Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: A common question to both sides... [View all]discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,479 posts)I find the sections of Justice Steven's opinion in Heller contrived and unconvincing which define "the people" as other than individuals. I further see no reason for a Bill of Rights, as was demanded, considered concurrently with and passed within days in 1789 of the Constitution, to give federal authority of the regulation of private citizens regarding arms. The Bill of Rights names individual rights. In all cases the BoR assigns to individuals and protects basic rights. Its existence is a measure of restrictions against government.
I have read the Militia Act focusing on the sections you highlighted and find nothing to alter my opinion.
Your refusal to accept the nature of an individual and the inherent source of personal rights blinds you to the nature of the need for a Bill of Rights apart from convention for individual restriction. Some people look at society and see our laws as drawing a line of absolutes which bounds an area beyond which is solely the pervue of government. They see the area short of that bound as possibly subject to government limitation depending on laws which may or may not yet be written.
It is the correct and the ONLY correct view of society that rights limit the government. The boundary between personal liberty and government authority describes a bound beyond which government may not legislatively intrude. No respectful government limits my sole and most basic instinct to preserve my own life. A government destructive of individual sovereignty can justify no source for its own authority compatible with the reasoning within the Declaration of Independence "...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...". What facility is there to devise a governmental power derived from the consent of the governed, not originally possessed by the governed? This would be self-contradictory. Further in the Declaration: "...That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." Some people may see that if the people find an attractive idea, that it may be legislated into reality by their popular agreement.
This is BULLSHIT. Legislation is bounded by personal rights. There is a non-arbitrary boundary between the liberty of a free person and the authority of government beyond which government may not intrude. No justification of saving the children, the whales, the under privileged or the grand opinion of an overly self-important judge, legislator or executive may stand against freedom.
The spirit evident in right of the people to alter or abolish the government, supersedes any justification of how anything binding of the individual, has any business being named as a right.
A healthy fear of the people by the government yields freedom.