From The Patriots Post, 27 June 2008:
In the Heller case, Justice Scalia wrote, “Nowhere else in the Constitution does a ”right“ attributed to ”the people“ refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention ”the people,“ the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset... The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms... The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed’.”
Justice Scalia continued in defense of original intent: “We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad... Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”
Indeed, the Second Amendment is “the palladium of the liberties of the republic,” and those who fail to support it as such do so at great peril to the liberty of future generations of Americans. However, when the rights of man, as enumerated in our Declaration of Independence and its subordinate exposition, our Constitution, hang in the balance, Patriots do not rely on a court of men for interpretation.
Soap Box Ravings believes the Second Amendment battle is equally as important as the battle for energy. Therefore, Soap Box Ravings would like to invite all of his fellow citizen Patriots to please take 30 seconds to read and sign the petition at: http://patriotpetitions.us/second/ Please feel free to ask all your friends and relatives to sign also.
The following is the petition:
The Right of the People ... shall not be infringed
To President George Bush, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Republican Leader John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:
To President George Bush, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Republican Leader John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:
We, the people of these United States, rightfully petition our President, House of Representatives and Senate in affirmation of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
We affirm that said Amendment was established to define an individual "right of the People to keep and bear arms," and that there is no more important constitutional issue than that of defending the plain language and original intent of the Second Amendment.
The newly-emboldened Democrat Party, with Barack Hussein Obama leading the charge, is once again attempting to redefine the Second Amendment as a collective right only, as outlined on the ACLU's website under "Gun Control": "We believe that the constitutional right to bear arms is primarily a collective one, intended mainly to protect the right of the states to maintain militias. ... The ACLU therefore believes that the Second Amendment does not confer an unlimited right upon individuals to own guns."
Justice Joseph Story, appointed to the Supreme Court by our Constitution's principal author, James Madison, wrote in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of the rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
Indeed, the Second Amendment is "the palladium of the liberties of the republic," and those who fail to support it as such, and reject detractors like Obama, do so at great peril to themselves and the liberty of future generations of Americans.
Accordingly, we, the undersigned, declare that gun ownership is not only an individual right, but a duty and obligation of all Patriots.
Signed,
