Full Scope Of The Second Amendment
Beyond Individual Self-Defense
Today on Legalese we will be discussing the full scope of the natural right of armed self-defense, codified in the second amendment.
Too often, the modern debate over the second amendment has to do with whether, and to what extent, may people engage in individual self-defense when the government is either incapable or unwilling to adequately protect people.
However, they never question the legitimacy of the government's assertion of their monopoly on the use of violence. I am of a belief that this conversation is long overdue.
Moreover, should the types of arms individuals may own and carry be limited to those weapons suitable only for individual self defense?
I want to challenge that very notion and to begin to debate and define the true size and scope of this ever-vanishing natural right before its too late and we wake up one day to find no memory of such a right in our history and traditions left to define and debate. All because we gave an increasingly centralized government greater control to dictate to us precisely what rights we created this government to protect.
As many of my recent articles and videos have attempted to demonstrate…
…This problem of misleading arguments and misdirected hostility is only gaining ground. Despite our best efforts, the House has managed to pass HR 1808 - The Assault Weapon Ban of 2022.
It’s easy to console ourselves with the belief:
“We don’t need to worry. They don’t have the votes in the Senate to get this through.”
But Cicero’s maxim of Republican virtue is no less true now than when he wrote it in Ad Atticum XV in 57 B.C.
-Etiam si Dominus non sit molestus, tamen miserremum est, posse, se vebit- Though a despot may not act tyrannically; yet it is dreadful to think, that if he will, he may.
Moreover, what HR 1808 does accomplish is to provide an easy solution to a difficult problem that they can sell to voters.
They will continue to blame an ever-growing list of inanimate objects like semi-automatic sporting rifles, pistol braces and barrel shrouds (That perfidious shoulder thing that goes up) as the catalyst of increasing day-to-day criminal violence and civil unrest, simply to place the blame on something, anything, they can control.
Despite the fact we are all fully apprised of the realization that no matter how many inanimate objects we concede to banning, there will always be something else that needs banning. Because what they really want to ban is violence and hatred and mental illness.
They desperately want to avoid talking about those problems because we all know they are built-in to the human condition, and likely always will be.
So they choose to show the people nothing but what would flatter and mislead them. To exhibit, by a rush–light only, that which, to dissipate its darkness, requires the full force of the meridian sun. When the people are fully apprized of the chains you have prepared for them, if they choose to put them on, you have nothing to answer for. If they choose to be tenants at will of their liberties, instead of having their freehold in them… [secured by a desire to retain their natural rights]… I can only lament it.
Cincinnatus I – New York Journal, November 1, 1787
Perhaps it not too late to remind our fellow citizens of the once commonly taught words of the great English jurist Sir Edward Coke–
For a man to be tenant at will of his liberty, I can never agree to it.
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Legalese is a podcast that discusses all things constitutional law as well as current events in politics and other areas of law.