Excellent Second Amendment essay

Karl Denninger usually posts topics on his blog that are finance related. But get him on a rant about guns, and he writes a killer essay. I did not know, until reading this, that the Federal Government actually bought 30 to 40,000 sawed off shotguns during WWI. He likes to continually point out that those who want to disarm us are hypocrits, because they all live under armed security, and will not get rid of that even if we are forced, at gunpoint, to disarm.

Read this, it's long, and PASS IT ON to others on your email lists.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=215441

Warning. Factual Errors in the Essay.

He makes a great point about Miller protecting weapons used by militia and thus all rifles based on assault-rifle patterns.

However, he's got at least two very serious factual errors that make me suspect the rest of his historical information.

The first I noticed was his comment about the Bill of Rights and the constitution being passed together. This is flat wrong. The constitution was ratified and went into effect in 1789. The Bill of Rights was ratified and went into effect in 1791.

The second I noticed was his comment about the 2A holding a place early in the list. Formerly, it was fourth on the list. And, it didn't move to second because of importance. It started with anti-Federalists raising a ruckus during the constitution's ratification period about creating a fedgov that would grow and become too powerful, and having no Bill of Rights. The anti-Federalists nearly derailed ratification. James Madison, a Federalist, finally realized that they would have to provide a Bill of Rights, and offered to receive proposals for a bill of rights from the states that would be sifted and culled into one proposal. This silenced enough resistance that the constitution was then ratified and went into effect.

Madison received the state proposals for rights to include in the Bill of Rights. He sifted and culled them into twelve articles. It was one amendment with twelve articles. This was sent back to the states for ratification. The first two articles were not approved by enough states to become operative. The last ten articles did. Thus, our first amendment today, was actually number three on the list that was sent to the states for ratification.

You can learn more about this here: http://www.constitution.org/bor/amd_cong.htm Also, there is a very good book, Origins of the Bill of Rights by Leonard Levy. Excellent book. Packed with info.

So, its kinda foolish to give weight or emphasis to the position of the RKBA amendment as second on the list today. It was originally fourth on the list and only bumped up to second because not enough states ratified the first two articles.

Thus, I'm afraid I am suspicious about the rest of his historical accuracy.

An interesting little sidenote: one the first two Articles of Amendment that was not ratified concerned pay raises for congress. Many years later, a fellow decided to push it through. Turns out there is no expiration date for a state's ratification of a proposed amendment. So, the ratifications of those states who did approve the first two articles were still valid. Meaning, the fella didn't have to start from scratch--a number of states had already ratified the article about congressional pay raises back in 1791. The ratification process was revived and in 1992 it became our latest amendment. That is to say, our last amendment was one of the first proposed.

The author of the above article I posted has this to say.

There were originally 12 amendments as proposed, yes. However, only those that are ratified count (duh).

As for his other comment, he belays the entire process:


Quote:

The anti-Federalists nearly derailed ratification. James Madison, a Federalist, finally realized that they would have to provide a Bill of Rights, and offered to receive proposals for a bill of rights from the states that would be sifted and culled into one proposal. This silenced enough resistance that the constitution was then ratified and went into effect.


Which is the point -- The colonies refused to ratify without the Bill of Rights.

If you think I'm going to engage in the sort of nit-picky crap that has derailed any sort of productive debate thus far, and which the author of that comment is intentionally engaging in, you're incorrect.

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I would go along with you, CBXER55, if the author hadn't said it the way he did. He even emphasized the word "with" the second time he used it. Even saying the Bill of Rights passed with the constitution. There's just no way you can work around that to mean something else. I could overlook it if he wrote the constitution passed with the Bill of Rights, but who in their right mind is going to accept it the other way around?

Then there's his snarky editor note. I admit I didn't see that at the time. Perhaps it wasn't there? But, even if it was he didn't own up to his own choice of words--instead he attacked anybody pointing it out.

And, he still doesn't explain how he assigned extra significance to the RKBA for being second on the list. For petes sake, his editor note above he even says he knew there were twelve articles of amendment originally. If he knew that, what on earth was he thinking when he assigned special significance to the RKBA for being second?!?!?!?!

This guy may come up with good ideas; I won't argue that. But, the more I think about this, the less impressed I am with his methods.

I have to say I'm now very suspicious of his comment that such-and-such number of shotguns were purchased by the military to guard WWI prisoners. I'm gonna put that one on hold until I see it verified by a reputable scholar or see .pdf's of the documents or something to corroborate the information.

The author writes:

The Constitution is the supreme Law of the Land, and no law made by man or any law of any state that contradicts it controls over it.

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Ummm... not really. In the part immediately before advocating the Supremacy Clause, he went directly over the most important part of Article VI:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

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Thus, the only laws that are 'supreme' are those that are made in 'pursuance thereof' (of those enumerated powers listed in Article 1, Section 8).

Which takes us to the Tenth Amendment:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

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And what most firearms owners seem to forget, is that the Constitution is a LIMIT on the government, not the people. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights grant absolutely no rights to anyone in the US. Rights come from our Creator and thus, because He grants them, they CAN NOT be taken away (they are unalienable) by government... but only infringed by government. These rights existed before the colonies existed, before the states existed, before the states created the federal government.

I personally believe the tactic of firearms owners in defense of the right to bear arms is flawed each and every time they begin discussing the tool itself and the purpose (hunting, recreation, defense). None of those matter. What matters is the philosophy of natural rights which can never be taken away except by the Creator himself.

I doubt few non-gun owners are going to read this piece. And if they do, likely not understand much of it as they have little or no understanding of the history of the nation's birth as most went to government operated education camps.

The author needs a bit more education...