Of all the people least expected to back the NRA from Jonathan Turley in an editorial in USA Today :
A liberal’s lament: The NRA might be right after all
This term, the Supreme Court may finally take up the Voldemort Amendment, the part of the Bill of Rights that shall not be named by liberals. For more than 200 years, progressives and polite people have avoided acknowledging that following the rights of free speech, free exercise of religion and free assembly, there is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Of course, the very idea of finding a new individual right after more than two centuries is like discovering an eighth continent in constitutional law, but it is hardly the cause of celebration among civil liberties groups.
Like many academics, I was happy to blissfully ignore the Second Amendment. It did not fit neatly into my socially liberal agenda. Yet, two related cases could now force liberals into a crisis of conscience. The Supreme Court is expected to accept review of District of Columbia v. Heller and Parker v. District of Columbia, involving constitutional challenges to the gun-control laws in Washington.
The D.C. law effectively bars the ownership of handguns for most citizens and places restrictions on other firearms. The District’s decision to file these appeals after losing in the D.C. appellate court was driven more by political than legal priorities. By taking the appeal, D.C. politicians have put gun-control laws across the country at risk with a court more likely to uphold the rulings than to reverse them. It has also put the rest of us in the uncomfortable position of giving the right to gun ownership the same fair reading as more favored rights of free press or free speech.
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Liberal Commenters on the article are fuming check it out here .
h/t: Hot Air
t/b: Stop The ACLU
This particular arguement was analyzed beautifully by Judge Napolitano, in his highly recommended book Constitutional Chaos.
To understand the absurdity of the arguement just take a few quotes outside the Constitution by any of the founding fathers. I will present a few as examples.
“The great object is that every man be armed . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun.” (Patrick Henry
“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.” (Richard Henry Lee
“The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”
– Alexander Hamilton
Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defence 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, speech of June 9 1788
To disarm the people… was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
– George Mason
Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.
– “M.T. Cicero”, in a newspaper letter of 1788 touching the “militia” referred to in the Second Amendment to the Constitution
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms…
– Samuel Adams, in “Phila. Independent Gazetteer”, August 20, 1789
The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the *government*, not to *society*; and as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage.
– Joel Barlow, “Advice to the Privileged Orders”, 1792-93
I can go on forever frankly, but let there be no doubt, when the framers said, the right of the people, they meant individual citizens.
[...] Shocker: A Liberal Accepts NRA View Of The Second Amendment » This Summary is from an article posted at Stuck On Stupid on Friday, October 05, 2007 This [...]