Dear Conservative,
The Second Amendment exists as a last fail-safe in case that all other Constitutional bulwarks in place to protect against tyranny fall. When James Madison wrote that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” he was not referring to an organized militia. He was referring to the need for citizens to be armed and trained in case a citizens militia became necessary to defend the country against enemies foreign and domestic.
The phrase “well regulated militia,” contrary to what the gun control advocates say, is not referring to any sort of gun control. At the founding, “well regulated” meant to be well supplied and well trained.
The Second Amendment isn’t really about hunting, unless you consider the hunting of tyrants to be a past-time…
However, that has not stopped Liberals from defining the Second Amendment in terms of “sporting purposes” for almost a century. Prior to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in District of Columbia vs. Heller, you had no universally recognized individual right to bear arms. Your “right” was seen as a collective right.
Every step of the way, the gun control movement has sought to eliminate access to firearms that were deemed to have no “sporting purpose.” Democrats in Congress didn't see that fully-automatic guns had a “sporting purpose,” so they outlawed the new creation of civilian machine guns in 1986. The Clinton administration did not want cheap Soviet and Chinese weapons entering the country in the 1990s, so the administration determined that these weapons were banned because they didn’t have a “sporting purpose” (among other reasons). And when the Democrats banned so-called “assault weapons” in 1994 and tried to do the same in 2013, they targeted guns that they believed didn’t have a “sporting purpose.”
So what is a sporting purpose, according to the law? Well, while Congress spent the better part of a century linking Americans’ civil rights to this term, nowhere in the legal code is it actually defined. Generally, it is believed to refer to the traditional sports of target shooting, trap and skeet shooting, and hunting.
The Second Amendment isn’t about hunting or skeet shooting. The Second Amendment exists so that free men can never be disarmed and deprived of their right to defend themselves, their families, and their communities.
Even though the Second Amendment wasn’t written to protect the rights of hunters, it has always been understood by gun control advocates and gun rights supporters alike that banning hunting wasn’t on the table. For the so-called “Blue Dog” Democrats living in rural areas, going after hunting firearms would be political suicide. Even though a shotgun has the capacity to do tremendous harm, it isn’t nearly as scary-looking as a 22 caliber varmint rifle commonly known as an AR-15.
Going after hunters has never been on the table, even for the most nefarious of gun control activists… until now.
Allow me to introduce U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane (a Bill Clinton appointee). In Pennsylvania, it is illegal (in almost all cases) to hunt on Sundays. A group representing the state’s hunters sued Pennsylvania, arguing that the ban infringed not only on their Second Amendment rights, but also violated the First Amendment by giving preference to the Christian day of worship.
The State argued that the Second Amendment didn’t apply to recreational hunting and, remarkably, the Judge agreed. Judge Kane ruled that nowhere in the Constitution could she find a constitutionally protected right to hunt.
For the first time, a court has ruled that hunting is not protected under the Second Amendment! Even though I am inclined to agree that protecting hunting wasn’t the intent of the Founders, this ruling serves as a stark warning that nothing is sacred for the gun control movement!
Think about that for a second…
Hunting firearms, which have long been seen as untouchable by gun control lobbyists, are apparently now on the table.
In its Heller ruling, a split Supreme Court ruled that individual citizens have a right to own a handgun and keep it in the home for self-defense. Then a year or so later, the Supreme Court ruled in McDonald vs. City of Chicago that individual states and localities cannot infringe on this right.
As groundbreaking as those Supreme Court rulings were, they stopped short of determining what we all know, which is that civilians should have the right to own a wide variety of firearms suitable for militia service. But that isn’t what the Supreme Court said. They stopped short of that.
So if Federal Judges are ruling that the Second Amendment doesn’t protect hunters, and other Courts have ruled against the ownership of some military-pattern firearms, then what is the Second Amendment good for?
Obviously, I couldn't personally care less what these activist judges decide. In the words of Charlton Heston, they’ll have to pry my gun from my cold dead hands.
But at a policy level, these court ruling threaten the future tradition of firearm ownership in this country!
You and I both know that the Second Amendment isn’t primarily about hunting, but that the right to own firearms for hunting purposes is still protected under the Constitution. Well, at least one District Judge has ruled otherwise!
These court rulings tend to spread and that is something that we simply cannot afford!
Congress must put an end to the gun control movement’s push to outlaw your firearms! We all knew that they were going to go after scary-looking semi-automatic rifles, but now there is actually judicial precedent that can be construed to remove constitutional protections from hunting guns!
We have executive and judicial branches that have proven to be enemies of your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. At the state and federal levels, these branches have conspired to circumvent Congress and implement gun control by any means necessary.
Currently, there is nothing in the law that defines what lawful firearm ownership entails. The “sporting purposes” provision is out-dated and, quite honestly, it is also unconstitutional.
You cannot afford to have Liberal executives and activist judges redefining your right to own a firearm.
Make no mistake, the fact that hunters are now being targeted by the gun grabbers should serve as a warning, regardless of whether you actually hunt. If they are willing to go after a group previously seen as ‘untouchable,’ then we are all on the chopping block!
From my cold dead hands,
Joe Otto
Conservative Daily
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