DID THE FOUNDERS MAKE A MISTAKE ADOPTING THE SECOND AMENDMENT?

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. – 2nd Amendment, Adopted December 15, 1791

Florida’s February 15, shooting where gunman 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 high school students and faculty is without saying an unimaginable tragedy or is it? Was it or is it really unimaginable? If it was unimaginable why did Nikolas Cruz come up with the idea as a way of self expression?

My thought is what Nikolas Cruz did has become all too imaginable. Today we are exposed to imaginary and very real ideas, which have created our common social standards. Some of these ideas are new progressive ideas. These ideas are being used to shape what our society considers to be acceptable or not acceptable. Songs and mannerisms from recording artist of today were unimaginable fifty short years ago. Movies, Television, Games were held to standards, back in the day, that today’s guardians of social freedoms would poo poo.

Our society has undergone a fundamental transformation, that is undeniable, but did we really think this change would be without a cost? Interestingly, and before I go any further, one of only constants during this period of time is that of guns and gun ownership. Guns have always been a part of our society from our country’s inception until now.

I know of a story of a family, which moved into a neighborhood. The house they purchased was beautiful as was the neighborhood. One minor thing annoyed them. A old ratty fence blocked the view of majestic scenery just below their property line so they removed the fence to get a better look at the scenic view from inside the house. Several months past then one evening a hurried knock at the door. When the door was opened they were met with an emotional commotion. The family was informed that two children visiting next door wondered over to their yard and had fallen to their deaths from their yard.

I have always been a proponent of never removing fences before knowing why they were put there in the first place.

The Bill of Rights is like an old ratty fence. Some of the rights listed seem to be blocking our views of a more progressive society. However, in light of the present calls for restricting or completely repealing the second amendment the questions go begging, did the founders make a mistake adopting the second amendment and would society be safer without it?

They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety – Benjamin Franklin 1775

WISDOM OF THE AGES VS AMERICA POPULAR CULTURE CONSENSUS

Simply stated the second amendment is a safe guard or “a fence” against tyranny. The cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control can manifest from a Ruler, a government or the tyranny of the majority. The second amendment was adopted to protect individuals from wide ranging and ever present threats of tyranny.

Whether derived from the rule of popular opinion, what we witness so much of today (and better known again as the tyranny of the majority) or to the rule of our government, if our government violates it’s constitutional mandate to be subservient to the people. The founders thought it wise for individuals to have the ways and means to protect ourselves from those who would use force or power to subjugate us.

In discussing the need for the second amendment the founders considered that every government ever known to them eventually became a tyrannical threat to the individual. In addition they knew that governments were eventually conquered. The conquerors were usually governed by tyrants who violated individual rights. Therefore, based on this knowledge of world history the individual fundamental right to self protection was recognized and codified into what we know today as the second amendment. Much of the background for the thinking, which when into the 2nd amendment is found in Federalist paper #46 (see here)

Even so, those who hold anti-second amendment opinions, in the wake of the horrific Florida attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have all but forgotten our history and persists on a temporary remedy, which they feel is, gun control or banning guns altogether, to feel safe. We have already been warned of this misconception by one of the greatest American minds to have ever lived Benjamin Franklin. Mr. Franklin presciently warned that, a people who would willingly give up their rights for what they think is safety would have neither their rights nor their safety!

If the justification of the Tyranny of the Majority or anti-gun advocates is to ban guns to feel safe, that is not an adequate or even reasonable ground to give up the constitutional right to bear arms.

Yes I want our schools to be safe but I will not be bullied into a decision by the majority to ban guns based on pure group consensus, emotionalism and political manipulation.

Gun control is like a cheap teenage date. No wonder so many High school students are drawn to it. It sounds sexy, it’s cheap and its an easy solution but it’s not what you’d select later in life! Yes I understand that everyone of the Douglas High school students have gone through an horrific and traumatic experience. Yet I also know that decisions made in a knee jerk fashion to a traumatic experience are rarely solutions to real problems. Making decisions under conditions of trauma are hard for any adult and almost impossible for children.

In normal times, grief counselors would be bused in by the tons to help the Douglas High children deal effectively with their grief and loss. But these are not normal times. No these are highly charged partisan times. These are times of Antifa organizing, Pink Knit hat organizing and grieving high school students organizing. Instead of a bus load of grief counselors getting sent to the school, what we are witnessing instead are hundreds of grieving kids organized for action, then put on buses and sent to carry a message that may be partially theirs but not totally because the message has been politicized.

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel, Former Barack Obama Chief of Staff

Someone or some group(s) is orchestrating this well run campaign to disarm Americans of our second amendment rights. There are adults standing in the shadows of these orchestrated events. High School students don’t organize National Marches on Washington DC. at the drop of a hat in calm peaceful times. They never have before in my recollection. Yet we are to believe that days after perhaps the most traumatic event that many of them will ever face they got themselves together and organized and funded protest against the NRA and guns both at the state and federal levels? Hmm...

It has been interesting to see our herd mentality in the United States move from Russia, Russia Russia to that of Guns, Guns, Guns! That notwithstanding, the second amendment is a right that the founders placed very carefully to protect Americans from Governments and mobs both foreign and domestic that would prey on defenseless citizens of the United States if given the chance.

So what is the answer to school shootings or violence in our society. In the terminology of fences, we have taken down a gate which kept the barbarians at bay. That was the first line of defense against heinous crimes such as school mass murders as well as most of our social ills. That gate is Virtue. Or has the second President of the United States said, “morals and religion.” President John Adams said…

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”-- President John Adams, 1976-1800

Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters [Gun control Laws].” George Washington later praised the new American Constitution as the “palladium of human rights,” but pointed out that it could survive only “so long as there shall remain virtue in the body of the people.”

W. Cleon Skousen,in his book The Five Thousand Year Leap, tells of the heated debates occurring in the thirteen colonies between 1775 and 1776 over the issue of morality. Self-government was generally referred to as “republicanism,” and it was universally acknowledged that a corrupt and selfish people could never make the principles of republicanism operate successfully. These early Americans were, in essence, debating whether or not the people (citizens of the thirteen colonies) were sufficiently moral and virtuous to govern themselves.

George Washington declared in his Farewell Address, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Later in his Farewell Address Washington went on to say, “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”

Did the founders make a mistake adopting the second amendment? No! Yet, in all of the discussions we will entertain in the upcoming days about how to keep schools safe I venture to say the actual problem and solution will never be mentioned. We have taken down fences and opened our gates to all sorts of immorality and have allowed the barbarians of our non restraints to come crashing through. And then we self righteously point our fingers at guns or at the NRA as the problem.

But as with all finger pointing three fingers always point back at us!

It’s Not Gun Control Stupid!

"Clearly, mental health professionals have a legal and moral responsibility," when a student presents a possible risk we have a duty to warn."—Christoper Flynn, Head of Virginia Tech Counseling Center

We are a litigious society that loves to place blame. As Liberals root around to find the latest fall guy to blame for the 4/16 massacre at Virginia Tech the number one culprit that will be blamed is guns and the lack of gun control. Liberals if they had their way would make it virtual impossible for a citizen of the United State to get a gun.

One small problem with this thinking, every citizen of the United States has a Constitutional right to have a gun. So if liberals are going to blatantly disregard the Constitution, as they always do, they must have a compelling argument for violating the second amendment. So what is it?

Liberals will undoubtedly say, if Seung-Hui Cho, the deranged and mentally ill gunman of Virginia Tech was not able to purchase a gun 33 people would not have died on 4/16. It is much to simplistic a view.

So according to Liberals the Second amendment, a Constitutional guaranteed right, is at fault for the 4/16 massacre.

Also anyone who supports this Constitutional right to own a gun namely Conservatives are indirectly at fault because they are the ones standing in the way of anti-gun advocates’ ability to take away the Constitutional second amendment right to own a gun.

Courts let him Go

Still there is another way of seeing this. If we must have someone to blame then why not blame the court that found Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho was "mentally ill" and potentially dangerous. Then it let him go. We blamed President Bush for the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita when the State and City were the actual first responders.

President Bush’s administration has been accused of incompetently handling Katrina so by that same logic who are the incompetents that allowed Cho Seung-Hui to kill 33 people?

In December 2005 -- more than a year before Monday's mass shootings -- Justice Elinor Williams, a district court in Montgomery County, Va., ruled that Cho presented "an imminent danger to self or others." That was the necessary criterion for a detention order, so that Cho, who had been accused of stalking by two female schoolmates, could be evaluated by a state doctor and ordered to undergo outpatient care.

Psychologist Roy Crouse found Cho's "affect is flat and mood is depressed.”

After Dr. Crouse's psychological evaluation of Cho, Special Justice Paul M. Barnett certified the finding, ordering follow-up treatment on an outpatient basis.

What’s so tragically laughable about this situation is the so-called experts in psychology offering their assessments of the pathology, which would allow someone to perform such a grotesque attack against innocents after the fact. So where were these “experts” when the courts where attempting to determine what to do with Seung-Hui Cho?

And contrary to what pundits and so-called experts are saying now the courts did have the power to hold Seung-Hui.

Dentention Order

According to the court documents: The judge may rely solely upon the evaluations and reports of the appointed examiner and of the Community Services Board, to order your involuntary commitment, if these reports are not contested by you.

But regardless of whether Seung-Hui contested the reports there was enough evidence to demonstrate that Seung-Hui was a danger to himself and to others.

Justice Elinor Williams, Psychologist Roy Crouse, Special Justice Paul Barnett, the Police Department, Virginia Tech Counseling Center and Virginia Tech Administrators all acted incompetently and negligently by allowing Seung-Hui Cho to remain at Virginia Tech thereby remaining a threat to himself and his fellow students.

Had one of the professionals that came in contact with Seung-Hui Cho had done his or her jobs correctly Cho would not have been able to purchase a gun because he would have received the help that he needed. But instead the worst massacre in the history of the United States was allowed even though at any time someone could have prevented it.

It’s not gun control that we need to waste our time discussing. We need to know why people who we entrust to protect us did not do their jobs.

Their egregious negligence is the best argument for second amendment rights making the point ever so cleary that we can not expect anything but post massacre investigations and media coverage of tradegies however if you want protection, as always, you’ll have to do it yourself!