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Given the reichish makeup
of the present Supreme Court, it was clearly a foregone conclusion that
they would consign Washington D.C.’s prohibition of handguns to the
compost heap and let the bullets fly once again in that troubled city.
I shall never understand
the almost conscious and willful empty-headedness of judges or attorneys
who, first of all, refuse to acknowledge that there are two clauses in
the Second Amendment and, second, that when the Founding Fathers talked
about “arms,” they were talking muskets that took three or four minutes
to load and that fired off one shot. They had no ken of automatic weapons
that fire rounds of ammunition, and they certainly knew nothing of
handguns.
If, then, as conservative Supremes
like Scalia, Thomas and the rest of the Gang of Four insist, we should
interpret the Constitution with the ultimate strictness of a librarian
imposing silence on a reading room, why don’t they truly reflect the
intent of the Founding Fathers and admit that, while we all have a right
to bear arms, those arms must be muskets?
I would have no problem
with their “interpretation” of the Second Amendment if indeed people were
keeping muskets in their homes to ward off intruders. By the time you got
your musket loaded and ready, the intruder most likely would have
departed. Or, if the intruder were Aunt Mary coming for an unexpected
visit, you would have time, while jamming your powder, to rectify your
intent and not blast her to kingdom come.
Furthermore, we could
forget all this concealed weapon business. If all we had were muskets,
people could drag them anywhere they pleased, along with all the
accoutrement needed to get off a shot, and no one would be concerned.
Want to take your musket
into a bar? Go ahead. If you get into a dipsy-do with a fellow binger,
the bartender or bouncer will be all over you before you can load and
fire.
Or lug your musket into a
church, a school, a library, a park or any other place where guns are now
forbidden. Who cares? Before you
can prop up your musket or realize that your powder is wet, you will be
surrounded by people looking rather stern and wagging fingers at you.
No, the Founding Fathers
obviously had no idea that their notion of the right to bear arms would
be interpreted as it is now. In fact, they would have been astounded at
the stupidity of such interpretations, if only because they recognized
the futility of using muskets to settle personal disputes or blow off
some loudmouth who was charging too much for crack cocaine.
What they did understand
was that muskets, when used by a militia or any large group of men en
masse, were effective. And given the times, when revolutions or uprisings
were not out of the question, it would make sense for citizens to legally
possess muskets that would be ready to go if the state or federal
government had need of an armed force to quell a rebellion. Or indeed, if
the government itself became overly authoritarian and returned to its
British roots.
Hence the dependent clause
immediately preceding the main clause of the Second Amendment.
I have written elsewhere of
the Latinate construction of this amendment. Suffice it to say here that
disregarding the dependent clause dealing with a well-regulated militia
is to grossly violate the intent of the grammar and the language used in
the amendment’s construction. The point is that grammatically the main
clause about the right to bear arms is totally dependent on the militia
clause.
Yet, this is exactly what
the majority in the recent Supreme Court decision about the amendment
did. By cavalierly dismissing the militia clause, these strict
constructors of the Constitution virtually sanctioned a new amendment
that is totally alien to the intent of the Founding Fathers.
In the upcoming election,
we should all be heavily concerned with the question of appointments to
the Supreme Court. While Republicans blather about leftist political
agendas relative to court interpretations, it has become all too clear
that the right-leaning members of the court have become the real
activists when it comes to mangling the Constitution.
In this particular case,
obeisance to the NRA was hardly quiescent. And the real intent of the Founding
Fathers was so mutilated as to be abstruse and incomprehensible.
July 2,
2008
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