Anyone who has ever engaged with gun-grabbing left-wing hoplophobes has heard it—more than once. Well, [Blank] didn’t exist when they wrote the Constitution or the second amendment. [Blank] could be scary black rifles, flamethrowers, semi-automatic weapons, large-capacity magazines, anything.
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The idea is that the founders could not possibly foresee the weapons we have today.
What is ironic is that they didn’t have too because they could foresee people using the government to deny you your natural rights, which is why they didn’t care what [Blank] was. The point was not to allow private citizens to own “military-grade” it was to ensure they had the same or better weapons than the government.
This would guarantee their right to free speech, assembly, religion, trial by jury, and protection from things like illegal search and seizure.
The same people have been successfully whittling away at all our other rights, including number two, but with more than 400 million arms (more-or-less) in the hands of US citizens, the mountain of regulations seems as moot as their point. Open to debate, though that ‘right’ is increasingly fragile, which brings me to my point.
Is this the best response ever to someone claiming that [Blank] didn’t exist when they wrote the second amendment?
I think it’s close to one of the best. It plays the same tune on a different fiddle. Sort of like how I have begun to point out that I am an indigenous person. No more or less than so-called ‘native Americans’ who were born here but whose ancestors arrived from someplace else.
No ‘people’ began on the North American continent, and if you want to play word games, then I’m here to play along. It naturally follows then that if you think my rights should be denied because some vehicle of them (like, say, the internet) didn’t exist when the Constitution was written, then they can’t possibly apply to you for the same reason.
But they do.
Because what did exist, and is the reason the Constitution applies now as much as it did when written, are people looking to use the force of government to deny the rights of others. Even in the name of things like public health.
Right before our eyes. And they are getting away with it. That has to stop.
