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Josh Horwitz on Heller
At the Huffington Post. Horwitz is leader of one of the antigun groups (they change names so frequently I can't recall what it's named now) created by some mega-billionaire.
His theme is rejection of an "insurrectionist" purpose behind the 2A (i.e., that it was meant to provide a safeguard against tyranny). He doesn't deny the history, just doesn't like the idea because it precludes the government having a "monopoly on force." (Madison's insight was deeper than Weber's: he saw the US as composed of people, states, and the federal government. By this standard, none of the three has a true "monopoly."
What I find interesting about all repudiations of "insurrectionist purposes" is that they are left empty when it comes down to: so what WAS the Second Amendment about? It had to have purposes, right? If not enabling resistance to tyranny, aren't you left with self-defense as a purpose? But for some strange reason they don't like that idea, either.
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Well, the answer is quite simple. They don't give a tinker's dam about the purposes of the Second Amendment one way or the other. They don't like guns. They don't like the idea of individual subjects (we usually call them "citizens") owning guns. And the Second Amendment is one of the biggest institutional obstacles to their overall plan for the general disarming of the proletariat.
Seems no more comments are being allowed...least I cannot log in to comment.
But in a nutshell, Horwitz' understanding of the 2A, and of lawful revolution is pitifully meager.
It's possible that he fully understands, and simply doesn't agree...and thus is going with what he's got. Straw men are built that way.
This paper serves as a pretty good primer to what ordered, legitimate revolutions are made of...
He mentions Iraq, but, if I remember correctly, each household gets to keep an AK-47.
Conclusion: Josh Horowitz supports ownership of assault rifles.
Dennis Henigan addressed the "insurrectionist theory of the 2A" in a piece he authored in Valparaiso University Law Review [vol 26 1991], using Sanford Levinson's "Embarrassing Second Amendment" as a foil.
I do have to wonder what Henigan and Horwitz, and others of similar left-wing bent, think of the slogan "No Justice - No Peace".
The "militia" purpose (one of the three purposes of the 2nd, the others being the insurrectionist purpose, and the self defense purpose) is spelled out in Article 1 Section 8.
"the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions"
Often, what men do not say speaks as loudly as what they do say.
Case in Point: The Constitution of the United States including the Second Amendment.
In August of 1786, in one county of Massachusetts a protest group of more than fifteen hundred men armed with clubs, swords and firearms forced the closure of courts that were deciding tax foreclosure issues.
In January 1787, just months prior to the drafting of the Constitution a rather large tax “protest” took place in and near Springfield, Massachusetts. This disturbance was later named “Shays Rebellion” and consisted of over two thousand armed men whose object was the federal armoury in Springfield. These men intended to seize the arms including artillery stored in the armoury and continue on to Boston where they planned to lay waste to the town. History tells us that the rebellion was thwarted and the arms stored in the federal armoury remained there. Most of the insurgents were veterans of the Revolutionary War who carried their hunting firearms, continental army issue firearms, swords, antique muskets, as well as pitchforks and other farming implements.
During the same time period several similar armed tax protests broke out in other counties of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
Between September 1787, when the Constitution was drafted, and 21 June 1788, nine states ratified the Constitution - without the “Bill of Rights”. The aforementioned armed protests must have been well publicized. All the delegates attending the Constitutional Conventions as well as the members of the state legislatures that ratified the Constitution must have been aware of the nature of the armed tax protests, and yet nothing concerning regulations of citizen’s arms (firearms or otherwise) is mentioned within the body of the original Constitution as ratified by the states.
From 21 June 1788 until 15 December 1791, when the first ten amendments were ratified and became a part of the United State Constitution, members of the federal legislature as well as those of the state legislatures had ample time to consider and reflect upon the many armed citizen insurrections that had occurred since the War for Independence and yet, included the second amendment recognizing and guaranteeing the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
With all these armed citizen “insurrections” fresh on the minds of the law makers, both state and federal, why didn’t they make at least some effort to regulate the ownership and/or use of the arms of the people?
Is it possible that the right to keep and bear arms was seen as fundamental as the right to possess one’s own home, to plow one’s own land, to provide for one’s own family, to travel from one town or state to another, to gather with friends and family for whatever purpose, to engage in whatever business one chooses, to defend one’s self from an unlawful assault or from the cold of winter, etc…….? Notice. None of the rights mentioned in the forgoing question are mentioned in the Constitution.
Maybe. Just maybe, what men don’t say tells us as much as what they do say.
Interestingly, the alternative to the "insurrectionist" view is that of a neo-Tory one: that the state has a right to exist even if the population prefers that it not. This is of course in conflict with the principles of the DoI, and places Horowitz with the Redcoats.
Doesn't this pretty much contradicts his position in the American Jewish Committee, et al brief which claimed the Second Amendment was a federalist provision to prevent the Feds from having such a monopoly on force?
Doesn't anybody read the founding fathers, the Federalist Papers, what was really being discussed and thought at the time, behind the words in the Bill of Rights? If the Constitution was being ignored or subverted, the intent was to enable the people to put up armed resistance to the kind of tyrannical government they had just thrown off...a government that tried to take away the powder and rifles...
It wasn't so folks could hunt, though hunting was common.
It wasn't so folks could defend themselves from "savages" or animals, although it was handy to be able to do so.
Having said earlier in the Constitution and other documents that government drives it's legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and that the people are sovereign...("We the People", not we the Government...), the people had to have the means to NOT consent to a usurpation or a tyranical subversion of their new states. Mao had one thing right, "Power flows from the barrel of a gun." If the people have the guns, the people have the power...If the government has a monopoly on guns, or force in general, consent is a moot point...anyone who does not consent to what the government wants is expendable.
What part of "the People" do these "people" not understand?