2nd amendment right not from gov't

7/30/2019 2nd Amendment Right Not From Gov't

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The Market Ticker Commentary on The Capital Markets

Posted 2013-04-25 22:51

byKarl Denninger

in2ndAmendment

Why We Can't Have A "Reasonable Discussion" On 2A

The other night I got into a twitter-flamefest with Dylan Ratigan on, you guessed it, guns.

He tweeted something about The Senate and "reasonable" gun control and I went after him. He responded and

the game was on. You can back through my timeline (as Tickerguy) and have a look if you want.

The conversation quickly degenerated when he started with the "So you're for private ownership of nukes,

right?" crap and "The Second Amendment was written in a time of muskets, so that's what it covers" nonsense.

I retorted with "So the First Amendment is about movable type, paper and ink -- hand-driven -- right?"

Ah, no answer.

Didn't think I'd get one, by the way, so rather than keep hammering that I instead pointed this out the following

(and it took three tweets to do it @ 140 characters each):

The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution (no government can give what it does not have)

2A recognizes the fundamental human right to self-defense, irrespective of the attacker's identity.

The Bill of Rights PROTECTS Rights, it does not GRANT them as government NEVER HAD THEM TO

GRANT.

This is why we can't have a "reasonable" debate on this point with people on the other side of the debate.

They refuse to recognize these essential facts:

The Government never possesseda single right, therefore it cannot grant them. Instead, we thepeople granted a limi ted set of pri vilegesto Government. That's what a Constitutional Republic is

The Second Amendment is formal recogni tionof your, my, and everyone else's Right to Lif e. Sincethe police cannot be everywhere nor do they have a duty to prevent or stop a crime in process

(and they cannot be held legally accountable if they fail to do so, never mind that even if they

could dead is still dead) you have the right to self -defense which fl ows fr om your ri ght to li fe.

Dylan was looking for a place to insert a wedge because he refused to debate from principle. He wanted to look

for a way to play the typical media "gotcha" game but I 'm too smart f or that as I 've been at thi s for 20+ years

as has he. He should know, having dealt with me on the bankster issues, that he wasn't going to get away with

that crap but he tried anyway -- and failed.
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If you look at principle-- that is, what's embodied in the Declaration of Independence -- then there is nothing

difficult in figuring out where the lines are at all. Not here, not on the First Amendment, not on the Fourth orFifth. All are simple.

And more importantly, all lead to inescapable conclusions for virtually every case, leaving only a few

uncommon circumstances to be briefed and argued in a courtroom or legislative chamber.

The First Amendment most-certainly applies to all types of speech, because speech is a component ofLiberty.

Government didn't give you that right (they never had it to give away), you have it because you are human. Youtherefore have the right to speak, but not the right to force someone to listen or to pay to amplify your speech

for you. This right extends to words printed on paper using movable type, it extends to skywriting, it extends to

the In ternetand it extends to other forms and means of effecting speech that we have not thought of yet but will

in the future.

The Fourth Amendment applies in Boston to the searches of homes and what was done there is blatantly

unconstitutional and as a consequence is a crimeunder 18 USC 242 (and is civilly actionable under 42 USC

1983.) The so-called "law enforcement" people who committed those searches and seizures under duress

without a warrant violated the law. Period. This is true irrespective of the means by which such is done becauseThe Fourth Amendment does not grant you the right to be secure in your papers and effects, you have that

r ight because it is an essential element of l iber ty; the fr eedom to possess privately-obtained property thr oughthe frui ts of your l abor without it being ri fl ed through or stolen by anyone, including government agents,

except under due process of law where probable cause exi sts to bel ieve you have personal ly committed a

crime.

The Fifth Amendment likewise attaches to the actions in Boston and also gives rise to criminal liability under

18 USC 242 to the extent that anything was seized, no matter how momentarily, without a warrant. Again, The

Fifth Amendment is not a grant from government it i s recogni tion of your fundamental l iberty interests that

vested in you at bir th.

And finally, The Second Amendment protects your right to exercise self-defense against all enemies, foreign

and domestic, that could reasonablybe expected to attempt to unlawfully deprive you of your life. It is againnot a grant from government either of a right or a privilege because government never had thi s to give.

The Declaration called forth whereyour right to life came from -- your creator. In other words, you have that

r ight because you're human just like you have the right to li berty and pur sui t of (but not guarantee of

attainment of) happiness.

All the answers to "where is the line?" come easily and logically when you debate from principleinstead of

playing games. The Second Amendment therefore protectsyour right to keep and bearany arms that might bereasonably used in the present time for the purpose of defense of yourself or those in your charge, voluntar il y

or otherwise, against any reasonable threat of death or serious bodil y harm by any reasonably-foreseeable

malefactor who would take your li fe or l iberty un lawfu ll y from you.

It is therefore quite clear that you may keep and bear any gun which you are able to carry and deploy as a single

individual because murderous marauders sometimes attack in packs, sometimes are jacked up on drugs andoften are capable of physically overpowering you. Yes, this means you may keep and bear, underThe

Declaration's statement of your rights, a machine gun. Yes, this includes a gun with a "silencer" (which really

doesn't make it silent.) Yes, it includes a gun with a 10, 20, 30 or 100 round magazine -- or ten of them. Yes, it

includes a concealed pistol. Yes, 2 guns. Yes, if I (or someone else) invent one, a Star Trek Phasor. Yes, 100guns and as much ammunition as you care to buy and store should you so choose; although you can only shoot

two at a time (unless you're from Mars and have six hands) there may be others in your care, custody or

association that could use them in the event of a need of defense when they are in your company.


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Now let's look at the "nuke" argument that the left loves to trot out.

Is there a reasonable argument to be made that a person possessing a nuclear device would have reason

to use it under any rational ly-foreseeable cir cumstancethat would be deemed, in full totality of the

circumstance in hindsight, self-defense?

I can't come up with the circumstances under which that would apply, despite putting a fair bit of mental

effort into it.

We answered the question with logic, didn't we?

So where's the line?

Let' s apply logic and your r ight to l if e as the guideposts.

If there are no MS-13 gangs coming into the country with armored vehicles, then I don't need an anti-tankrocket. If there is no permanent Army with tanks on American soil, then I don't need one for the eventuality that

our government may go rogue and try to blast me with one. If there are no drones based in, located in, or flying

over American cities then I don't need defensive devices that can shoot them down, disable their weapons or

jam their communications. And before you say "but the government would never do that" please go ask thequestion of the 6+ million dead Jews who would beg to differ with you, or if you prefer you may pick on the

dead Armenians, Soviets, Chinese, Guatemalans, Ugandans, Cambodians or Rwandans -- and that's just in thelast 100 years or thereabouts, totaling something like 80 million people or several times as many as were killed

in all the wars of the 20th Century combined.

By the way -- The Constitution prohibitsstanding Armies -- it prohibits an appropriation spanning more than

two years for the purpose of raising an army. On the other hand the Constituti on expli citly permits forming

and funding a standing Navy.

Guess why? Because that ties in directly to the people's right to life; a Navy is used to protect vessels at sea and

the coastline and has by its nature rather limi ted inl and reach.

That our government has wantonly and illegallyviolated its own founding documents doesn't change a thing.

But it does change what's covered by the Second Amendment if you debate fr om the principles that founded

thi s nation and are embodied in The Declaration, and the items covered by the Second Amendment are

directly linked to our government's own voluntar il y-taken actions.

All of the other so-called "tough questions" are likewise answered by looking to principle, and at the same time

we solve, to a lar ge degree, our crime problems.

Like, for example, this question that left loves to run:

Does a felon have a right to life? Yes, underThe Declaration. During the time he or she is incarcerated TheStatetakes responsibility for that life and is duty-bound to protect it. During the time he or she remains under

supervision that duty and responsibi li ty remains with The State. However, upon satisfaction of that person's

"debt to society" they stil l have a ri ght to li fe, which means that no law impair ing their abil ity to defend

themselves, post-di scharge, is Constitu tional !

But what about the bad guys, you ask?


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That's simple, but we don't want to talk about it. In particularthe liberals don't want to talk about it, because

they're largely responsible for the dangerous animals prowling our streets.

Ifyou are dangerous to others, as determined under due process of law, whether by reason of criminal activity

or mental defect, the proper place for you is in an institu tion where your r ight to lif e remains but the duty toprotect i t is transferred to the state. At the same time since you have demonstrated (under due process of law)

that you're dangerous to others you must be removed fr om having the abil ity to do that harm to othersbecause

their right to life trumps your asserted but non-existent right to murder,******or rob.

We could have prevented the shooting in upstate NY of several firefighters i f we had not let the shooter

out of pr ison af ter he kill ed his grandmother with a hammer. Likewise, most of the other murders arecommitted by people with violent criminal pasts. Yes, there is the exception, but it's exactly that -- an exception

In fact, that's the history of "crime reporting" in this nation. The gang-bangers who shoot up people in

Chicago literally every day rarely make the news, but the occasional nut is front-page news forweeks, despite

the fact that the 20 people the nut kills are surpassed in less than a dayby the thugs. Our media doesn't talk

about the thugs because if we do we must face that we keep letting them out of pr ison with fu ll knowledge that

they are dangerous predators. Neither the media or politicians want to deal with this fact and so we bury it onpage 15 -- if it gets mentioned at all.

How about private property? If I own property I may ban the keeping and bearing of arms upon it. I therefore

may post signs demanding that you not bring guns into my store, theater or other place of business. I may alsoprohibit them in my home. The choice is mine, not yours. But on public property, where the people all have

an equal right to be, they also have no obligation to give up their right to defend their life in order to be

there. Therefore any peaceable person who wishes to have a firearm with them in a public park, on a beach, in

their car on the road or in a public parking lot may do so. I f and onl y if that person commits a crime by

threatening others (or worse) is there cause to remove them from the people they are threatening, and the

way we do that is by arresting them and charging them with the crime. If this threat is deemed (again, underdue process) to be material and ongoing then we imprison them until that is no longer the case.

It's not hard folks. We don't need a National Firearms Act, we don't need a Gun Control Act of 1968 and wedon't need a Brady Law. We don't need any of the 20,000+ gun laws now on the books, none of which have

stopped gun violence because the defi ni tion of a criminal is a person who ignores the law. We can (andshould) keep laws that enhance punishment for a crime committed with a firearm, and perhaps even strengthen

those laws as they punish conduct, not possession of a device.

I remind everyone that with some 300,000,000 guns in America and about 11,000 homicides a year

0.004% of them are used in a murder annually. In other words 99.996% of the firearms owned are not

used to murder someone in a given year.

None of the firearm laws will ever be effective and all of them are dir ect violations of your r ightsno matter

what a liberal, conservative, cop, mayor, governor, or a man or woman in a black robe says.

They are violations of your rights because The Constitution does not grant rights -- it is incapable of doing so

because Government never had any rights to begin with and thus cannot delegate what it never possessed.

There is only one solution to violent people, whether their violence manifests due to malevolence or insanity,

and that is to isolate them from society until they either rehabilitate, are no longer insane, or die. That too is afact and no amount of arguing over this can change reality. Gun prohibition has never and will never stop

someone from committing a violent felony because the problem isn't a device, it's the criminal mind.


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A person who intends to do harm will find a way; you can murder with a knife, an axe, a hammer, a gallon of

gasoline or a Suburban. There are more people killed with hammers, baseball bats and fists than rifles of

any sort, including so-called "assault rifles", each and every year. And let us not forget that the Boston

Bombers appear to have chosen to use ordinary pressure cookers and fireworksto make their bombs.

Men and women with evil in their hearts are not deterred by laws. They are only deterred by being physically

restrained -- that is, locked up.

If people on the other side of this position wish to have a principled debate where one must lay foundations fortheir positions and questions, tracing them to fundamental rights, then I'm all for it. Bring it on and I'm willing

to engage. Contact me. I'm game. Let's do it, in public view.

But if all you've got is the common media game of "gotcha" you're wasting your time among those of us who

understand where our rights come from, what limited government is, and what The Constitution actually does --and doesn't do.

That's the bottom line.

2nd amendment right not from gov't

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