Op-ed:
A Former Justice, an Op-ed, and Anti-Second Amendment Propaganda
By: Diane Sori / The Patriot Factor / Right Side Patriots on American Political Radio
"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."
- the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
In
2008, the United States Supreme Court decided in The
District of Columbia v. Heller (case #554 U.S. 570) that the
Second
Amendment
does indeed protect an individuals right to possess a firearm
unconnected with service in a militia and to use that firearm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within but not
specifically limited to the home. And yet most on the left with a
scattering of some on the right continue to refuse to accept that
ruling as basically being what is is...as in case closed.
And sadly, even some who once sat on the High Court's bench refuse to accept said decision.
Take the case of now 97-year old former liberal
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a nay vote in the above
cited decision, who when the decision was handed down, wrote in his
minority dissenting report that the High Court's ruling overturned a
"long-settled understanding of the Second Amendment's limited
reach." Also stating that the decision
allowed the National Rifle Association (NRA) to become "a
propaganda weapon of immense power"...this
statement alone reeks of Stevens not interpreting the law as was his
sworn duty but of judicial activism, something that most definitely
is frowned upon.
But being that he retired in 2010, at age 91...too
old to sit on the High Court and make carefully crafted and thought
out decisions if you ask me...it was this
very same man who one week ago today suddenly reappeared to call for
the actual “repeal”
of the adopted in 1791, Second Amendment. Obviously forgetting or
willingly choosing to ignore the fact that no amendment to the
Constitution as set down by our Founders and Framers has ever been
repealed (the 18th Amendment regarding prohibition and its subsequent
21st repeal amendment was obviously not done by our Founders and
Framers)...former Justice Stevens also forgets that to amend the
Constitution is no easy task for it means an amendment must be
proposed by either Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both
the House and the Senate, or by a constitutional convention called for
by two-thirds of the Senate legislatures.
So even if the near impossible regarding the Second Amendment being
amended was officially proposed, it would still need
ratification by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states or
state ratifying conventions in three-quarters of said states, and
that I would assume will never happen. And why...because dare we
forget that any concerted effort to try and repeal or even amend the
Second Amendment would be “political suicide” for those elected
officials involved in said task.
Also, to amend the all-important Second Amendment
and to go against a Supreme Court ruling already in place, I so believe,
would rightfully lead to the Second American Revolution. And really, isn't that
the very reason why our Founders and Framers put the Second Amendment
into place, as in to give 'We the People' the means by which to
overthrow the government in the event it becomes tyrannical. And
while such a rightful revolution would likely see America's streets
flowing red with the blood of American patriots...remember the old
saying, “behind every blade of
grass”...amending the Second Amendment
with the left's goal being the disarming of American citizenry is
surely an example of government tyranny to which we have the “natural
right” to revolution.
Now as for the above stated Gerald Ford appointee, while former
Justice Stevens is certainly entitled to his opinion, even one as
obviously wrong and misguided as his saying that,
"Overturning
that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second
Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s
ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun
control legislation than any other available option,"
shows that sometimes opinions are given not based upon facts but upon
emotions and focused political party ideologies alone...both
dangerous as the foundation upon which to base such an important
opinion on.
Writing in-part in his emotionally charged op-ed, John Paul Stevens: Repeal the Second Amendment, printed
in The New York Times, Stevens cited the recent
nationwide student protests in response to last month's deadly school shooting in
Parkland, Florida, as a catalyst for change. Saying that he had, "Concerns
that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of
separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides
that 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,'" Stevens added that
“Today that concern is a relic of the
18th century"...leaving Stevens' words to be but a slap in the face to not only our Founders and Framers but to the Constitution itself.
Very foolish words indeed for to former Justice Stevens, it seems,
how we as individuals in today's society choose to protect ourselves
and our families should not be how said protection was done in the
18th century when our country was young, untamed, and still flexing
its new found muscle, no matter that our beloved America still sees
some of the same problems existing today as it did almost three centuries ago.
One case in point...school shootings...former Justice Stevens' very
touch point...which are not just modern day occurrences as most people
think...as the liberal media wants you to believe...as Stevens wrote
about even while knowing this truth. Writing words strictly based
upon last month's events in Parkland, Florida...the Marjorie Stoneman
Douglas High School shooting...what Stevens ignores is the critical
fact that school shootings go back to the time of our nation's
founding and even before. But most importantly is the reality that
school shootings occurred before there was a Second Amendment, before
there was any sort of semi-automatic anything, and before the
erroneously blamed for every shooting that happens NRA even
existed...back to the time of the single shot musket.
And
it all started on July 26, 1764. Known as the Enoch Brown School
Massacre, this happened during the Pontiac's
War
when four Delaware Lenape Indians entered the schoolhouse near
present-day Greencastle, Pennsylvania, and shot and killed
schoolmaster Enoch Brown, also murdering nine out of the eleven
children present that day. However, some liberals historians love to
say that this “incident”
as
they call it may only “incidentally
be considered a school shooting"
because only the teacher was shot...remember this was at a time of
single-shot muskets and flintlock pistols which were not easily nor quickly
reloaded...while the nine children were killed with knives and
tomahawks. But no matter the word semantics for it still saw the
teacher being fatally shot by a gun.
And children shooting children is not a new occurrence either as the
first child to commit a school shooting was 13-year old Mathew Ward
of Louisville, Kentucky, who on November 1, 1853 shot his brother's
teacher dead on school property at point blank range over what he
perceived as excess punishment given to his brother.
And
know that school shootings continued unabated throughout the 18th,
19th, and 20th centuries, right up until last month's Parkland school
shooting that left 17 children dead. In fact, you can see for
yourself the list and details of all the almost 500 school shootings
here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ListofschoolshootingsintheUnitedStates. But the point is that until fairly recently no call to repeal the
Second Amendment was made for it seems those in the past could
separate the issue of our Second Amendment rights from school and
other shooting events...something the liberals seem not able or
willing to do today.
Still missing the point that no law or background
check will totally prevent school shootings from happening, and
also missing the point that neither will the repealing of the Second
Amendment keep firearms out of the hands of those wishing to do harm,
Stevens' written statement did nothing but fuel the liberal anti-gun
agenda by using and capitalizing on the murder of children. By his
calling the Parkland shooting an “event”
that "demanded our respect”...which
by the way goes
without saying...Stevens refused to leave it at that for what he went on to do was cloak “respect”
into a flowery liberal infused rant about "more
effective and more lasting reform"...as
in his call for a total repeal of the Second Amendment.
Oblivious, like most liberals are, to the fact that guns do not kill
people...not even semi-automatic rifles kill people...it's people
that kill people...Stevens never once published these misplaced
thoughts of his after Columbine, the Virginia Tech shooting, or any
of the other school shootings that occurred while he was a sitting
Supreme Court justice. And this leads me to believe that former
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens was either willingly
recruited by the left, is simply being used by the left in a ploy to
get a respected 'person of name' to lead the charge on repealing the
Second Amendment, or is sadly just a foolish old man spewing out
liberal nonsense in what he perceives as his last hurrah.
"There is broad public support for
legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren
and others in our society," Stevens
went on to say in his op-ed piece forgetting the obvious that no one
wants to see any schoolchildren killed, especially in what should be a
safe environment. But again as most liberals do, Stevens is missing
the obvious point that securing school grounds... that securing school
buildings...is the answer the public really supports not more
useless legislation that takes away the ability of 'good guys with
guns' to stop 'bad guys with guns' from doing their vile deeds.
And
besides, a totally useless piece of legislation already exists in
regards to firearms...as in 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(25)...otherwise known
as the Gun-Free Zone Act. Enacted by Congress in 1990, this act
prohibits any “unauthorized”
individual from knowingly possessing a loaded or unsecured firearm at
a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to
believe, is a school zone.
And why is the Gun-Free Zone Act useless...because no sign placed on
a fence will stop someone hell-bent on committing mass murder as
proven by the findings of the much respected Crime
Prevention Research Center, which found that from the 1950s
through July 10, 2016, 98.4 percent of mass shootings have happened
in gun-free zones. Now if you add in last month's Parkland school
shooting that percentage goes up even higher.
And
former Justice Stevens knows well that legislation is not now nor has
it ever been the answer in regards to anything relating to
firearms...for no laws passed will succeed in keeping firearms out of
the hands of those focused on doing harm nor will any laws passed
divert the the left's attention away from their ultimate goal of
trying to take away our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
And also what Stevens and his leftists cohorts fail to see is that by
their very act of trying to negate the Second Amendment it actually
results in more support for it. In fact, right after the Parkland
school shooting The
Economist/YouGuv Poll found that just a total of 21 percent of
Americans would support repealing the Second Amendment, and
surprisingly that total number included just 39 percent of Democrats
who said they would support repealing the Second Amendment.
So while the Trump White House issued a statement via Press Secretary Sarah
Huckabee Sanders supporting the Second Amendment while still being
focused on removing guns from “dangerous individuals” and "not
blocking all Americans on their constitutional rights" to keep
and bear arms, know that even some on the left did push back against
former Justice Stevens' op-ed including one Adam Winkler, a UCLA law
professor, who argued that repeal would not have the effect that
Stevens imagined it would. In fact, he stated that Stevens words
would "do little to change America's gun laws," especially
in states that are anti-gun control.
But good little liberal that he is and like Stevens one who does not
know when to shut-up, Winkler added that,
"The Second Amendment
is not a barrier to enacting good gun laws...the NRA is. It's the
politics of guns that control our gun laws, not the law of the Second
Amendment." And those words show just how misguided this discourse
has become for the gun-control, anti-Second Amendment sorts still
refuse to see let alone understand that not one mass shooter has been
an NRA member...yet they continue to focus on the NRA alone instead of
on the one who actually pulled the trigger...on the one who actually
committed mass murder.
Such is the hallmark of the left...never blame the one who committed
the crime but blame the one the media and the 'powers that be' insist
we focus on as it will help not only to divert and deflect us from
the truth but will help the media move forward the leftist agenda.
And former Justice John Paul Stevens and his op-ed reeking of leftist
anti-Second Amendment propaganda fits that bill to a tee.
Copyright @ 2018 Diane
Sori / The Patriot Factor / All Rights Reserved.
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For more political commentary please visit my
RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS partner Craig Andresen's blog
The National Patriot to read his latest article
The Method to Liberals Madness
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day.
And
besides, a totally useless piece of legislation already exists in
regards to firearms...as in 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(25)...otherwise known
as the Gun-Free Zone Act. Enacted by Congress in 1990, this act
prohibits any “unauthorized”
individual from knowingly possessing a loaded or unsecured firearm at
a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to
believe, is a school zone.
And why is the Gun-Free Zone Act useless...because no sign placed on
a fence will stop someone hell-bent on committing mass murder as
proven by the findings of the much respected Crime
Prevention Research Center, which found that from the 1950s
through July 10, 2016, 98.4 percent of mass shootings have happened
in gun-free zones. Now if you add in last month's Parkland school
shooting that percentage goes up even higher.
