About That Second Amendment
BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 1 month ago
Seen in the comments at David’s WoG.
‘The Second Amendment states explicitly that it exists to protect “a well regulated Militia,” ‘
Ah, no!
What it says is that RKBA shall not be infringed.
In a prefatory clause it indicates ONE of the reasons why that must be true.
https://www.mic.com/articles/24210/gun-control-myth-the-second-amendment-makes-clear-guns-aren-t-just-for-the-military
Wishing it were otherwise, and trying to use SCOTUS lack of rulings on RKBA issues to make that wish come true, does not make it true.
What is rarely discussed by outfits such as Vox, is that for much of the Second Amendment’s existence, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms was not under ceaseless attack, so there was no reason for SCOTUS to get involved.
But that is not in alignment of Vox’s version of the truth.
But as noted leftist and anti gun Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said:
“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES. This. This. And a thousand times yes.
I’ve pointed out before that firearms ownership was ubiquitous in the states. The colonists had a RKBA because God granted it. This is an axiomatic irreducible. It is the predicate upon which everything else is based. Without this presupposition, the second amendment makes no sense.
The framers needed only one reason to tell the FedGov to stay out of their business, and this was their main one. The second amendment is not a treatise on the RKBA. The second amendment is the states telling the FedGov not to interfere with the militia. The militia brought their own armaments.
Thus, God gave the right to own firearms for hunting and feeding the family, just like he gave men the right to use rocks and spears and bow and arrow to do the same in ancient history. If you want firearms for this purpose, God protects that right. It is assumed in the second amendment, which doesn’t speak to hunting.
If you want cannon to protect your ship’s cargo, God gave you that right in the Holy Writ. The second amendment doesn’t speak to cannon aboard ships of trade because it doesn’t have to. It is assumed.
If you want to give your son a rifle to carry with him to school like the founders did for hunting and plinking and learning to be a man, that’s within your rights too, because God says so.
If you are 90 years old and unable to form with the militia but want a machine gun to defend your home, that’s within your rights too because God says so.
If you want firearms for 3-gun competition because you enjoy it, that’s within your rights because God says so, totally apart from forming with the militia.
Rights and duties are granted and given by the Almighty, the sovereign maker of the universe. The second amendment is the states telling the FedGov to back off ever trying to regulate said rights because what’s at risk is the capability overthrow tyranny.
That’s all the founders had to say. The second amendment is about tyranny. Not hunting, not competition, not self defense, not pleasure plinking. Those things are assumed, presupposed, and irreducible. They are the basis for everything else – because God says so.
On November 1, 2021 at 12:14 am, Jimmy the Saint said:
“because God says so.”
Well, to paraphrase our dearly beloved inspiration, Stalin: how many divisions has God?
– Congress & The Supreme Court
On November 1, 2021 at 2:33 am, Mike Austin said:
When Stalin said this, the response from the representative Pope Pius XII was, “Tell your master that he will meet my legions in Hell.”
As Stalin lay dying he was screaming about wolves running across the snow to devour him. They were preparing him to meet the legions of Pius.
On November 1, 2021 at 8:38 am, Fred said:
You won’t learn much in the American Church about the Lord of hosts.
“And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant? And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so.”Joshua 5:13-15
Jesus Christ is the Lord of hosts. Which means that He is the Lord of armies. The problem this presents is not one of God’s making at all. The problem with men is sin, and therefore thinking that just because you have an army, of whatever size, that your use of that army is righteous. I offer into evidence the heart of so called Christians in America who love war and killing and bombing brown people for fun and profit. If there was ever a self righteous group it’s them.
The Lord may use an army in judgement. The term, or a variation, Lord of hosts is all throughout the books of the profits. This term is a reference to Holy God using the armies of men to bring about (a portion of) judgement against the whoring (love of false gods/religions) and idolatrous (worshipping of false gods having known the one true God).
Now the hard part; the refusal by dispensationalists to recognize the very obvious use of this language and a great many other uses of OT type prophetic terms in the book of Revelation coupled with the very present connection to Matthew 24 and Luke 21.
Revelation, just like the OT profits, is about judgement against Israel. And in no small part that judgement was accomplished by the use of Roman legions in the first century at the command of…wait for it…The thrice holy resurrected Christ of God Almighty, this Lord of Hosts.
The Revelation is so well aligned with the OT profits in it’s description of judgement against Israel and then judgement against those He used to meet out that Judgement that it requires willful blindness to refute.
Revelation is the answer to Matthew 24, and Luke 21. This leaves me with a problem, when was Revelation written? That’s worth the discovery. And a much larger problem looms today, if all was fulfilled just as Jesus, the Lord of Hosts, said, then what is that thing called Israel in present day Palestine? Eh, I actually don’t care about that last question.
The point of this is, Pope Pius’ answer was the stupidest thing a Christian could have said. And, in part, the blood (his own) of Stalin (the man), is on the head of Pius.
How about telling the dying man who the Lord of Hosts is and how wickedly and sinfully that he (Stalin) had abused the high honor and privilege of commanding any host of men? How about repentance toward the Lord of Hosts seeking His mercy and forgiveness since it is this Son of God who had died for Stalin’s sin and it is this same Lord of Hosts that is the judge of the quick and the dead.
Pope Pius gave the worst Christian answer to a dying sinner I’ve ever heard. I don’t know if God would have forgiven Stalin but I do with emphatic assurance know as fact; that the job of a Christian is to tell the sinner, yes even Stalin, that the Lord of Hosts is also a merciful and a gracious Lord indeed.
The hardest thing of all, sometimes the Lord of Hosts coming on clouds of power and numbered as the grasshopper is the most merciful thing He can do to a wicked and destructive, waring and murdering people such as us. Even so, come quickly Lord.
I pray that when you meet this Lord, and surely you will, that it is not as the Lord of Hosts come for His vengeance, but that you meet Him in love, welcomed home to His eternity.
On November 1, 2021 at 8:45 am, Herschel Smith said:
Stalin is in eternal torment. God is still alive.
On November 1, 2021 at 8:48 am, Fred said:
I don’t think that’s in dispute.
On November 1, 2021 at 12:16 pm, Fred said:
I am further confused (I’m not) as to how the carrying away into Babylon (Jeremiah 27, elsewhere) is readily and rightly accepted as history fact but when our Lord said in Mark 13 that the temple and great buildings shall be not one stone left upon another and that not all of that generation would pass until those things would be fulfilled (Luke 21 and Matthew 24) that this can’t possibly be fulfilled in the Jewish wars of ’68–70 first century?
How is one true and the other not? How is Jeremiah a greater (oh that I would just do as God says) profit than Jesus? Is Jesus lying about the judgement that must come for the rejection of Him? Was not all the blood since righteous able poorerd out on that generation who stoned the the profits?
How is one as readily acceptable as the grass is green but the other, if spoken of at all, is as though God would be in sin if it were true? Was not the temple destroyed and the rest of that prophesy fulfilled in that generation or is Jesus a liar? It can only be one or the other.
On November 1, 2021 at 12:17 pm, Bradlley A Graham said:
The 2nd Amendment means nothing unless you are willing to personally enforce it.
On November 1, 2021 at 2:05 pm, MTHead said:
2A wasn’t under ceaseless attack. And that was also because the government could write a law. But their was no one to enforce it in large scale.
Hillbilly Joe could saw off a shotgun and the odds of him getting caught were pretty slim.
Only in modern times do we see the subject brought before the court because people are getting in trouble with police over it.
No one really fought the NFA. Because machine guns and suppressors were not something alot of people were getting arrested for. Or were interested in.
Troubled times have changed that.
And at this point in God’s creation. Do we truly care what government says is right or wrong?
It’s still a matter of enforcement.
On November 2, 2021 at 6:05 pm, Elon Muskox said:
The Founding Fathers were masters of the King’s because they were drilled in rigid and proper English at the finest institutions of higher learning in the Americas. Few today have such a high level of literacy but fortunately Justice Antonin Scalia was not one of those inflicted with the Public Education Syndrome.
Scalia showed the depth of his understanding of the subtleties of the language in writing the majority opinion in the DC v. Heller decision, focusing in part on the grammatical significance of the phrase, “A well regulated Militia….”
Scalia’s opinion, which paralleled the logic used in the amicus brief submitted by Dr. Nelson Lund, Ph.D., J.D., Professor at George Mason University School of Law, was that the phrase DOESN’T MATTER. NOT IN THE LEAST. It was nothing but window dressing, setting the stage for the meat of the sentence, which was to follow.
Specifically they both correctly noted that the opening phrase of 2A is of a type known (variously) as a prefatory clause or an ablative (or nominative) absolute. And the function of the “prefatory clause” or “nominative absolute” is defined (and limited) as follows under Rule #15 of Noah Webster’s 1790 Rudiments of English Grammar, a treatise which was well-known to Mason, Jefferson, et Al:
__________________________________________________________
A nominative case or word, joined with a participle, often stands independently of the sentence. This is called, the case absolute.
Examples.
The sun being risen, it will be warm.
They all consenting, the vote was passed.
“Jesus conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place.”
Explanation.
The words in italics ARE NOT CONNECTED with the other part of the sentence, either by agreement or government; they are therefore in the case absolute, which, in English, is always the nominative. (emphasis added)
__________________________________________________________
Get that? According to Noah Webster, the father of American scholarship, whose name is synonymous with the word “dictionary”:
“…The words in italics are not connected with the other part of the sentence, either by agreement or government….”
Arguments about the definition or role of the Militia are completely meaningless to 2A because its grammar commands that it be so. The phrase has absolutely no influence over or control of the meaning of the Operative Clause, “Right of the People.” You just have to have sufficient literacy to figure that out.
So instead of engaging the hoplophobes and other neo-Bolsheviks on the meaning of “A well regulated Militia,” the cause of 2A would be better served if you simply told them to go away and come back once they’ve learned how to read proper English.
The Heller decision online, to include Justice Scalia’s masterful rendering of the opinion for the Majority:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160828030749/https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html
On November 2, 2021 at 6:58 pm, Fred said:
Which “prefatory clause or an ablative (or nominative) absolute” arrived at the common use test instituted out of whole cloth by Scalia?
On November 2, 2021 at 7:09 pm, Herschel Smith said:
Like I said, Heller was a weak decision. If it says what’s being claimed is being said, then why didn’t Heller declare the NFA unconstitutional?
Don’t answer that.
The 2A doesn’t have to speak to personal ownership of firearms and the RKBA everywhere, because that’s assumed in the 2A. Without that assumption, the entirety of the 2A makes no sense whatsoever. To even begin a discussion or debate on the meaning of the 2A requires the stipulation by all parties that men have a RKBA. Otherwise, overthrowing the government because of tyranny makes no sense unless men have arms and bear them in public.
Presuppositions.
Presuppositions.
Presuppositions.
Logic. Presupposition + presupposition + deduction = proof.
Or, presupposition + immediate inference = proof.
It would have been better if American children had been trained in logic all of these years. I have in my possession a a book by Isaac Watts entitled “Logic,” intended for use in schooling children in colonial times. I had R. C. Sproul sign it for me (after talking a bit with him at a conference). I seriously doubt most adult Americans would be able to handle it.
On November 2, 2021 at 8:30 pm, Fred said:
Did you just challenge a known retard (me) to learn logic!!!
Oh, it’s on!!! Heh.
Yeah, Heller stinks.
On November 2, 2021 at 9:09 pm, Herschel Smith said:
You’re not a retard Fred. I wasn’t speaking to you. I was reemphasizing my points in the post because I can’t write everything down at one time. It tires me.