RNS Quote of the Day

On every question of the construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adpoted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debatesand instead of trying to find what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

Thomas Jefferson’s letter to William Johnson – June 12th, 1823 – “The Complete Jefferson” pg. 322

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.

James Madison

The Constitution is a written instrument. As such, its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when it was adopted, it means now.

South Carolina vs. US 199 US 437, 448 (1905)

Two of the Founding Fathers, one of whom was the author of the Declaration of Independance, and a US federal court case.

I post these three quotes in relation to the high probability of a coming assault on the rights of law abiding gun owners by believers in “Living Documents”.

In the next two to six and possibly even ten years, the anti-private ownership of firearms crowd will be firing up their press machines once again to full tilt. We do not know from which direction they will be driving from; Whether it will be the “It’s for the Children” angle, the “We’re OK with hunting rifles” scheme, the “Look how peaceful Canada is” distraction or the “Tax the Ammunition” doppleganger, or perhaps all of them at once.

I do forsee a federal ban on .50 caliber rifles, with registration of all those owned prior to the ban, along with a renewed attack on Hi-Cap Magazines, Gun Shows and “Cop Killer Bullets”, both of which stand a high possibility of being successful. These are easy predictions made by an analysis of the previous attempts.

What is not so easy to predict are the other fronts from which they will attepmt; Limiting the number of purchases in a certain time period, which will probably start out at “Per Month”, which once passed, is easily stretched to three or six months, or whether they’ll just head straight for the actual registering of firearms and/or the owners.

I believe it was Joe Huffman, though I am loathe to admit I cannot find it, who said that, if I may paraphrase, ‘We in the firearms community never actually win, we only maintain a holding position. When we succeed in replacing a gun bigot with a supporter of the private ownership of firearms, said new politician never actually gets around to repealing the legislation enacted by the gun bigot poltician. We hold there with that person as a firewall against new legislation, until the bigots get another bite at the apple. It is a spiral. A slow spiral, but a spiral nonetheless’.

Joe is absolutely correct. No one that I know of can actually name one piece of anti-gun legislation that has ever been turned on its head and repealed. The AWB expired due to politicians doing what they do best: Ignoring something. Bush said he’d sign it if it got to his desk. Thankfully, he was able to talk enough legislators into ignoring it’s renewal window and it never made it there. Had we had a different set of persons in the House and Senate, like we likely will come next year, we would not have been so “lucky”.

Do your studying now; both for whom you’re voting for on November 7th and on the facts pertaining to your private ownership of firearms. Once the election results come down, study up on your local, state and federal representatives so that you have their contact info readily available.

I hope to have some time in the coming weeks to post up info for y’all as to where to sign up for alerts on upcoming legislation. If you have some available now, please leave it in the comments section or email me with it (email contact info is at the top of the right hand column).

We are not wicked, but we shall still get no rest.