This week, in a fit of judicial activism, five members of the United States Supreme Court overthrew the Constitution of the United States.
At issue was the “meaning” of the Second Amendment that states:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.Note that this is the only – the only – item in the Bill of Rights that the framers of the constitution felt necessary to explain with any clause whatsoever. This one exceptional clause begins, “A well regulated Militia being necessary…”
The other items in the Bill of Rights don’t, for example, say that “discourse and free exercise of conscience among citizens being necessary to a free state…” before they prevented Congress from interfering with freedom of religion, speech, assembly or the press.
Why the difference?
Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the Constitution-be-damned ruling, explains his twisted reasoning this way:
The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.Let's grant that he's right about the history, so far as he goes. But that still means that the purpose of the law is to permit “well regulated” citizens’ militias, and not for you and I to keep a Glock under our pillows and another tucked in our waistbands for “self defense” as essentially unregulated individuals.
For that matter, if you follow what Scalia and his four concurring justices say, it doesn't give women the right to bear arms for any purpose whatsoever. Got that, Annie Oakley?
Imagine an armed
march on Washington
If we logically follow Scalia’s argument, you and I, as ordinary citizens, have the right under the constitution to form a militia, and in well-regulated order march on Washington with our arms and put down either a "politicized" army – and who decides whether the U.S. Army is "politicized" or not? – or a "select" militia, whatever that means. We could simply open fire on the United States Army. Fat chance that would be allowed to happen!
Besides, what would we march for? Maybe, in defense of the United States Constitution and in favor of civil order – because we are sickened by drive-by shootings, gunshot accidents and suicides, gang wars, robberies, murderously berserk students shooting up their fellow students on high school and college campuses and of the Supreme Court justices who by their rulings encourage this murder and mayhem.
Maybe our militia would march on Washington to demand that the five members who voted for this Constitution-killing decision be arrested, tried and hanged for playing fast and loose with constitutional law.
Armed insurrection
ain't constitutional
Except if we did that, that would be an armed called an insurrection, wouldn’t it? And how do you think the Supreme Court would rule if we were tried for this insurrection and appealed our absolutely certain convictions?
Well, here’s a hint: The U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t allow citizens – members of a well regulated militia or not, men or not – to bear arms in the U.S. Supreme Court.
