-Caveat Lector-
WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
CONGRESS ACTION: August 26, 2001
=================
FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED (Part One) -- GUN BAN IDEOLOGY: ".let me state
unequivocally my view that the text and the original intent of the Second
Amendment clearly protect the right of individuals to keep and bear
firearms." Attorney General John Ashcroft, in a letter to the N.R.A.'s
Institute for Legislative Action. Because of Ashcroft's deviation from
politically correct dogma, Common Cause and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun
Violence have filed an ethics complaint against the Attorney General,
claiming that his "interpretation directly contradicts the stated position of
his client, the United States of America, on the meaning of the Second
Amendment." Their complaint specifically refers to the case of United States
v. Emerson, now on appeal in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in which the
Clinton administration explicitly denied that such an individual right
exists. In a press release announcing the ethics complaint, Common Cause
president Scott Harshbarger proclaimed, "What's at stake here is the
integrity of the U.S. Department of Justice." In their complaint, Common
Cause and the Brady Center relied on an opinion by Sam Dash, that Ashcroft's
conduct was "an act of disloyalty to his client, the United States". That
would be the same Sam Dash who during Clinton's impeachment resigned as
ethics advisor to Independent Counsel Starr, and publicly criticized Starr
for accepting the invitation to testify before the House Judiciary Committee
-- was that an act of loyalty to Starr? Apparently, consistency with a past
attempt to subvert liberty is more important than loyalty to the Constitution
and to an oath of office to uphold the Constitution. ("I believe it is clear
that the Constitution protects the private ownership of firearms for lawful
purposes. .when I was sworn as Attorney General of the United States, I took
an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. That responsibility applies to
all parts of the Constitution, including the Second Amendment." -- Attorney
General John Ashcroft)
In July, the Violence Policy Center (VPC) issued a report titled "Shot Full
of Holes, Deconstructing John Ashcroft's Second Amendment". The ultimate goal
of gun ban extremists is to totally disarm all private individuals --
obviously believing that violent crime is the fault of honest people owning
guns. To accomplish this ultimate goal, gun banners believe that they must
eliminate (or in VPC's terminology, "deconstruct", the term fashionable in
academia which means using apparently logical arguments to "prove" that black
is really white) the Second Amendment. The VPC says that Ashcroft's letter
"is an astonishingly inadequate piece of legal reasoning and an exemplar of
wishful, and at times bizarre, revisionist history." A sign of the
desperation of the VPC is their insulting attempt to equate "The NRA and gun
criminals" (the VPC apparently sees no difference between the two) who "will
seek to have the Second Amendment incorporated against the states.". As
though "gun criminals" care about the Constitutional doctrine of
incorporation. But the VPC's reliance on deconstructing Ashcroft and the
Second Amendment depends on a compound of fundamentally flawed ideas about
the nature of, and a massive expansion of the legitimate power of,
government; and as such carries implications that go far beyond the firearms
issue and go to the very essence of our individual liberty.
The argument of the gun banners is simple: Without the Second Amendment,
there is no individual right to keep and bear arms. Thus "deconstruct" the
Second Amendment, and the individual right disappears. Given the wealth --
and remarkable unanimity -- of the expressions of intent by the Founders of
this country and by their contemporaries, as well as philosophical discourses
on the inherent right of individual self defense extending back fifteen
hundred years to Justinian's "Digest of Roman Law", twisting the Second
Amendment into a collective right only, rather than an individual right, and
nullifying the age-old right of self defense, is a monumental and ultimately
futile task. For even if the gun banners succeed in hoodwinking a majority of
the public with their collectivist interpretation of the Second Amendment (a
real possibility given the propaganda and the lack of discussion about the
requisites of individual liberty in education today), and even if they
succeed in convincing a majority of the people that they have no right to
defend themselves or their families or homes against criminal attack, the
attempt to eliminate the Second Amendment as a barrier to total civilian
disarmament (with government alone retaining a monopoly of force) is still
fundamentally flawed.
Fundamental Flaw Number One: To believe that without the Second Amendment
there is no individual right to keep and bear arms, one must believe that
that right was granted to citizens by the Second Amendment. It is basic to
the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, nor has it ever been questioned by
any court or Constitutional scholar, that the Bill of Rights did not grant
any new rights -- it protected rights that already existed. The First
Amendment, for example, did not grant to citizens of the new nation a new
right to worship as they saw fit, a new right to freedom of speech, or a new
right to peaceably assemble -- those rights already existed, and the First
Amendment merely protected those pre-existing rights. Since it is beyond
dispute that individual citizens did own firearms at the time the Bill of
Rights was ratified, and did so lawfully, the right of individuals to
lawfully own firearms already existed. A recent study by Michael Bellesiles
(the methodology and data of which was seriously questioned by other
academics) attempted to prove, using inheritance and estate records from the
Revolutionary period, that the individual ownership of firearms at that time
was not as widespread as previously believed. But even Bellesiles did not
attempt to claim that nobody owned firearms at the time of the Revolution, or
that everyone who did own firearms, did so illegally. Such claims would
clearly have been too ridiculous even for die-hard gun banners to believe. So
even if we grant Bellesiles' thesis that the number was fewer than previously
thought, even he would have to admit that there were at least some private
individuals who lawfully possessed firearms at the time of the ratification
of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Which means that the individual
right to keep and bear arms pre-existed the Second Amendment, and existed
(then and now) independently of the Second Amendment, which just added an
additional layer of protection to that right.
Fundamental Flaw Number Two: Since the Second Amendment did not grant the
individual right to keep and bear arms (that right already existed), if we
are to accept the gun banners' argument that the right no longer exists we
must ask: When was that right revoked? If the federal government at some
point revoked that individual right, it must have done so by a law enacted by
congress and signed by a president. And in order to enact a law -- any law --
the federal government must have the legitimate authority to do so. Where is
that authority? Once again, we go back to the fundamental nature of the
Constitution. When it was ratified, the Constitution created a new government
for the United States, replacing the form of government existing prior to
1787. Some delegates nominated to the Constitutional Convention -- Patrick
Henry most prominent among them -- refused to attend that Convention,
believing that the charter from the States under which the delegates convened
did not permit them to void the existing government. But if we are to accept
the present Constitution as valid at all, we must accept that those delegates
in Philadelphia in 1787 started from scratch and created a new government.
Since the gun banners' presume that the federal government at some point in
time exercised the power to revoke the individual right to keep and bear
arms, we must ask: What powers were in fact granted to the federal government
when the Constitution was ratified? To quote James Madison, the Father of the
Constitution, "The powers delegated...to the federal government are few and
defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and
indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on the external objects.
The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all objects
which...concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people."
(Federalist # 45) Those delegated powers are enumerated in the Constitution.
To again quote Madison ("The Virginia Report" to the Virginia House of
Delegates, 1799): "If no such power be expressly delegated, and if it be not
both necessary and proper to carry into execution an express power; above
all, if it be expressly forbidden, by a declaratory amendment to the
Constitution, the answer must be that the federal government is destitute of
all such authority." ".a fundamental and characteristic principle of the
Constitution, that all powers not given by it were reserved; that no powers
were given beyond those enumerated in the Constitution, and such as were
fairly incident to them.". This is the heart of the issue -- Where in the
Constitution is the federal government granted the authority to disarm
individual citizens, who have not forfeited the protection of the law by
violating the law? Because if the Constitution did not "expressly delegate"
authority to the federal government to do something, then "the federal
government is destitute of all such authority". Where in the Constitution is
the federal government expressly delegated the authority to revoke the
individual right to keep and bear arms? The answer is -- nowhere. So even if
we grant the assumption that at some point the federal government did revoke
the individual right to keep and bear arms, it is clear that such a
revocation was wholly illegitimate, and is thus null and void, because the
federal government was never granted any such authority. But the gun banners
like to say that they don't seek to revoke the right to keep and bear arms,
just to modify that right in the interest of public safety. They must then be
prepared to state unequivocally that they accept the individual right to keep
and bear arms. Are they willing to do so? On the contrary, their every
argument in congress and in the courts, and their public statements, prove
that they refuse to acknowledge any such right, and that a total ban is what
they demand: "Applying those same standards [consumer health and safety laws]
to guns is the real key. . Under these standards, handguns would be banned
because of their high risk and low utility." ".the answer to America's gun
problem isn't trigger locks, 'smart' guns, or even licensing and
registration. It's banning handguns." -- Violence Policy Center. ".the Second
Amendment confers a right to keep and bear arms only in connection with
service in a well-regulated militia-known today as the National Guard." --
League of Women Voters. "This legislation.would prohibit the transfer or
possession of handguns and handgun ammunition.". -- Congressman Major Owens.
".we should ban all handguns.". -- Senator John Chafee.
Fundamental Flaw Number Three: It is clear that the individual right to keep
and bear arms pre-existed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is
clear that the Constitution did not grant to the federal government the
authority to revoke the individual right to keep and bear arms (the federal
government certainly has the raw power to enact any law it chooses regardless
of any Constitutional restraint on its authority, but when it does so -- when
it legislates beyond its legitimate authority -- it does so without
Constitutional legitimacy). So for the gun ban argument to have any validity
at all, it must be assumed, contrary to the explicit words of James Madison
cited above, that the federal government can legitimately take actions that
go beyond the authority expressly delegated to it by the Constitution, and
beyond the powers both necessary and proper to carry into execution those
express powers. What this means, according to gun banner logic, is that the
Constitution is wholly irrelevant to limit the powers that can be properly
exercised by the federal government. This is the most dangerous presumption
of the whole argument, with implications for the utter destruction of our
freedom that go beyond the individual right to keep and bear arms. Simply
put, this argument claims that the federal government has the legitimate
authority to do anything that it chooses to do. Anything at all -- what the
Founders despised as the evil of "arbitrary" power. Thus we can understand
the anger of the gun ban totalitarians whenever a federal court constrains
arbitrary congressional power, or puts limits on the agenda to disarm honest
individuals. They want to deny federal court appointments to any judges who
will limit the power of congress -- which means that they like the idea of a
federal government of unlimited power, a government with the arbitrary power
to do anything at all. A government unconstrained, that can do anything it
wants, is an unaccountable government of raw arbitrary power, and is not a
government of laws. That is the very essence of tyranny.
FOR MORE INFORMATION.
========================
Violence Policy Center ("Shot Full of Holes, Deconstructing John Ashcroft"):
http://www.vpc.org/graphics/holes.pdf
United States v. Emerson: http://www.tsra.com/Emerson.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mr. Kim Weissman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107,
any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use
without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational
purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ]
Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists!
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
