The Founders Tried Their Damnedest to Ensure Individual Gun Rights

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…but even armed bears weren’t enough to head off centuries of debate over their meaning.

27 COMMENTS

  1. Yeah an “honest” reading of amendment #2 needs an honest person. That’s difficult if you’re a Leftard or a Dim(quite often synonymous). Ho hum🙄

  2. Much, if not all, of our Constitution has been subverted. If we hold a Constitutional Convention of the States, say goodbye to everything we, as conservatives hold true and dear. If we do not hold one, say goodbye anyway because election theft and the uni-party will usher in the tyranny albeit more craftily..

    In the meantime, choose your blade of grass…

  3. Better a free man with bear arms than a ‘Subject’ with bear arms, ol’ King George III disagreed.

  4. Look at it from the other side. How SHOULD they have worded it to make it indisputably clear that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed?”

    In other words, how did they get it “wrong?” How should it have been written instead?

    • Thomas Jefferson had something to say about interpreting the Constitution:

      On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

      Ask anyone who claims it wasn’t written clearly and ask them what the debates were about. They will either not know or make some claims about not foreseeing the future. It can be fun when you apply the other portions of the Constitution to other modern things they say are covered, just not arms. They are inconsistent and twist into a lot of knots.

  5. I think the simplest solution for the corruption of Federal Law Enforcement is for each community to create a Home Guard self-defense organization to protect themselves and their neighbors from unconstitutional acts by these corrupt agencies. They break the law on a daily basis and then expect American Citizens to be intimidated and cowed by their bullying and illegal acts. Perhaps if they were met by 100 armed community residents checking their warrants for validity and making sure they did not exceed the limits of the warrants we could get back to being a nation of civility and cease to view them as the US Gestapo. They have lost the respect of many Americans and should be prevented from performing illegal searches and seizures.

    • How would the residents know they were coming and what their intent is? Anyway, if 100 meet them, they’ll leave and return with armor and 200 or more – already happened in Texas at a bar during Covid lockdowns. They have the muscle so those 100 would have to be willing to die to bring about any kind of change. You won’t find those kinds of people in high enough quantities in many neighborhoods these days.

      • Knowing where their families live make all the difference, because at the end of the day. Regardless of their station within the federal bureaucracy. Protecting their families is the most important thing in their lives. I’ve had this conversation with many law enforcement personnel over the years. At the end of the day. Choosing to enforce laws that violate the Bill of Rights or protecting their families from potential retaliation has been a question they have had to answer. Both to themselves and with their colleagues. and make no mistake that guides them in the direction of their allegiance

  6. It may not be that simple. Read this book available for free download here:
    To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant’s Face: Libertarian Political Violence and the Origins of the Militia Movement
    University of Michigan Press, 2011
    Robert H. Churchill
    https://annas-archive.org/md5/7535213c2173941e038a806f32d287a6

    It covers the history of the 2nd Amendment and the term “militia” in some detail, as well as describing subsequent uses of militias in later times up to the present day.

    The problem is there were two sets (at least) of people trying to frame the Constitution. They didn’t see eye-to-eye on the wording of much of it. This makes interpreting the final version much more difficult than it should be. This is the result of the difference between the time of the Revolution and the time the Constitution was actually written. This was considerable political turmoil subsequent to the Revolution and the factions that emerged weren’t as clear cut as “the Founders” term would suggest.

    I agree that no one would be dumb enough to suggest that banning firearms at any time in the future was likely during this period. Nonetheless here we are and the framers aren’t here to argue the point. As a result of their leaving room for “interpretations”, our supposed “right” is threatened.

    In the end, it’s pretty much like every other “right” in the Constitution: if you’re not prepared to defend it, you’ll lose it, because in the end without active support it’s just words on paper – interpreted words on paper at that.

  7. James Madison texted me on the time machine smartphone and asked just how we thought he could clarify “shall not be infringed”.

  8. A bookstore near me sells stickers that say “I don’t care what the Founding Fathers said.”

    Debates about the Constitution are moot to the segment of the population that has no respect for it.

  9. Great cartoon!!
    Yes, there are in fact very educated people who are just that stupid.

    And I have come to distrust very educated peopl Because I know the education system. That they got their education from.

  10. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again and again and again — we don’t have (natural) rights because of the Constitution or amendments or anything else. We have them because we are alive, i.e. we are born with them. EVERY person* that is alive right now has the exact same gun rights. US citizens, German citizens, Chinese citizens, et cetera.

    What WE in the US are (supposed to) enjoy are explicit protections of our natural gun rights.

    The founders NOT try “… Their Damnedest to Ensure Individual Gun Rights …”, they tried their damnedest to ensure PROTECTIONS from a corrupt government that sought to destroy rights.

    If we continue to call them ‘constitutional rights’ and the like, we perpetuate the falsity that if the amendment is repealed that the right is likewise revoked. NOTHING is further from the truth.

    Thank you.

  11. In reality it was and is pure right wing ignorance that the criminal Founders wanted the people to have guns. The Founders (criminal, greedy businessmen) were well aware of all the present pre-revolutionary gun laws already on the books and had zero desire to rescind them which they did not.

    There were already laws that prohibited keeping a firearm loaded in your home in some cities and their were many laws in many big cities that prohibited carrying firearms concealed and even carried openly.

    Later in time post revolution, the old West Movies showing Law enforcement forcing cowboys to turn in their weapons when they were in town was not a fabrication of the truth. It happened in many western towns.

    In reality 2A was deliberately written as vaguely as possible to give the courts the power to ban and restrict firearms and that is exactly what has happened since the day 2A was signed. None of the pre-revolutionary gun ban laws were overturned either.

    In reality 2A was originally conceived to convince the States to join the Federal Government and the States would have the right to have their own private armies to murder slaves that revolted. Surviving letters by Madison and Jefferson prove beyond all doubt that they were very worried that the slave Revolt in Haiti would spread to the U.S. because slave owners there were fleeing with some of their slaves to the U.S.

    • The laws that prohibited keeping a large amounts of gun power in homes (as black gunpowder was far less safe then current smokeless gun powder), so no one was prohibiting from keeping a loaded gun in your home even in the cities, keeping a loaded firearm was common and legal in all cities and prior to 1911 no cities had any laws that prohibited carrying firearms concealed. The measures were strictly to address the potential fire hazard of black powder in large amounts in residences.

      Anyone could even carry without a permit or registering any firearm (rifle, pistol) – it wasn’t until the democrats slave patrols to capture runaway slaves that the laws began to change with the passage of enforcement of unconstitutional laws. Additionally post civil war the creation of the democrats Black codes and Jim Crow laws passing and being enforced that the unconstitutional civilian disarmament laws to make disenfranchising them and the disarming the emancipation advocacy groups from being able to protect them.

  12. no, they didnt. They COULD have worded it, “every swinging dick in the US gets to carry any gun he wants, anywhere he wants, concealed or openly, because he’s a swining US dick”. But they didn’t, cause they did not MEAN it. they meant as a militia member.

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