Fraud and the Second Amendment
Warren Burger, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Supreme Court, 1969-1986, said and wrote:
“The gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the work fraud, on the American people by special interest groups that I have seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies—the militia—would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.
Former Chief Justice Warren Burger made his position clear in 1991 In an interview with Public Broadcasting and later in the same year in what we now call an Op-Ed article for the associated press.
It is long past time that we re-started this conversation.
The text of the Second Amendment reads; “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Firearms are for the use of a militia.
Control of a militia is spelled out in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. Congress is “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.” This is what a Militia is supposed to do.
Who tells the militia what to do and who controls it? Section 8 of Article 1 answers those questions: Congress is to “provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by congress.” Militias, and hence firearms, are completely under Governmental control.
How did we go from this, perfectly clear, outline of ownership and control of firearms to an 18 year old legally purchasing a military grade firearm and slaughtering 19 small children, two adults and inflicting life-changing wounds on 17 others? As Chief Justice Burger indicates, we have been the victims of one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public. It isn’t just stealing money or goods; it is stealing lives.
The gun lobby went from being gun safety advocates to gun sales advocates and along the way have given rise to a great slaughter of Americans, many of them, children, in defense of a myth. There are many groups advocating myths in this county, but this particular one was reframed as a fundamental “right” and the cause was taken up by right-wing politicians in pursuit of votes.
This pursuit of election and power resulted in 45,222 firearms deaths in 2020, the last year for which statistics are available of which 24,292 were suicides and 19,384 were homicides. As gun laws loosen around the country, deaths go up. These aren’t peaceful deaths. Bones are shattered, heads are blown apart, brains splattered and chunks of flesh are ripped from often very young bodies.
The gun culture advocates stand before us defending the ownership of military grade weapons before the children have been buried. Their words and hands drip with the blood of the innocent and yet they continue to advocate for this great fraud; this great myth of the right to ownership of weapons of death. The gun lobby and their allies in congress and state legislatures took 40 years to get control of this issue and we need to reverse the trend, even if it takes another 40 years.
Outstanding Bob Grant, so well stated. We need to send this to every elected official in the country,
Gun prohibitionists in our country want to interpret the second amendment to mean that one doesn’t have the right to own firearms unless they are serving in a militia; since the founding of our country Americans have owned all kinds of arms without performing militia duty so obviously that interpretation is dead wrong.
The 2nd Amendment is in the Bill of Rights. Theses Amendments give the people, not the government rights.
Well said. I would add that the other significant fraud perpetrated by the gun lobby and its supporters concerns the myth of “guns are needed to protect us from government tyranny”. They usually cite the 2nd amendment when making this seditious claim. The truth is that under no circumstances did the Founders ever countenance violence against either state or the federal government. The Sedition act of 1798 made that quite clear. And as per the Militia Acts of the 1790’s, as well as Article 1, Section of the Constitution, the state militias armed by means of the 2nd amendment were there to protect and serve the government, not to attack it. Elections, not bullets, was how the Framers specifically tailored the Constitution to affect government change.
Yes, 650,000 babies (over 70% minorities) are ripped apart and shredded during abortions, but not one word from these Leftist-Socialist hypocritical frauds!!!!! All they want to do is talk about gun deaths and ways to confiscate ALL FIREARMS!!! Remember that over 250 MILLION innocent people have been murdered by their dictatorship-run governments in the 20th Century because of “reasonable” & “common sense” gun control. Let me remind those idiot Democrat-Socialists of which countries did that: Red China (over 100 Million murdered), Soviet Union (over 50 Million murdered), Nazi Germany (over 15 Million murdered), Imperial Japan [from 1931-1945](over 12 Million murdered), North Korea (over 6 Million murdered), Communist Vietnam (when they took over South Vietnam after the U.S. left in 1972) and Communist Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge dictatorship (over 2 MILLION murdered in each country), Afghanistan under Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc. (over 4 MILLION murdered), etc., etc., etc. The common theme was “reasonable” and “common sense” gun control that led to TOTAL CONFISCATION, and then dictatorships that eliminated “enemies of the party”.
Cowards don’t leave their names and can’t ever seem to stay on topic.
By writing this article Bob Grant is having a temper tantrum just like NJ democrats after the historic supreme court ruling. Would love to see his face when the supreme court shuts down NJ racist carry killer legislation. And its requirement for all the government permission slips to exercise a constitutional right. 🙂
Well written. We’ve seen too many state sanctioned executions by cops and too many massacres by individuals discharging military style weapons with the sole purpose of taking as many lives as possible in the shortest times possible. It’s pure insanity. And it’s the fault of politicians that put power and money above the lives of the people they’re supposed to serve.