Say Anything Blog

Normally an enumerated Constitutional right, in legal parlance (the terms of art being bolded) is deemed fundamental and any governmental infringement thereupon given strict scrutiny review, and only a compelling governmental interest will justify that infringement.  Even so, any governmental infringement upon that right must be narrowly tailored to address the specific evil while leaving the vast bulk of that fundamental right alone.

The Second Amendment is one such Right enumerated as one of the initial ten Amendments, collectively known as the Bill of Rights. These enumerated rights are part of a super law—Constitutional law—designated under Article 6, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, also known as the Supremacy Clause, as trumping anything in the State laws, Constitutions of courts to the contrary. 

In a perfect world, where the Constitution is followed the way to alter a Constitutional provision is to Amend it—using a supermajority vote of Congress and the Amendment being ratified by a supermajority of the States—no easy task.

It is NOT, however, to be altered by the mere solemn pronouncements of those sitting on a Federal Court of Appeals or even the U.S. Supreme Court.  Their tasks are to clear up ambiguities, not to re-write the Constitution—otherwise the Amendment process is a complete lie.

Well, we are currently living under a Complete Lie.  That Lie is Gun Control—which goes kind of like this: by disarming people (without having to go through that pesking Amendment thingy) we make them safer.

But only the most braindead or deluded among us will have failed to notice that massacres take place where Gun Control rules have been applied and almost never where citizens are free to exercise their fundamental right of Self Defense (e.g. the Second Amendment Right to Keep and Bear Arms --- RKBA for short)

Janet Ellen Levy, in her American Thinker entry:
The Fight To Bar Arms covers this slow-motion coup against the Constitution:

With the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech in which 32 people were slain on campus by a lone gunman who turned his weapon on himself, no doubt the clamor to ban personal ownership of guns will be raised again. Yet amidst the grief and anguish over this terrible incident it should be noted that the campus itself had gained a well-known reputation as a “gun free zone.”

Virginia Tech earned that reputation from widespread, national coverage arising from the 2005 disciplining of a student who brought a permitted firearm on campus. That reputation was further enhanced in January of 2006, when H.B. 1572, a bill that would have given students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus, was quashed in subcommittee review before it ever got to the Virginia General Assembly for a vote. Meanwhile, last June, Virginia Tech’s governing board passed a violence prevention policy that further strengthened the ban against weapons on campus.

With the notoriety of its no-gun policy as a backdrop, the Virginia Tech campus thus ensured that students and faculty were practically sitting ducks, stripped of their ability to defend themselves during Monday’s tragic sniper shooting. Who can say if the methodical shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, a senior who was a Virginia Tech student during the 2005 student-disciplining incident, was aware of the school’s reputation and took it into account? What can be said, however, is that this most recent disaster, featured prominently on the national stage, underscores for many how necessary is our constitutional right to bear arms.