.  Hope these folks sell a ton of them!

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?

Nothing in law or politics is a sure thing.  Never has been, and never will.  So I know you’re nervously awaiting the Heller decision, just like I am.

“Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possesion and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”

                                          - Patrick Henry

Update: not this morning…

10:27

Ben Winograd -  The Chief Justice has announced from the courtroom that the Court will issue all of its remaining opinions tomorrow at 10 a.m. Eastern.

I’m off to Vale, Oregon to participate in the Appleseed Shoot.  This is my Father’s Day present, and I’m pretty excited about it.  It’s expected to be 100 degrees or so over there, so I’m carrying about equal weights ammo and water.  I’ll have a report  and maybe some pictures later this weekend.

Just as a side note, we went in to town for the Dairy Days Parade last night.  There were a couple of young men sitting near us who were open carrying.  I doubt many folks even noticed (my wife didn’t).  We spoke for a minute after the parade about Appleseed, and about the assault weapons ban.  One of them mentioned that we only have a few months left to “stock up” before “the change”.   All his budget is being diverted to acquiring the things on his list before the gun grabbers take over.  Sounds about right to me.