It’s time to replace the Second Amendment. It’s old fashion. Do you know what is says. Well here it is: “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.”
I know, I know, I’m supposed to forget the first part of the sentence talking about the need for an armed militia to keep our country secure. I’m suppose to read the Second Amendment as only saying: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” and figure the rest of the language was put there because it had a nice ring to it.
Then I’m supposed to forget that these lines were written over two hundred years ago before we could conceive of having the strongest military in the world. I’m supposed to pretend that today the people need arms to keep our country secure and make-believe I do not know that our government using just a small fraction of its drone power could eliminate any group of people it felt threatened it with arms in a nanosecond. Yes, I understand there is no reference to nanoseconds in the Constitution.
I’m not supposed to try to figure out why the writers of that document thought it was necessary for the right to bear arms not be infringed. But I can. I just have to look at the first part of that sentence. Those who adopted the Second Amendment knew the security of a free state depended upon an armed populace that could resist a foreign invasion, an internal rebellion, or a tyrannical government. Now we have given that job to our military and police. As citizens we no longer play a role in our county’s security outside of those forces.
I’ve read recently people are buying up guns in record numbers because they fear the Government is planning to come and take their guns away. First, that’s not going to happen; but if the Government decided it wanted you guns it’d get them no matter how well armed you were because the Government would always have more and greater arms and a greater force to seized them from you. Remember the pictures we saw on April 19 of the assemblage of local fire power in the Boston area, no one or no group could stand up to that, and that wasn’t even the forces in Washington acting.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to take away your guns. I want you to be licensed to have them. I don’t want violent felons to have them. I believe they are important for our self-defense, our pleasure such as hunting, target practice, comfort or any other legitimate reason a person has for one or more of them. I believe the right to possess them pre-dates the Second Amendment. I want to get beyond that.
It is just I think there is presently something much more necessary that we citizens must have now that the security of our free state is established. Here’s my suggestion for changing the language to ensure America remains a free state with people having the ability to exercise free rights.
“An open Internet, being necessary to the existence of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear instruments that provide access to a free and open internet shall not be infringed.”
To me, free access to the Internet is much more important as we slog along through the 21st Century than a person’s right to bear arms. The Internet is the first thing an oppressive government will want to control. It was the Internet that brought about the Arab spring; it was the Internet that almost made the Green Revolution in Iran successful. It is the Internet that will give us the knowledge we need to know to stay a free people.
The Government knows it already controls your ability to oppose it by arms. It also know that through its arms it can control the public protest movements as we saw it do with the Occupy Wall Street movement. We have seen how it has restricted public assemblies by allowing government officials to set up “free speech zones” as it did during the political conventions which are far away from the people one wants to speak to. We have seen it establish “security zones” as it has done around abortion clinics that force people to stand far distances from the people they want to influence..
We have seen the arming of our police forces with armaments more useful to a war zone than a city street. We have seen the creation of new police forces which are layered on top of traditional forces. And we have seen the confusion over whether the military is being given the right to become a police force in our own country. I’m sure you have heard of USNorthCom the military group established in 2002 which “partners to conduct homeland defense, civil support and security cooperation to defend and secure the United States and its interests.”
We can no longer keep our freedom by arms. We must keep it by speech. We must be able to communicate. That’s why the first amendment the writers of the Constitution agreed upon was the right to free speech. The Government will always have greater and better arms and forces than the people; but it will never have greater and better speech than the people. That is what a free people must have. Today the best way to insure that is by protecting it by changing the Second Amendment to protect the Internet.
Thanks for the reply. You may be convinced by your research that the Second Amendment serves no purpose today, but I disagree because of the reasons I’ve already cited. You can believe whatever you want and it’s your blog so write whatever you want, but if your goal through writing this topic was to convince people of your point of view, I was not convinced.
There are several other arguments more convincing; I only cited one. Another one worth researching that convinces me the Second Amendment was never written with ONLY the militia in mind is known as the “civilized warfare” test. Check it out sometime. Cheers.
Jason:
I don’t expect to convince everyone of anything I write but I do appreciate it when people like yourself give me feedback. I look upon this as a discussion where I put out some ideas I have and hope that those with different thoughts will respond and show where they disagree. I appreciate you having taken the time to write.
Why do we have to “Change The Second Amendment To Keep America Free? If you think America is losing it’s freedom it’s not because of the 2nd amendment. Just leave the 2nd Amendment as is and add your other amendment to the Constitution.
Jason:
Thanks for asking. My point was that the possession of guns by the citizens can no longer measure up to the armaments of the government and right now we are strong enough to deter any foreign enemy. What we need is to insure that we can speak out, like you did when you wrote, on the Internet for as long as we can do that we will protect ourselves from a tyrannical government. I was using the example of the Second Amendment to show that at one time the threat to us was an insurrection or foreign invasion so we were given the right to bear arms. So now when the threat to us may be to limit our ability to speak freely and communicate with each other we should have an amendment that preserves our right to do so over the Internet. Thanks again.
Thanks for the reply, but I still don’t see why the Second Amendment needs to change to keep America free.
Military armaments may well exceed the armaments civilians are allowed to possess, but that doesn’t make the Second Amendment irrelevant even if you ascribe to the theory that the Amendment was only meant to maintain a citizen militia to oppose a tyrannical government.
The government can’t render a right obsolete because it fails to perform its own duties related to the right (ex. failing to maintain a citizen militia) Judge Thomas M. Cooley wrote about this more than a century ago. See “The General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United States of America”, 1880, pg 270-272 Section IV “The Right is General”
Also see http://mason.gmu.edu/~nlund/Pubs/GreenBagRev2dAmend.pdf which also makes this point to rebut legal scholars who adhere to the same idea you appear to adhere to, namely the Second Amendment is obsolete. See particularly the last two paragraphs on pg 103 that end on pg 104. The first para. in the Conclusion section is also notable.
Jason:
For every expert you can cite there are others who have an opposing view. You cannot equate the country the Founding Fathers were trying to create with the one that exists today. In my mind to do so is folly. My research convinces me the Second Amendment has not purpose in today’s society as written. If it read “the right of people to bear arms shall not be infringed” that would be one thing; but it has all these other words that people are trying to pretend do not appear there. As for the idea of militia that went out with the idea we should not have a standing army. Even Thomas Cooley lived in a different America.
The greatest threat to freedom today is preventing people from uttering their grievances. The only effective way to do this is through the Internet. My point is were the Founding Fathers to write a Second Amendment today it would preserve that right rather than the right to arms.
Matt, there are 200,000,000 guns in America owned by, let’s say, Fifty Million Sharpshooters. Now, a couple million gunmen in Vietnam bested the Hi Tech B-52s and Napalm of the Allies in the 1960s nd the French in the 1950s. In 1775-1776, Fifteen Thousand rifle/musket men from North Carolina to Vermont surrounded Boston and drove out Britsh legions/naval squadrons. With our inalienable right to bear arms and Fifty Million sharpshooters, we can capture the Tanks and Drones of a Government that turns against its own people and its founding documents. Afghan rebels withhand held and shoulder-fired small arms defeated the Soviet’s Hi Tech Helicopters, fighters and bombers. Militia meant then and now, homegrown volunteers. Every schoolchild should know how to handle fire, axes, archery, clubs, bats and small arms: capguns and bb guns. JUst in case. Also, who’d invade a country with two-hundred million persons armed, ready, locked and loaded? Don’t tread on the Second Amendent. It deters domestic and foreign enemies of the Constitution.
2. I wholeheartedly support your new Constitutional Amendment protecting every American citizen’s right to free and unfettered access to the Internet.
Bill:
Dream on – no group of citizens can stand up to the force of the Government that is even if you could get them interested enough to do so. Sugar Daddy has to just to threaten not to reload their bank accounts at the first of the month which means their money cards they earned for sitting around will not work and all will fall in line.
Soft, I say, soft. The majority of the nation are too soft. They enjoy the soft life and won’t get of the couch and endure hardship. No one went out on the streets to protest the Iraq war; no on goes out on the street to protest anything. Operation Wall Street failed because it had no message that appealed to the couch bums and gamers.
Too many in America believe they deserve something. They deserve it for being here and not for any other reason. We’ve been happy to foster that belief. We are on the way to becoming a nation of free loaders. Franklin said the first politicians gave us a Republic and wondered if we could keep it. We have managed to do so up to now but the insidiousness of the American life where we call upon less than 1% of the nation to defend and sacrifice for the rest of us is producing a nation of marshmallows.
Money interests manipulate media and their appetite to consolidate and control is never satiated. Any semblance of independence,in movies,TV networks ,Cable Stations and print outlets continues to disappear. The days when one thought that the airwaves were a matter of public domain are seen in the rear view mirror. Was truth, justice and the American way just a pipe dream conjured up to sell cereal. There is so much dough on the Internet that you can be sure that greed will use every trick in the book to take its liberty away from the citizens interested in freedom and fairness.
Hopalong:
I have to agree with your assessment. An article in the NY Times today on Barbara Walters talked about how when she first began on TV people thought she was too much into personalities and fluff to be taken seriously as a news anchor. 40 years later she is considered too serious to be on the network news which has become all about personalities and fluff. I have to think that the viewers of TV don’t represent the typical American but more and more I think we are losing citizens interested in freedom and fairness who are caught up in the non-serious news about such things as Prince William touring Long Island rather than the IRS targeting people or the Justice Department putting a chill into the press freedoms.
Might be the worst opinion I have ever read.
I’m sure the our fore fathers plans for the first amendment was not to protect groups like 2 Live Crew and had no clue they would be singing vulgar songs, but we protect that right and let our kids listen to music that glorifies rape and killings. The under lying problem is more than gun control by an already overbearing government.
I’m for background checks AND sensible gun control, but your option to remove the second amendment is the same as putting a bubble around a kid and then sending them to the real world with no life experience at 18…good luck.
I was/am a Marine and I don’t expect anyone to protect me or my family – including the government.
If you believe our government is transparent in everything it does you are a complete imbecile. Our government is there to manage our safety, not run our protect our lives, foreign or domestic. That’s our job as citizens.
I’m glad I can protect myself from a heavily medicated and drug abused America. I’m sure the fore fathers didn’t know about those potential threats either, but I’m sure glad they let me decide for myself.
Cris:
I’m not for taking the guns from anyone. My suggestion in no way diminishes the right of a person to defend herself. I don’t expect when push comes to shove you should have to run away. I believe that we have the right to guns especially in our homes (under proper lock down conditions) and also just for the fun of having them to shoot at targets and get Maggie’s drawers and all that good stuff.
I expect the Government to do its best to keep our country safe from foreign enemies and domestic foes. I don’t believe any one individual or group of individuals is or will ever be strong enough to stand up against the full force of our government forces. If people are arming themselves with the idea that some day they may need to fight of the government I believe they are delusional.
I agree the founders never expected the First Amendment to cover a lot of things that it has been deemed to cover by the courts. One thing it was suppose to protect is our ability to communicate our ideas freely. We are also expected to do this and to have people disagree with us and through that type of discourse we may or may not change our minds, one way or the other ever so slightly. WE must also know that although we may speak freely there are consequences to what one says like having someone say: “Might be the worst opinion I have ever read.” Your ability to write that to me is what my post is all about, our right to speak freely.
I understand the dangers of the Internet especially for parents in this age with all the temptations that it presents to young folk. I also see the Internet as the one means left where we can openly discuss ideas. I want to see it preserved in its present form. I want to be able to sit down, as you have, to express my opinion. If I see something or read something not to my liking especially if it is done by our government I want to be able to speak about it through the Internet without having some government censor looking at it first. That’s why I think it should be one of our basic rights.
Semper Fi. I too was/is a Marine probably long before you.
Matt
Perhaps, you could open a new thread on the interesting recent developments in the Tsarnaev case? Is it possible that Brendan Mess may have beefed on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, after being pinched on a minor drug bust?
Khalid:
I’m going to run a few posts on that matter. I’m not letting go of it. I’m trying to figure out how to make it easier for people not interested in some of the other stuff I may write to avoid being bothered by it. The murder of Brendan Mess and the two others will not bring much clarity to the matter now. It is like the indictment of Amy Bishop for murder when she was already under indictment in Alabama for three murders. It was done for show by the DA who was running for Congress; his successor was smart enough to drop it. If they connect Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the murder now it means nothing other than that back when the murder occurred the cops did a lousy job. Tamerlan cannot defend himself from any accusation that he did it.
The amendments to the U.S. Constitution do not give us any rights, but define rights that already existed so that no one in government would attempt to take them away. Are there any other rights that you propose to deny for any pretense, such as “efficiency”?
I suggest that you review Castle Rock v. Gonzales, which establishes that the police have nor responsibility to provide for your safety. You are responsible for your own safety and the safety of your family. The 2nd Amendment simply states that you will have the tools necessary to protect yourself and your family.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1976377/posts
The freedom of speech and the press in the 1st Amendment has been interpreted to be independent of the media in which they are expressed. However, the government support that paid for the research used in establishing the Internet, specifically the DARPA network, is not required for the Internet to continue to function.
Ed:
Thanks for writing. I agree with you on guns. I’m for people having guns to protect themselves as I said in my post. You are right that we don’t need the Second Amendment for us to have that right.
I’m suggesting that the Government, as we have seen other governments do. Right now I think Syria has shut down the internet and Iran limited its use during elections. China which has its thumb on everything prohibits certain discussions. Freedom of speech with a way to disseminate it is worthless. If I can only express myself in my office then what good it is? The Internet is intricately linked with our present day freedom of speech. It is the way most people now get the news. It is a way we can express ourselves and learn from others. We have no right to it but we should. That is what I propose that it be made sacred, something the government cannot touch in this country.
your going into the alex jones crazy stuff with this post.
Pat:
You didn’t read it closely enough. I’m for gun ownership and gun rights. I just think right now there is something more important and that is preserving the rights to have our free speech heard. Ed wrote that the amendments to the Constitution don’t give us any rights. I noted that the right to bear arms came from common law. We really don’t need the Second Amendment because we’re not going to lose our rights to bear arms.
What I am trying to suggest is that although we have the right to free speech, we don’t have the right to use the Internet if the Government gets tired of listening to us complain. It can shut it down. Then guys like you can’t tell me that I’m “going to the alex jones crazy stuff”. You want to be able to say that to anyone you disagree with. I’m just trying to preserve that right for you. Is that crazy?
Matt,
Great post. I’d suggest the federal government fully recognizes that it’s power is threatened by the power of the Internet. When the power of any government is threatened, it will naturally reward those who support its power and outlaw those who threaten its power. The Aaron Swartz and Barrett Brown line of prosecutions support the idea that those who merely unveil the truth about what is supposed to be a government “of the people, for the people” are a threat. Conversely, the subservience of the press in Boston exemplifies the rewards to be gained from supporting governmental power.
The “free press” has let this country down. The press is a business and are slave to to profits, not ideas. In the Bulger case, we see the power of federal law enforcement over the press. The potential profits to the struggling Globe of a source like AUSA Brian Kelly are immense. He alone can guarantee a reporter like Shelley Murphy a constant stream of stories. These stories are money to the Globe and to Shelley Murphy. The Globe sells Kelly’s stories and shares the profits with Murphy. Kelly is an extremely valuable and consistent revenue source. Murphy and the Globe become reliant on the revenues Kelly generates. As a business in fiscal crisis, the Globe and Murphy cannot afford to offend or differ with Kelly’s views. Similarly, the press cannot afford to express the ideas discussed on this blog. Although the ideas are powerful, they would offend the Globe’s reliable revenue sources and harm corporate profits. The fact that this blog remains unmentioned, and unmentionable, in the mainstream media speaks volumes of the media’s subservience to it’s government sources in federal law enforcement. Murphy and the Globe are, therefore, no longer representative of the Free Press envisioned by the founding fathers.
As Jefferson wrote, “The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”
This country will be going through some doctrinal growing pains for a while until our federal government adjusts to the specter of truly free speech available through the internet. Until they relent, some innocent people will spend a lot of time in federal jails.
It’s interesting to note that several Globe reporters follow Matt openly on Twitter. There may be other reporters who follow him anonymously, too. Matt’s blog has broken new ground on many facets of the Bulger case, not the least of which is the mysterious back seat shooter. The public facts strongly suggest that shooter is a current Top Echelon Informant. Still these reporters refuse to ask questions and prefer the lazy life of peddling the soundbites fed to them by the US Attorney’s Office. Today’s reporters are very loyal to their handlers on the waterfront.
Patty:
I’ll be talking about the back seat shooter tomorrow. I don’t really think it is much of a mystery.
What people should read are the descriptions given by Pat Nee and Kevin Weeks about the murder of John McIntyre which they wrote in their books when they though Whitey was never going to come back. After reading them I’d have to say that you’d be hard pressed not to think that the whole murder was carried out by Weeks and Nee alone in Nee’s brother’s house. I just don’t see Whitey having a motive to kill McIntyre but Nee surely did which he as much as admitted in his book.
I’ve been intensely studying NELCN and WH for almost a year now and though I reserve the right to come to different conclusions when all is said and done, Matt’s blog has had a tremendous impact on my thinking, if only for asking the simple but powerful question: why the hell do we think Bulger was so important in 1975? That question has profoundly changed how I view this whole saga and history. And then of course his much appreciated detailed lessons in history.
Jon:
Of course you should come to the conclusion that you think best. There are many unknowns here that will always remain unknown. The more you study the more informed you will be and perhaps come up with a better result than I do. Keep an open mind as you seem to be doing, tests you ideas, and arrive at the best conclusion you can.
Patty:
I couldn’t agree with you more. The mainstream media is not what envisioned when the idea of a free press was created. At that time people loved to kick around the government and other public office holders. Much of the free press was run by people with political leanings and it was sponsored by political parties. You knew whose side the papers were on just by the heading of the paper. Now the free press is very much subservient to and dependent upon the government. The Iraq war showed that when only one mainstream newspaper tried to view things a little differently (McClatchy) and found there was no basis for what the Administration was saying. Every other paper, and television news, parroted the government line, a tradition that was popular in Britain for many years. It became absurd at times to see retired generals who were working for private companies that would benefit from the war explaining on television why we needed the war.
Of course you can’t bite the hand that feeds you and when you depend on the government, or anyone else, for inside information you have compromised yourself a bit. That is why the Internet is so important and deserving of great protection for it is only through that can the people receive another view and examine the background of the person presenting the view so that a decision can be made upon the ability of a person to make those views known and what may be the biases and prejudices of the person. It also allows for people to comment anonymously but requires that the person in charge of the blog exercise diligence to make sure the comments are not libelous or do not slander other persons.
Violence is another way a person makes herself heard; it is more likely when the ability to express oneself freely is taken away. The creators of the Bill of Rights put free speech first because it is the bedrock upon which our nation stands. Now with the monetary influencing limiting some open discussion the only area left where people are really free to express their opinions is on the Internet. It is not guaranteed to us so it must be preserved.
Matt,
The only thing I would point out about the often-made point that the government has force sufficient to overwhelm an armed citizenry is that it seems to ignore the lessons of insurgency around the world and in history. There’s no way the Taliban or Al Qaeda could defeat the US in a face to face battle, but their military tactics of insurgency have proven their are quite capable of drawing ISAF into a protracted war. The same lessons are all over – Yemen, the Caucasus, Vietnam, and on and on. This is not to ignore the particular contingencies of those examples – the terrain in Afghanistan for example. But overwhelming force has quite commonly not led to overwhelming destruction of a less powerful, but well organized insurgency. Despite Obama’s claim that AQ is decimated, AQ is actually still quite strong – currently 10000 and probably more fighters with al Nusrah front in Syria alone. Never mind Afpak, northern Africa, etc.
So we should not forget the power and sustainability of insurgencies. Of course the right wing militias and the like are not going to start an insurgency in our country any time soon, but in the long if it ever came to that, it’s not so far fetched as it might seem.
Jon:
I agree with all that you say. The British learned that in Afghanistan a century or so ago and the Russian in the last century; the French learned that in Indo-China and Algeria. That’s why the war on terror will go on and we have to defend on our fine military and other police forces to protect us. I’m depending on them not that my neighbors have the right to bear arms.