US Person blames not the political
hacks of the gun industry for the failure to control America's gun disease, but the
spineless so-called liberal politicians who continually fail to reform the US Senate which was never intended by the Founders to only legislate by a supermajority.
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| [credit: Cameron Cardow, Ottawa Citizen] |
As an observer of this often paranoid debate,
US Person is forced to ask, what part of the Second Amendment do absolutist, unlimited gun right zealots not understand? Apparently it is the first part, the preamble, the stated purpose of the Second Amendment that has clearly become an anachronism regardless of what the closeted originalists on the nation's highest bench proclaim. Even the original militiamen were
required to register their musket each year with state militia leaders under the Militia Act of 1792. Recall the Second Amendment refers to "a well regulated Militia". Jefferson, upon reading the Constitution in Paris where he was ambassador, wrote to Madison urging for a provision to "substitute a militia for a standing army", then considered to be the great bane of democracy (probably correctly). This was how the Second Amendment was envisioned by the Founders, not as a guarantee of individual gun rights, but as
a protection against disarming existing state militias and their being superseded by a federal standing army. History has seen the rise of a hugh federal military establishment--some might even argue a police state--but the Second Amendment was never intended to be a license for unlimited personal arsenals. Author Madison and leading Anti-Federalist George Mason viewed the citizen's right to bear arms, as did most American 18th Century social theorists, to be in the context of rendering required military service in person as part of an organized citizen militia. Subsequent commentators such as Chief Justice Story agreed.
Are these assault weapon fetishists contemplating armed insurrection against an elected federal government? Are they are unconsciously equating its actions with the tyranny of the British Crown, or the perceived aggression of Northern States? Do they see themselves as "bulwarks of liberty" as they brandish their semi-automatic weapons of modern war in public? Whichever is the case, you cannot think this latest failure to represent the people's will the nadir of Congress when you consider slavery was abolished only with the aid of bribery. And on that consideration revolves the gun debate.
