DOJ Memo: 2nd Amendment is absolutely Individual Right

The 'Brady Center' comes out in favour of police state. CNSNews | December 21, 2004 - By Jeff Johnson

The U.S. Department of Justice has declared that the Second Amendment explicitly recognizes the right of individual Americans to own and carry firearms. Gun rights advocates call the statement a "good first step" but cautioned that it is not the end of the gun control debate.

The "Memorandum Opinion for the Attorney General" released on the Internet last week is entitled " Whether the Second Amendment Secures an Individual Right. "

The 103 page report, with 437 footnotes, concluded that, "... the Second Amendment secures a personal right of individuals, not a collective right that may only be invoked by a State or a quasi-collective right restricted to those persons who serve in organized militia units."

That conclusion is based, according to the authors, "... on the Amendment's text, as commonly understood at the time of its adoption and interpreted in light of other provisions of the Constitution and the Amendment's historical antecedents."

The Aug. 24 memorandum stated that it did not consider the "substance" of the individual right to own and carry firearms or the legitimacy of government attempts to limit the right. The document also declared that the authors were not calling into question the constitutionality of any particular limitations on owning, carrying or using firearms.

Joe Waldron, executive of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), told Cybercast News Service that the memorandum is "a good start, a good first step.

"What this does," Waldron explained, "is it puts the federal government -- the U.S. Justice Department -- which is the nation's chief law enforcement agency, on record as recognizing that the Second Amendment , without question, is intended to apply to individuals and not to collective organizations such as the National Guard or any kind of lesser militia."

The memo does not protect individuals from being prosecuted under existing gun laws, Waldron acknowledged, but he said it does require a fundamental change in how the government approaches those cases.

"It changes the courts' view of the issue and it applies a stricter standard of scrutiny as to whether or not a given law does infringe on an individual's constitutional rights," Waldron said. "They have to look at it from a civil rights perspective now instead of just [whether] the individual violated a given law."

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence did not return calls seeking comment on the Justice Department's determination, but the organization has spoken out against the "individual rights" interpretation of the Second Amendment frequently in the past, including in an amicus brief filed in federal court in 1999.

"The fact that militia members are no longer required to supply their own arms when reporting for service has depleted the Second Amendment of most of its vitality," the Brady Center stated. "And, in fact, the Second Amendment remains relevant today because the rights it protects are held by the National Guard."

Dennis Henigan, director of the Brady Center's Legal Action Project, also spoke against the "individual rights" interpretation of the Second Amendment at James Madison University in 2002.

"Both the language and history of the Second Amendment show that its subject matter was not individual rights," Henigan said, "but rather the distribution of military power in society between the states and the federal government."

The Brady Center's argument was rejected by the Justice Department.

"A 'right of the people' is ordinarily and most naturally a right of
individuals, not of a State and not merely of those serving the State as militiamen. The phrase 'keep arms' at the time of the Founding usually indicated the private ownership and retention of arms by individuals as individuals, not the stockpiling of arms by a government or its soldiers, and the phrase certainly had that meaning when used in connection with a 'right of the people,'" the Justice Department report stated.

"Moreover, the Second Amendment appears in the Bill of Rights amid amendments securing numerous individual rights, a placement that makes it likely that the right of the people to keep and bear arms likewise belongs to individuals," the document continued.

Waldron expects the opinion to be introduced in support of the "individual rights" of gun owners in several cases currently working their way through the federal courts. His hope is that one of those cases will reach the Supreme Court.

"Is this the end, is this the Omega? Absolutely not," Waldron said. "The Omega will come when the Supreme Court begins to overturn selected gun control laws based on the fact that they do infringe upon the individual right protected in the Constitution."

[However all this will be in turn destroyed when the UN's 'Freedom from War' doctrine is passed as supreme Law in all countries, making private ownership of firearms akin to an 'act of terrorism'.]

http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/doj_memo_2nd_amendment_is_right.htm

Idaho Town Asks Residents to Own Guns

Gun Owners of America website

John McCain Is A Liberal Gun Grabber - Chuck Baldwin, February 25, 2008
The last thing we need is another liberal neocon in the White House.
If the Presidency of George W. Bush proved anything, it proved the hazard of
electing phony Republican conservatives. At least one is able to clearly see
a liberal for what he or she is when they have a "D" behind their name. But
put an "R" behind the name and suddenly their liberal, Big-Government,
anti-freedom agenda is barely recognized, which makes a liberal Republican
much more dangerous than a liberal Democrat.

Let me say it straight out: a John McCain Presidency would be far
worse than a Barack Obama Presidency. With a Democrat in the White House,
conservatives and Christians suddenly find their principles and are able to
offer resistance. Put a Republican in the Oval Office, however, and those
same people become blind, deaf, and dumb to most any principle they profess.
 

Veterans Disarmament Act To Bar Vets From Owning Guns - Sept 12/2007
The Veterans Disarmament Act -- which has already passed the House -- would place any veteran who has ever been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the federal gun ban list. [full report]

Above photo shows police hiding behind trees as lone

shooter picked off dozens of [recently] disarmed students.

Campus Gun Ban Disarmed Virginia Victims
VA Tech has "blood on its hands" as gun control advocates milk tragic events

A gun ban recently enforced by Virginia Tech campus prevented over thirty victims

of today's mass shooting from defending themselves against the killer, and yet gun

control advocates are already politicizing this morning's tragic events to pull the l

ever for mass gun control.

Virginia is a concealed carry state and yet Virginia Tech campus

recently enforced a policy prohibiting "unauthorized possession, storage or

control" of firearms on campus.

According to gun rights activists such as Aaron Zelman of Jews For The

Preservation of Firearms, VA Tech has "blood on its hands" for disarming the

victims and other students who could potentially have stopped the killer in his

tracks in the three hour time period he was allowed to carry out his rampage by

cowardly police who hid behind trees as the carnage ensued.

Reuters is already disseminating the talking points for an imminent propaganda

coup against the Second Amendment, and yet it was the stripping of that right to

bear arms that ensured today's death toll represents the deadliest mass shooting

in U.S. history.

"Advocates of wider gun controls said the availability of guns in the United States

had made it easier for people to commit murder everywhere, including in schools

and colleges," reports Reuters, with no mention of the fact that had the victims

been allowed to exercise their concealed carry rights, the casualty figures may

have been far lower.

Students at VA Tech are already slamming the pathetic response on behalf of the

police, who locked down the school and sat back as the killer was able to carefully

pick off his targets.

"What happened today this was ridiculous. And I don't know what happened or

what was going through this guy's mind," student Jason Piatt told CNN. "But I'm

pretty outraged and I'll say on the record I'm pretty outraged that someone died

in a shooting in a dorm at 7 o'clock in the morning and the first e-mail about it —

no mention of locking down campus, no mention of canceling classes — they

just mention that they're investigating a shooting two hours later at 9:22."

He added: "That's pretty ridiculous and meanwhile, while they're sending out that

e-mail, 22 more people got killed."

Gun Control Law Helped Campus Killer
Yet disarmament lobby and establishment media exploit tragedy to disarm more potential victims

Prison Planet | April 17, 2007  Paul Joseph Watson

In January 2002, a student at the Virginia Appalachian School of Law, Peter Odighizuwa, shot three people dead before other students were able to retrieve guns from their cars and put an end to the carnage before there was more bloodshed. Over thirty victims at VA Tech yesterday were denied that right as a result of a campus gun control law that helped the shooter pick off his targets at will.

A bill in the Virginia legislature last year that would have allowed students with concealed weapons permits to carry their guns at schools was killed, with VA Tech spokesman Larry Hincker heralding the move as action that would "help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus." How hollow those words sound now in light of eyewitness reports of how victims had to cower under desks as the killer calmly approached, their only means of defense throwing chairs or risking their lives by escaping out of high-rise windows.

"Isn't it interesting that Utah and Oregon are the only two states that allows faculty to carry guns on campus. And isn't it interesting that you haven't read about any school or university shootings in Utah or Oregon? Why not? Because criminals don't like having their victims shoot back at them," Gun Owners of America's Larry Pratt said yesterday. "That's why the American people want an end to this ineffective gun ban."

85% of Americans support the right of a principle or a teacher to have instant access to a safely stored firearm in order to defend the lives of students and prevent a school massacre, but a drive is already underway to disarm more victims and grease the skids for more horrors similar to what unfolded yesterday.

The talking points have already been disseminated and the disarmament lobby and the establishment media is doing it's best to exploit yesterday's tragedy to push for gun control.

AFP led the way , writing that "Buying a handgun or rifle is relatively easy in Virginia," before any details of where the killer acquired his weapons have even been released.

The Los Angeles Times lauded the fact that the NRA are still silent on the massacre, claiming that "Supporters of gun rights generally kept their heads down," which is completely untrue. Everyone besides the NRA immediately went on the offensive , pointing out the fact that campus gun control policies directly disarmed the victims. The NRA at its apex is a co-opted organization, and routinely backs down when key gun control debates arise.

Gun Owners of America , the only major no compromise 2nd Amendment group in America, issued a press release in which its President Larry Pratt stated,"All the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last ten years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen -- a potential victim -- had a gun."

"The latest school shooting demands an immediate end to the gun-free zone law which leaves the nation's schools at the mercy of madmen. It is irresponsibly dangerous to tell citizens that they may not have guns at schools. The Virginia Tech shooting shows that killers have no concern about a gun ban when murder is in their hearts."

Questions linger about the massacre itself, with furious students blaming a delayed, incompetent and cowardly response from police for the over two hour gap between the first and second shootings before they were warned.

The identity of the killer has not yet been released, but quite what motivated a man whose girlfriend cheated on him to slaughter over thirty other innocent people is very suspicious. Rumors that two shooters were involved have still not been ruled out. Students of numerology will be all too aware of the connotations attached to the fact that there were 33 victims in all. The massacre occurred three days short of the anniversaries of Waco and Ruby Ridge and four days short of the 1999 Columbine shootings.

Timeline: Tragedy unfolds at Virginia Tech - BBC

Virginia Tech Shooting -- Gun Bans Are The Problem, Not The Solution

Armed Men Terrorize School
Michigan raid part of unfolding agenda to mould schools into prisons and students into

obedient slaves

Internal Link > RCMP storm High Schools

Think of the right to bear arms this way.... A government is a potential assailant.... and there is no principled argument by which a potential assailant could regulate or restrict the ability of a (potential) victim to protect themselves. - BCRevolution

Men given hundreds in cash to testify against lawful sale of guns at US gun shows...

Obama's Gun Ban List Is Out - March 12/09 Rense.com
 

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