{"id":66717,"date":"2021-04-11T14:18:53","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T19:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=66717"},"modified":"2021-04-11T14:18:53","modified_gmt":"2021-04-11T19:18:53","slug":"66717","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=66717","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Biden\u2019s planned gun control actions do not pass muster<\/a><\/p>\n

On Thursday, in a Rose Garden statement, Biden announced that he\u2019s going to take myriad executive actions, all purporting to save Americans from gun violence. In fact, as is almost invariably true for leftists, just about everything he said was a lie,\u00a0including \u201cand\u201d and \u201cthe.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0In an epic segment on his show, Tucker Carlson reveals that the truth behind Biden\u2019s lies is that he will disarm law-abiding Americans who oppose his political agenda. The purpose of this post is to show that, as a purely legal matter, he lacks the authority to carry out any of his threats.<\/p>\n

The Second Amendment states simply:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Supreme Court, in 2008\u2019s\u00a0District of Columbia v. Heller<\/a><\/em>, gives a masterful disquisition about the law and history behind the Second Amendment\u2019s language. Suffice to say that we are all the militia and that the government has only the most limited power to interfere with our right to keep and bear arms. Rifles, even if they have cool attachments, are still \u201carms.\u201d<\/p>\n

While there are rights\u00a0as\u00a0<\/em>fundamental as the Second Amendment \u2013 namely the other enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights \u2013 there are no rights that are\u00a0more<\/em> fundamental. Indeed, the Second Amendment is unique in have an entire amendment dedicated to it. The others are portmanteau amendments that gather several related doctrines under a single heading.<\/p>\n

At this point, it\u2019s important to point out that the Bill of Rights is not a set of liberties that the government graciously grants to the People. (I have capitalized \u201cPeople\u201d in this context because I\u2019m using it in its constitutional sense of \u201cWe the People.\u201d) If the government gives something to the People, it\u2019s merely a privilege. When it comes to privileges, the government can dole them out and take them away again.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the People have \u201cunalienable rights<\/a>\u201d because they came from the Creator \u2013 that is, whether you\u2019re religious or not, they came from a source\u00a0greater than<\/em>\u00a0government.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It is true, however, as\u00a0Biden said<\/a>\u00a0in one of his few accurate statements, \u201cno amendment is absolute.\u201d Thus, the People have graciously allowed the government to impose some limitations on their constitutional rights, but those limitations must benefit the People, not the government. The benefit can accrue to the government only insofar as it is a means to protect or support the People.<\/p>\n

To determine that benefit, the Supreme Court has held that, when the government infringes on fundamental rights, its action must pass a standard called \u201cstrict scrutiny.\u201d The left\u2019s beloved\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>\u00a0contains the most trenchant and best-known articulation of that standard. In that case, after concluding that the Constitution included an unwritten \u2013 but now constitutionally protected \u2013 right to privacy, the Court explained how limited the government\u2019s power was to infringe on that right:<\/p>\n

Where certain \u201cfundamental rights\u201d are involved, the Court has held that regulation limiting these rights may be justified only by a \u201ccompelling state interest,\u201d\u00a0Kramer v. Union Free School District<\/em>, 395 U.S. 621, 627 (1969);\u00a0Shapiro v. Thompson<\/em>, 394 U.S. 618, 634 (1969),\u00a0Sherbert v. Verner<\/em>, 374 U.S. 398, 406 (1963), and that legislative enactments must be narrowly drawn to express only the legitimate state interests at stake.\u00a0Griswold v. Connecticut<\/em>, 381 U.S., at 485;\u00a0Aptheker v. Secretary of State<\/em>, 378 U.S. 500, 508 (1964);\u00a0Cantwell v. Connecticut<\/em>, 310 U.S. 296, 307-308 (1940);\u00a0see Eisenstadt v. Baird<\/em>, 405 U.S., at 460, 463-464.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Roe v. Wade<\/em>, 410 U.S. 113, 155-56 (1973).<\/p>\n

And therein lies the most unique attribute of the Second Amendment: It is the only stated right that enables the People to remind the government about the almost complete inviolability of the other rights. Without the Second Amendment, the other parts of the Bill of Rights are merely wishes and suggestions.<\/p>\n

Now that I have (I hope) laid down the operating principles, I can make the case that Biden\u2019s Executive Order \u2013 which is the weakest form of action since the president cannot make laws \u2013 fails to meet the strict scrutiny standard. Or even better, Tucker Carlson can make that case.<\/p>\n

As Carlson pointed out, despite all his talk of gun violence, nothing in Biden\u2019s Executive Order addresses gun violence. Instead, the entire order is aimed at disarming those people who are most law-abiding and who believe most strongly that government must be constrained from unduly infringing upon the People\u2019s inherent rights:<\/p>\n

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Once you appreciate that Biden\u2019s Executive Order does nothing to affect gun violence and everything to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans, you can appreciate that it doesn\u2019t come close to meeting the strict scrutiny that all government actions must face when they impinge on explicitly expressed constitutional rights.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biden\u2019s planned gun control actions do not pass muster On Thursday, in a Rose Garden statement, Biden announced that he\u2019s going to take myriad executive actions, all purporting to save Americans from gun violence. In fact, as is almost invariably true for leftists, just about everything he said was a lie,\u00a0including \u201cand\u201d and \u201cthe.\u201d\u00a0In an … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66718,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66717\/revisions\/66718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}