Your Constitutional protections stop here. No wait. Here. (courtesy cbsdetroit.com)

Over at Ammoland.com AWR Hawkins writes:

The momentum in the gun debate has clearly shifted toward gun rights proponents as the NRA continues to stand on the clear language of the Second Amendment. Whereas 2012 ended with Democrats working their constituents up into an emotional fervor to ban entire classes of guns, expand background checks, and ban “extended magazines,” now nothing sounds sillier than the suggestion “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms [holding less than 10 rounds], shall not be infringed.” That said, what about . . .

“The right of the people to keep and bear Arms [after getting government permission through expanded background checks], shall not be infringed.”

Americans, men and women of all political stripes, socioeconomic backgrounds, and races, have grasped once more the fact that our Founding Fathers intended the citizenry to be armed. And they are starting to understand again that the Second Amendment rights was put in place to defend the rest of the Bill of Rights from government infringement.

Now, when gun control proponents push for expanded background checks to stop crimes that don’t involve background checks or seek to ban guns that are statistically never used in crimes–guns like a Barrett .50 caliber rifle–Americans hear something that is nonsensical.

Just think how silly “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms [that aren’t arbitrarily called ‘assault weapons’], shall not be infringed” sounds.

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68 COMMENTS

  1. The right of the people to keep and bear muskets shall not be infringed doesn’t have the same ring to it either. The founding fathers may not have had full autos in mind but they would have wanted us to keep up with the times just as they kept field artillery and swords and muskets in there armory.

    • Good and salient point. Doesn’t your country also have the First Amendment? You know–that paragraph that guarantees free expression…mindful of the fact that computers and the Internet, telephones, television and film, radio, Linotype, or even ballpoint pens and typewriters didn’t exist when the Bill of Rights was drafted. I guess only quill pens and movable block type are protected methods of free expression, according to the rod and flintlock crowd.

      Interesting to note that the English Bill of Rights was the prototype of America’s Bill of Rights…and this still forms the body of constitutional law in Canada and Britain:

      http://www.lowe.ca/Rick/FirearmsLegislation/RightToArms.htm

    • Our Founding Fathers did have a pretty good idea about the notion of automatic fire. Examine the Puckle Gun – 1718. The idea of sending projectiles downrange quickly was definitely not an abstract concept. As with anything, it was technology immaturity (manufacturing costs as well as ammunition tech) that hampered it’s development. Honestly, it’s development is not too dissimilar to the overall development and role of firearms in wartime (initially it was a novelty, and really stunk at that, but after technology caught up, it became more practical).

    • All you have to ask is:

      “Did the Founders only intend for the First Amendment to apply only to printing presses and pamphlets?”

      • Exactly. Remember that even printing press technology of the time did not include the ability to publish photo images…and photography did not exist, either.

  2. I disagree.

    A vehicle hurtling out of control on the wrong direction cannot be said to have momentum when it is halted.There is still the matter of backtracking to the way we came.

    In 1932, a man could mail order a weapon and have it delivered to his home.Ever since 1934 we’ve been regressing.The time to say we’ve established momentum is when I can order a 1911 on Amazon.com, prime shipping and all to my door.

    We have a lot of work to do,and none of it involves celebrating .

    • If you are waiting for the courts (any courts) to resolve this issue you are in for a long wait and a serious disappointment. Even SCOTUS cannot seem to develop enough backbone to just admit that the Second Amendment means exactly what the twenty-seven plain English words it is written in mean.

    • I doubt that. But many try to say that just because he has been smart and focused his arguments in cases to narrow legal questions…

      Piss on gura if you want but he has moved forward and won more cases for gun rights when the NRA was sitting on its hands and not wanting to move forward.

    • Oh, I know how to help! I’ll post passive-aggressive whine fests on gun blogs long after anyone gives a damn about me! That’s sure to make things better!

    • And by fancy convoluted lawyer speak in SCOTUS decisions such as Heller and McDonald. It has been how long since McDonald and Chicago is STILL fighting against the right of residents of Chicago to keep and bear arms? So long as SCOTUS has no teeth in their pronouncements they are worthless.

      • Talk about dragging their feet, the Supreme Court issued their Heller decision in 2008 and Washington D.C. is still a giant “gun free zone”. And the frosting on the cake? I believe the one federal firearms licensee that was operating in Washington D.C. has left. That means there is no government sanctioned way for a Washington D.C. resident to acquire firearms any more.

        You know, that should be the reason that we can sh!tcan most of the Gun Control Act of 1968 … because absolutely nothing stops Federal Firearms Licensees (who are everyday citizens just like you or me) from leaving a state without any Licensees — and hence the residents without any “legal” means to acquire firearms.

        • What was interesting about that situation is the typically underhanded way that he was forced out of the District. The DC Zoning Board just kept rezoning the neighborhoods of his intended places of business until he finally gave up and left.

          And by the way, DC is NOT a state, it’s a Federal Territory. Like Guam. Just a big plantation on the Potomac. The overseers run it with an iron fist.

  7. “Shall not be infringed” means, regardless of whatever decisions wrought by legislative fiat, the courts, or arguments grounded in social utility, exactly that — and only that.

    Ten rounds or less? Come and get my standard capacity magazines, then.

      • Okay, next question why do you believe we are winning? I would love to see a column on why you think we are winning. I appreciate it!

    • As the old joke goes…
      A young cannibal asks his dad, ” Daddy” he says.” What do old people taste like.?”
      Well his daddy looks at him and says. “Depends.”

    • Jerry, RF did NOT answer that we are winning. He answered your duplicate question “are we winning or not” with the ambiguous answer, “Yes.” And of course he is correct – in some ways we are winning, in others we are at best holding our ground. As long as California, New Jersey, New York, et al, go unchallenged we cannot make much further progress. THEY are the test cases because if those blatantly un-Constitutional laws are allowed to stand then we have given up our Second Amendment rights by default. Either the 2A applies to all Americans in every state, or it will eventually apply to none.

        • Jerry, we are generally losing ground in the most populous states as we speak. The next rising generation will be highly urban, devoid of vehicles or meaningful personal property, and will be more comfortable with government oversight and dependence. Following immigration reform, we will have tens of millions of new citizens, nearly all derived from countries that don’t have our traditions of personal liberty and firearms ownership. We are one liberal SCOTUS justice away from overturning many of our judicial victories, potentially.

          Unless this system just blows the hell up, the trend is clear, and not in our favor. Even then, if it blows up, what comes out the other side is generally not all too favorable for personal freedoms either, if history is any judge.

        • If everyone doesn’t turn to, the next state to go under is Virginia. Bam is campaigning for his sock puppet there today.

    • We are losing slowly. After Newton a small number of states passed common sense gun laws (ha ha, they passed pro 2A laws). These were mostly in states with small populations that tended to be more rural. A number of states passed more restrictive gun control laws. These tended to be states that were more populous and urban. There was no movement nationally in either direction.

      We think of the gun rights debate as a state by state thing but I think that the real divide here is an urban vs rural thing. I heard an alarming statistic that the urban population is growing much faster than the rural population (a little google fu at census.gov proves this) and we are making no inroads that I see in getting converts among the city dwellers. At some point, unless we change the urban rural divide, we’ll be out bred.

      Our national gun rights victory wasn’t rolling back current gun control laws, we just avoided more. The states that enacted more gun control were populous and politically and economically powerful. The states that rolled back some gun control were less so. There has been some give and take but, on the balance, I think we are losing.

  9. I believe I read somewhere that Indiana CCW permits are subject to FOIA requests by the media. Hmmm, Shannon Watts(TM) and hubby John live in Indiana. And TTAG is a media powerhouse. Just saying. Time to check on hyporcrisy. It is for the children(TM).

      • RF – btw Shannon Watts(TM) uses the following aliases:

        Shannon Marmion Watts, Shannon Renee Troughton, Shannon Renee Weaver, Shannon Renee Marmion.

        I am still trying to find out how many times the Bunny Boiler has been married.

  10. I had a conversation today with a fellow gun guy and NRA certified instructor. His experience being largely with newbs and still a fledgling, being far from a master pistolero himself. He advocates a light recoiling high capacity gun (ie a 9mm). I carry a 1911 (a real Colt brand) and it’s an enigma to him. At least it was until he shot it and found he shot better with it than his sacred Springfield XD9.

    Then he started to see that his students shot better with a 1911 than what ever they bought.

    He’s still a ‘many holes’ guy, but he’s coming around to the idea that misses don’t count no matter how many tries you get. The next step is the realization that the .45 is not just easier to shoot, it’s more effective per hit. His head might explode when he puts it together, but at some point (because he’s smart) he’ll get it. 8-10 rounds of a more effective cartridge that you hit better with beat 16 rounds of a lesser cartridge that you don’t hit as well with.

    Haters gonna hate, but I’m about to win one for the 1911 the right way. . . let them shoot it.

    • Sorry guys, that was supposed to be a tongue in cheek bit about how the 1911 remains unaffected by such a mag cap law as a dig on basically everyone who doesn’t pack a 1911 along with some griping about unconstitutional laws. Either I lost the rest of it or it didn’t copy. I somehow made a post on another topic last night that ended up on the wrong thread. . . I think I may have a gremlin in the PC.

  11. I DO NOT agree with a 10 round limit on mags but that was the thing that spurred a lot of the mfgs into coming out with some really nice easily concealable designs. For what thats worth. I guess.

  12. “. . . the right of very few people to keep and bear some arms shall not be infringed some of the time but most of the time it’s okay.”

    Kind of a tortured reading of 2A, but that’s what the gungrabbers and wingnuts are saying.

  13. Despite his penchant for strict construction of the actual words used in the Constitution, Justice Scalia has already told us in Heller that “the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” He allowed that there could be time, place and manner restrictions, restrictions on “dangerous and unusual weapons, as well as restrictions based on status (felon, mentally ill). So there goes your “shall not be infringed” right out the window. And there is no way that there will be a majority concluding otherwise in the foreseeable future. I think that he would really squirm if asked, where is it in “shall not be infringed” that you find language allowing the government to unilaterally impose restrictions on the citizenry?” [Don’t tell me–“it’s common sense!”] I assume he would look to legislation passed after the adoption of the Bill of Rights….

    • There are obvious limits on all rights.

      For example, who believes that felons in prison get to have firearms in prison? Not allowing firearms in prison is an infringement.

      Nor could you own arms whose very existence endangers others. Having a 2,000 lb bomb in your home means if there is a fire, everyone around you is harmed. Having firearms in your home endangers nobody, unless a human uses it in some manner. There are arms that are dangerous without a human being around.

      • There was something very similar to bombs back in the 1700’s, it was the cannon with exploding mortar, AKA artillery- the right to bear arms (firearms), not the right to bear artillery.

    • Of course it’s limited by status. The right doesn’t go away, but the state may through due process curtail free exercise of a right, down to and including the right to breathe.

      As far as types of weapons, I firmly believe that they were referring to practicable infantry weapons — as differentiated from 60 gun ships of the line or an 8″ columbiad. Weapons an individual can use, in other words.

      The big, expensive stuff was generally kept and maintained at government expense, whereas the militia were supposed to bring their own guns and supplies when called.

      This armed populace were considered to be the defenders of liberty, far more numerous and motivated than any standing army would ever be.

      It was a nice dream while it lasted.

      • Sorry Russ, I have to disagree with you, in particular, on your ships analogy. Much of the Independence War navy was composed of civilian vessels, and most of which were completely privately funded. In point of fact, Washington greatly relied on Privateers to bring in the necessary gun-powder to wage war with. Here is some cool info on the subject – http://www.usmm.org/revolution.html

        I think the only ground the Founders would give on infringement would come from weapons of indiscriminate application – things like gas, chemicals, large unguided high explosives or nuclear ordinance.

    • Felons have had their rights removed by due process of law. The Mentally Ill have had their rights removed by due process of the legal system by being adjudicated by a judge to be incompetent/incapable.

      The key phrase is Due Process of Law.

      The government can not ask you to wear a gag when you enter the theater to prevent you from yelling fire. The government can not ask you to turn in your firearms to prevent you from shooting someone. Both examples are a restriction of your rights and both are a violation of due process because you are assumed to be guilty before you have committed any wrong doing, guilty until proven innocent. You can not be trusted to be in this theater without a gag because we believe you are going to yell fire.

      It is the other way around. Innocent until proven otherwise.

      *After* you yell Fire in a theater, or shoot someone, and you are convicted of wrong doing in a court of law, then your rights can be restricted or removed because a court of law with a jury of your peers have proven you to be incapable of exercising your rights in a responsible manner.

      Due Process. It’s important!

  14. Just have what you want at home. Who cares what the libtards (democrats) think. Better judged by twelve than carried by six.

    • I’ll also not stay in a “free speech zone” six blocks off the route, no matter what the contards want.

  15. The title is ludicrous. Ten rounds is way too many. Seven rounds sounds more appropriate for our Second Amendment Privilege.

    Source: I am from NYS.

  17. Gina Raimondo the Treasurer of Rhode Island just pulled any investments that involve gun/firearms AND she is most likely going to be running for Governor. Guess what party she belongs to?

    Why would profitable companies be removed? She is hurting the State both at the investment level and 2A rights. Because of her progressive Democrat ideology.

    Rhode Island is/has become a s**thole of a State – I envy RF’s move to TX. I wish I was at a point to get out of here too.

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