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Freedom and the Role of the Militia Part III

You can’t fist fight tyranny

“The American people, Lee wrote Samuel Adams, had not fought the British only to be ‘brought under despotic rule under the notion of strong government, or in the form of elective despotism; Chains still being chains, whether made of gold or iron’. The “Corrupting nature of power’ made it essential for public safety that ‘power not requisite should not be given’ to government and ‘that necessary powers should be carefully guarded”.1

Richard Henry Lee

“America is a system of taxation to which a government is attached.”2

Part 1 covered an article by conservative journalist Daniel McCarthy wherein he rebutted liberal solutions to Public Mass Shootings (PMS). He hit the right chords at first but then notes turned sour. McCarthy tied private ownership of firearms to membership in a militia under strict State control. He contends the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) “inspired” the Second Amendment. He adds a reason to keep arms is to maintain a well-regulated militia “under strict subordination to, and governed by the civil power” dismissing as “right-wing folklore” claims the Amendment’s authors in any way intended it to support citizen uprisings against a tyrannical government i.e. Shay’s Rebellion.3 Stephen King writes in Danse Macabre that Bram Stoker’s Dracula inspired his novel Salem’s Lot, an homage to Stoker. However, King’s novel is wholly his own and the narrative quite different.4 McCarthy’s problems are more serious than errant extrapolation.

Article III of the Virginia Declaration of Rights written by George Mason reads, “That a well regulated militia, composed of the Body of the People, trained to Arms, is the proper, natural, and safe Defence of a free State; that standing Armies, in Time of Peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty” [emphasis and spelling in the original].5 Regardless of inspiration, Virginia’s Declaration of Rights is not the Second Amendment. In addition, local autonomous militias pre-existed declarations and constitutions.

Colonial survival, especially in outlying villages and settlements, required individuals possess and be skilled with arms long before the Revolution. For the most part, Americans did not acquire skill at arms serving in militias or in standing armies.5 No army or police force existed to protect colonists from criminals or against attacks by the French and their Indian allies. When British Royal Governors began seizing the firearms and ammunition of colonials, Virginians George Washington, and George Mason formed the Fairfax County Militia Association. It was a ground up not top down unit. Enlistment was voluntary. Each member had to supply his own weapons and ammunition and they chose officers through election.6

Mason shed light in 1775 on the meaning of militia noting a “well regulated militia” was comprised of “Gentleman, Freeholders, and other Freeman”. Its purpose was to “protect ‘our ancient Laws & Liberty’ from a standing army” [emphasis and spelling in the original].7 For Mason and many of his contemporaries, a standing army, whether British or American, national or state, was a threat to liberty. Mason wrote, “All men are by nature born equally free and independent”. The greatest threat to liberty was government in all its forms. He defined a “well-regulated” militia as the whole of the people, possessed of arms, who formed and organized themselves into “independent companies” prepared to “resist the standing army of a despotic state”.8 Founding Father Richard Henry Lee observed a militia could only consist of the people as a whole. If it was organized and maintained in continual service, it would constitute a “select militia” no different from a standing army in peacetime a practice that the Founders, for the most part, abhorred.9

Americans and political leaders universally viewed the individual right to keep and bear arms, and the right of States to call up a militia, as two separate issues neither dependent on the other. Beyond the Founder’s hope that Americans would maintain their precision with arms, the right to keep and bear arms had/has nothing to do with membership in a militia. If states called on the people to form a militia, prior experience with arms would lessen the time to train them.10 Had the Founders known future Americans would manufacture confusion concerning the Second Amendment’s meaning, they might have bifurcated it into two separate amendments. Why didn’t they? At the time State delegates ratified and then amended the Constitution, there was no confusion with respect to the right to keep and bear arms. It was an individual G-d given right. Some delegates opposed adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution as superfluous. States delegated specific authorities to the federal government enumerating them in Article I, Section 8. Government cannot regulate activities or rights over which it has no authority. The States delegated to the federal government no authority to regulate the right to keep and bear arms. For it to do so is unconstitutional. Various state delegates argued to declare that people have an individual right to keep and bear arms was akin to declaring people breath air.11

Part 2 explained the so-called “Shay’s Rebellion” in Western Massachusetts was used by proponents of a strong national government, who wanted to jettison the Articles of Confederation, as a boogeyman to whip up fear among Americans that the nation was falling apart. Like public schools today, merchants of mendacious propaganda told Americans then that landless rabble, thieves, bandits, and poor hardscrabble farmers deeply in debt had formed a violent mob and marched on Boston to overthrow the state government. If successful, the rebels would have freed men in debtor’s prisons, erased public and private debts, and seized the land of the rich to divide among themselves. This story is problematic to say the least.

Shay’s was actually several rebellions led for the most part by leading men in their communities. They were patriots, Revolutionary War veterans, political and religious leaders, landowners, and men of means.12 They called themselves “Regulators” organized into militias to halt depredations committed against them by the corrupt government in Boston controlled by a coastal banking and commercial aristocracy.13 Only three years prior (1783), Americans had concluded a war against Great Britain based on similar offenses. It is incongruous that leading Founding Fathers then and textbook authors today, fail to see the parallels and similarities.

Daniel McCarthy is a credentialed well-established journalist writing for conservative and Libertarian publications. It is unfortunate he dismisses as “right-wing folklore” the notion the Founders intended the Second Amendment support a Shay’s-like rebellion. They certainly did. If the federal and or State governments commit crimes against the people’s rights, they have but two choices, submit or resist. The Left employs the labels “right-wing” and “far-right” equally to the former Nazi Party, Ku Klux Klan, and their modern iterations. They also apply it to patriots from Ronald Reagan to Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives, the antithesis of such groups. Although their motive should be obvious, regrettably such a malicious and deceitful practice works in post-literate America. How disappointing a learned man like McCarthy would follow suit. Was Shays’ Rebellion emblematic of anarchy, lawlessness, and chaos verging on destroying America or, were their actions an embodiment of the spirit that sparked and guided the Revolution of 1776? Is it possible to find support for the rebellion in the Founder’s writings?

The Federalist Papers are not part of the Constitution nor do they necessarily reflect majority opinion among America’s Founders. They are a collection of polemics in support of ratification of the proposed Constitution (1787). Its author’s opinions represent a spectrum spanning desires for a strong national government with states as appendages, Hamilton and to a lesser extent, Madison, to true Federalists like John Jay.14 Nevertheless, with respect to resisting government tyranny, they represent commonly held views among Americans.

Hamilton and his allies adopted the name Federalists but they were actually nationalists. They sought to extinguish state autonomy and sovereignty in favor of a central unitary government much like that in England. Hamilton believed the English system was the best of all. Others, like James Wilson of Pennsylvania, were Federalists but recognized Hamilton’s plan to destroy state sovereignty would also destroy the Constitution hence supported creation of a federal system of government. The central government would have authority over international relations, trade, war, and functions only a central government could execute. States would retain all other functions and authorities, sovereign in their own sphere. Both nationalists and true Federalists supported the right of the people to overthrow their own government should it become oppressive, tyrannical, and destructive to their liberties.

In Federalist 28, Hamilton writes there exist circumstances in which the “national” (sic) government may “resort to force”. They would include “seditions and insurrections” that are “maladies as inseparable from the body politic as tumors and eruptions from the natural body…” He also refers to uprisings in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.15 However, Hamilton addresses circumstances in which the people have a legitimate right to rise up against their rulers. He observes, “If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government…” Hamilton adds that self-defense (armed resistance) against a “national” (sic) government offered greater “prospects” for success than against an “individual state”.16 Whether resistance to a federal or state government would likely be more successful, Hamilton affirms the right of the people to rise up against a tyrannical government. Only an armed people could execute such an undertaking.

Hamilton condemns those who betray the people’s liberties as “usurpers”. Although people might organize for armed resistance, “usurpers, clothed with the forms of legal authority, can too often crush the opposition in embryo”. Hamilton argues states should be in charge of organizing and executing the resistance not local militias raised by the people. This is because the states would have more arms and larger forces to resist a federal army.17 However, suppose States, not the federal government, commit usurpation against the people’s liberties. Did Hamilton forget that the people of their respective states raised their own local militias to oppose the State Militias controlled by Royal Governors? He explains the methods by which states can organize in cooperation with each other to resist “invasions of the public liberty” by the central government. Even if a federal army quelled resistance in one state, others states would respond “with fresh forces”.18 Strategies and methods aside, Hamilton establishes that States have the right to raise an army to resist usurpation of their powers by the federal government. The people possess the same right against their respective states. Is Shays’ Rebellion a great departure from this principle? Hamilton, nor anyone else, argues people have a right to arm and rise up against government over pet peeves or perceived injustices. The standard justifying resistance is gross violations of the Bill of Rights and suppression of the people’s liberties by government with no possibility of redress.

Critics of the proposed Constitution warned the federal government might turn its power to call up, organize, and equip state militias against the states turning militias into a federal army. Hamilton addressed this possibility in Federalist 28.19 He conceded in times of extreme emergency (invasion by a foreign power, insurrection) the federal government would need to call up and train state militias because such training allows them to act in concert. However, it would not be the same as raising, organizing, equipping, and disciplining a federal standing army. To do so would be futile requiring too much time in the face of an immediate threat. It was not feasible to take the “yeomanry” far from their towns and farms long enough to transform them into professional soldiers. If the federal government called up State militias, the latter would be responsible for arming, equipping, and choosing their officers. The federal government would train and subject them to military discipline. The point is militias come from the people. If harnessed for a national purpose in times of extreme emergency, their loyalty remains to their respective states. Once the crisis had passed, the federal government returns militias to their states. This would create a trained body of armed people large enough to oppose a standing federal army should one attempt to suppress the states. Hamilton wrote that militias were the “best possible security” against a standing army. For any of this to be remotely feasible, the people would have to retain their own arms.20

In Federalist 46, James Madison noted, “Ultimate authority wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone” and not in the federal or state governments.21 If the federal government attempted to expand its “power beyond due limits” at the expense of states, the “latter would still have the advantage in the means of defeating such encroachments”. The States would resist the federal government by force. Even if the latter had the resources to raise powerful standing armies, states would always possess a greater resource in the number of citizens within their boundaries. State militias would outnumber a federal army.22 He added that Americans possessed a great advantage over all others in the world; whether the threat came from federal or state governments, the people are armed. In America, all government is “subordinate to the people” and the people are ultimately the masters of the militia because they are the militia.23

The Founders are clear. People have an individual right to keep and bear arms independent of membership in any form of militia or military unit. States have a right to resist, by force, federal usurpation of State rights and Constitutional liberties. The people retain the same rights with respect to both. Why do some attempt to tie firearms ownership to service in a quasi-professional militia or “national” (sic), State guard? Perhaps they do not trust the common man to be the master of his affairs including responsibility for his safety. People buying, building, and selling arms sans government oversight frightens them. What you smell is the aroma of elitism that permeates all aristocracies, economic, political, or professional. They have never trusted the Great Unwashed with freedom. To the elite, for anyone to claim people have the right to keep and bear arms, as a defense against the federal and state governments is unthinkable. Nevertheless, that is how this nation was born.

11 Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate The Constitution, 1787-1788 (New York N.Y., Simon & Schuster, 2010), 67.

22 Author, 12 March 2020.

33 Daniel McCarthy, “Liberalism Cannot Stop The Shootings” American Spectator at https://spectator.us/liberalism-cannot-stop-shootings/

44 Stephen King, Danse Macabre (New York, N.Y. Berkley Books, 1982), 25, 26, 62, 63, 79, 80.

55 Stephen P. Halbrook, The Founders Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms (Chicago, Illinois, Ivan R. Dee, 2008), 129.

55 Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution Of A Constitutional Right (Oakland, California, The Independent Institute, 1984), 58.

66 IBID. 60.

77 IBID. 61.

88 IBID. 61.

99 IBID. 71-72.

1010 Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence, Kansas, University Press of Kansas, 1985), ix, 60-63. See also, Gary T. Amos, Defending The Declaration (Brentwood, Tennessee, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1989), 35-74, 117-118. Sheldon Richman, “Properly Interpreting the 2nd Amendment”, Human Events (June 16 1995), Halbrook’s The Founder’s Second Amendment, 221, and Gary A. Shade, “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms: The Legacy of Republicanism vs. Absolutism”, at https://www-firarmsandliberty.com/papers-shade/TheRightToKeepAndBearArms.Pdf

1111 Maier, 56.

1212 Leonard L. Richards, Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 43-62.

1313 IBID. 89-116.

1414 Kevin R. C. Gutzman, J.D., Ph.D. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution (Washington, D.C. Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2007), 15-28.

1515 Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist (Birmingham, Alabama, Library of American Freedoms, Palladium Press, 2000), 170-171.

1616 IBID. 173.

1717 IBID. 173.

1818 IBID. 174.

1919 IBID. 175.

2020 IBID. 175-176, 178, 179.

2121 IBID. 305.

2222 IBID. 309-310.

2323 IBID. 310-311.

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authoritarian swine, Culture, Junk Science, Law, mindset, Politics, Rights, So Much Stupid!

Coroniacs: Drinking the Kool Aid

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“They don’t have a right to object. That is the rule and that is the regulation, and they have to comply with that.’ Governor Andrew Cuomo (Democrat, New York), in forcing nursing homes to take COVID-19 patients, resulting in thousands of nursing home deaths, NBC News, 4/25/20. On May 17, when questioned about his decisions, reports RedState, Cuomo said: ‘Older people, vulnerable people, are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen…[W]e can’t keep everyone alive”.1

They drank the Kool Aide

“We’re all in this together” is a government slogan oft repeated by its witless mouthpieces: movie stars, professional athletes, entertainers, and elite cultural dilettantes. Unlike waitresses, hair stylists, restaurant and hotel workers, officials who slammed businesses shut still receive a check squeezed from the taxes of those they put out of work. Where is the “we” in all this suffering? Is it government of the people when officials can strike at any moment, like a cobra, destroying the lives and businesses Americans labored long and hard to build? We?

“Question Authority” was the de rigueur bumper sticker pasted on the Volvos of Bay area liberals when I was a policeman2 in California.

Question Authority

Having metamorphosed from the larval to the adult stage of the liberal life cycle, they now are the authority and chief dispensers of government Kool Aid. Those who once urged Americans to question government authority now wield the club of censorship beating down voices that…question authority. Citizens who dare to exercise their Bill of Rights, they arrest. “Drinking the Kool Aid” is a phrase with horrific antecedents and it is instructive to reprise its origin.

[Disclaimer: I am not a doctor nor a theologian. Observations with respect to denominational practices are for elucidation only].

Jim Jones, a self-avowed communist, grew up a bright charismatic young man in Indiana. His Marxist views were well known but proved no impediment to the Methodist Church’s District Superintendent ordaining him a minister. His support for racial integration in the 1950s was another matter. Methodist leaders asked him to leave so Jones formed his own church, the “Wind of Deliverance”.3 While attending big-tent revivals, he learned the lucrative connection between experiential based religion and fundraising. Jones adopted those methods.4

In 1965, Jones renamed his church the Peoples Temple and moved it to San Francisco where he adopted the name “The Prophet”. By the mid-1970s, Jones was rich and hobnobbed with powerful state politicians and mover and shakers. Newspaper journalists learned from ex-cult members there was a dark side to the Peoples Temple and began investigations. Reports of embezzlement, stealing church member’s money, and drug use, began circulating in newspapers. Fearing legal consequences, in 1977 Jones moved his cult to Guyana, South America where he established Jonestown as a socialist agricultural commune. He ruled it with an iron fist. He confiscated drivers’ licenses and passports and meted out punishment for rules infractions including beatings and interning people in dirt holes. Family members stateside heard these stories and pressured their Congressman to investigate. On November 14 1978, California U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led an unofficial delegation to Jonestown. Four days later, his work finished, Ryan, his entourage, and 14 defectors, headed to the local airstrip. Jones feared what they would reveal so he ordered the Ryan party assassinated. His hit squad attacked at the airstrip murdering the Congressman and four others. When Jones learned the others escaped, he knew they would head straight for the police. He decided mass suicide was the only answer. His lieutenants mixed up a concoction of Flavor Aid and cyanide.5 They filled cups for the obedient and syringes for the reluctant. When the Guyanese police arrived, they found 913 dead cult members, 276 of which were children. Jones was dead by an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head.6 Over time, the term “drinking the Kool Aid” came to mean people who accept, embrace, and believe what political organizations, union leaders, the media, and so forth, tell them uncritically, rejecting evidence to the contrary. For them, propaganda is gospel.

This past Saturday I entered an almost empty Ace Hardware store. By the time I made it to the checkout counters, the store was packed out. I stood in line behind a sullen faced middle-aged man wearing a black United Auto Workers Union Ford T-shirt. Once at the counter, he told the teenaged Asian girl behind a plastic shield, to spray the counter before he would touch it. When she asked a colleague where the bottle was, he became angry. “You don’t know where it is means you are not spraying down the counter between each customer,” he barked angrily at her. He was wearing no mask. I wanted to yell, “Drop the Kool Aid and leave her alone you Coroniac!”

I am stunned by the willingness of Americans to drink the government’s Kool Aid with respect to edicts that have eviscerated the economy and imprisoned people in their homes. Even churches have fallen in line without questioning the efficacy and legality of these diktats. Who is asking how executives, be they mayors, county executives, governors, or the president, acquired legislative powers to make laws to which are appended police enforcement? Who is asking if government is violating the Bill of Rights? Who is asking if government lockdown edicts are constitutional? Even so-called reopening policies reflect ingestion of government’s Kool Aid.

Great Clips Hair Salons require online appointments. They have removed waiting room chairs. Once there, patrons must wait in hot cars until summoned by a stylist. Ten people may have their haircut at one time but they cannot permit two or three to wait in the lounge, masks or not? Many doctor, dentist, and physical therapy offices permit only patient entry. If chauffeured, drivers must remain in their cars, in the heat, unable to find a bathroom mask or no mask. A young man I know passed his driver’s test. In order to complete the process at the license bureau, he had to book an appointment online. The problem is they are booked for over a month. However, they allow “walk-ins”. This requires people to line up and wait until the end of the day. He waited five hours, in 90+-degree heat, outside. His father waited two hours in his car. The closest bathroom is behind a dumpster. This is safe? “Customers”, when they finally make it inside, are required to wear a mask. Clerks behind the counter are and were not. Rumors several people died and those waiting in line simply stepped over their bodies remain unsubstantiated. Government requires people to have a driver’s license and then makes no provision for them to do so under less than inhumane conditions. They do not care. They are the government.

A Baptist pastor with whom I am acquainted sent an email to church members detailing protocols for reopening. He admonished members to trust and obey his and the leadership team’s decisions. He based protocols on the “wisdom” of local political officials, upon whom he “leaned” along with the word, prayer, and “discernment and discretion to lead G-d’s church each step of the way”. He removed 100 chairs from the church auditorium to enforce “social distancing”. Considering this church is typically packed out, members arrive early to save seats and even rows for habitually tardy family members and friends, where will they sit? Coffee is no longer available in the Coffee House. Why? Does Red China’s Virus contaminate the boiling hot water? More likely, Church leaders cannot trust adults to obey County edicts limiting human gatherings to ten or less. Apparently, “science” has determined if 10 people or less congregate, they are safe but add one more, and they all die. A “Welcome Team” will be at the entry door, armed with clipboards, taking down names of attendees. Why is that, so the church will know whom to contact if someone later tests positive? Who does the contact tracing, the Church or government officials? The pastor did not say. Forget nursery and Sunday school classes. Canceled. The ten-people rule? Where will they go, the auditorium?7

This Church prohibits all forms of physical social interaction including handshakes and hugs. Does this include family members who live together, arrive together, and sit together? They do not say. They banned early entry. Would be seat-savers must line up, six feet apart, at the one entry door. Ushers will ensure proper government mandated distancing. Only one person may enter at a time. What is the rationale for six feet as opposed to seven, or eight, or twelve? When I move up in line, taking the place of the man who was in front of me, won’t I enter the wake of his exhalatory backwash? Social distancing applies to potty breaks as well. Ushers guard bathroom doors to ensure members, standing in lines inevitably long, maintain proper separation. Worse, they allow only one person in at a time. One person at a time? Bathroom guards had better collect cellphones, makeup, and magazines or it could get ugly. Ushers wipe down bathroom doors and knobs between each use but not toilet handles or sink faucets. For Diabetics who often most go frequently, these protocols are untenable. Church dismissal is single file with each person maintaining proper distance. The pastor writes that Romans 13: 1-2 requires people to obey their secular rulers (city, county, state, and federal). Remarkably, the church requires no one to wear a mask. This is truly odd. He adds that Ephesians 4 requires members to preserve unity by supporting and obeying these reopening rules. 8 One wonders, who made them, the DMV?

Policies like those of hair salons, doctor’s and government offices, and churches are feel good window dressing. They calm Henny Pennys and placate politicians who revel in fashioning red tape and hoops through which people must jump. If the pandemic remains that deadly, why reopen at all? If infections reappear, does that mean these measures failed? Then what, close forever? If to ask these questions engenders anger in response, is it because those imposing draconian protocols share no interest in their efficacy and legality? Where to begin with respect to Biblical support for unquestioning obedience and asking no questions. We begin with the New Testament Bereans.

Acts 17 finds Paul, formerly Saul a Pharisee, on a missionary tour through Greece and Asia Minor. On this mission, Paul visits various synagogues where he discusses and debates with local Jews over who Jesus is. When it became unsafe for Paul to remain in Thessalonica (modern day Greece), the brethren sent him to Berea. The Jews in this Greek town were renowned for studying everything they read, including the Scriptures, and testing their veracity.9 I will follow this model.

In Romans 13: 1-2, Paul writes, “Everyone is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For these is no authority except from G-d, and those which exist, are established by G-d. Therefore whoever resists has opposed the ordinance of G-d; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves”.10 Is Paul referring to ecclesiastical or secular civilian authorities considering the latter were pagan or heathen. English and European Kings fastened onto Romans 13 to claim a divine right to rule. This meant no one could question the monarch’s rule. Manegold of Lautenbach (1030-1106), a theologian, priest, and member of the Church Canon, addressed Romans 13 writing that people choose their rulers. Their function is to “protect the good, destroy the wicked, and administer justice to every man”.11 Justice refers to administration of G-d’s Law. By entering into a compact (covenant) with a ruler, the people also enter into one with G-d. The people and their governors are under equal obligation to obey the terms of the compact. Should the ruler violate the terms of the pact, the “people are justly and reasonably released from its obligation to obey him. For he was the first to break the faith that bound them together”.12 Manegold argued the king’s authority within the pact is derived from “the consent of the people” and not from conquest or divine right. English bishop John of Salisbury (1115-1180) contended that if government disobeys the law, secular or divine, it becomes the duty of people to oppose their ruler as “resistance to tyranny” is obligatory.13

Thomas Aquinas also addressed Romans 13 noting Paul referred only to those authorities who “derive their authority legitimately from G-d” and not those who come to power through illegal means (conquest, coup, and so forth). G-d is not the author of disorder, anarchy, and lawlessness. If a legitimate authority commands people to commit an immoral or illegal act, they are obligated to resist.14 In 1579, French theologian Philippe du Plessis Mornay wrote Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (vindication of resistance to tyrants) in which he argued “governmental leaders are bound by the same laws of G-d as anyone else”. Kings rule as “delegates” of G-d. Their authority is limited to administering G-d’s law and justice.15 Mornay agreed with Paul that government is ordained by G-d but, as an institution in general rather than an endorsement of any specific form of government. Absent the personal rule of G-d on earth, without government, mankind tends toward anarchy and lawlessness ultimately leading to rejection of G-d. However, people are to oppose tyrannical government because it provokes resistance, which may spark rebellion resulting in anarchy.16

America for the most part was a Judeo-Christian nation at the time of the Revolution. Her various denominations, Baptists, Catholics, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and so forth, agreed Romans 13 means people are not to “overthrow government as an institution and live in anarchy nor does this passage mean they had to submit to every civil law”. The template by which people determine if resistance is legal is to ask; is the intent simply to overthrow unpopular rulers, or is it to restore an aspect of G-d’s law wounded by the actions of their rulers? If resistance is to “bad laws, bad acts, or bad governments”, then it is justified.17 Americans resisting violations of their Bill of Rights would not be in violation of Romans 13.

No executive at any level of government has the right to legislate. This is the proper and constitutional role of City Councils, State Assemblies, and the federal Congress. Any law that includes punishment and deprivation of rights must be subject to a veto by the people. The diktats of executives violate the legislative process and as such are immune from consent of the governed. No level of government has the authority to violate, let alone suspend Constitutional rights. In the lead up to the War of Independence, America’s religious leaders, in pulpits, militias, and in the Continental Army were at the forefront of resistance to tyrannical British rule. They carried Bibles and rifles. Today, in the face of harsh rules fastened on the necks of Americans, they are nowhere to be found.

Finally, in Ephesians 4, Paul declares that the Church has unity because it is one body through Christ with one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one doctrine. He is calling for unity in faith and doctrine. Obedience to that one faith is what demonstrates unity, not obedience to the edicts of secular authorities passed on by church leaders having no bearing on theological doctrine. Religious leaders must be prudent when using Scripture in support of secular civil law. Family and friends ask me if we will return to “normal”. Considering the amount of Kool Aid Americans are consuming, this is a good question.

“Lockdown U.S.A. bears little resemblance to America. It is a grim, oppressed place, with empty streets and closed stores and snitches. Masked pedestrians, few and far between, trudge to permitted destinations, following one-way arrows painted on sidewalks and in grocery aisles. Tattles and scolds socially regulate their fellow citizens on proper maskage, calling those who question this depraved new normal ‘murderers’ and ‘granny killers’.18

Covid fears

11 Rush Limbaugh, “Teachable Moment: This Is What Socialism Looks Like” The Limbaugh Letter 6 (June 2020), 10.

22 The Word program attempts to change any word designating one of the two sexes (gender refers to femininity or masculinity of nouns) to some ambiguous trendy hermaphroditic word and I have to change it back. Considering how hard it is to teach people there are but two sexes, it’s the science, after all, my computer is probably hopeless.

44 I visited a Pentecostal Church wherein services culminated with people working themselves up into a shaking sweating lather, and then passed out on the floor. Ushers collected money in large KFC buckets with the minister exhorting church members to make them clink and heavy with coin. At another conservative church in the Midwest, I will not mention the denomination but it requires full emersion for baptism, the pastor “caught” me reading a book on English history and “warned” me against the dangers of “head-knowledge”. I am a retired history teacher…

55 It was not Kool Aid. The manufacturer of Kool Aid attempted to educate people that it was not their product, nevertheless, the name stuck.

66 Britannica.

77 The Pastor’s Email, My files, 25 May 2020.

88 IBID.

99 Editors, Holy Bible, New American Standard Bible (La Habra, California, The Lockman Foundation, 1995), 107.

1010 IBID. 127.

1111 Robert J. Hutchinson, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2007), 206.

1212 IBID. 206.

1313 IBID. 206-207.

1414 IBID. 208.

1515 IBID. 209.

1616 David Barton, “Was the American Revolution a Biblically Justified Act”? Wallbuilders Press at http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=46

1717 IBID.

1818 Limbaugh, 10.

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Academics, authoritarian swine, Culture, gun control, gun grabbers, guns, Law, Politics, Sellouts and traitors, spirit of rebellion

Is the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Dependent On Militia Membership? Part 1

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The entertaining Greta

My opposition to Red-Flag laws has been steadfast countenancing no exceptions. Until now. Liberal Time Magazine’s Girl, er um “Person”1 of the Year’s trembling quivering rage-filled Greta Thunberg, who should be starring in H. P. Lovecraft inspired movies, could be that one exception. Ghostwriters and Handlers, please, do not allow Greta near sharp objects or anything that goes bang. Perhaps parents should be scheduling counseling sessions rather than enabling Greta’s delusions of imminent human extinction. Scandinavia once gave the world Vikings. What happened?2

From the Great Depression, mass starvation, to man-created global warming, the Left needs crises with which to menace people. Only through scare tactics terrifying the masses can they evoke reaction based on emotion rather than reason. People who have lost their minds seldom make good decisions. Since the Second World War, the Left, either through ideological compatibility or supreme naïveté, has promoted notions the way to deal with adversarial nations (Communist dictatorships) and people is through non-violent appeasement. Leftists are moral relativists rejecting concepts of good and evil. Therefore global and personal conflicts result from misunderstandings not malevolent intentions. Because people have “issues”, not problems, conflicts can be resolved without anyone having to accept blame or facing consequences. All Stalin needed was a couch, a good listener, and a hug. Today, if the puny underweight wretched victim of bullying stands up to his tormentors, school administrators suspend him along with the thugs. Through its evangelists teaching in public schools, the Left has indoctrinated Americans to reject notions of self-reliance and taking responsibility for their own safety. Lockdowns, shelter-in-place, hide under your desk or in your home…Hence, they grow up to despise the Second Amendment. They are aghast at the idea citizens can own guns and decide when and where to use them in self-defense. Appearing on Fox’s Martha MacCallum Show in response to the Fort Worth Texas church shooting, Democrat strategist Doug Schoen argued people are not competent to carry guns for personal defense. This he added, should be left to the police who, coincidentally, were not there.3 The Left hates the Second Amendment for two reasons; first, it exposes their unwillingness to stand up to bullies and criminals whether on American streets or as heads of State. Think, Justin Trudeau. Second, it is an obstacle to the Great Project.

Whether taking the name Liberal, Socialist, Progressive, Central Planner, Democratic-Socialist, and so forth, Statists are determined to dismantle the Second Amendment either through abolition or redefining it out of existence. Until accomplished, it remains the single greatest impediment to The Project begun by 19th century American Progressives and European Socialists. Its central imperative is to bend the will of the individual completely to the volition of the State to plan, control, and regulate every aspect of human existence. And, the Left is the State. Because altering the Constitution has proven un-doable, the Left has chosen to redefine the Second Amendment as they did the Commerce, General Welfare, Necessary and Proper, and Supremacy clauses until they mean the opposite of their intent. For example they claim owning firearms is dependent upon membership in a federal (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines) or State (“National” sic Guard) standing army. This claim could not be more wrong.4

Proponents and enemies of the Bill of Rights have debated the Founders’ meaning of “militia” ad nauseam. Rehashing it here would seem superfluous. That is, if its enemies were not using mass media, popular culture, and public dis-education to peddle lies conjoined with an American public too intellectually lazy to read and think for itself. As a recovering public school teacher, I can attest to the pervasiveness of this mental lassitude.

Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken writes that the Founders’ idea of a militia was not one comprised of “unorganized amateurs”, called up by local authorities, to address insurrection or invasion. Instead, it was to consist of men between a certain age range, proficient in arms, possessing some degree of training in military discipline and tactics, a system of choosing officers, subject to call up by State or local authorities, and under civilian control.5 McMaken’s conclusion is problematic. In the 1740s, the French, perennially at war with England, established a large fort at Louisbourg near Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. From there the French threatened New England with invasion and provided safe haven for pirates and “cruisers” who raided its fishing villages and naval commerce. Finding the British unwilling to act, in 1744 New England raised an army of unorganized amateurs including commoners, farmers, merchants, fishermen, and so forth. With little or no experience, these New England boys executed a successful amphibious landing under difficult conditions, besieged the fort for three months, and forced the French to surrender.6 During the French and Indian War, the British could not have defeated the French without the assistance of colonial militia troops, amateur soldiers who fought as local units under American command.7

On 1 October 1768, in a lead up to what became the War of Independence, Britain dispatched 700 troops led by General Thomas Gage from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Boston. His orders were to suppress resistance to British commerce, trading, and tax laws.8 A month later (8 November 1768), King George III declared Bostonians to be in rebellion against English law and government. British political and military leaders drew up plans to subdue the insurrection.9 They employed their standard method of subjugation; round up, jail, and execute the rebellion’s leaders and door-to-door searches for arms and munitions in private hands. Colonials often stored gunpowder in storehouses outside of town due to its volatility. In order to prevent the Red Coats from seizing it, locals formed militias to guard them. In Virginia, Patrick Henry led the Hanover Independent Militia Company comprised of armed locals independent of the Governor’s control. They comprised the nucleus of resistance against British forces. Other colonies replicated this strategy.10

In 1774, British soldiers marched from Boston into the countryside to seize colonial supplies of gunpowder and weapons in Charlestown, Cambridge, Medford, and Salem. Forty thousand militiamen met the British, called “Bloody Lobsterbacks”, by locals, at Charlestown. These amateurs drove them back to Boston without firing a shot.11 British confiscation of private arms led to the “shot heard round the world”, the British march on Concord and Lexington, Massachusetts, to seize arms.12 Among the militiamen awaiting the British attack were farmers, craftsmen, mechanics, gentlemen, laborers, slaves, dairy farmers, and veterans of the French Indian War. Americans gave as good as they got forcing the British back to Boston.13

McMaken contends, “Gun Rights advocates fixate” on the latter part of the Second Amendment, “The people having a right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” as the rationale for private ownership of arms separate from militia membership. He asserts the Second Amendment’s purpose was to guarantee that States “would be free to raise and train their own militias as a defense against federal power and as a means of keeping defensive military force available to Americans while remaining outside the direct control of the federal government”.14 He is correct state militias are supposed to be outside federal control but his assertion the militia is the primary focus of the Second Amendment is incorrect. The Second Amendment clearly contains two independent parts that framers could have fashioned into separate amendments. In fairness to McMaken, his purpose was to demonstrate State Militias are to be independent of federal control and that the so-called “National” (sic) Guard is a standing army and a gross violation of the Constitution.

Drafters wrote definitions of a militia into State Declarations of Rights and later into the federal and State Constitutions from 1791 on. They typically refer to “the mass of ordinary citizens, trained to arms” who would be available for call-up by State or local authorities, and to which was often appended an age range for those subject to service. Founding Fathers from Patrick Henry, George Mason, John Adams to Thomas Jefferson made clear the purpose of the Second Amendment was “that every man” be armed.15 Was this not so that the people would be equipped for militia service if needed? True but only in part. The Founders clearly saw that as an auxiliary advantage. However, the stress was that all men possess the right to keep and bear arms and government in no way have the power to infringe on this right or disarm the people. During debates over ratification of the proposed Constitution (1788) at the Virginia Convention, Patrick Henry declared, “The great object is that every man be armed…Everyone who is able may have a gun”. Zachariah Johnson added, “The new Constitution could never result in religious or other oppression because ‘the people are not to be disarmed of their weapons”. Not militias, people. At the Massachusetts’ ratifying convention, Samuel Adams stated, “That the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience, or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms”.16 Again, these rights, freedom of speech, religion, and arms belong to individuals, not states or any other form of organized political entity including militias.

Many States, including Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, and others specifically state people have an individual right to keep and bear arms and it is not tied to membership in a militia, military, or any form of security force.17 The Founders knew Americans opposed standing peacetime armies (as we have today) and that States were reluctant to cede any of their sovereignty to this new untried federal system of government. They also knew government, like an irresistible force of nature, attracts to it men of ambition, those craving power, and men with no moral scruples. Therefore, they added the militia phrase. States would retain the means to resist federal usurpations of their power and infringement against the liberties of people. Under the proposed Constitution, the federal government, facing a national emergency such as invasion or insurrection, could request the states call up their militias. Governors would send them to federal authorities who in turn would arm, equip, and organize them into a standing army. The States would retain the right to choose officers commanding their militia units. Once the crisis was resolved, militiamen would return to their respective states and mustered out of service. Constitution or not, efforts to “federalize” (actually, “nationalize”) State militias placing them under presidential control began almost at once just as so-called Anti-Federalists had warned.18 The individual right to possess arms was always a separate issue.

English philosopher John Locke’s Treatises On Government were widely read (1689) in the colonies. He argued man had a “natural” (G-D given) right to life, liberty, and property. Inherent in each is the right to the means of defending it.19 Under the supervision of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence.20 Drawing on many widely held philosophical and theological roots; Jefferson wrote that all rights are individual and a gift from G-D. Among them are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (property, wages, and the fruits of one’s labor). Rights imputed by Divinity are inherent in the nature of each individual’s humanity. People are born already possessing these rights. A right to life presupposes a right to the means of defending it.21

The Second Amendment employs the words “right” and “shall not be infringed demonstrating it refers to “a right that is already assumed to exist” (which comports with the Declaration). It does not say, “The people shall have a right to keep and bear arms.” The amendment recognizes but does not grant the right” [emphasis in the original].22 Requirements to join the military, a militia, or engage in a government specified activity in order exercise a right would negate that right. Any regulation, red tape, or hoops one must jump through before accessing a right is a gross infringement and, again, negates it as a right. Governments can in no way qualify a right. No vote by a majority of one’s neighbors to limit a right in any way is legitimate. In addition, people cannot through constitutions or laws, “agree to an infringement on their rights”.23 This is because of the inherency of rights. Only Divinity can alter or abolish rights divinely created. So why does the Second Amendment continue to confound people?

George Mason’s proposed draft of the amendment read, “That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state”.24 Madison’s version read, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well-regulated militia being the best security to a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person”.25 Madison, like Mason and other Founders, wanted it understood that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right separate from membership in any form of militia. For example, those objecting to military service on religious grounds, still possessed the right to keep and bear arms. This would not be true had the right been dependent on being in a militia. Madison’s intent “is clear not only from his wording, but also from his notes for his speech proposing the amendment”. He states it pertains to an individual right which his “colleagues clearly understood the proposal to be protective of individual rights”. Massachusetts delegate Fisher Ames wrote that among other rights, that of bearing arms “to be inherent in the people”. Writing under the name “A Pennsylvanian” in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, Madison’s friend Tench Coxe argued that the delegates wrote the Second Amendment to “guarantee the right of the people to have ‘their private arms’ to prevent tyranny and to overpower an abusive standing army or select militia”. Madison read Coxe’s articles and agreed, the amendment pertained to an individual right.26

So much, did the Founders write about the Second Amendment; its meaning is beyond question. These documents and writings are available to anyone. On what basis can opponents of an individual right interpretation justify their position? Simple. The truth is unimportant. Only the Great Project matters. All narratives, including history, must be made to fit and support it. Like a starfish turning a clamshell over searching for a vulnerability by which to penetrate its defenses, so too do enemies of the Bill of Rights search for weaknesses. They find it in contemporary American’s unfamiliarity with grammatical construction.

It is important to keep in mind, of the Bill of Rights none refers to “States having rights”. Each refers to a right of the people. These are individual rights. To argue the Second Amendment applies only to members of a military organization turns it into a State not individual right. We have clearly seen that was not the Founder’s intention. If the Founders had intended military or militia membership dependency in order to own or possess arms, “Why would they say, ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”? Madison and those who shaped the amendment’s wording “chose to put the militia reference into a dependent phrase” choosing “the weakest possible construction by using the participle (word formed from a verb) ‘being’ instead of writing say, ‘Since a well regulated militia is necessary…” The militia wording’s weak form demonstrates its framers listed it as a right of states. “The main independent clause” of the amendment reads, “The people’s right to have guns ‘shall not be infringed”.27

An independent clause is a stand-alone sentence dependent on nothing. The militia part of the Second Amendment forms a dependent phrase. It cannot stand alone by itself containing a subject, verb, and complete thought. Therefore, it is secondary in importance to the main independent clause. The words; “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” would mean what by itself? The words; “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” would mean what without the first part of the amendment? People have a right to keep and bear arms. By reversing this order, the amendment’s drafters made emphatic that the independent clause was its most important part. “The Founders correctly intuited that in a bill of rights (list), the last thing the reader should have ringing in his mind’s ear is the absolute prohibition on infringement of the natural right to own guns”.28

If the Bill of Right’s enemies read America’s founding documents and writings, they know the truth. None of that matters. What does matter to them is total disarmament of American citizens. The Great Project cannot culminate until that happens. Toward that goal, the end always justifies the means.

11 Unlike men and women since the dawn of time, those on the Left are stymied when it comes to determining their sex, of which, there are but the two aforementioned options.

22 As with the Marjory Stoned Man Douglass high school “useful idiots,” Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky, David Hogg, et al, the Left cowardly uses kids as stooge props, their youth supposedly giving them and their terribly immature and uninformed rantings an unassailable immunity against critique. Isn’t this what Muslim terrorists do, hide behind children?

33 Martha MacCallum Show, FOX News, 31 December 2019.

44 Sheldon Richman, “Reading the Second Amendment”, The Freeman 2 (February 1998), 112.

55 Ryan McMaken, Mises Institute, 22 August 2018, “Why We Can’t Ignore The ‘Militia’ Clause Of The Second Amendment”, Mises Institute, at https://mises.org/wire/why-we-cant-ignore-militia-clause-second-amendment/

66 Marvin Olasky, Fighting For Liberty And Virtue: Political and Cultural Wars in Eighteenth Century America (Wheaton, Illinois, Crossway Books, A Division of Good News Publishers, 1995), 93.

77 IBID. 97-98, 102-105, 107, 109.

88 Stephen Halbrook, The Founder’s Second Amendment (Chicago, Illinois, Ivan R. Dee Publisher, 2008), 13.

99 IBID. 17-19.

1010 Halbrook, 104-105.

1111 Willard Sterne Randall, Ethan Allen: His Life And Times (New York, N.Y., W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), 8.

1212 Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause, The American Revolution 1763-1789 (New York, N.Y. Oxford University Press, 2005), 272-274.

1313 Randall, 8, Halbrook, 76-79.

1414 McMaken.

1515 IBID.

1616 Stephen Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right (Albuquerque, New Mexico, University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 73-75.

1717 McMaken.

1818 Edwin Meese III, Matthew Spalding, and David Forte, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, (Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2005), 139-143.

1919 Gary A. Shade, “The Right to keep and Bear Arms: The Legacy of Republicanism vs Absolutism,” at http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/papers-shade/TheRightToKeepandBearArms.PDF.

2020 Clarence B. Carson, A Basic History of the United States, Volume I: The Colonial Experience 1607-1774 (Wadley, Alabama, American Textbook Committee, 1987), 182-183.

2121 Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence, Kansas, University Press of Kansas, 1985), ix, 60-63. See also, Gary T. Amos, Defending the Declaration (Brentwood, Tennessee, Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers, Inc., 1989), 35-74, 117-118.

2222 Sheldon Richman, “Properly Interpreting the 2nd Amendment” Human Events (June 16, 1995), 16.

2323 IBID.

2424 Halbrook, Founder’s Second Amendment, 22.

2525 Shade.

2626 Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed, 76-77.

2727 Richman, Reading the Second Amendment, 112-113.

2828 IBID.

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authoritarian swine, gun control, gun grabbers, guns, Law, mindset, Political philosophy, Politics, Rights, Voting

Signing On The Dotted Line

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Last weekend was Shavuot. In the diaspora it is a two day holiday. I admit it is an emotional holiday for me. I love Shavuot.

The holiday of Shavuot is the day on which we celebrate the great revelation of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, more than 3,300 years ago. You stood at the foot of the mountain, as did your grandparents and great-grandparents before them. The souls of all Jews, from all times, came together to hear the Ten Commandments from G‑d Himself.

What was involved?

Moses ascended Mount Sinai, and G‑d spoke to him the following words (Exodus 19:3-6): “So shall you say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel. You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and [how] I bore you on eagles’ wings, and I brought you to Me. And now, if you obey Me and keep My covenant, you shall be to Me a treasure out of all peoples, for Mine is the entire earth. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of princes and a holy nation.”

Moses returned from Sinai and called for the elders of the people and put all these words of G‑d before them. Unanimously, with one voice and one mind, the people answered: Naaseh Venishma – “Everything G‑d has said, we will do.” Thus they accepted the Torah outright, with all its precepts, not even asking for a detailed enumeration of the obligations and duties it involved

So last Sunday, June 9, I went to my synagogue to hear the Ten Commandments and reaffirm the covenant with G‑d and His Torah. There are actually 613 commandments, like little holy bread crumbs helping you find your way to G-d. But within the 10, they contain kernels from which the others come.

Number 6 is the one that seems to confuse people. It does not say “Thou shalt not kill”. It says “You shall not murder”. Which is a very different kettle of fish.

I also note it does not say that “You shall not murder by a so-called assault weapon” “You shall not murder using a adequate capacity magazine” “You shall not murder using a shoulder thingy that goes up” “You shall not murder using a ghost gun” “You shall not murder if you are in a citizen registry” “You shall not murder if your ammunition is registered” “You shall not murder if you are taxed so high you can’t afford to defend your family” “You shall not murder with a knife” “You shall not murder with an ax” “You shall not murder with a screwdriver” “You shall not murder with a rope” “You shall not murder with a car” “You shall not murder by drowning” “You shall not murder by poison” “You shall not murder with a chain” “You shall not murder with your hands”.

Just a very simple “You shall not murder”.

And yet, our politicians have put who knows how many gun control laws on the books that only law-abiding citizens will obey in the first place. Criminals are not the least affected by laws, the more the merrier for them.

We can live by G-d’s law or die by man’s I heard a Rabbi say.

So, for your information, here’s a handy clip out guide to the current crop of aspiring tyrants running as the Demoncratic candidates for President of the United States. Where I didn’t come up with a snazzy nickname for one of the aspiring tyrants, feel free to suggest one. Anything in italics is just my comments.

Aspiring Tyrant Citizen Control Scheme
Joe “Sniffy” Biden Obligatory Universal background checks

National Database

Obligatory “Assault weapons” ban

High (adequate) capacity magazine ban

Opposes protecting school children
Cory “Spartacus” Booker Universal background checks

Ban on “assault weapons” & Bump Stocks

Prohibition of standard-capacity magazines

Establish a federal registry of guns

Federal registry of gun owners

You have to apply to Washington for permission,reapply every five years Inform the executive branch of each weapon you own in your home

Use of the error ridden terrorist watch list to prohibit gun ownership.

Allow lawsuits against gun manufacturers.

“Red flag” gun confiscation
Bernie Sanders the millionaire communist A nationwide ban on assault weapons

Expanded background checks

Ban on “high capacity magazine over ten rounds.”

A “common sense proposal on guns that will have the support, not of everybody, but a significant majority of American people.”

“We need strong sensible gun control, and I will support it,”

“I support what President Obama is doing in terms of trying to close the gun show loopholes.”

Mostly vague
Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren Obligatory “Assault Weapons” ban

Obligatory “Universal background check”

Mostly vague
Kamala Harris Vows to use executive action on “Day 1”

Reminiscent of Valerie Jarrett’s statement obama would be “ready to rule from Day 1”

Direct the ATF “to promulgate a regulation” that makes it so that “if you sell five or more guns for profit a year, you will be considered a ‘dealer’ and required to perform background checks.”

Ban Semi-automatic firearms

Direct the ATF “to promulgate a regulation” that makes it so that “if you sell five or more guns for profit a year, you will be considered a ‘dealer’ and required to perform background checks.”

Require universal background checks

Ban high-capacity ammunition clips

Make gun trafficking a federal crime (no mention if this applies to the ATF as well)

Prohibit those convicted of a federal hate crime from buying firearms.

Repeal the Protection of Commerce in Arms Act
Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke Obligatory Universal background checks for gun sales

Obligatory weapons ban

“Red-flag” gun confiscation laws

Close the boyfriend loophole, the Charleston loophole, the gun show loophole, the online loophole<<gibberish

Fully invest in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and research into gun violence<<taxpayer fraud
Pete Buttigieg Obligatory Universal background checks for gun sales

Obligatory weapons ban

National gun-licensing system
Eric “Duke Nukem” Swalwell Gun Confiscation

Drop nuclear weapons on American Citizens

You know, on Shavuot, we reaffirm our dedication to G-d and living according to his Torah commandments. I would suggest that to be a candidate for the office of President, the candidates of all parties need to reaffirm their dedication to our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. All of them, every single one. Including the Second Amendment.

But then, see my comment above about criminals and laws. The laws don’t apply to them, right?

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