2A Brief
BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 2 months ago
David Kopel writes at Reason explaining the 2A brief filed with the SCOTUS in the New York case. It’s very good, but this part is worth lifting.
The king ordered London hostelers to tell their guests not to carry arms in London. According to the Ninth Circuit, this shows that arms carry restrictions “permeated public life.” To the contrary, the Feast of St. Thomas decree presumes that travelers will be carrying arms and will expect to continue carrying in London. The king ordered the hostelers to tell the visitors to pause their usual practices.
[ … ]
Whatever the English Bill of Rights protected, it was not good enough for Americans. James Madison’s notes for his speech introducing the Bill of Rights in Congress show that he regarded much of the English Bill of Rights as deficient, including the Protestants-only provision of the right to arms. St. George Tucker, William Rawle (author of an influential 1825 treatise on American constitutional law), and Joseph Story all denounced the English right to arms as feeble and as far inferior to the Second Amendment.
The second amendment also presumes that free men will bear arms, and in order to understand it, we must use that as a working assumption. Nothing else will do. The bearing of arms in colonial America was ubiquitous.
And yes, clearly, the founders felt the rights understood under English common law were inferior to what they understood under God. Thus, the second amendment was crafted to ensure that the federal government stayed out of the business of dictating when or where to bear arms, or what kind of arms to bear.
How far we’ve fallen.
On October 7, 2021 at 9:35 am, Longbow said:
Since all this is so…
What aren’t We… our side, the NRA, CCRKBA, SAF, NSSF, GOA, etc… demanding en masse, that the NFA of 1934 be repealed? Why aren’t we, et.al., demanding that the GCA of 1968 be repealed?
I have been shouting this for thirty years. My voice has grown course.
On October 7, 2021 at 10:22 am, Herschel Smith said:
Of course, no reader here disagrees. I’m just keeping you informed on current related events.
On October 7, 2021 at 11:56 am, Frank Clarke said:
@Longbow:
It seems everyone here knows that the GOP has no real interest in the 2nd Amendment beyond its value as a vote-getting tool. If some morally tight politician were to propose such a thing, hir colleagues would soon be whispering in hir ear: “As soon as you solve that ‘problem’, you lose your biggest fund-raising issue!”
Sorry, as long as people keep voting for Republicans (or Democrats), things are not going to get any better.
How do I know? I just look back over the past 120 years. The solution is left as an exercise for the student.
On October 7, 2021 at 1:37 pm, Longbow said:
Thank you Herschel. It was rhetorical anyway.
On October 7, 2021 at 1:38 pm, Longbow said:
Frank Clark: Yep.