Daily Broadside | There is No “Exception” in the Second Amendment

Daily Verse | 1 Kings 12:8
But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and
consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him.

It’s Friday and the end of another week under the heel of Chairman Cho Bai Den and his communist acolytes. Dear Leader, “claiming that shootings are a ‘public health crisis,'” just announced several gun control measures.

Here’s what he said.

“A Public Health Crisis”

“Today we’re taking steps to confront not just the gun crisis, but what is actually a public health crisis.”

That’s is an interesting way to frame this “discussion.” Why is he using the phrase “public health crisis”? What does he mean? A mental health crisis? An anger management problem?

He probably means lead poisoning.

As Paula Bolyard worries, “After what our country has been through over the last year with the endless COVID-19 lockdown orders, the words ‘public health crisis’ are very ominous indeed.”

I fear it’s only a matter of time before someone gets the idea to regulate gun ownership by declaring a public health emergency. Is that what Biden’s up to with the language above? Time will tell, but don’t be surprised if whoever is running the show at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue tries to make an end-run around Congress to push through emergency orders to confiscate guns from those deemed a “health risk,” beginning with anyone who attended the Trump rally on Jan. 6.

“Nothing I Recommend Impinges on the Second Amendment”

“Nothing, nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment. They’re phony arguments suggesting that these are Second Amendment rights at stake for what we’re talking about.”

Funny to hear Biden talk about “phony.” The man is a walking, talking textbook example of phony. If he tells you that nothing he is about to say “impinges” on the Second Amendment, grab your guns and hold on for dear life, because the word he’s looking for isn’t “impinges” but “infringes.”

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

“Shall not be infringed.”

Shall not.

Sounds absolute to me.

In fact, a good case can be made that all federal gun restrictions are illegal infringements.

The truth is, the intentions of those who debated, wrote and passed the Second Amendment are clear: The purpose of the amendment is to protect individual liberty by, in part, stopping the federal government from instituting gun restrictions of any kind, because America’s founders wanted to ensure citizens had the ability to defend themselves against a tyrannical national government and other domestic threats, as well as from foreign invaders.

“No Amendment to The Constitution Is Absolute”

This is another worrisome statement. If no amendment is “absolute,” what does that mean for the First Amendment, much less the Second? Biden uses the example of the freedom of speech to press his point.

“You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded movie theater. Recall the freedom of speech.”

First, Resident Biden, don’t presume to lecture us on “you know, the thing.” You’re no constitutional scholar, nor are the cabal of Leftists you’ve surrounded yourself with. Second, the “yelling-fire-in-a-crowded-theater” maxim is associated with one of “the most odious free speech decisions in the Court’s history, but was overturned over 40 years ago.”

Today, despite the “crowded theater” quote’s legal irrelevance, advocates of censorship have not stopped trotting it out as the final word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. As Rottman wrote, for this reason, it’s “worse than useless in defining the boundaries of constitutional speech. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any unpopular speech.” Worse, its advocates are tacitly endorsing one of the broadest censorship decisions ever brought down by the Court. It is quite simply, as Ken White calls it, “the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech.”

Biden goes on to say, without evidence, that “From the very beginning, you couldn’t own any weapon you wanted to own. From the very beginning the Second Amendment existed, certain people weren’t allowed to have weapons.”

Really? You expect us to believe that? Please, give us all the examples you’ve collected. As Tyler O’Neil writes,

Biden is laying the groundwork for carving out exceptions to key constitutional rights. It’s not just gun control: Biden supports the Obamacare contraception mandate and would remove religious freedom exemptions for Catholic nuns like the Little Sisters of the Poor. Biden also supports the Equality Act, which explicitly undermines the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion and the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Biden supports H.R. 1, the Democrats’ election boondoggle that, among other things, eviscerates free speech in politics by mandating donor disclosure.

This is tyranny dressed up as concern for “safety.” Are there too many shooting deaths? Too many people in pain from the loss of loved ones? Yes, there are.

But the answer isn’t to violate the Constitution. The answer is to make men fear God again.