This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed.
By Chief Justice Morrison Waite in 1875.
If the 2nd Amendment is somehow repealed, and repealed unanimously, that does not mean you no longer have a right to keep and bear arms. The right transcends the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It is Universal. You have always had it and always well, unjust laws to the contrary be damned. Just because a British citizen has been proscribed by law from owning and bearing a pistol in a lawful manner by the law of his nation that doesn't mean he has no right to. He is just allowing the law to trample upon his rights.
When we settle the issue once and for all, here, in the U.S. we need to push the issue to be recognized in the UN Charter so all humans rights to defend themselves are recognized.
I've talked on this before, but it never hurts to reinforce it.
3 comments:
Sadly the UN charter is going exactly the OPPOSITE direction...
I believe that the Right to Self-Defense lies in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The Second just allows us to use "Arms" to enforce those Rights.
That quote of course is from US vs Cruishank (1878), one of the 3 times the SC talked specifically of the 2A before Heller (Presser which was later, and then Miller in 1939).
The US prosectued Cruishank for violating the rights of black citizens in the South to assemble and to have and bear arms (in short, the Klansmen were roughing them up) under the new civil rights laws.
The court said, nope, the 2A (and the 4th) only prohibited Federal infringement and that the people had to look to their state governments for protection of those rights.
In effect the SC left the newly freed Blacks in the South after the Civil War at the mercy of their still very racist state governmens.
A horrible decision on that, but an absolutley correct understanding of what the 2A protects, IE that pre-existing right. But they should have upheld the conviction of Cruishank as it would have changed the "Jim Crow" era for the good.
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