WITHOUT AN ARMED CITIZENRY THE PEOPLE REMAIN AT THE MERCY OF THE STATE

POST-BRUEN—WHAT IT ALL MEANS AND WHAT ITS IMPACT IS BOTH FOR THOSE WHO SUPPORT AND CHERISH THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS AND THOSE WHO DO NOT; THOSE WHO SEEK TO UNDERMINE AND EVENTUALLY TO DESTROY THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHT AND THOSE WHO SEEK TO PRESERVE AND STRENGTHEN THE RIGHT BOTH FOR THEMSELVES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS

WITHOUT AN ARMED CITIZENRY THE PEOPLE REMAIN AT THE MERCY OF THE STATE

MULTISERIES

PART TWELVE

HELLER, MCDONALD, AND BRUEN ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT DECISIONS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the Anti-Second Amendment Legislators in Albany were in a bind. The U.S. Supreme officially published its decision in NYSRPA vs. Bruen on June 23, 2022. Governor Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party-Controlled State Legislature in Albany had reason enough to expect, and every reason to fear, that Bruen would be a momentous decision—and for Hochul and the Democrat Party Legislators in Albany—a disastrous decision, directly and potentially fatally, impacting the State’s century-old Gun Law, the Sullivan Act, long since codified in the State’s Penal Code, NY CLS Penal § 400.00, et. seq. It would take Hochul and the Legislators, and their respective lawyers considerable time to concoct a scheme that would salvage the Sullivan Act, creating the illusion—if ultimately unconvincingly—of complying with the High Court’s rulings. The Anti-Second Amendment Hochul Administration and the Legislators in Albany had nothing but contempt for the High Court. Hochul, herself, did not so much as try to hide this. On the Governor’s website, the public sees this announcement:“ ‘While the Supreme Court's appalling decision to strike down New York State's concealed carry law has potentially vast and far-reaching implications, it does not activate any immediate changes to State gun license and permit laws, nor does it allow residential permit owners to carry their weapons outside their homes. . . . “As the case returns to lower court, we encourage responsible gun owners to continue to follow their current restrictions, and always put safety first. While we are disappointed with the Supreme Court's reckless disregard for the safety of our communities, we are prepared to fight. And the Lieutenant Governor, Antonio Delgado, added this to Governor Hochul’ statement.“‘Yesterday, the Supreme Court sent us backwards in our efforts to protect families and prevent gun violence by striking down a NY law that limits who can carry concealed weapons. While the implications are not immediate, New York is committed to taking action and enacting a new set of laws that will work around this ruling. . . . If the Supreme Court and federal government won't act to keep our children safe, then New York will.’” Id.Hochul likely had received abundant advance notice of the content of the Bruen decision “on the QT,”  judging by how quickly her Government came out with a comprehensive set of amendments to the State’s Gun Law. The Arbalest Quarrel has taken an in-depth look at the Bruen decision along with the Hochul Government’s response to it. There is a lot of material to digest, and we will continue to do this as nothing—absolutely nothing—is more critical to the preservation of a free Constitutional Republic, than the right of the people to keep and bear arms.All the rambunctious talk of “the need to get rid of guns” for the sake of public safety and public order for everyone serves as deflection. The message translates as: “constraining law-abiding citizens’ access to firearms for self-defense. The argument presented for doing so is specious on its face and, worse, it is corrosive of the fundamental truth that tyranny looms in the absence of an armed citizenry. Tyranny of Government looms in New York. And, as New York is a microcosm of the Nation, what transpires there has a ripple effect across the Nation: crime is rampant and intractable; the criminal justice system casts a blind eyed to the safety of the public, and the public is denied the right to defend itself against the danger presented. It is a recipe for societal collapse. The U.S. Supreme Court could see this even if the New York Government does not. The Court could not compel the New York Government to protect its citizens, but it could require New York to adhere to the core principles of the Bill of Rights. That means New York cannot lawfully prevent the citizen from protecting itself. The Bill of Rights boils down to these Divine absolutes: the sanctity and inviolability of Selfhood; and the fundamental, immutable, unalienable, and incontrovertible natural law right of survival against aggression, howsoever that aggression manifests itself: from predatory creature, or predatory man, or a predatory Government.Yet, as violent crime goes unchecked, and the criminal justice system itself remains constrained, the Hochul Government provides excuses. Yet, as to the matter of armed self-defense, the Hochul Government has much to say.It couldn’t dismiss U.S. Supreme Court rulings out-of-hand without admitting that it cares not for the Article 3 authority of the Court. So it came up with a workaround to salvage the Sullivan Act. It was as ingenious as it was diabolical. The Government pretends to give free rein to the law-abiding citizen to carry a handgun concealed for self-protection. And a seditious Press and the Hochul Government denounce the U.S. Supreme Court for turning New York into a “wild west.”  The Press and the Hochul Government should reflect on that a bit. New York City and other jurisdictions, including those several on the west coast, and jurisdictions inland, including Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and many others, are already in the throes of the “wild west.” In the name of the new secular religious dogma of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” and with Soros's money raining down on jurisdictions that support his Dystopian Nightmare of the “Open Society,” Cities across the Country are collapsing. Incompetence can’t alone explain this. It has to be deliberate.The degradation of society invariably follows in the wake of and must therefore be construed as a function of systematic denigration of the Second Amendment by governments in all of those jurisdictions. Congress and the Biden Administration have done little if anything to prevent wholescale annihilation of the exercise of armed self-defense, and much to promote it.And so it is left to the province of the U.S. Supreme Court to reinvigorate the Bill of Rights that the Federal Government and those of many States and cities have disdainfully ignored or actively dismantled.

DOWN MEMORY LANE: THE VIOLATION OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT OF THE NATION’S BILL OF RIGHTS

The U.S. Supreme Court had done with playing games with New York and with all other State Governments that had heretofore played fast and loose with the natural law right of armed self-defense. New York and other similar Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions had withstood the impact of Heller and McDonald through feats of judicial legerdemain. And New York itself had weathered the storm of the predecessor to the Bruen case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association vs. the City of New York, 140 S. Ct. 1525 (2020); often referred to informally as the “New York City Gun Transport” case.In both NYSRPA vs. Bruen and NYSPRA vs the City of New York, the U.S. Supreme Court began to zero in on a long-standing nemesis to the Second Amendment, New York, just as it had zeroed in on the District of Columbia and on Illinois, several years earlier. All three of these jurisdictions were notorious for systematically treating the right of the people to keep and bear arms, as the bane of Collectivist orthodoxy that seeks to Government absolute control over the thoughts and actions of the masses. And that requires suppression of basic freedoms and liberties—most notably that of speech, privacy, and the right to armed self-defense.The U.S. Supreme Court was one remaining Branch of the Federal Government that had had enough of the immolation of basic natural law rights: most concerning to some Justices on the Court: armed self-defense.If Congress and the U.S. President would not take concrete steps to preserve the natural law right of armed self-defense, several Justices on the High Court would do so. And, after years of noncompliance to High Court rulings in Heller and McDonald, two Associate Justices, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, would not be denied any longer. NYSRPA vs. the City of New York provided an opportunity to prevent the New York Government from continuously weakening the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The Court’s rulings would course through the rest of the Country, impacting those States that had enacted similar unconscionable, unconstitutional constraints on the exercise of the right codified in the Second Amendment.

NYSPRA vs. THE CITY OF NEW YORK: DECISION ON THE MERITS AVOIDED

In the Gun Transport case, Petitioners challenged a New York City rule preventing holders of restricted handgun premise licenses from transporting their firearms outside the confines of the City.  Petitioners claimed the rule violated the Second Amendment and sought both declaratory and injunctive relief against enforcement of the rule insofar as the rule prevented their transport of firearms to a second home or shooting range outside of the city. The District Court and the Court of Appeals rejected Petitioners’ claim and they took the case up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The liberal wing of the Court, and likely Chief Justice John Roberts as well, were not keen on reviewing the case. They had no desire to take up any Second Amendment case they felt would serve, from their ideological perspective, of expanding the people's exercise of the natural law right of armed self-defense.Of course, Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch—Trump’s first nominee to the High Court, after the untimely death and, some would add, dubious circumstances surrounding that death—do not view Second Amendment cases as irrational or unreasonable attempts by Americans to expand the natural law right of armed self-defense. Rather, these Justices perceive Second Amendment challenges to Government actions constraining the exercise of a natural law right as opportunities to preclude the Government from constraining the exercise of a supernal right. It is the unconstitutional actions of the Government that demand adjudication by the High Court—a task that should be unnecessary and would be unnecessary if the States and the Federal Government would acknowledge the Bill of Rights instead of continually frustrating Americans’ exercise of their fundamental, unalienable rights.Although the Gun Transport case wasn’t the ideal case to adjudicate, as many others had wended their way to the Court years before, yet could not garner enough votes for review, this case was the best that could be achieved at the time.The Petitioners sought to have the case decided on the merits. They argued that, notwithstanding that they held a restrictive premise handgun license, they still had a fundamental right under the Second Amendment to carry a firearm to a target range outside the City limits. Had the case been decided on the merits, the Court could have taken the opportunity to rule restrictive handgun carry licenses as presumptively unlawful. The liberal wing and Chief Justice Roberts would have none of that, and, likely, Roberts cajoled the newest member of the High Court, at that time, Brett Kavanaugh, to vote with him to forsake the opportunity the case gave them.The case didn’t just bother several members of the Court, it concerned Andrew Cuomo and other Anti-Second Amendment politicians who had made it their life’s work to make New York a veritable Gun-Free jurisdiction. And, Cuomo saw an escape route, and most of the Justices saw a pretext to avoid dealing with the case on the merits.Since the issue in the Gun Transport case pertained only to holders of restricted handgun licenses who, under New York law, could not lawfully carry a handgun outside one’s home for self-defense, there was the concern that the Court could come embroiled with the issue of armed self-defense outside the home. If so, that would impinge on the Sullivan Act itself. Neither the liberal wing of the High Court nor the Chief Justice, John Roberts wanted to deal with this. And Andrew Cuomo, the Governor at the time, and a virulent hater of the Second Amendment intended to do all in his power to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from reviewing a case that could very expand the right of all law-abiding civilian citizens in New York to carry a concealed handgun in the public realm for self-defense, thus imperiling the century-old Sullivan Act at its core. Better, then, Cuomo realized, simply to redraft the State Gun Law and the Rules of the City of New York, to allow a holder of a restricted premise license to carry a handgun outside the environs of the City, albeit, in a locked container, with ammunition separated from the firearm. This would still preclude the use of the handgun for self-defense in public if the need arose, and the Sullivan Act would remain intact. Cuomo and the other Anti-Second Amendment zealot power brokers don’t like to weaken their own gun laws, but they could do so here, as it wouldn’t have a disastrous impact on the core of the Gun Law—inhibiting the vast majority of law-abiding New Yorkers from lawfully relying on a firearm for self-defense.New York City changed its Rules and the State reconfigured the law to avoid a direct threat to the Sullivan Act. The last thing anti-Second Amendment forces want is a high Court opinion that strengthens the Second Amendment. The City’s gambit paid off. In a 6 to 3 vote, the Supreme Court held that, since the City changed the old rule, the case is moot, because Petitioners can now lawfully transport their handgun to a second home or shooting range outside the City. But can they really? What will New York City do in the future to restrict the fundamental right of the people to keep and bear arms? This will almost certainly embolden New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. And there is nothing to prevent the New York Government from countermanding the law once the High Court dismisses it. The Petitioners made these points and Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch concurred, but they were two votes shy of reviewing the case on the merits. So, for a time, at least, the Sullivan Act was spared direct confrontation. The reprieve for Anti-Second Amendment zealots, both in New York, and elsewhere, was short-lived. Everything changed with Bruen.

NYSRPA vs. BRUEN: DECISION ON THE MERITS UNAVOIDABLE

Unlike the NYC Gun Transport case, the constitutionality of armed self-defense outside the confines of one’s home was now squarely before the High Court. Reconfiguring New York law to avoid a showdown was out of the question. There was no way the Hochul Government could finesse the Gun Law to avoid a High Court review of the case on the merits. And with three certain votes in favor of striking down the Sullivan Act, and with both Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Kavanaugh compelled to add a fourth and fifth vote, the High Court had a majority, necessary to defeat the Liberal wing of the Court. Chief Justice Roberts would look more the fool for siding with the liberal wing now, even if he likely wanted to. For to do so would be demonstrably inconsistent with his pro-Second Amendment votes in Heller and McDonald, and, as Chief Justice, he would prefer not to be situated with the losing side on any occasion, but certainly not on a case of this magnitude.And Kavanaugh would be compelled to side with the majority as he said as much in his concurring opinion in the NYC Gun Transport case. He made clear the Court would have ample opportunity to hear a Second Amendment case on the merits in the future, which he would support, and that day had come, even if he would prefer not to see it.Hochul and Albany were therefore on their own to devise a strategy to salvage the Sullivan Act. And, it would have to come after the fact once the case was decided on the merits. And since Bruen dealt squarely with State law, as it no longer had anything to do with New York City Rules, Mayor Adams would have done well to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t. Ever the lackey, under the thumb of Neo-Marxists and Neoliberal Globalists, and discerning that it would be best for him not to disappoint Kathy Hochul, he would do what was expected of him; and that meant concurring with whatever the Governor had in mind. His own Press Release reflected that. On the official NYC website, Adams echoed the sentiments of both Hochul and of the State Senate Majority Leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins. In so doing, Adams made clear and indisputable, if ever there were any doubt, that he vehemently disapproves of the civilian citizen's right to armed self-defense. He declared, “Put simply, this Supreme Court ruling will put New Yorkers at further risk of gun violence. We have been preparing for this decision and will continue to do everything possible to work with our federal, state, and local partners to protect our city. Those efforts will include a comprehensive review of our approach to defining ‘sensitive locations’ where carrying a gun is banned, and reviewing our application process to ensure that only those who are fully qualified can obtain a carry license. We will work together to mitigate the risks this decision will create once it is implemented, as we cannot allow New York to become the Wild West. One thing is certain: We will do whatever is in our power, using every resource available to ensure that the gains we’ve seen during this administration are not undone, to make certain New Yorkers are not put in further danger of gun violence. This decision may have opened an additional river feeding the sea of gun violence, but we will do everything we can to dam it.” See also the article posted on the website, Reason, on November 10, 2021, a week after the Oral Argument in Bruen.“Before he was elected mayor of New York City . . . , Eric Adams raised some eyebrows by saying he would carry a handgun to protect himself and any houses of worship he might visit. While those remarks were controversial, the real scandal is that ordinary New Yorkers cannot legally carry guns for self-defense—a privilege that Adams takes for granted as a former police officer.That double standard came into focus last week, when the Supreme Court considered a constitutional challenge to New York's carry permit law. Unlike the vast majority of states, which allow residents to carry guns in public if they meet a short list of objective criteria, New York gives local officials broad discretion to decide whether an applicant has ‘proper cause’ to exercise a right guaranteed by the Second Amendment.Former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, speaking on behalf of the law's opponents, emphasized that applicants cannot pass the state's amorphous test by expressing a general desire to protect themselves against criminal assault. ‘In order to exercise a constitutional right that New York is willing to concede extends outside the home,’ he noted, ‘you have to show that you have an atypical need to exercise the right that distinguishes you from the general community.’That situation, Clement said, ‘describes a privilege’ rather than ‘a constitutional right.’ Most of the justices seemed inclined to agree.”Six Justices did agree—two of them, Roberts and Kavanaugh, likely reluctantly—the flipside of what occurred a couple of years earlier, where it was 6 to 3 that voted against the NYSRPA and individual gun owners in the disastrous “Gun Transport” case.

A SCHEME IS HATCHED!

Hochul and the Democrats in Albany, with their band of attorneys, conceived and executed a plan to salvage the Sullivan Act, which meant, by logical implication, sabotaging the Bruen holdings, albeit without appearing overtly that they were doing just that. Hochul and the other conspirators in her Government had ample time to plot a way around Bruen, notwithstanding the clarity and conciseness of the case, delivered in the first sentence of the Opinion. Obviously, someone alerted Hochul as to what to expect. Could it have been the same law clerk who had presumptuously and illegally released an early copy of the Dobbs decision to the Press? In aPress Release, dated May 3, 2022, printed in full by the Washington Examiner, the Chief Justice said he has “directed the Marshal of the Court to launch an investigation into the source of the leak.” Did the Chief Justice find the leaker? If so, he hasn’t reported it, which belies the sense of importance that he says he had placed upon it. See the article in the Federalist concerning it:“More than 100 days have passed since the infamous leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s majority draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and Americans are still no closer to finding out the identity of the leaker than the day the draft decision was published.”Deception and contrivance and false reporting and hiding findings seem to be the modus operandi of this Federal Government.But, concerning the Second Amendment—the importance the founders of the Republic, the framers of the Constitution, had placed on it is a matter always front in center. It is a matter as important to a tyrant who is as wary of the armed citizenry as the armed citizenry is wary of the tyrant. The matter of firearms is not a topic easily dismissed or swept under the rug. Tangible weapons in the hands of criminals and in the hands of a tyrant’s standing army—that may be used or have been used, or continue to be used, or will be used against the people—require arms in the hands of the people to counter the threat.Governor Kathy Hochul and the Democrat Party controlling majority in Albany see the law-abiding citizenry as a greater threat to themselves than the criminal element that is tearing down the community they are sworn to protect but do not. It is their design then, through their policies, to destroy society, just as on a National level it is the aim of the Democrat Party-controlled Congress and the Biden Administration to do the same to the Country. The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court places a damper on both. It impacts New York immediately and directly, but it has a ripple effect across the Nation. Hochul and Albany meant to throw a wrench into the Bruen rulings.The scheme wasn’t perfect, and it really fooled no one—certainly not anyone who spends sufficient time to pour over the elaborate contrivance. But, it was the best they could muster, given the clear exposition of Bruen.Associate Justice Thomas, writing for the Court majority, opined:“In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 177 L. Ed. 2d 894 (2010), we recognized that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense. In this case, petitioners and respondents agree that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense. We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”The holding was concise, unambiguous, and categorical. But would it suffice to prevent a New York Government, that had a long tradition of constraining the natural law right of armed self-defense, from devising an end run around the holding, while ostensibly complying with the dictates of it? Apparently, in anticipation of just that possibility—and with Justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett in agreement, and with two others, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the Chief Justice, John Roberts, in tow, if only reluctantly—Justice Thomas set forth an additional holding in the second paragraph of the opinion. He wrote, in pertinent part:“The parties nevertheless dispute whether New York’s licensing regime respects the constitutional right to carry handguns publicly for self-defense. . . . Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution.”It would seem clear enough at least to a casual observer that the U.S. Supreme Court had covered two critical bases—seemingly sufficient to forestall Kathy Hochul and her compatriots in Albany from circumventing Bruen.Boiled down to its essence the Court’s first two holdings set forth in the first two paragraphs of the Opinion, established the following:

• The right of a law-abiding citizen to possess a handgun for self-defense exists beyond the confines of one’s home as well as in it; and
• New York’s Gun Law, requiring a person to justify a special need to carry a handgun for armed self-defense outside the home, is unconstitutional.

The implication of the first holding is that the right of armed self-defense, unconstrained by place, time, or circumstance, follows from the plain meaning of the Second Amendment for there is nothing in the language of the Second Amendment to suggest an American’s right of armed self-defense is limited.The implication of the second holding is that a showing of special need to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home is inconsistent with the natural law right of armed self-defense. A claim of simple self-defense is sufficient and that simple claim need not be stated, for it is logically implied in the language of the Second Amendment. To require one to assert self-defense to justify the issuance of a concealed handgun carry license would be redundant.Did Justice Thomas, et. al., adequately cover their bases? Apparently, they didn’t realize just how cunning Hochul and  Albany could be, and how advanced notice of the decision gave her Government ample time to defuse the import of the holdings.Even with the Court’s acute legal minds and an unshakeable desire and resolve to preserve the citizen’s natural law right of armed self-defense—a right both fundamental and immutable, unalienable and eternal—Justices Thomas and Alito, in particular, might not have foreseen the lengths to which Kathy Hochul’s Government was prepared to go to protect a 100 plus old Gun Law, the Sullivan Act of 1911, and the diabolical cleverness of the Government’s scheme to override Bruen even as her Government created the illusion of complying with it, by striking the phrase, “proper cause” from the Sullivan Act. She could work around that and has done so. The “Good Moral Character,” of little importance given the “proper cause” requirement, has been re-engineered to function much like the “proper cause” requirement.Thus, it may well be that Justices Thomas and Alito did know or did suspect that New York would disobey the rulings of the Third Branch of Government. For, did they not have firsthand knowledge of how lower State and Federal Courts, including those of New York had hitherto disobeyed the clear rulings of Heller and McDonald?That Bruen was needed at all to rectify the matter of prolific disobedience to Heller and McDonald serves as proof of the tenacity of Anti-Second Amendment State Governments as well as the tenacity of the Biden Administration and the Democrat-Party Controlled Congress, at the Federal level, to arrogantly dismiss the U.S. Constitution out-of-hand, even as it pretends to cohere to it, with its ludicrous claims of adhering to the Rule of Law and of claiming it is a steadfast defender of Democracy.It is interesting to behold that Democrats like to throw out terminology without ever bothering to define what they mean by it as if expressions like the ‘Rule of Law’ and ‘Democracy’ are self-explanatory. They aren’t. But, by referring to these phrases, ad nauseum, and positing undying faith and passion in them, Democrats presume the American public will take them at their word, reflexively, like a sneeze or cough, as if they care deeply about the well-being of the Nation and the American people. They don’t. And that is exemplified by policies systematically designed to wreck the economy, demoralize the citizenry, weaken the Nation militarily and geopolitically, dismantle our institutions, and shatter the cohesiveness and stability of society. Nothing better exemplifies the danger wrought by the Destructors of our Nation and its Constitution, who pretend to be Defenders of both, than the inexorable disintegration of our Nation’s Bill of Rights, especially that of the Second Amendment.Consider——The Heller case of 2008 reaffirmed what all rational minds know: the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right unconnected with one’s service in a militia. That the prefatory “militia clause” might mean the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a collective right flies in the face of the very purpose of the Bill of Rights. Apart from the dictates of the Tenth Amendment, referencing the doctrine of federalism underlying the relationship of the Federal Government to the States, the first Nine Amendments of the Bill of Rights codify the natural law rights of the individual and the Second Amendment is no exception.The militia clause—a dependent clause under the rules of English grammar—is not a thing that can, or does, stand-alone, for dependent clauses are not complete sentences: they don’t convey a complete thought.* The late Justice Antonin Scalia, who penned the majority opinion in Heller, explained the prefatory, dependent clause, “a well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free State,” does not assert a limitation on the independent clause, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Rather, the prefatory clause provides a rationale for the independent clause that follows. Justice Scalia explained that the drafters of the Second Amendment knew that nothing less than a well-armed citizenry would serve as the best deterrent to tyranny emerging in the Federal Government. This was of great concern, especially to the Antifederalists, among the framers. They were justifiably wary of establishing a strong central government with its own standing army. Thus, an independent citizen army, unbeholden to a federal government, would have both the means and the frame of mind to deter tyranny if such should come to pass.Oddly, many academicians today ignore this or dismiss this. They argue that the Constitution’s framers could not have intended to create, in the Second Amendment, a mechanism through which the commonalty could overthrow their own Government. Therefore, any right to keep and bear arms had to be tied to a militia—but one that was constrained by the Federal Government itself. One academician says that the Federalists, among the framers of the Constitution—those who supported a strong centralized Government and a strong standing arming—intended for armed citizens, as part of a militia, to function under federal control. Can that be true? They write,“In the eyes of the Federalists, the past had proven that the militia, to be effective, had to be federalized. The discipline of militia members, in particular, was of paramount concern.  Federal authority over the militia would also create uniformity in arms and training. But of the two means of military power recognized by the document, a standing army and a militia, both were put under federal control.” Of course, today, militias as such, are under firm State and/or Federal control. These militias have transformed into ‘national guards.’” “The Inconvenient Militia Clause Of The Second Amendment: Why The Supreme Court Declines To Resolve The Debate Over The Right To Bear Arms,” 16 St. John's J.L. Comm. 41(Winter, 2002), by Robert Hardaway, Professor of Law at the University of Denver College of Law; and Elizabeth Gormley and Bryan Taylor, graduates of University College of Law 2001The writers go on to say, in support of the idea the Second Amendment must, on logical as well as legal grounds, only be construed as conferring a collective right to keep and bear arms:“One of the most commonly made arguments by the broad individual rights advocates is that the Second Amendment embodies some sort of right of insurrection. This is a difficult argument to sustain given the numerous, and sometimes explicit, provisions against insurrection in the Constitution. Perhaps the most obvious constitutional prohibition against insurrection is the treason clause which forbids making war against the United States. Armed insurrection obviously is making war on the United States. Therefore, far from embodying a right of insurrection, the Constitution explicitly criminalizes the act. Further, the militia clauses themselves deny any right of insurrection. One of the constitutional functions of the militia is to suppress insurrection. It strains credulity to believe that the same institution would be empowered with the right to engage in insurrection and the duty to suppress them. As one writer expresses, the Constitution cannot view the militia both as a means by which government can suppress insurrection and as an instrument for insurrection against the government. It must be one or the other. ‘The Militia Clauses make clear which one it is.’ Lastly, the militia was intended to implement the guarantee clause. This provision reflects Madison's desire to expressly guarantee the ‘tranquility of the states against internal as well as external dangers.’ The primary concern underlying the provision was to secure the ability to put down insurrections such as Shay's Rebellion. Taken together, these clauses ‘make it overwhelmingly clear that the Constitution was framed to forbid, prevent, and punish insurrection against its own laws - as, indeed, any constitution that claims legitimate authority must do.’ To assert a constitutional right of insurrection is fundamentally illogical. The Constitution could not embrace the means of its own destruction. As Lincoln said in his first inaugural address, ‘it is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination . . . it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.’ The right of insurrection inheres intrinsically in all people, regardless of the government under which they live; it does not derive its sanction from a disputed interpretation of an amendment with an altogether different purpose.’” Id.It might be noted that the afore referenced law review article came out seven years before the Heller decision. AQ mentions this not to suggest that, perhaps, the writers would admit they were wrong in their thesis. Rather AQ mentions this because the writers would likely maintain they are correct and it's the U.S. Supreme Court authors of the majority opinion who are wrong. The entire thesis begins with the assumption that the antecedent dependent militia clause controls the import of the following independent clause and serves as a defining limitation of the right of that clause, i.e., that the people to keep and bear arms operates only as long as one serves in a State militia; and, as the notion of a 'state militia' has essentially been superseded by 'state national guard units.' The writers say, in that regard: “Of course, today, militias as such, are under firm State and/or Federal control. These militias have transformed into ‘national guards.’” The import of these assertions is not to be taken lightly. For, the writers allude to the idea that, since militias don't exist any longer, at least as they like to understand the meaning of the term, 'militia,' the Second Amendment is essentially nugatory, which means that it serves no function and, so, should be repealed. This is also the thesis of retired Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, and that of Justice Steven Breyer as well, although Breyer did well to refrain from mentioning that position in his dissenting opinion in Bruen. But there is more at stake here. The argument made has disturbing implications impacting the relationship between the American people and the Federal Government. The writers of the afore referenced article claim that the framers of the U.S. Constitution could not and would not under any circumstance conceive of a situation where the citizenry would have the right and obligation to dismantle the Federal Government.The argument made begs the salient question, of whether “insurrection” qua revolt or rebellion against tyranny is not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when penning the Second Amendment. After all, didn’t these men once take up arms against a Tyrant, the British Empire? The writers of the above article would rather not deal with the implications of their own thesis and the attendant, and very serious consequences of that thesis. They merely dismiss out of hand that there could exist any moral, and legal, justification for the American people taking it upon themselves to dismantle an unjust Federal Government, i.e., a tyrannical Government, and bringing the servants of that tyranny to justice. These writers, so careful in positing an argument against what they refer to as insurrection, slither around how it is, or whether, the American people could rightly, legally, dismantle a Government that no longer serves the interests of the American people, and, in fact, operates contrary to the interests of the American people. But, let us here take a closer look at that thesis and consider the legal and logical consequences of it. We begin by asking——  Would the founders of our Republic be so naïve as to believe that the “Federal Government” they were devising could not itself—even with their best efforts to constrain a powerful, centralized Government—one day devolve into tyranny? And, if so, would not the American people have a right and obligation, then, to take up arms against that tyranny just as they had once taken up arms against tyranny? The Federalists, among the framers of the U.S. Constitution, who supported a strong centralized Government, would certainly be well aware of the threat to life, and liberty, and well-being of the American people, as were the Antifederalists who emphasized their concern and who emphatically demanded inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the Constitution to prevent such an event occurring. And the Federalists relented realizing the obvious truth. The Antifederalists would not leave it as a matter of faith that Government servants would adhere to the express limitations on the exercise of Governmental power set forth in the Articles of the Constitution.It hardly takes much imagination to recognize that the founders of our Republic and framers of our Constitution would be appalled, indeed horrified, to observe the powers that Government now wields—powers that go well beyond the strictures permitted by the Constitution, and this Federal Government doesn't deny it; in fact, perfunctorily acknowledges it and operates with abandon. And our Government is well on the road to tyranny if it hasn't already swung over into it.So, yes, the founders of the Republic did recognize and would agree that the American people would have a right to revolt against a tyrant. To argue otherwise is to infer that the people do not have a right to rebel against tyranny. The writers of the afore referenced law review article must have known the logical implications of their argument but felt it better not to acknowledge the flaw in their reasoning. It is one that Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito made clear in Heller:Of course, Americans have the moral and the legal right—a sacred right and duty—to rebel against tyranny.But then, if the American people have both a right and a duty to revolt against tyranny, is that not to say that a Government that turns against its own people, has committed unforgivable violence against its people—a cardinal transgression against the Divine Creator as well. For tyranny of Government manifests as oppression and subjugation of a people and that destroys the sanctity and inviolability of the Human Soul. And that, in turn, amounts to sin against the Creator.Such violence, therefore, amounts to treason against the people. Is not the crime of high treason a two-way street, then? If Americans who rebel against a just and fair Government are justifiably, rightly to be roundly condemned and deemed traitors, and if they are to suffer the consequences merited for their egregious crime, is it not also so that an unjust Government that betrays its people should not be similarly deemed traitor against the people, and rightly rebuked for it? And would not that just rebuke include the dismantling of that Government and trial and punishment of those servants of the people who have—through their treachery and licentious betrayal of Oath to Country, and to Constitution, and to People—brought the Nation to ruin, and brought Constitution and people to harm? And ought not those disloyal servants suffer severely for their crimes, lest to forgo punishment serve to condone it. And if a Government is not to be considered a traitor to its own people, is that not to say the people are less to be regarded than the Government? But, in our Nation, it is the people who are Sovereign over Nation and Government and it is not the case that Government is Sovereign over Nation and people. If so, and if one remark that high treason is to be regarded as a crime against the sovereign, then wherefore is the argument to be made that no action of the Federal Government toward its people shall work as treason against them? What then is to be made of the assertion that the American people are sole Sovereign over the Government of the United States and that Government owes its existence and continued presence only by the will and consent of the Governed—the people who had created that Government to serve them. How is it that the servant, owing its existence and its duty to the people—the one true Sovereign—should entertain for itself that the people serve Government and the Government can do with the people as it pleases, even to oppress and subjugate them. Of what use is an electoral process at that point? To whom is it that the people can turn to as their elected representatives when those representatives are all of the same cloth—united against the people? Of what greater urgency and need exists then for armed revolt?Is not the tyranny of Government against its people, treachery of Government toward its people? If so, is not ‘tyranny’ then but equivalent to the term ‘treachery of Government’ and should not the term ‘traitor’ not apply with equal and bold force to that Government, any less so than to a person who would revolt against a just Government? Is not a “tyrant” but a “traitor’ to the people—certainly a people whom the founders pointedly ascribe the term “Sovereign” to, whom they could not and did not ascribe that term to when speaking of a tyrant who was Sovereign, namely, the King of England?Tyrants of course are the last sorts that would acknowledge that they are tyrants and would continue to deny that even as they are led to the gallows. Is it any wonder that tyrants such as those in the Biden Administration and in some State Governments would be oblivious to their own acts of treason against the people? Is it not curious that the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, would proclaim that Americans who belong to “militias”—bands of armed citizens who are not connected with the “national guard”—are the greatest threat to the Nation? But is it not they, some of these servants of the people, rather than we, the People, who are the greater and graver threat to the Nation—to the Security of a free State?As can be seen through dissenting opinions in Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, these Justices do not recognize the right of the people, as individuals, to keep and bear arms. Given the opportunity, these three cases would be overturned, marking the quickest reversal of U.S. Supreme Court thought in American jurisprudential history.At the State level, too, people like Kathy Hochul and those in control of the State Senate and Assembly in Albany, view the armed citizen as a graver threat to the State than common criminals and even well-armed and well-funded international criminal cartels. Strange that, but true nonetheless. Otherwise, her Government would have taken measures to bring these psychopaths and lunatics to justice. They don't! Ant that is telling. Thus, it is no surprise to see Hochul and Albany caustically attacking the High Court, with affected pieties, and insincere demonstrations of acquiescence to the Supreme Court's rulings. Who, indeed, has dangerous impulses here?Is it so beyond the pale for Americans to demand their right to armed self-defense against predatory creature, predatory man, and predatory Government? The High Court rightly admonishes Government actors who do not abide by the Constitution. The Court rightly ruled against the New York Government.Here, in New York, we see a Governor who claims by the power she exerts—as did her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo—justification to exert that power, as she pleases. It is all circular reasoning, albeit with real-world, not mere academic consequences. Hochul fails to recognize that she is expected to serve the interests of the people of New York, consistent with the State and Federal Constitutions. Affected pieties don't serve as an adequate substitution for serving the interests of the people of the State.Kathy Hochul’s Government, like several others, ignored Heller. And they were prepared to ignore McDonald too, until the High Court made clear that the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms applies to the States, no less so than to the Federal Government, through the application of the Fourteenth Amendment. In New York, it is the Hochul Administration and the controlling Democrat Party Legislature in Albany that is acting the part of an unfettered out-of-control Tyrant.With the attitude of a tyrant—the Hochul Government and Legislature—behave with customary indignation at any authority that would dare dictate to them. But, the U.S. Supreme Court has done just that, dictating to the New York Government, that its Gun Law is inconsistent with the import of the Second Amendment, having found Petitioner’s case to have merit. Hochul and Albany aren't concerned about armed civilian citizens per se. Rather, they are concerned about what that armed self-defense represents: a threat to the Government itself. The New York Government has long abided lawlessness in New York, such coming from the criminal element. That lawlessness the Government will tolerate, perhaps even encourage. That criminal element poses no tenable threat to the Government. It is something the Government understands for that Government, too, like the omnipresent and ferocious and voracious criminal element, has become a law unto itself, unbeholden to New York's own Constitution and to its laws and to the Constitution and Laws of the United States Government. It has become lawless. A Government that refuses to recognize that it is the people whom it exists to serve, and not the other way around is a danger to the people and must be taken to task. The U.S. Supreme Court has done so. And New York isn't alone in its distrust of and its disdain for the common people.Somewhere in the last 250 years of our Nation’s existence, Governments at all levels forgot the fact of and the meaning of the American Revolution.Government tyranny has become the very thing the people must fight against. The Federal Government and many of the State Governments do not represent the will of the people, and care not at all for their needs; not anymore. These Governments, ironically, defer to the foreign dictators whom our Founders fought a successful war against. Back then, it was the mighty British Empire funded by the fabulously wealthy Rothschild financial clan. Today, it is much the same threat, albeit now restructured, reconstituted, as one even more powerful: the European Union and various supra-national constructs like the United Nations whom we are told do not wield any authority, but only advice. How is it then that the Biden Administration adheres to the pacts and tracts and treaties emanating from the United Nations that our Nation never signed, nor even discussed?The money behind these monstrous global entities belongs now, as in the past, to the powerful Rothschild family. The Rothschild clan and other mega-billionaires are working together to complete a transnational neo-feudalistic empire spanning the world, to replace all present western nation-states. The world of the 21st Century is shapingThe Rothschild family and its minions have extended their reach—through the vehicle of the central banking system—throughout the world. A world comprising two powers: a western neo-feudal empire and CCP China. A strong, vigorous, independent sovereign United States doesn't factor in that equation. It is in the process of disassembling.New York is its own little fiefdom—a Baron that owes allegiance to a Lord that doesn’t even reside in our Country.The purpose of  New York’s Gun Law, the Sullivan Act, was designed then as now, to constrain, and—as can be seen through further attempts by the Government, through time, to constrict and restrict the right of the law-abiding civilian citizens of New York to keep and bear arms ever further—eventually to curtail the exercise of the right, altogether. In her Press Release, upon official publication of the Bruen case decision, Governor Hochul made clear a passion to constrain the inherent right of armed self-defense, regardless of the rulings of the High Court. In both her tone and in the content of her messaging, Hochul conveyed a contemptuous attitude toward the High Court and made no attempt to disguise her contempt of the Court. Likely she is taking her talking points from others who pay for her campaign, and those who formulate her policies. She is essentially a messenger, and she is paid handsomely for doing the work of her benefactors, just as Biden takes his share of wealth from a shadowy network of benefactors. He has no compunction against selling out the Country. He has had plenty of decades of practice; nor does he mind mouthing platitudes, if he understands at all what it is he is asked to recite. So he informs the public that all is well and that he means well and everything will be just fine. He doesn't believe that he is capable of coherent thought any longer anyway. And the propagandists that feed him and his Administrators their lines, don't sound convincing, and it is not necessary that they do sound convincing to the public. The Federal Government is long past caring what the polity thinks anyway. It is only necessary that they obey. Meanwhile, the Country goes to Hell in a Handbasket.Further litigation and armed revolt are to be avoided. New York has an opportunity, through the electoral process, to throw out the petty tyrants, and vote into office people who respect the Constitution and the fundamental natural law rights of man. A vote for Lee Zeldin for Governor of New York is the most obvious way and the easiest way to turn the State back to its historical roots. So many people in New York and throughout the Country have been so conditioned to deny the truth before their eyes that they continue to reflexively vote into Office the same tyrants who do nothing to promote the well-being of the people and society. The Country was well on its way to recovering its security under Trump: economically, geopolitically, militarily, and societally. But the airwaves are now filled with negativity and our own tax dollars are being used against us. Americans must wake up to the truth and confront the lies and liars head-on. It just takes a little common sense and a leap of faith.It is far easier and much less time-consuming and expensive to prevent a petty tyrant from serving in Office in the first place than it is to attempt to remove a tyrant after the fact. California provides several textbook examples of what is to be avoided. New York should learn from this. How much more damage can New Yorkers be expected to take? How is it that so many people have taken leave of their senses—always believing that a better, safer, New York is just around the corner even as the truth illustrates something else entirely? And the not picture isn't an attractive one. And it won't become any more attractive if people keep electing the wrong people to Office. At some point, even the electoral process may well be denied to the citizenry. New Yorkers already have a good taste of Kathy Hochul and her brand of politics and politicking. It is no different than that of Andrew Cuomo. She shares the same set of beliefs; she conveys the same messaging, and she is backed by the same Globalist money. It isn't the average New Yorker that informs her policies and decisions. On crime, the right to armed self-defense, on abortion, Hochul packages her policies as candy; telling the voting public what she thinks the public would like to hear, but not what the public needs to hear. Between Kathy Hochul and Lee Zeldin, there is a world of difference. Each New York resident should ask: which world would he or she prefer to live in? ___________________________________ *Every child learns this, or, at one time, had learned this. That was before the lunatics took control of public education and proclaimed the dogmas of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” “Critical Race Theory,” and “Transgender Doctrine,” more important to the structural formation of young minds than developing a child’s own critical thinking processes, by teaching the core traditional subjects, like “reading, writing, and arithmetic,” and those subjects that instill in our youth a love of and an appreciation for our history, heritage, and ethical system of justice through which our Nation can continue to survive and thrive: a free Constitutional Republic.____________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J. Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPONS UNDER FIRE

“It’s like déjà vu all over again.” ~ Yogi BerraIf you asked your fellow Americans to point to one defining moment in our Nation’s recent history, many would likely mention the attack on our soil in 2001, for obvious reason. Some Americans might point to Barack Obama as U.S. President, but not for anything he carried out—if he carried out anything of benefit to this Nation and its people—but because he served as the Nation’s first African-American President. Some people might mention the recession of 2008, and the bailout of major banks. Still others might point to the result of the general U.S. Presidential election in 2016. Depending on one’s political bent, that result is shocking and dreadful, or surprising and hopeful.But, for those who cherish our natural, fundamental, unalienable rights, the watershed moment came in 2008, with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 171 L. Ed. 2d 637. The high Court held, in principal part, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms, asserts an individual right, unconnected with one’s service in a militia. One would think a lengthy Supreme Court interpretation of the Second Amendment would be unnecessary. The text of the Amendment is clear, concise, precise, and categorical.But the high Court’s affirmation does serve a purpose. It lays to rest any pretension the Second Amendment means other, or less, than it says. Sadly, the pretension lingers among many, despite this seminal Second Amendment case.Many defy and denigrate the high Court’s imprimatur: politicians, the mainstream news; entertainers; billionaire globalists both here and abroad; antigun coalitions; myriad Leftist groups; academicians; and jurists. They detest the Second Amendment, and wish to rid the Nation of it.It should not come as a surprise to Americans that the Democratic Party’s leadership, holding most seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, plans to introduce a flurry of antigun bills in the coming months. The most ambitious concerns a ban on those semiautomatic firearms, referred to by the negative expression, “assault weapons.”But this push to ban an entire category of semiautomatic firearms in common use is nothing new. The late U.S Senator, Howard Metzenbaum, a Democrat from Ohio, who died in 2008, introduced a bill to control the sale and use of assault weapons in 1989. That Senate bill, 101 S. 386, failed.The House introduced similar bills that year. They, too, failed.However, in 1994, Congress did enact a semiautomatic firearms' ban, as part of The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The “Assault Weapons Ban” provision was codified in federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922 (v)(1). The law expired in 2004. It wasn’t reauthorized. The House then tried, in 2007, to resurrect a ban on semiautomatic firearms, introducing the “Assault Weapons Ban And Law Enforcement Protection Act Of 2007, 110 H.R. 1022.” That bill failed.After a lull, Democrats ramped up efforts. The 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy served as the pretext to ban an entire category of firearms, once again.Congress, though, often acts slowly. That’s a good thing when proposed legislation impinges on or infringes Constitutional rights and liberties. But, Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, unlike Congress, doesn’t act slowly. He doesn’t have to, and, he doesn’t want to, especially when an opportunity arises to further constrain the right of the people to keep and bear arms.New York’s Constitution provides a Governor the means to push the State Legislature to act quickly if he deems a matter an emergency. Article I, § 14 of the New York State Constitution sets forth:“No bill shall be passed or become a law unless it shall have been printed and upon the desks of the members, in its final form, at least three calendar legislative days prior to its final passage, unless the governor, or the acting governor, shall have certified, under his or her hand and the seal of the state, the facts which in his or her opinion necessitate an immediate vote thereon, in which case it must nevertheless be upon the desks of the members in final form, not necessarily printed, before its final passage. . . .”Governor Cuomo intended to act quickly to further restrict New York’s already draconian gun laws. He pushed for an immediate vote on the New York Safe Act of 2013. His statement to support emergency passage of the NY Safe Act, reads:“Some weapons are so dangerous, and some ammunition devices are so lethal, that New York State must act without delay to prohibit their continued sale and possession in the state in order to protect its children, first responders and citizens as soon as possible. This bill, if enacted, would do so by immediately banning the ownership, purchase and sale of assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition feeding devices. For this reason, in addition to enacting a comprehensive package of measures that further protects the public, immediate action by the Legislature is imperative.”With the clout he wields in Albany, the measure passed, and the Governor signed the Safe Act into law on January 15, 2013. To herald enactment, he created a web page, devoted to glorifying his achievement.Then, on January 24, 2013, hardly a week after Governor Cuomo signed the NY Safe Act into law, Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-California, introduced a federal assault weapons ban, modeled on the Safe Act. Senator Feinstein expected Senator Harry Reid to include the assault weapons ban in the broad Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act Of 2013, 159 Cong Rec S 2699. That didn’t happen. Senator Reid felt its inclusion would reduce chance of passage of the broader gun control act. Senator Feinstein was livid. But, the Act failed on a Floor vote, 40-60, even without Feinstein’s assault weapons provision.Senator Feinstein then released a statement to the Press, barely restraining her anger:“I’m disappointed by today’s vote, but I always knew this was an uphill battle. I believe the American people are far ahead of their elected officials on this issue, and I will continue to fight for a renewed ban on assault weapons.The very fact that we’re debating gun violence on the Senate floor is a step in the right direction, and I hope my colleagues vote their conscience and approve the underlying bill. But I’m certain that in the coming months and years, we will be forced to confront other incidents like Newtown, where innocents are murdered with one of these weapons of war.I will carry on this fight against military-style assault weapons, and I ask of the American people that they continue to pressure their elected officials to take action. It’s long overdue that we take serious steps to remove these dangerous firearms and high-capacity ammunition magazines from society.”In later years, Democrats, in the House and Senate, ever undeterred, tenaciously, rapaciously introduced semiautomatic firearms’ bans, one after the other, despite repeated failures—ever determined to rein in the Second Amendment. these bills included:The Assault Weapons Ban of 2015, 114 H.R. 4269  Imported Assault Weapons Ban of 2016, 114 H.R. 4748The Assault Weapons Ban of 2017, 115 S. 2095The Assault Weapons Ban of 2018, 115 H.R. 5077They all failed. But, the antigun politicians remain undeterred. They aim to destroy the right of the people to keep and bear arms, however long it takes. The recent roll-out is drearily the same: same title, later date. This one is the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019. Many of the usual cast of characters have signed on as co-sponsors. Some are considering a run as Democratic Party nominee for U.S. President in 2020.Not surprisingly, Senator Feinstein is the principal sponsor on this latest “assault weapons” bill, directed to an attack on semiautomatic firearms. Destroying our most sacred right has always been a high priority for Senator Feinstein and she is a prominent figure in all antigun legislation emanating from the U.S. Senate.According to Feinstein’s Press Release, issued January 9, 2019, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019 is an “updated bill to ban the sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.”  The Press Release then lays out the details. The House will likely release the bill shortly. The Arbalest Quarrel will analyze it when the House does release it.

A NATION-WIDE BAN ON SOME SEMIAUTOMATIC FIREARMS IMPERILS ALL SEMIAUTOMATIC WEAPONS.

Antigun zealots desire nothing less than an end to firearms ownership and possession in America. This is not an exaggerated concern for those who cherish the Second Amendment.New York Times contributing columnist commentator, Brett Stephens has called for outright repeal of the Second Amendment. We may dismiss an excessive, incendiary remark from a news commentator. But, when a retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice echoes that sentiment, Americans must take notice. Consider the remarks of retired Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Paul Stevens, as reported in The New York Times:“Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the 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.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.”Retired Associate Justice Stevens always tied the right of the people to keep and bear arms to the militia. Read his dissenting opinion in Heller. But, the majority in Heller rejected Stevens’ premise.Americans should take antithetical remarks attacking the sanctity of the Second Amendment, seriously, especially when coming from powerful and influential people. The attorney, Christopher Keleher, in an academic article, titled, “The Impending Storm: The Supreme Court’s Foray into the Second Amendment Debate,” 69 Mont. L. Rev. 113, 154, (Winter 2008), published just months before the high Court’s decision in Heller, recited a litany of disturbing comments from members of Congress.“United States Senator Dianne Feinstein, commenting on an assault weapons ban, stated  ‘if I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them, Mr. and Mrs. America turn them all in, I would have done it.’ Former United States Senator Howard Metzenbaum complained that the same ban was insufficient, exclaiming, ‘until you ban them all, you might as well ban none. . . . [But, it] will be a major step in achieving the objective that we have in mind.’ United States Congressman William L. Clay proclaimed the 1993 Brady Bill was a ‘minimum step’ that Congress should take in its efforts to restrict firearms. Congressman Clay professed, ‘we need much stricter gun control, and eventually we should bar the ownership of handguns except in a few cases.’ A fellow member of the House of Representatives, Congressman Bobby Rush, was also forthright in his strategy: ‘Ultimately, I would like to see the manufacture and possession of handguns banned except for military and police use. But that’s the endgame.’ Senator Lincoln Chafee was no less bashful when he asserted, ‘I shortly will introduce legislation banning the sale, manufacture or possession of handguns. . . . It is time to act. We cannot go on like this. Ban them!’ The recent tragedy at Virginia Tech prompted Congressman Dennis Kucinich to draft legislation ‘that would ban the purchase, sale, transfer, or possession of handguns by civilians.’ While such views have not garnered a majority of lawmakers, these statements are notable for their stridency and frankness.”Americans should not brush aside these candid remarks as simple bluster. These politicians support their words with direct attacks on the Second Amendment. Anti-Second Amendment politicians despise the Second Amendment. They find it not merely inconvenient and irrelevant, but also unconscionable. They see our Second Amendment as incompatible with an ethical system predicated on utilitarian consequentialism they espouse, but which our founders did not. Antigun politicians find the mere thought of firearms both aesthetically distasteful and morally objectionable.These politicians consider the Second Amendment inconsistent with international legal rules and standards, and incompatible with societal norms of conduct. One or the other must go. For them, it’s the Second Amendment that must go. They feel we, Americans, should adopt and adhere to the new international liberal democratic order they, and those in the European Union, ascribe to.The mainstream media conveys the message of the antigun zealots incessantly, obstreperously, and passionately. The false message delivered to Americans is plain enough: for the welfare of society  you must comply with and adapt to the conventions of the global, liberal, democratic order; and this requires you to forsake the archaic and degenerate desire to own and possess firearms.________________________________________________________Copyright © 2018 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.

THE MILITIA CLAUSE IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT: IT IS, UNFORTUNATELY, STILL AT LOGGERHEADS WITH THE INDIVIDUAL RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

Maryland's Firearm Safety Act: Attacking The Core Of The Second Amendment Through The Veneer Of Promoting Public Safety

KOLBE VS. HOGAN:

PART EIGHT

Those Lower Federal District Courts And Higher Federal Circuit Courts Of Appeal That Seek To Disarm Americans, Do So In Clear Denigration Of The Core Of The Second Amendment And In Clear Defiance Of The U.S. Supreme Court Decision And Reasoning In Heller.

When deconstructing the history of Kolbe, (Kolbe vs. O’Malley, 42. F. Supp. 3d 768 (D. Md. 2014); vacated and remanded, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 813 F.3d 160 (4th Cir. 2016); rev’d en banc, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114 (4th Cir. 2017)), legal commentators and laymen generally ignore the issue whether the prefatory militia clause still constrains the right of the people to keep and bear arms. They do so for an obvious reason. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570; 128 S. Ct. 2783; 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with an individual’s service in a militia. Thus, one might reasonably assume that a sacred shibboleth of the antigun movement and of the antigun movement’s benefactors in Congress, in the media, in finance, and in several of the Courts, may finally be laid to rest. Yet, that isn’t true at all. Those opposed to Heller's rulings maintain the case was wrongly decided and must, at some point, be overturned. Those jurists who share the antigun establishment's sympathies thereupon render rulings as if Heller never existed. The influence of old dogma sets in and pervades judicial opinions. One, though, should not be surprised about this. After all, the Heller case was decided narrowly, sharply demarcated along liberal wing/conservative wing lines.Those Justices opposed to the Heller rulings made clear their disagreement of and, indeed, their disdain for the methodology employed by, the positions embraced by, and the legal and logical conclusions deduced from the premises accepted by the Court's majority in reaching their conclusions. For, the Heller Court majority accepted, as axiomatic, and, in the first instance, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a natural right, preexistent in man and not a privilege bestowed on man by the State, through Government. It is Government that is an artificial construct, not the rights and liberties, codified in the Bill of Rights. This sacred principal, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a natural right, preexistent in man, is consistent with the framers' belief concerning the concept of natural rights, inherent in man. Such rights and liberties, preexistent in man, forever rest beyond the power of the State, through its Government, to intrude upon and to destroy. This sacred precept, the dissenting Justices, in Heller, would not accept, could not accept, would never accept. Thus, the conclusions they reached in Heller were the opposite to, diametrically opposed to those conclusions drawn by the Court's majority. The philosophical differences dividing liberal wing and conservative wing Justices are much ingrained, and marked. Those philosophical differences manifest in the Court’s majority opinion and in the two dissenting opinions. Those differences continue to play out in the rulings and reasoning of the judges who sit on the lower U.S. District Courts and on the higher U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal. The differences cannot be reconciled. They will never be resolved. The differences are deep set, visceral, as well as intellectual. Surely, the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were aware of the nature of and extent of the philosophical differences that lay between them, that informed their notions of the individual's relation to Government. They pushed back and pushed back hard against the majority opinion in Heller, written by Scalia. But the dissenting opinions in Heller, penned by Justices Stevens and Breyer, who also concurred in each other's opinions, in Heller are legally and logically weak. The reasoning of the dissenting Justices is logically faulty, often internally inconsistent, incoherent, and clearly antithetical to the framers' ideas concerning the fundamental rights and liberties of Americans.But the dissenting Justices, unlike the majority in Heller, whose conclusions follow from sound premises, cannot overcome a singular hurdle. It is a hurdle that weakens their position and ultimately makes their position untenable, ultimately reducing their argument to a reductio ad absurdum. The dissenting Justices must accept one premise that is a basic assumption of the Heller Court majority, namely that the right of the people to keep and bear arms can, at least in theory, under the dissenting Justices' thesis, be vindicated. This is critical. For, if the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be vindicated, then the right does not exist, and the right codified in the Second Amendment reduces the Second Amendment to a nullity as the right sits empty in the Second Amendment, as a bald face lie. Of course the dissenting Justices hold contempt for the right embodied in the Second Amendment. But, they dare not say that. They cannot say that even as inconsistencies in their position illustrate that the right codified in the Second Amendment simply cannot, under their thesis, be vindicated. It is a painful thing to see--and their contempt for the right codified in the Second Amendment lurks, like some hideous beast, just beneath the surface of their legal opinions.Justice Stevens, in the first paragraph of his dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, says, “The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a ‘collective right’ or an ‘individual right.’ Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals. But a conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us anything about the scope of that right.” District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. at 636; 128 S. Ct. at 2822; 171 L. Ed. 2d 684. Yet, Justice Stevens lays out this odd gambit, proclaiming unconvincingly and, in fact, inconsistently, that, the individual right of the people to keep and bear arms can be vindicated, notwithstanding that the right is tied exclusively to one’s connection with and service in a militia. But, is not the right of the people to keep and bear arms, then, as argued by Justice Stevens, a collective right, after all? If so, the right cannot be an individual right. It is one or the other, not both; and it must be one or the other. But, the two are mutually exclusive. But, if the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a collective right, after all, then, how is the right ever to be vindicated? We constantly get back to the same problem with the dissenting Justice's thesis. Justice Stevens' opening paragraph does not set forth a vehicle through which he might argue, soundly, that a right exists under the Second Amendment that can be vindicated. And, the point that he puts forth in the opening paragraph of his dissenting opinion, namely, that the distinction between individual rights and collective rights is not a critical question before the Court is false.Justice Stevens attempts to conflate the concept of individual rights and collective rights, ostensibly to support the notion that the right of the people to keep and bear arms that he proclaims to be tied solely to one's connection with a militia, can be vindicated. He knows that collective rights cannot be vindicated. So, he posits that the reader can and should dispense with the individual right/collective right distinction in the context of the Second Amendment. He dismisses the importance of the distinction as irrelevant, when, in fact, it is critical to an understanding of the import and purport of the sacred right embodied in the Second Amendment. Still, he posits, up front, that the reader can and should  dispense with the individual right/collective right distinction. We should not dispense with the individual right/collective right distinction, from the legal standpoint, because doing so is an affront to the framers' idea of the right of the people to keep and bear arms as a natural right, governed by natural law--that the right is not, then, man-made, and, therefore, ought not be constrained by man-made laws. And, we cannot dispense with the individual right/collective right distinction from a logical standpoint, because doing so, in the context of the import of the right of the people to keep and bear arms would, then, be incoherent. Justice Stevens presents this assertion as an assumption to be accepted, as reasonable. It isn't. It is a proposition the truth of which must be proved. He does not prove it. Justice Stevens asserts it anyway, as a given, as a naked assumption, and then proceeds on his merry way with his argument that the right to be vindicated does exist; and that the right can exist within the notion of connection with one's service in a militia--a collective right, after all, a collective right that does not and cannot exist legally, and, more importantly, a right that does not and cannot exist logically. Justice Stevens thereupon, negates, tacitly, at least, the truth of the assumption he makes, and his argument, existing as it does on that single false assumption, collapses in, on itself. But, Justice Stevens continues with his faulty logic, undeterred. After surmising that the right of the people to keep and bear arms can be vindicated in the context of an individual's connection with a militia, Justice Stevens continues with the crux of his thesis, namely that the Second Amendment's dependent clause, that he refers to as a "preamble," carries the force of the right. Justice Stevens argues that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is conditioned by, limited by the "preamble." Justice Stevens claims that the preamble is critical to an understanding of the meaning of the right established. He emphasizes the importance of the "preamble" to the Second Amendment when he should know that, in law, a preamble never carries, within it, a legally enforceable right at all. Enforceable rights do not exist in the preambles to contracts, laws, or even constitutions. Rights exists in the operative portions of contracts, laws, and constitutions. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is not conditioned by the dependent, antecedent clause of the Second Amendment. The right is contained solely in the independent, operative clause of Second Amendment. And, in that operative clause of the Second Amendment there is no qualification or condition, limiting the extent of the right. Moreover, as an embodiment of a natural law, the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be conditioned anyway.Nonetheless Justice Stevens emphasizes the importance of the antecedent clause, the preamble. He opines, “The preamble to the Second Amendment makes three important points. It identifies the preservation of the militia as the Amendment’s purpose; it explains that the militia is necessary to the security of a free State; and it recognizes that the militia must be ‘well regulated.’ In all three respects it is comparable to provisions in several State Declarations of Rights that were adopted roughly contemporaneously with the Declaration of Independence.” District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. at 640-641; 128 S. Ct. at 2824-2825; 171 L. Ed. 2d 686-687. Were Justice Stevens correct—an opinion still held erroneously by many lower U.S. District Court judges and higher U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges as well—a question arises whether there is anything left to the right of the people to keep and bear arms that shall not be infringed. For, if the right of the people to keep and bear arms extends merely to one’s service in a militia, does not that interpretation essentially destroy the right embodied in the Amendment? It does; and, in fact, that is the point Justice Scalia was getting at in Heller when taking Justice Stevens to task, and it is a point that Justice Stevens was never able to effectively counter, try as he did.Justice Stevens was, apparently, astute enough to recognize the problem with his position. It’s a problem that transcends legal considerations. It is one that rises to the level of a logical defect in his thesis. He therefore felt compelled to respond to it, albeit he did so in a footnote. But Justice Stevens response is confusing and ultimately logically unsatisfactory.Attempting to circumvent Justice Scalia’s point, Justice Stevens asserted in his typical roundabout, fashion that, “The Court assumes—incorrectly, in my view—that even when a state militia was not called into service, Congress would have had the power to exclude individuals from enlistment in that state militia. See ante, at 600, 171 L. Ed. 2d, at 662. That assumption is not supported by the text of the Militia Clauses of the original Constitution, which confer upon Congress the power to ‘organiz[e], ar[m], and disciplin[e], the Militia,’ Art. I, § 8, cl. 16, but not the power to say who will be members of a state militia. It is also flatly inconsistent with the Second Amendment. The States' power to create their own militias provides an easy answer to the Court's complaint that the right as I have described it is empty because it merely guarantees ‘citizens' right to use a gun in an organization from which Congress has plenary authority to exclude them.’ Ante, at 600, 171 L. Ed. 2d, at 662.” District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. at 655 fn 20; 128 S. Ct. at 2833 fn 20; 171 L. Ed. 2d 695 fn 20. Justice Stevens argues in his dissenting opinion that Congress cannot exclude one’s right to keep and bear arms. But, suppose a State should decide to exclude one’s right to keep and bear arms. What then does that make of the individual right of the people to keep and bear arms and in what manner would a person be able to vindicate that right against one’s own State? But, there is a more serious problem. For, even as to Congress, if one surmises that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is bound up in the notion of a militia, Congress may very well have plenary power to disband a State militia. In fact, it has done so, and has emphasized its power over a State’s militia even during the infancy of this Nation. That means the right of the people to keep and bear arms either exists within the context of a man-made construct--a militia--and, if so, the right, then, does not exist and never existed at all, or the right exists, quite simply, independently of, and always did exist independently of, one's connection with a militia. The right must exist, then, in the individual. A State’s militia, as an organized body of men simply no longer exists. Congress has seen to that. Congress itself has essentially destroyed the organized militia of every State through legislation in which a State’s National Guard is essentially a component of the United States Army, while the Air National Guard of a State is a component of the United States Air Force. “Today, the states’ security personnel are not militiamen, but principally are the members of local law enforcement—and the bulk of counterterrorism work will fall to them.” “The Security Constitution,” 53 UCLA L. Rev. 29, 141-142 (October 2005), by Jason Mazzone, Professor of Law, Brooklyn University Law School. Expanding upon the point, the author says, in a footnote, “In thinking about modern translations and applications of the Constitution, one error must be avoided: equating the National Guard with the old militia. The National Guard claims to be the direct descendant of the militia. See National Guard Website, History, http://www.arng.army.mil/history (last visited July 27, 2004). In fact, the National Guard originated in the early twentieth century as a part of the national military. See Act of Jan. 21, 1903 (the Dick Act), ch. 196, 32 Stat. 775 (promoting the efficiency of the militia, and for other purposes and forming the Organized Militia as the ‘State National Guard,’ in accordance with the organization of the Army, and with federal funds and army instructors); Act of June 3, 1916 (National Defense Act), ch. 134, 39 Stat. 166 (making the National Guard part of the Army). Moreover, the National Guard is nothing like the old militia. The cornerstone of the Constitution's militia was universal service (by adult white men), whereas the National Guard is an entirely voluntary corps. The militia originated as a local institution under the authority of the states, but the National Guard is, by law, part of the national military, run by, paid for, and mobilized by the national government. See Uviller & Merkel, supra note 425, at 142-43. Indeed, ‘the militia . . . was designed and supported as an alternative to the professional standing army of the central government. The modern National Guard, then, is not just different from the militia referred to in the Constitution, it is in many ways, its antithesis.’ Id. at 153-54 (concluding that there is today no functionally equivalent entity of the old militia). The militia was not only separate from the national army, it was meant to outnumber and overpower it. (Recall Madison's claim about what a half million militiamen could do to twenty-five or thirty thousand regulars. See supra text accompanying note 177.) Today, though, more than 1.4 million troops belong to the regular United States military establishment - the Army National Guard has about 360,000 members. Uviller & Merkel, supra note 425, at 143. The distinction between the old militia as an alternative to a standing army and the National Guard as the army itself is symbolized by a further difference: who takes care of the weapons. Militiamen kept their guns at home because they might need them at any moment to rise up in arms against oppression. Weapons for use by National Guardsmen are kept under lock and key in federal armories. Further, the only armed fighting Guardsmen do is at the direction of the government itself. See id. at 143-44. (Without pressing the point too far, police officers today keep and maintain their own weapons; it is also a fair assumption that to the average citizen, seeing a police officer, gun in holster, patrolling a street, is less startling than seeing a Guardsman in fatigues with an M16.) For all of these reasons, it is wrong to read the Constitution's militia provisions as referring today to the National Guard. At the same time, the federal government can, of course, deploy the National Guard - as part of the national military - for homeland security purposes.” 53 UCLA L. Rev. 29, 141-142 fn 621 (October 2005), by Jason Mazzone, Professor of Law, Brooklyn University Law School.To tie the right of the people to keep and bear arms into the notion of a "militia" or into the descendent of the militia--the National Guard, which is essentially a part of a "standing army"--the very thing the framers sought, in the codification of the right in the Second Amendment to be a guard against--turns the right into a blasphemous, ludicrous caricature. Justice Stevens must have known of the disingenuousness of his remarks in Heller. One can forgive Justice Stevens’ intellectual fallibility. But one cannot forgive, nor should one forgive, blatant hypocrisy.Eleven years prior to Heller, Justice Stevens wrote his dissenting opinion in Printz vs. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 117 S. Ct. 2365, 138 L. Ed. 2d 914 (1997). This was a case where, as in Heller, not incidentally, Justices Souter, Breyer, and Ginsburg concurred in Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion. Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion in Printz may be perceived as a precursor to his dissenting opinion in Heller, in which the Justice elaborates on his desire for a strong federal Government to thwart the excesses of the public--where excess means the existence of an armed citizenry. Justice Stevens' contempt for the Second Amendment--a contempt shared by the liberal wing of the Court that concurred in his opinion--is on full display in Printz. Again, as in Heller, Justice Stevens' twists his words, arguing, in Printz, essentially that the Federal Government must require the individual States to clamp down on an "armed citizenry." This according to Justice Stevens, in his usual twisted logic, serves as a guard against tyranny. For, if the Federal Government should, on its own, simply create a vast bureaucracy to clamp down on an armed citizenry, that would certainly lead to tyranny. But, does there exist a difference? In Printz, a case cited by the author of the aforementioned law review article, the U.S. Supreme Court—in an opinion penned by Justice Scalia, for the majority—invalidated a portion of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act that prohibits the Federal Government from commandeering State Executive Officials from enforcing Federal law. Justice Stevens and the other liberal wing contingent of the high Court took exception to that. Justice Stevens argued that Congress was well within its power to compel a State's assistance in fighting “the epidemic of gun violence”—which, Stevens felt the Brady Act was enacted to combat.With his proclivity to contort ideas through verbal legerdemain, Justice Stevens argued, in Printz, that tyranny is less likely to occur in our Nation when the Federal Government can and ought to compel the States to act in its behest than were the Federal Government simply to “create vast national bureaucracies to implement its policies.” Printz vs. United States, 521 U.S. at 959, 117 S. Ct. at 2396, 138 L. Ed. 2d at 959 (1997). Extrapolating from Printz, one might reasonably argue that Stevens makes a similar case in his dissenting opinion in Heller. Tyranny, for Stevens is less likely to occur when the Federal Government can compel the States to constrain possession of firearms in the citizenry than were the Federal Government to create a vast National bureaucracy to do the job itself. But, in terms of the result, this is truly a distinction without a difference. If the militia is identified with the National Guard and the National Guard is essentially an adjunct of the United State Army and if the individual’s right to keep and bear arms is a function of one’s connection with a State militia qua a State’s National Guard, wherein is the right to keep and bear arms, existent in the individual, to be vindicated? If the threat, as Justice Stevens sees it, as evidenced in his dissenting opinion in Printz, is found in the very existence of an armed citizenry as situated apart from that armed citizenry’s connection with a State’s militia qua National Guard, as merely an adjunct of the Federal Government’s standing army, then wherein is one to envision anything left of the Second Amendment as a right to be vindicated?Does it matter whether it is the State that constrains the individual or the State that constrains the individual on behalf of and at the behest of the Federal Government, or the Federal Government that constrains the individual on its own behalf and at its own behest? Tyranny is the end result in any event, however one chooses to look at it.________________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.  

DOES THE SECOND AMENDMENT CODIFY NATURAL LAW, PREEXISTENT IN THE INDIVIDUAL, OR IS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS A MAN-MADE CONSTRUCT?

Maryland's Firearm Safety Act: Attacking The Core Of The Second Amendment Through The Veneer Of Promoting Public Safety

KOLBE VS. HOGAN

PART SEVEN

The Underpinnings Of The Second Amendment Right Of The People To Keep And Bear Arms

Against the backdrop of every major Second Amendment case rests a fundamental and profound philosophical question. The question is this: does the right of the people to keep and bear arms exist as a quality, feature, attribute, aspect, condition, or characteristic intrinsic to the individual, existing, then, within the individual, or is the right to be perceived as an endowment, bestowed on the individual by others, something, then, extrinsic to the individual—existing, if at all, outside the individual? If the right of the people to keep and bear arms is extrinsic to the individual, this means the right is a human invention. It is a construct, convention, or contrivance. It is a thing created by and then granted to, licensed to, or bestowed upon the individual by another entity, say the State, through Government. But, if it is a thing bestowed upon the individual by the State, then the right does not belong to the individual. The right belongs to the State. The State may, then, at its discretion, at its whim lawfully withdraw or rescind the right so bestowed upon the people. That means the right of the people to keep and bear arms is less a right than a privilege of the people to keep and bear arms—a privilege which the State may grant, or cede, or license to an individual, for a time, and, thereafter, at the State’s pleasure, rescind or withdraw. The individual has no legal recourse to contest the privilege rescinded or withdrawn except to the extent that law set forth in statute—also a creation of the State, through the State's government, yet another man-made construct—allows.If, however, the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an inherent quintessential quality, feature, attribute, characteristic, condition or aspect of each person, existing within an person qua an autonomous individual, this means, by logical implication, the right exists outside of and independently of the State. If so, the right of the people to keep and bear arms operates as an extraordinary constraint on the State’s power, through Government to regulate and control the exercise of the right. For the right is indefeasible, immutable, archetypal, preexistent in the soul of man, and therefore resting beyond space and time. In its purest application, the right of the people to keep and bear arms is absolute. The right cannot be constrained without also restraining and constraining the sanctity and inviolability of the individual soul. The right of the people to keep and bear arms--the operative clause of the Second Amendment--is not, then, a creation of man. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is simply a codification of, and an acknowledgment of the right preexisting in the individual. It is not a thing that can, lawfully, be defeated through legislation or really destroyed by the State, through government since it was never a thing enacted through legislation or granted or licensed to the individual by grace of the State through the State's Government. To suggest otherwise is mere pretense and artifice. The right of the people to keep and bear arms as a right, preexisting in the individual, is not a novel idea. The U.S. Supreme Court made the point in 1879, as Justice Antonin Scalia reminds those jurists who may have forgotten this critically important fact or who may simply have chosen to ignore it or belittle it. Justice Scalia says, "The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it 'shall not be infringed.' As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 553, 23 L. Ed. 588 (1876), '[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed. . . ." Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 592; 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2797-2798; 171 L. Ed. 2d 637, 657-658 (2008). How a Court perceives the right of the people to keep and bear arms informs a Court's resolution of all Second Amendment cases that come before it. Does a Court perceive the right of the people to keep and bear arms as a primordial, preeminent right preexisting in the individual, consistent with the framers' beliefs when the framers codified the right within the Bill of Rights as the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and as recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as early as 1879 in the Cruikshank case and as reiterated by Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, in the 2008 Heller case, or does a Court simply view the right of the people to keep and bear arms as a man-made construct or invention, no more so nor less so than any man-made statute, code, rule, regulation, or ordinance? If a Court chooses to deny, or chooses to ignore, or, if a Court  simply chooses, seemingly and  conveniently, to forget the import of the operative clause of the Second Amendment--the right of the people to keep and bear arms--as several United States District Courts and United States Circuit Court of Appeals are wont to do, as the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has done as seen in its disastrous Kolbe decision, the Second Amendment will lose its strength, its efficacy. The right, though, does not cease to exist. It cannot ever cease to exist because the right is deathless. The right exists in a person's very being. But, if a Nation fails to recognize and accede to the import of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, the right remains dormant, and a nation, any nation--but, in particular, our Nation--will loses its soul that would seek to deny to the individual his or her natural birthright. Tyranny will, then, inevitably, rear its ugly head, and if tyranny should arise, our Free Republic will surely fall, for the existence of a Free Republic is incompatible with the existence of autocracy even as government heads assert the continued existence of a republic in an attempt to assuage public consternation, public doubt, public enmity, and to quell rebellion--rebellion that would be impossible to effectuate anyway with the loss of a citizen army with the denial of one's natural right to keep and bear arms. Thus, the philosophical underpinnings of the sacred right embodied in the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution cannot be overstated. It is the hallmark of this Nation and of this Nation's regard for the autonomy, sanctity, and inviolability of the individual, as this is in accord with the framers' own core beliefs in codifying The right of the people to keep and bear arms within the Bill of Rights as the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and as, subsequently recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1879 in the Cruikshank case and as reiterated by Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, in 2008, in the seminal Heller case. And it is the ultimate "fail-safe device" against tyranny. The attempt, any attempt by a Court to denigrate the right of the people to keep and bear arms is nothing less than an apostasy.Unfortunately, as we have seen, although Courts will acknowledge the seminal Second Amendment case, District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. 570; 128 S. Ct. 2783; 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 (2008), as they must when faced with a Second Amendment issue, this acknowledgement does nothing, of itself, to restrain courts from often blatantly ignoring the rulings of that seminal case, and, in so doing, ignoring the jurisprudential principles that ought guide judicial conduct in the resolution of a case before it, and, more so, committing the cardinal sin of undercutting the sacred precepts of our Nation. The Heller case has cast the right of the people to keep and bear arms in stark relief. Lower Federal District Courts and higher Circuit Courts of Appeal can no longer hide their animus toward the Second Amendment by contending that the import of the Second Amendment has never been adequately resolved by the Courts or by academicians. The Heller case makes abundantly clear, in no uncertain terms, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right and, more, a preexisting right, intrinsic to the individual, a right unconnected with one's service in a militia.The high Court has provided clear guidance for resolution of cases that involve government actions that attack the core of the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Lower federal courts that ignore the clear intent of and clear reasoning of the seminal Heller case, do so at their peril. For they can no longer hide behind obfuscating language if they choose to ignore the holdings of the case and the reasoning of the Court's majority in rendering those holdings. They can no longer claim that the meaning and purport of the right of the people to keep and bear arms is still in doubt. The Kolbe case ((Kolbe vs. O’Malley, 42. F. Supp. 3d 768 (D. Md. 2014); vacated and remanded, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 813 F.3d 160 (4th Cir. 2016); rev’d en banc, Kolbe vs. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114 (4th Cir. 2017)) is the latest in a line of poorly decided and poorly reasoned--and extremely dangerous--cases cascading through the legal system from Courts that directly and routinely and unabashedly attack the core of the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Kolbe is a case that aptly illustrates a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal’s caustic attitude toward Heller, and, by extension, aptly illustrates the Court's disregard for application of case precedent to the Second Amendment cases before it; the Court's disregard for the sanctity of the American citizen as an autonomous individual; and the Court's refutation of the importance of adherence to the core traditions, values, and belief system as reflected in the Constitution and in the Republican form of Government that our framers created and passed down to us.The Kolbe case aptly demonstrates that, once a Court disagrees with the philosophical underpinnings of the Second Amendment—that the right of the people to keep and bear arms exists within man, and not as a thing extrinsic to man—that Court will invariably rule for the State, against the individual. It will do so in clear contravention to and in clear defiance of case precedent, as set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Heller, and will do so in ostensible contemptuous disregard of our Nation’s historical traditions and in disregard of our Nation’s substantial jurisprudential history, manipulating law to derive a result consistent only with the Court's personal flawed philosophy, remarking, in its opinion, what, in the Court's view, the Second Amendment ought to say, rather than in adhering to what the Second Amendment does say, as clarified through the rulings and reasoning of the Heller majority.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS, AS A COMPONENT OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, STANDS PREEMINENT; FOR THE BILL OF RIGHTS, UNLIKE THE CONSTITUTION’S ARTICLES AND SUBSEQUENT AMENDMENTS, CODIFY NATURAL LAW, NOT MAN-MADE LAW.

The framers of our Constitution accepted, as axiomatic, that a critical component part of that Constitution —the normative rights and liberties, of the Bill of Rights—are, in a critical manner, wholly unlike the main body of the Constitution. For, although the structure of Government is man-made, the rights and liberties codified in the Bill of Rights, are not man-made. The rights and liberties, set forth in the Bill of Rights are not social or political constructs, conventions, contrivances, or mechanisms. The framers knew that any Governmental form they created could, even with the best checks and balances in place, can still devolve into tyranny. The framers understood that the greatest threat to the sanctity and inviolability of each person, each American citizen—is the threat that the Federal Government might one day devolve into autocracy, into totalitarianism, into tyranny. To guard against this possibility, to offset the insinuation of tyranny, lurking behind the corner of every government formed by man, the founders of our Nation and framers of our Constitution, established, as a critical component of our Nation’s Constitution, an indelible Bill of Rights.The Bill of Rights comprises a set of primary, primordial, fundamental, natural laws that Government must adhere to lest Government devolve into tyranny. These natural laws rest well beyond the power of the Federal Government, lawfully, to destroy. Preeminent among the natural laws that constrain the possibility of a despotic Government is the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.The framers understood that an armed citizenry protects the entirety of the Bill of Rights and that an armed citizenry is the single best guardian against and check on a Federal Government run amok and that an armed citizenry is the ultimate bastion against tyranny. Some jurists, though, do not appreciate the threat posed to a free Republic, in the absence of an armed citizenry. They don’t accept this. They are philosophically predisposed to regard an armed citizenry with trepidation, with suspicion; as a potential threat against public order. So, they don't accept the necessity of an armed citizenry. They do not and will not accept the emphatic command to the State, to a State's Government, to the Court itself, as a component of the State, of the Government. They do not accept, will not accept the idea that the Second Amendment is to be revered, respected, preserved, strengthened, exalted, as the framers intended. They don't accept this. But, they must. The Heller holdings and the legal and logical reasoning of the Court's majority, as penned by the late Justice Scalia, fell upon those courts, that find the Second Amendment anachronistic, like a ton of bricks. They don't like the holdings and they do not agree with the Heller majority's reasoning. So, they slither around Heller, pretending to adhere to it rather than truly complying with it, rendering decisions, antithetical to Heller, and, therefore, antithetical to the import and purport of the Second Amendment.

WHY THE HELLER CASE IS TRULY CRITICAL TO U.S. SUPREME COURT JURISPRUDENCE

The Heller case is generally cited for its principal holding: that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right, exclusive of a person’s connection with a militia. But, in dicta, the Court's majority spoke, at several points, of the “natural right” of self-defense and resistance. To the framers of our Constitution, the right of the people to keep and bear arms is not a creation of government. The right exists intrinsic to man, as natural law, not man-made law. Justice Antonin Scalia refers to the right of the people to keep and bear arms as a natural right several times in the opinion he penned for the majority of the high Court, citing to the historical writings of the Second Amendment that he reports in the Heller case. Not surprisingly, the dissenting Justices for their part, notably Justices Stevens and Breyer, who penned penned two separate dissenting opinions, do not. The dissenting Justices do not even allude to the notion of a right of the right of the people to keep and bear arms in the context of natural law and natural rights.The dissenting Justices on the high Court do not accept the facticity of the rights and liberties of man as codified in the Bill of Rights, as natural rights. These Justices—and many other judges that fill the seats on the lower U.S. District Courts and that fill the seats on the higher U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal—do not and will not accept as axiomatic that the Bill of Rights comprises a set of indefeasible rights and liberties.The liberal wing of the high Court and the liberal jurists of the lower Federal District and higher Federal Appellate Courts take as a jurisprudential principle, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is no less a social, political, and legal construct than any other part of the law. For such jurists, the idea that the right of the people to keep and bear arms bespeaks natural law, outside one’s service in a militia, is not only false, it is patently ridiculous. Their opinions are infused with the notion that the Bill of Rights may be lawfully violated if utilitarian demands so dictate. None of the dissenting Justices in Heller would, though, make such a remark overtly and none have done so. But, since none of the dissenting Justices accept as axiomatic that the right of the people to keep and bear arms codifies a natural right, they fail to see how discordant their position is when they proclaim that such right of the people to keep and bear arms that exists is contingent only on one’s service in a militia. For, one might reasonably ask that, if a person's right to keep and bear arms is tenable only in the event one serves in a militia, then under what circumstance or set of circumstances might an individual ever vindicate the right so violated, if such right operates only in connection with one's service in a militia? And, if the right cannot be vindicated, is the right, then, not simply nugatory?Justice Stevens, in his dissenting opinion, joined by Justices, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, attempts, unsuccessfully, to skirt as de minimis the question whether the Second Amendment codifies an individual right to keep and bear arms as opposed to a collective right. In the first sentence of his dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens says, “The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a ‘collective right’ or an ‘individual right.’ Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals. But a conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us anything about the scope of that right.” District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. at 636; 128 S. Ct. at 2822.* How is the individual right to be vindicated legally--indeed, how is the individual right to be vindicated logically--if that "individual" right is subsumed under or in connection with one's service in a militia? Is that right not, then, a mere "collective" right? But, if the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a "collective" right, how is that collective right to be vindicated? Is a collective right of the people to keep and bear arms, a right in any legal or logical sense at all?Justice Stevens undermines the import of his own remark as he directs the entirety of his argument to the thesis that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is merely and solely tied to one’s service in a militia. The scope of the right is, apparently, the issue Stevens seemingly wrestles with in his dissenting opinion because he must realize the logical flaw inherent in it. Justice Stevens attempts to respond to Justice Scalia's logical argument that, on Justice Stevens' interpretation of the right codified in the Second Amendment, there is nothing in "the scope of the individual right" left to be protected. Justice Stevens cannot and does not adequately argue that there is something left of the individual right to be protected on his peculiar interpretation of the Second Amendment, because, once Justice Stevens accepts, as a premise, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms rests principally upon the person’s service in a militia, he cannot escape the implication of that premise, namely that there exists no individual right of the people to keep and bear arms left to be protected, as he has severed the right, which exists only in the operative clause of the Second Amendment, from the prefatory clause, and, in so doing, he attempts, unsatisfactorily and unjustifiably, and, indeed, incoherently, to insinuate the right into the prefatory clause. But, there is no legal or logical, or linguistic way in which he might reasonably do this. Thus, the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be protected, which is to say vindicated, in any manner, because the right is contained, according to Justice Stevens, in the prefatory, dependent clause of the Second Amendment. The prefatory clause, though, has, in its very language, no operative force. It talks of no right at all. So, there is nothing in the prefatory clause that can be vindicated. Justice Scalia laid bare the problems with Justice Stevens argument. Justice Stevens, for his part, had no adequate rejoinder. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, pointed out that, "The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose. The Amendment could be rephrased, 'Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed [citation omitted]. . . . Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command. The Second Amendment would be nonsensical if it read, 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to petition for redress of grievances shall not be infringed.'" District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. at 577; 128 S. Ct. at 2789; 171 L. Ed. 2d at 648, 649 (2008).** Moreover, if one assumes for purpose of argument that a right does exist or can be implied in the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment, that somehow carries over to the independent, operative clause, that still doesn't help to salvage Justice Stevens' argument. For, the State, through Government is, then, and, in fact, must be, the final arbiter not only of what firearms the individual may possess but whether the individual may possess any firearms at all, outside of that individual’s connection with a militia. But, if that were so, then, once it is posited that the Government has sole authority to regulate the kinds of firearms a person may possess in his or her individual capacity, or whether a person may possess any firearms at all, then, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, as a right exercised by the individual, is subject to the whim of Government. The right, then, is not a real right at all, as the "right" may very well be regulated out of existence. The right, then, is ephemeral. It simply falls away. This is the salient problem with Kolbe and those cases that, like Kolbe, accept, at least tacitly, the absolute power of Government to dictate the kinds of firearms that Americans may possess and, ultimately, whether Americans may possess any firearms at all.We continue with our exegesis of Kolbe in light of the Heller case in Part Eight of this series._________________________________________________________*Did Justice Stevens pilfer from a law review article having failed to acknowledge the source? Consider and compare the remarks in the first paragraph of Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion in Heller to the following statements that appeared in a law review article written nine years before the high Court decided Heller: "There are two relevant Second Amendment questions. The first question is whether the right belongs to the individual. Professor Yassky [David Yassky, The Sound of Silence: The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment - A Response to Professor Kopel, 18 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 189, 190 (1999) (debating scope of individual's rights under Second Amendment)] believes the question to be confused because 'all constitutional rights - even those most obviously concerned with government structure rather than individual freedom - ultimately belong to individuals in the sense that individuals can sue to vindicate them.' The proper question assumes that the  Second Amendment recognizes some individual right but asks what the scope of the right is. This article argues that the scope of the individual right is limited to those circumstances in which the individual participates in a government militia." From, "The Inconvenient Militia Clause of the Second Amendment: Why the Supreme Court Declines to Resolve the Debate Over the Right to Bear Arms," 16 St. John's J.L. Comm. 41 (Winter 2002), by Robert Hardaway, Elizabeth Gormley, and Bryan Taylor. **Curiously, after Justice Stevens retired from serving on the United States Supreme Court, he attempted, apparently, as set forth in his book, published in April of 2014, titled, "Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution," to come to grips with if not to circumvent the problem, with his thesis as pointed out by Justice Scalia. Justice Stevens' contended, as set forth in his dissenting opinion in Heller, that a way exists through which the right of the people to keep and bear arms" may be vindicated. Justice Scalia explained that, under Justice Stevens approach, though, that, under Justice Stevens' thesis, there is no manner in which the individual right of the people to keep and bear arms can be vindicated, that, under Justice Stevens' thesis, the right is nugatory. Justice Scalia had proved that the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be vindicated through the prefatory clause, "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State," because the right--on the plain meaning of the language of the Second Amendment--does not exist in the prefatory, dependent clause and cannot logically be transported into "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" exists in the operative, independent clause only, for that is where the right is expressly stated.There is no logical, rational reason or basis for inserting the right of the people to keep and bear arms into the prefatory clause and tying the intrinsic right of the individual, inextricably, to that individual's connection with a militia. For, there is no mechanism for vindicating the right when the right is tied to one's connection with a militia. Thus, there is no right to be vindicated and the Second Amendment, as a codification of and assertion of a right, would be, must be nugatory. Apparently realizing this and not acceding to the idea that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is an individual right, preexisting in the individual, not connected with service in a militia--as these ideas are not philosophically acceptable to Justice Stevens--Justice Stevens suggests, in his book, that the Second Amendment should be rewritten as: "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms when serving in a militia shall not be infringed." Justice Stevens apparently sees this rendition of the Second Amendment--which, by the way,  does not comport with any such suggestion by any of the framers of our Constitution--as a tenable way to get around the late Justice Antonin Scalia's contention   that, on Justice John Paul Stevens interpretation of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, there is nothing left of the right to be vindicated. Justice Stevens apparently believes that, in his novel rendition of the Second Amendment, the right of the individual is, now, successfully limited but still vindicated, and the Second Amendment is not, then, nugatory as he has now tied the right of the people to keep and bear arms specifically, linguistically, indisputably, to a person's connection with a militia. The right is duly limited but expressly stated in the operative clause. But, there is still a problem, and it is a problem quite apart from the fact that Justice Steven's reworking of the Second Amendment fails to comport with any view of the import of the Second Amendment as set forth by any of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, and it is a problem that cannot be surmounted through the rewriting of the Second Amendment, which, is, by any account, an extremely drastic way to respond to the fatal flaw in his argument. For, even accepting, on logical grounds, that there is something to be made of Justice Stevens' redraft of the Second Amendment as a way to avoid the flaws in his position, as he has set forth that position in his dissenting opinion in Heller, the question arises how a group right, that is to say, a collective right, is to be vindicated. Justice Scalia had remarked on this point as well, in pointing to another flaw in Justice Stevens' position, that Justice Scalia referenced in the majority opinion he penned, in Heller. How, one might ask, might one petition the Courts for vindication of a right purportedly tied to one's service in a militia? Moreover, suppose the militia, "necessary to the security of a free State" though it be, as set forth in the prefatory clause, ceases to exist. Wherein is the right, that one may exercise, be vindicated if there is no right left to be exercised? What, really, is there left of the right? One may ask: was there ever truly a right that might be vindicated at all?  As Justice Scalia pointed out, the necessity for the armed citizen lay not in the existence of the militia but in the force of arms of the citizenry that the citizenry brought to the militia and that made a militia possible. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority said, ". . . the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens' militia by taking away their arms was the reason that right--unlike some other English rights--was codified in a written Constitution." District of Columbia vs. Heller, 554 U.S. at 599; 128 S. Ct. at 2801; 171 L. Ed. 2d at 662 (2008). It is the right of the people to keep and bear arms, that is to say, in the individual ownership of and possession of firearms, in and of itself, that is critical to the exercise of and vindication of the right, a right unconnected to service in a militia or in connection with any other man-made creation; and in that exercise of the right intrinsic to, immutable, indestructible, preexisting in each person, where each person is perceived as an autonomous individual, whose individuality must remain sacred and inviolate, would the security of a free State be preserved. An armed citizenry resides in what remains, today, of the true militia, namely, the unorganized militia, and that unorganized militia is not equivalent to or equated with, nor is it to be considered equivalent to or equated with the "organized militia," namely, the National Guard of each individual State that exists as a reserve military arm of and for the Federal Government, as dictated by Federal Statute.Better it would have been for Justice Stevens to accept that his thesis regarding the Second Amendment is wrong and that Justice Scalia is correct and that Justice Scalia was correct all along. But, Justice Stevens doesn't accept the plain meaning of the Second Amendment; he refuses to do so on a deep, visceral level. Justice Stevens absolutely refuses to accept the plain meaning of the Second Amendment as set forth in the Constitution, and in refusing to accept the plain meaning of the Second Amendment, Justice Stevens is taking exception with and contending with the deeply held beliefs of the framers of our Constitution. So, Justice Stevens is compelled to hold onto the legally deficient, logically unsound, and ethically dubious notion of an individual right of the people to keep and bear arms that happens to be tied to and exercised only by one's service in or connection with a militia.In point of fact, though, the "organized militia," as such no longer exists. It has been subsumed into and, more accurately, replaced by the "National Guard," which has become a reserve component of the federal Government, subject to federal control. This might not bother Justice  Stevens although it might be of concern to others. Justice Stevens seems to be more concerned with the logical coherency and consistency of his position, as well he should be, that requires that a right exercised by an individual must, in a logical sense, to be considered a true right at all be capable of vindication if violated. Justice Stevens seems less concerned over the practical application of the right that is to be vindicated, though, which, consistent with his thesis, is a contingent matter, after all, contingent on the existence of a militia. If there exists no militia, then, apparently, the failure of the condition precedent does not negatively impact the fact that a right may, at least, logically, if not empirically, that is to say, factually, be vindicated. In other words, the right to be exercised, albeit, one tied to the militia, under Justice Stevens' thesis, does always exist. For, Justice Stevens does, after all, in his redraft of the Second Amendment, retain the words, "shall not be infringed." So, if the militia exists, then the right may, Justice Stevens would argue, be vindicated. If the militia does not exist, the right, although it still exists, cannot be exercised and cannot be vindicated. The success or failure of a right to be vindicated is a function of the existence of the militia. But, then, what does it mean to say the right, supposedly, always exists? This is a tortuous attempt at legal and logical manipulation of concepts to give credence to an idea that Justice Stevens, doesn't even truly accept--that the right of the people to keep and bear arms {a right that shall not be infringed by anyone or any entity} if such right truly exists, beyond the power of the State to lawfully destroy, must be a right  preexistent, immutable, indestructible, and absolutely capable of exercise in all instances, for all time, beyond the possibility of any conceivable contingency that might serve to make the right impossible of exercise (as for example the nonexistence of a militia). Thus, merely tacking on this or that phrase to a proposition, in a dubious attempt to erode an indestructible right and in an attempt to overcome an insurmountable, logical flaw that exists in his argument, the retired Justice, John Paul Stevens cannot successfully sidestep the problem inherent in Justice Stevens' thesis that the late Justice Antonin Scalia had perceptively pointed to in Heller. Anyway, the proposed redraft of the Second Amendment, insufferable and ludicrous as that proposed redraft is, appears, then, to be, in part, at least, Justice Stevens belated answer to the late Justice Antonin Scalia's sharp attack on the weaknesses of Justice Stevens' argument as evinced in Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion in Heller.________________________________________________________Copyright © 2017 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.