I dont think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, I need an assault weapon to go hunting, Cuomo said, according to the New York Times. There is a balance here I understand the rights of gun owners; I understand the rights of hunters. Cuomo indicated the state will likely force some kind of permit process on owners of semi-automatic assault weapons. In addition to generating revenue and expanding the size and reach of government, the effort will allow the state to confiscate the weapons of citizens who do not comply.
Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option keep your gun but permit it, the governor said.
This is the mayor of one of the largest states (population-wise) in the country! We have devolved into to a point in the gun rights argument that were reverting back to the very thing from which we sought independence. The Declaration of Independence lists several grievances that led to the Revolutionary War.
King George was an oppressive ruler. He quartered troops in private homes to keep the citizens in check. He forced sailors to take up arms against fellow countrymen. He taxed them into oblivion without any representation. He made up laws on the fly to deal with trouble makers and denied them due process.
In Blackstones Commentaries on the Laws of England (1803), St. George Tucker, a lawyer, Revolutionary War militia officer, legal scholar, and later a U.S. District Court judge (appointed by James Madison in 1813), wrote of the 2nd Amendment that, The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and this without any qualification as to their condition or degree, as is the case in the British government.
Yes, Im a nerd. I read and RESEARCH the meanings of the Constitution, especially the most fundamental and important of our rights. Delving further into the Appendix, Tucker explains further the meaning of the 2nd Amendment (emphasis is mine).
This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty
. The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.
secondamendmentSound familiar? Todays progressive movement has sought to turn the 2nd Amendments meaning into something it isnt. Our lofty politicians protected with their throngs of security guards, armored vehicles, and other protections and their lapdog media have succeeded at convincing the low information voters, as Rush Limbaugh likes to say, that this right is meant to apply to hunters only. Or in your home only.
In addition, they have tried to tell us that even if we were hunters, we dont need those kinds of weapons for hunting. Nearly every argument I have with a progressive gun grabber usually ends incorporates the statements that there is no use for any type of magazine that can carry more than 10 rounds or to own a weapon that looks black and evil. Personally, I think thats racist that they are trying to ban so-called black rifles.
Another constitutional scholar to our Founders, William Rawle, wrote a book in 1829 called, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America. In this book, he talks about the reach and authority of the 2nd Amendment while also discussing the limitations on those that would attempt to circumvent it. He, rightly so, points out that the 27 words that make up the 2nd Amendment are composed of two, separate clauses; not one run-on sentence. Of the first clause (a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free state), he writes:
Although in actual war, the services of regular troops are confessedly more valuable; yet, while peace prevails, and in the commencement of a war before a regular force can be raised, the militia form the palladium of the country. They are ready to repel invasion, to suppress insurrection, and preserve the good order and peace of government. That they should be well regulated, is judiciously added. A disorderly militia is disgraceful to itself, and dangerous not to the enemy, but to its own country. The duty of the state government is, to adopt such regulations as will tend to make good soldiers with the least interruptions of the ordinary and useful occupations of civil life. In this all the Union has a strong and visible interest.
Some would point to the National Guard and say that this is what constitutes the well regulated Militia of the 2nd Amendment. However, such is not the case. The National Guard is frequently called upon to take on standing military operations. Our politicians and government have done a stellar job at preventing the people from forming their own well regulated Militias by labeling such groups extremist or seditious collections. Can anyone honestly say that if our government became so corrupt as to turn on its own people that the National Guard would be in place to oppose the regular military forces? We all know that the Guards troops are equipped with mostly secondhand equipment and arms. If and this is a very long shot the country was ordered into martial law either the National Guard would be called up to augment the active forces or would be defeated without support.
This is why militias comprised of the people are included in the Constitution. Imagine if the people were allowed to form these militias in Los Angeles before the LA riots. Neighborhoods of people could defend their homes and businesses. Heck, one only needs to look at this picture from the riots of what property owners were doing to defend and protect their property. These citizens were protecting Korea town.