Do you, personally, my good and fair readers, have the individual, personal right to own and use a firearm? If you're a member of the military or a police agency, clearly you do, and I don't think anyone would ever argue that they don't. But if you are just an "average" citizen, do you have that individual right?

Not according to the media:
"There is no individual right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights" -- Richard Benedetto, "Gun Rights are a Myth," USA Today, December 28, 1994.

"Law-abiding Americans have no unconditional right to firearms access" -- "Time for Gun Control," New York Post, August 12, 1999.

"The sale, manufacture, and possession of handguns ought to be banned...We do not believe the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep them" -- "Legal Guns Kill, Too," The Washington Post, November 5, 1999.

"There is no reason for anyone in the country, for anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use, a handgun." -- Michael Gartner, former president of NBC News, "Glut of Guns: What Can We Do About Them, USA Today, January 16, 1992.

They are all wrong. Dead wrong.

For those who believe the United States Constitution is a so-called "living document," you're wrong, too. Thomas Jefferson, to Supreme Court Judge William Johnson, June 12, 1823:

On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeeze out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

James Madison, to Henry Lee on June 25, 1824:

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that not be the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than faithful, exercise of its powers...

What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all it's ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense.

James Wilson, one of the original justices on the Supreme Court:

The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.

So, very clearly and obviously, those who created the United States Constitution absolutely determined it should not be a "living" document and that it should be read and interpreted as for its original intent, and the intent of those who wrote it.

Tomorrow I'll post some information on the opinions of those who wrote the second amendment.

Posted by: Ogre at 01:15 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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