By GREG WHITELos Alamos
The issue of gun control and the Second Amendment generates strong feelings for many people. Several past letters have been based on “facts” (opinions) rather than actually facts.
As I expressed when I ran for sheriff I am the strongest supporter of both the 2nd Amendment and true, not political, common sense gun legislation. The two are not incompatible. And the Founding Fathers put both in the Constitution.
Under the Obama administration the Bill of Rights page of the National Archives introduced the document stating, “Fresh in their minds was the memory of the British violation of civil rights before and during the Revolution. They demanded a “bill of rights” that would spell out the immunities of individual citizens.” The Trump administration has gone into far greater detail but I have a copy of the Obama page if anyone wants to see it.
Notice the use of the wording “individual immunities”. Now let’s read from the 1789 Joint Resolution of Congress: (https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript):
“The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added”.
Notice the use of the words “prevent”, “misconstruction”, “abuse of power” and “restrictive”. All of which clearly demonstrate the Bill of Rights (aka the First Ten Amendments) is to keep the Federal Government from interfering with the rights of the individual States and their citizens.
The 2nd Amendment is short and sweet: “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.”
This is one single sentence. the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be read separate from the need for a State Militia. And not just a bunch of armed citizens but a “well regulated Militia”. If the Founding Fathers had wanted individual people to have a right to guns they would not have written the first half of the sentence. But they also did not prohibit it by choosing to use the word “people” rather than “the right of the States to keep Arms”.
Today’s terminology for Militia is National Guard. As Militia’s in Revolutionary times just as today’s National Guard were controlled by the individual States, that word in this context obviously refers to the individual States and not the Federal Govt. as some have tried to distort it to mean (think of the movie Enemy of the State). Also since the Continental Congress made clear that these Amendments were to restrict the Federal Govt. and protect individual citizens it makes sense in only one way, the “State” is the individual States. Also reference, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-congress-officially-creates-the-u-s-army , “The first version of the Army worked with state militias on the fight for independence.”
Also read as a single whole sentence just as it’s written and in the frame of the time in history that it was written, a modern reading would go: A State National Guard, being necessary to ensure the protection of the people of each State, the right of a State to form such National Guard and establish its rules of operation, and for its members to keep and bear the necessary weapons, equipment, emergency equipment, and any other possessions as deemed necessary, shall not be prevented by the Federal Government.
The 10th Amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Quite obviously the 2nd Amendment delegates the issue of gun control to the States and prohibits the Federal Govt. from creating laws or rules about guns. And that is strengthened by the 10th Amendment as nowhere in the Constitution or any of the 27 Amendments give the Federal Govt. the right to regulate Arms. The Interstate Commerce Clause does NOT rule over the 2nd and 10th Amendments. To say it does would invalidate both Amendments as well as other Amendments that replaced original Constitutional clauses such as Amendments 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, and 27.
The two gun measures made law this year are clearly authorized as a power of the individual States.
The one concerning universal background checks is of course impossible to enforce on private sales. We’ve never been able to stop widespread prostitution despite undercover stings, why would we think we can enforce private citizens to have background checks even if the Legislature had approved the funds necessary to enforce the law. Ninety-nine percent of criminals are not going to rat on who they bought a gun from mainly because they stole it or bought it from a gang, just ask any prosecutor.
The one allowing for temporary confiscation of guns in cases of a charge of domestic abuse until heard by a court, is only common sense to protect the right of the abused person to live. The person is denied a right in this State on a temporary bases. How is this different than when anyone is arrested and temporarily has their freedom taken away by the State pending a court hearing? Or taking away the right of free speech for someone to threaten another person. Also this law is in place in 18 other, both red and blue, States.