Our Gun Rights Are God Given

BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 2 months ago

Jeff Knox at Ammoland.

But then Clement says this: “The state takes its revisionism so far as to claim there is no example in all Anglo American history of the carry rights petitioners seek. In fact, at least 43 states allow just that, while, as in Heller, only a few jurisdictions follow New York’s lead of presumptively denying a right that the Constitution guarantees to all…”

My complaint is that, if indeed “the Constitution guarantees to all,” this right, (which should be acknowledged to preexist the Constitution), then exercise of the right is not something which any state does, or can, “allow.” Those 43 states do not “allow” the exercise of the right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. They recognize the right. They honor the right. They have laws that specifically avoid infringing on the right. But they most certainly don’t “allow” the exercise of the right.

[ … ]

I believe Clement received more credit in that case than was really due him though, as the case was built and brought by the Second Amendment Foundation, and argued by Alan Gura, who was also the lead attorney for Heller. In the eleventh hour, the NRA petitioned for and received permission to join the McDonald case, and the 30 minutes for oral arguments was divided down the middle. With Gura first arguing that the Court should apply the Second Amendment to the states under a proper reading of the 13th Amendment, correcting over a century of bad precedents going back to the post-Civil War Court. Clement, in his turn, argued the more conservative line, calling for the Court to apply the Second Amendment as a fundamental right under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Because the Court chose to go with Clement’s remedy, rather than Gura’s, Clement was the one who got much of the credit, with some claiming that he “rescued” the case from Gura. I think that’s too generous to Clement, and far too dismissive of Gura. McDonald, like Heller, was Gura’s case. He put it together, led it through the courts, and convinced the Supreme Court to grant certiorari and hear the case. His push for the Court to reverse precedents, which virtually all constitutional scholars agree are erroneous and flawed, was worth trying. Gura knew that it was a long shot, so he had always taken a dual-pronged approach, arguing that the Court could either apply the Second Amendment to the states via a correct reading of the Thirteenth Amendment. Or they could take the less drastic route of accomplishing the same thing via the “incorporation doctrine” and the Fourteenth Amendment. Had the NRA and Clement not joined the case, Gura would certainly have argued both options during oral arguments – as he did in his briefs – and the Court would have reached the same conclusion they eventually did, via the “incorporation doctrine.”

Every time I’ve written on the Heller case, I’ve said it was a weak decision.  And I’ve always been right.  Now, this does not exonerate the idiots who wrote it for writing it the way they did (leaving open the question of whether the constitution recognizes the right to bear arms outside the home).  In fact it’s worse than that.  The Heller decision was a tip of the hat to the pampered beltway elitists and chattering class.

Heller offers a Second Amendment cleaned up so that it can safely be brought into the homes of affluent Washington suburbanites who would never dream of resistance-they have too much sunk into the system–but who might own a gun to protect themselves from the private dangers that, they believe, stalk around their doors at night. Scalia commonly touts his own judicial courage, his willingness to read the Constitution as it stands and let the chips fall where they may. But Heller is noteworthy for its cowardice.

So the Supreme Court bears blame, but then so does the lawyer who argued the way he did (Clement).  Rights come from the Almighty.  Any failure to ensconce our duties and rights clearly in His law-word insults the creator of the universe.

Ironically, I was just reading this discussion thread at reddit/Firearms where so-called Fudds are lampooned for their positions, e.g., “You guys with your AR-15s are always pushing things.  You’re going to make us all lose our rights.”  Listen. coward.  Your rights come from God, not man.  You cannot lose what God has granted.

All aspects and manifestations of God’s economy – Family, Church and State – must bend the knee to King Jesus, or they will not survive.  They will perish from the earth, and then suffer in eternity.


Comments

  1. On October 27, 2021 at 10:12 am, LatigoMorgan said:

    The thing that always stuck in my craw about Heller was the blatant ignoring and failure to even touch the words, “shall not be infringed.”

    Those words were the equivalent of today’s “mic drop”, showing end of discussion.

  2. On October 27, 2021 at 5:35 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

    Re: “Our Gun Rights Are God Given”

    The Founders – after much debate between the Anti-Federalists and Federalists – appended the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution, as a part of the political compromise to get it ratified at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, May-September 1787.

    The purpose of the Bill of Rights was not to confer rights upon American citizens; it was to codify pre-existing God-given or natural rights, rights that free men already possessed. Government, in other words, was not the source of our liberties and rights as a free people. Since it did not – and does not – confer those rights in the first place, it has no inherent legitimate right to take them away.

    Communism and atheism go hand-in-hand. Why? Since they do not believe in a higher power or Supreme Being who makes moral demands upon humanity, it then follows that they cannot believe in God-given rights. Indeed, virtually all of the evils of communism flow from this single fact.

    In his famous novel, “The Brothers Karamazov,” (published 1879-1880) Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, through his characters, ponders the issue of the existence of God and his role in human affairs. At one point, Ivan Karamazov exclaims, “If there is no God, anything is permitted…” – a phrase, as it happens, which neatly sums up the world view of the communists.

    The communists believe that the individual human-being belongs to the state and to the party, and not to himself or for that matter, any deity or higher-power.

    According to the world view of the communists, since there is no God -then man himself can act in his place. Survival becomes a cruel and Hobbsian struggle in which the strong survive and – to use the old expression – “the devil take the hindmost.” The law of the jungle in which the strong prey upon the weak.

    Because they do not view human life as being in God’s image, the communists have regarded human life as being cheap, even disposable.

    Stalin famously said, “Man is the source of all problems. Eliminate the man and you eliminate the problem….no man, no problem” and also “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

    Mao Zedong killed seventy million of his own countrymen -ethnic Chinese -because they were judged insufficiently committed to the Chinese communist party and its beliefs.

    Is it any surprise that the end-result of communism wherever and whenever it is tried, has been the torture chamber and the killing field? It is an ideology of death.

  3. On October 28, 2021 at 11:21 pm, luke2236 said:

    Amen.

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This article is filed under the category(s) Second Amendment and was published October 26th, 2021 by Herschel Smith.

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