Thanks to Rob Love of Texans for Accountable Government, we have video of the event. It has officially been posted on Youtube, and we hope you will assist us in making this go viral. We need people to understand the gravity of this kind of restriction upon our individual property rights. It’s not just about students needing to protect themselves, it’s about grasping the limits of government power.
Here’s the Youtube playlist, I know it’s a long series (8 parts!) but at least try to catch some of it. Know the facts!
The short-term answer is certainly yes. Chicago has one of the worst gun bans in the country, so if it’s loosened at all, then Chicagoans will enjoy more liberty. Presumably very restrictive bans in others cities will also fall, which is also good.
What about that disgusting language in the decision reassuring governments that the right to bear arms “does not imperil every law regulating firearms”?
Some libertarian friends have suggested that this might embolden certain state or local governments to pass more gun laws, but this argument isn’t persuasive.
Places that don’t have more stringent gun control now haven’t been holding back because they heretofore thought that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protected an unqualified right to keep and bear arms. Until now, governments everywhere had every reason to think they could pretty much get away with anything because cities like Chicago had already done it. The reason some places, such as my home state of Ohio, have a lot of gun freedom (relatively) is because the people there want it, and that’s not going to change.
One might also argue that the decision is bad because it is centralist — it is the federal government telling the states what to do, which the Founders never intended, and which, arguably, the Fourteenth Amendment’s framers intended only to a limited extent. I’m sympathetic to this point of view, but that question was not at issue in this case. The reality is that the Supreme Court long ago assumed the power to strike down state and local laws that violate certain rights, and it’s not going to lose that power anytime soon no matter what. The only question now is whether it will use that power in a way that benefits liberty, and here it did so.
Of course, future Supreme Court decisions may make clear that the exceptions to the rule are so expansive as to render Heller and McDonald meaningless. And none of this is to say that we should be grateful to the Supreme Court for letting us do what we had a right to do in the first place, or that we should count on the Court to protect our rights in the future. Where you see the Supreme Court’s true character is in its decisions on the extent of the federal government’s power — which it has held to be virtually unlimited, with the exception of a few carved-out “rights” such as this one. If the Constitution is going to get us out of that problem, it won’t be through more Supreme Court cases, but through nullification.
The Supreme Court issued its decision in the McDonald gun case today, holding that the Second Amendment’s protection of gun rights applies against state and local governments just as it applies to the federal government.
From a quick read of the decision, it appears to break down like this.
The majority opinion by Justice Alito holds that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause “incorporates” the Second Amendment right to bear arms and therefore limits state and local governments just as it limits the federal government. Like Justice Scalia in the Heller decision two years ago, Alito is careful to reassure governments that the right to keep and bear arms is not “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” so many gun-control laws will still stand.
Unsurprisingly, the majority opinion dismisses in a single paragraph the petitioners’ argument that the 14th Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause, which the Supreme Court rendered toothless more than a century ago in the Slaughter-House Cases, protects gun rights. The Privileges or Immunities Clause is the provision in which some libertarians, such as Randy Barnett, put great hope for protection of liberty in the future — but the Supreme Court’s decision here confirms that, however strong the legal arguments, the idea that the Supreme Court would ever do it is little more than wishful thinking.
As Michael Barnett points out, government can’t do anything efficiently, at least not without spending enormous amounts of tax dollars and violating our rights. The border wall is one example of a project the Federal government will never be able to complete to anyone’s satisfaction: for closed-border advocates, it won’t be effective in keeping out illegal immigrants; for open-border supporters, it will be a monument to government waste and tyranny. The only way it might work at a reasonable price (reasonable for government, anyway) is to put a lot of armed guards along the wall.
Arizona is now seriously considering another application of the brute-force approach, in the form of a “papers, please” shakedown of anyone who doesn’t look, well, legal:
The Arizona House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a wide-ranging bill that, if signed by Gov. Jan Brewer, would cement the state’s reputation as the leader in tough and controversial immigration-control measures.
Senate Bill 1070 would, among other things, make it a state crime to be in the country illegally and bar what its proponents call “sanctuary city” policies.
Most disturbing among the bill’s provisions is granting cops the ability to arrest an immigrant without a warrant if they have “probable cause” to believe the person has committed an offense for which they can be deported. And inviting an illegal immigrant over for dinner could land even legal residents in hot water, if they know their guest’s immigration status.
Just imagine how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who holds illegal immigrants, criminals and civil liberties in equal disdain, might utilize these new powers. Given that his uniformed thugs already routinely round up Mexicans in sweeps and were so abusive of their authority that ICE stripped the sheriff of some of his immigration enforcement powers, the Arizona legislature has effectively granted Arpaio a license to perform “enforcement” actions akin to ethnic cleansing. The state will protect you from the brown menace! And never mind the boot on your neck.
It’s all the more outrageous for the fact that it’s so unnecessary. The same week the Arizona House was debating this evil bill, Governor Jan Brewer signed a far more laudable measure that will do more to improve her citizens’ safety than an entire file cabinet of anti-immigration statutes: allow residents to carry a concealed weapon without a license. If Arizona residents are truly worried about violence from Mexico’s U.S.-backed drug war spilling over the borders, I can’t think of any better security measure than arming themselves. And Brewer’s spokesman said that the governor did not believe that residents needed permission from the government to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms. I’ll wholeheartedly agree with that! Now if only she was as consistent on people being free to go about their daily business without being harassed by the cops for having a suspicious skin color.
“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.”
~ Napoleon Bonaparte
As is my recent and sometimes unfortunate habit, I’ve been actively involved in or passively listening to, debates between libertarians, statists, anarchists talking like statists, statists pretending to be anarchists, self-proclaimed pacifists, libertarian consequentialists, died-in-the-wool might-makes-right psychos and (seemingly) everyone in between. If they’ve had time to kill and a high-speed Internet link they’ve been involved, or so it seems. (Clearly, I’ve got too much time on my hands as well, but enough about me.)
One of the sharper and recurring disagreements I’ve witnessed has been around the justification for self-defense, and why such a justification is vital. This premise–the absolute necessity–and dare-I-say God-given right to defend oneself, has been offered as a proverbial nail in the coffin as to why an ultimate belief in non-violence, otherwise known as pacifism, is doomed. I guess it’s no surprise that gun lovers of every stripe find themselves drawn to libertarianism, and frankly, I cannot fault anyone who seeks to defend himself and his possessions.
