Videos

The Young Turks Rebuttal: The Second Amendment

December 23, 2015

It's that time of year again. Or month. Day? Someone with a camera and a microphone has an opinion on the Second Amendment, which is about all it takes these days to spew idiocy all over the internet. The latest is Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks, a YouTube Channel with 2.4 million subscribers. Cenk preached to his audience all the classical anti-Second Amendment talking points. He feathered in a couple of facts, but it's mostly an Oregon Trail of ox feces. Time for my rebuttal...

Look it, I get it, facts are hard for people who hate facts. After this, I'm starting an awareness campaign for facts. Because their lives matter. Here's the thing, just speaking your opinion in a semi-athoratarian tone isn't the same as the truth. I get it, it's confusing when leftists sound knowledgable. In 2008, a junior senator from Illinois had the tone down to a science. But tones and teleprompter aside, you need actual facts to be factual.

So Merry Christmas. Here's a crap ton of them. Don't ever say I didn't get you anything nice.

Marque and Reprisal

Madison and the Letter of Marque and Reprisal:

During the Philadelphia summer of 1787, James Madison said that war “has the tendency to render the head too large for the body.” Madison concluded, “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.” Madison was not alone in this belief.

The argument of Madison and others illustrated the potential for letters of marque and reprisal to be used as an alternative. The letters themselves would allow for privateers (vessels which were equipped and commissioned by private individuals) to attack and capture enemy vessels, confiscate property, or engage in military hostilities. The letters served and a beneficial way to augment naval forces and produced positive results in the early stages of the republic.

Marque and Reprisal Clause explained by The Heritage Foundation.

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008 Supreme Court Case on Gun Control)

District of Columbia v. Heller-Case Brief Summary. Here are some points...

RULING: The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

This interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms-bearing rights adopted in state constitutions immediately preceding and following the Second Amendment. Furthermore, the drafting history reveals three proposals that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms. Interpretation of the Second Amendment by scholars, courts, and legislators from ratification through the late 19th century also supports the Court’s interpretation.
No precedent forecloses this interpretation. United States v. Miller limits the type of weapons to which the right applies to those in common use for lawful purposes, but does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes.

Founding Fathers On the Second Amendment

These quotations from TheFederalistPapers.org

George Washington:

“A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent on others for essential, particularly for military, supplies.” – Speech in the United States Congress, January 8, 1790; George Washington: A Collection, compiled and edited by W.B. Allen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988), Chapter 11

George Mason, co-author of the Second Amendment:

“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” – Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 14, 1778
“That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” – Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776

Samuel Adams:

“And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.” – Debates of the Massachusetts Convention of February 6, 1788; Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1788 (Pierce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850)

Thomas Jefferson:

“No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands].” – Proposed Constitution for Virginia – Fair Copy, Section IV: Rights, Private and Public, June 1776; The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition, Editor: Paul Leicester Ford, (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5); Vol. 2