BY Herschel Smith
9 years, 3 months ago
Bob Unruh at WND:
Americans are being warned that the danger from the porous United States borders has increased because of a federal appeals court’s determination that illegal aliens have a right to keep and bear arms under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.
“Just think: Illegal aliens who are about to be deported have standing to sue for gun rights, but the sheriff of the fourth largest county located near the border, Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, has no standing to sue Obama for violating the law and flooding his jurisdiction with illegal immigrants,” wrote Daniel Horowitz at Conservative Review.
The outrage came on the heels of a ruling from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said people “living in the United States illegally” share in the Second Amendment right.
In the ruling, which conflicts with the decisions of several other appeals courts, the Chicago-based court ruled one particular illegal alien was barred from possessing weapons because of a federal statute.
But the three-judge panel said Mariano Meza-Rodriguez is among “the people” cited in the Constitution and thus would be granted the right “to keep and bear arms” if not for the federal law.
He was found to have a bullet in his pocket when he was apprehended, but he argued that the charges that ensued should be dismissed because he possesses Second Amendment rights.
The author of the opinion, Judge Diane Wood, wrote, “We see no principled way to carve out the Second Amendment and say that the unauthorized (or maybe all noncitizens) are excluded.”
[ … ]
Bob Owens at
Bearing Arms said, “I don’t think for a second that the Founding Fathers would support the concept of granting criminal invaders the same legal status as legal immigrants, legal resident aliens, and citizens.”
I don’t go where Bob Owens does on this. This isn’t about the second amendment to me. I took a strong stand against illegal aliens and bearing arms before (I cannot recall where, perhaps in a comment at reddit/guns, or at Say Uncle), and was savaged, as if I was anti-gun.
There is a libertarian case against the ownership of weapons by illegal aliens. It’s simple. You cannot do things to take actions that adversely affect others, and the mere presence of illegal aliens on my home soil adversely affects me.
Libertarians notwithstanding, you do not have a right to do anything you want any time you want. Your rights are circumscribed by God. God gives me the right to own weapons. God does not give illegal aliens the right to be in my country. The discussion about weapons for illegal aliens shouldn’t even come up. Let central and South America figure it out.
I don’t have to turn to the founding fathers to figure this out. But what’s so rich about this – and Bob Unruh points this out – is that judges who would otherwise vomit at the notion of God-given rights and bearing arms, suddenly find it necessary to expand this right to people who have no right to be on this soil. It must suck to be a progressive and face logical problems like this. Being impaled on the horns of a dilemma is the sort of thing that sticks to your innards.
