Damn, liberals are stupid. I think it comes from living in insulated little worlds where stupid ideas have no real consequence.
If you look at the values and the historical record, you will see that the Founding Fathers never intended guns to go unregulated, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer contended Sunday.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Breyer said history stands with the dissenters in the court’s decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., handgun ban in the 2008 case “D.C. v. Heller.”
Breyer wrote the dissent and was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He said historians would side with him in the case because they have concluded that Founding Father James Madison was more worried that the Constitution may not be ratified than he was about granting individuals the right to bear arms.
Madison “was worried about opponents who would think Congress would call up state militias and nationalize them. ‘That can’t happen,’ said Madison,” said Breyer, adding that historians characterize Madison’s priority as, “I’ve got to get this document ratified.”
Therefore, Madison included the Second Amendment to appease the states, Breyer said.
“If you’re interested in history, and in this one history was important, then I think you do have to pay attention to the story,” Breyer said. “If that was his motive historically, the dissenters were right. And I think more of the historians were with us.”
That being the case, and particularly since the Founding Fathers did not foresee how modern day would change individual behavior, government bodies can impose regulations on guns, Breyer concluded.
Yes people, that is a sitting Supreme Court Justice trying to make the argument that you can just ignore some parts of the Constitution.
He should be impeached.
There is no way in hell that Breyer doesn’t know the reason why fighting started in 1775.
Furthermore, his intentional attempt to deceive only works if he successfully argues that the Second Amendment grants a new right. Obviously it doesn’t, since the word “grant” or “granted” doesn’t appear anywhere in the amendment.
So Breyer, sorry, but the federal government is breaking the law.
Also:
“…how modern day would change individual behavior…”
This is a transformational argument. You know: if we don’t do ‘x’, then society will fundamentally change for the worse, or we should do ‘x’ to fundamentally change human behavior and therefore improve society. We have yet to prove that human behavior has changed in all of recorded history.
We pay this guy to know the history of the law, not to be a collectivist pseudo-psychologist, so maybe he should concentrate more on the history and less on unproven theories of convenient, pro-statist bunk psychology.
I accidentally came across him on Fox News Sunday making that argument, when I came into the room to change the channel.
In essence he’s saying Madison put the 2A in to “buy off” the states and get the thing passed, so it’s not really part of the constitution. If that doesn’t make your head go over a thousand RPM, I’m not sure what will. I guess it doesn’t matter that the states wanted it.
Then I heard him say the DC gun ban was just peachy because, “if you want to shoot for a hobby, you can just hop on the subway and go out to Maryland”.
You just can’t argue with logic like that. No, seriously; someone that illogical can’t be argued with.
The truly scary thing about Breyers reasoning is that you could just as easily use his “logic” to decide any right in the Bill of Rights doesn’t exist.
The fact that such a man is a sitting Supreme court justice should scare the hell out of all Americans.
The Founders would do far worse to him than just impeachment.
I’m sure Breyer’s historical acumen will include his providing a primary source for the Madison quote, “that can’t happen.” Perhaps he’ll find it with some of these other Madison quotes:
“Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”
“Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.”
“It is not certain that with this aid alone [possession of arms], they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to posses the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will, and direct the national force; and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned, in spite of the legions which surround it.”
“A government resting on the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it, without a standing army, an enslaved press and a disarmed populace.”
“To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.”
“Suppose that we let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal: still it would not be going to far to say that the State governments with the people at their side would be able to repel the danger…half a million citizens with arms in their hands.”
“A people armed and free forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression.”
“[Tyranny cannot exist] without a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.”
I’m sure that a Supreme Court Justice with his staff will be able to substantiate his position.