s3779m said:
I would enjoy seeing the politician who speaks out standing up for the rights of the law abiding citizens, the rights to protect themselves and others. We can get there, starts at the ballot box.
There has been a very definite shift away from respect for the 2A in recent years, and that applies to politicians of both parties.
In 1982, the 97th Congress became interested in the Bill of Rights, and they established a joint subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary to study the issue. One of the products of this subcommittee was a report on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. The subcommittee was headed by Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R) and Representative Dennis DeConcini (D). Each of those gentlemen wrote a preface to the report. From Hatch's preface:
This is not to imply that courts have totally ignored the impact of the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. No fewer than twenty-one decisions by the courts of our states have recognized an individual right to keep and bear arms, and a majority of these have not only recognized the right but invalidated laws or regulations which abridged it. Yet in all too many instances, courts or commentators have sought, for reasons only tangentially related to constitutional history, to construe this right out of existence. They argue that the Second Amendment's words "right of the people" mean "a right of the state" — apparently overlooking the impact of those same words when used in the First and Fourth Amendments. The "right of the people" to assemble or to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is not contested as an individual guarantee. Still they ignore consistency and claim that the right to "bear arms" relates only to military uses. This not only violates a consistent constitutional reading of "right of the people" but also ignores that the second amendment protects a right to "keep" arms. These commentators contend instead that the amendment's preamble regarding the necessity of a "well regulated militia... to a free state" means that the right to keep and bear arms applies only to a National Guard. Such a reading fails to note that the Framers used the term "militia" to relate to every citizen capable of bearing arms, and that Congress has established the present National Guard under its power to raise armies, expressly stating that it was not doing so under its power to organize and arm the militia.
. . .
When I became chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, I hoped that I would be able to assist in the protection of the constitutional rights of American citizens, rights which have too often been eroded in the belief that government could be relied upon for quick solutions to difficult problems. Both as an American citizen and as a United States Senator I repudiate this view. I likewise repudiate the approach of those who believe to solve American problems you simply become something other than American. To my mind, the uniqueness of our free institutions, the fact that an American citizen can boast freedoms unknown in any other land, is all the more reason to resist any erosion of our individual rights. When our ancestors forged a land "conceived in liberty", they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against government interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men.
I respectfully submit that it would be difficult to find even a Republican senator today who would say or write something this clear.
DeConcini, a Democrat, was far more "nuanced" in his preface. Yet even he recognized the history of the 2A:
The right to bear arms is a tradition with deep roots in American society. Thomas Jefferson proposed that "no free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms, " and Samuel Adams called for an amendment banning any law "to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. " The Constitution of the State of Arizona, for example, recognizes the "right of an individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the State. "
The report then goes into a detailed discussion of the right to keep and bear arms, starting with Alfred the Great in 872 A.D. The report includes a number of statements submitted by outside parties, including the NRA, but from the actual body of the report we find the following statements:
The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms therefore, is a right of the individual citizen to privately posses and carry in a peaceful manner firearms and similar arms. Such an "individual rights" interpretation is in full accord with the history of the right to keep and bear arms, as previously discussed. It is moreover in accord with contemporaneous statements and formulations of the right by such founders of this nation as Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams, and accurately reflects the majority of the proposals which led up to the Bill of Rights itself. A number of state constitutions, adopted prior to or contemporaneously with the federal Constitution and Bill of Rights, similarly provided for a right of the people to keep and bear arms.
. . .
Finally, the individual rights interpretation gives full meaning to the words chosen by the first Congress to reflect the right to keep and bear arms. The framers of the Bill of Rights consistently used the words "right of the people" to reflect individual rights — as when these words were used to recognize the "right of the people" to peaceably assemble, and the "right of the people" against unreasonable searches and seizures. They distinguished between the rights of the people and of the state in the Tenth Amendment.
. . .
That the National Guard is not the "Militia" referred to in the second amendment is even clearer today. Congress has organized the National Guard under its power to "raise and support armies" and not its power to "Provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia".
. . .
The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.
Over the years since I first learned of this document, I have seen it posted on government web sites, then disappear from the government's web sites, then reappear somewhere else, then be reposted again in yet another location. The last link I had to it was not to a government web site but to The Constitution Society -- as of today, that link no longer leads to a copy of the report. If you can find a copy, I strongly urge you to download it and make a back-up, because it is apparent (to me) that "the usual suspects" do not want us to be aware that a joint committee of the Congress issued a formal report affirming the individual right nature of the 2A twenty-plus years before
Heller. Yet this report was produced by a subcommittee of the Congress and should be available to us as a public record.
I can't imagine a bi-partisan, bi-cameral committee of the Congress writing this report today.
Update: I found a working link -- but not at the gubmint:
https://constitution.org/1-Activism/mil/rkba82.pdf
This link is to the full version, with the attachments and all the references. Get it while you can.
FWIW, this link to the Constitution Society takes you to a page full of links to articles discussing the Constitution, Bill of Rights, the 2A, and issues relating thereto such as the Militia. These should be required reading for all of us:
https://constitution.org/1-Education/cs_defen.htm
