 |
|
||||||
California has done it again. It has set a new standard for contempt of constitutional government and individual freedom. This time it's the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has upheld California's so-called "assault weapons" ban in the case Silveira v. Lockyer. The court declared that the Bill of Rights' Second Amendment protects the people's right not to own firearms, but to maintain a state militia.
This may come as a surprise to most Americans. According to recent ABC News and Zogby polls, about 75% of the population think the Second Amendment means just what it says — that the right to keep and bear arms is possessed by people, not states. This was the settled meaning of the Second Amendment until twentieth century progressive liberal theory began to erode the entire notion of individual rights.
But California is not like most of America. When the nation went for a Republican congressional majority in last month's election, Californians stayed solidly Democratic. While most other states have relaxed their restrictions on responsible gun owners, California has tightened the screws.
Some of California's legal attacks on gun owners have been gratuitously nasty. For example, the "assault weapon" ban at issue in Silveira outlawed a youth Olympic shooting team's competition guns. The bill's author, Senator Don Perata, advised the young athletes to get out of California.
Still, until now times have been tough for Second Amendment revisionists. Late last year the Fifth Circuit Court ruled just the opposite of the Ninth — that the Second Amendment does indeed affirm an individual right to own firearms. Then Attorney General Ashcroft issued a formal statement agreeing with that interpretation, dismaying gun grabbers everywhere.
As if that weren't enough, Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles resigned in disgrace after his award-winning book was exposed as a fraud. A hero to gun control advocates, Bellesiles had rewritten colonial American history to downplay the role of private gun ownership.
Eerily, the Ninth Circuit Court's opinion reaches toward a similar goal. The court did not resort to Bellesiles' cheap fabrications. But by design it ignored the voluminous and well-documented writings of the framers of the Constitution and numerous scholars since their time. That record establishes beyond any doubt that the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of individual Americans to own firearms.
As 19th century constitutional scholar William Rawle put it, "No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious [i.e., shameful] attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature." Rawle's prediction was dead-on. California's legislature promises to grow even more flagitious with the help of the Ninth Circuit Court. Gun owners in California can soon expect more laws turning them into criminals for exercising what most Americans think is a natural right.
The Ninth Circuit Court has preached a brand of in-your-face progressivism that outrages even Californians. Its most recent proclamation that the words "under God" render the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional brought such a storm of protest that the court stayed its own order. For years it has obstructed California death penalty sentences, drawing rebuke from the Supreme Court and prolonging the suffering of victims' families.
The Ninth Circuit's hubris is well known — it is reversed far more often than any of the other 12 federal appellate courts. It comes as no surprise that the court's Judge Stephen Reinhardt, author of the Silveira decision, was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court 11 times in one term.
In a telling footnote Judge Reinhardt effuses about "granting to the national government the power necessary to operate effectively and to promote the social compact that underlies American democracy." Judge Reinhardt doesn't seem to know that under the social compact theory, as understood by the American founders, no individual could ever relinquish the fundamental right to self-defense. But then he never has been concerned with what the authors of the Constitution actually said or believed. This activist judge wants California and the nation to "progress" toward his vision of a perfectly engineered society. Formerly he aspired to rewrite California laws. Now he has rewritten the Constitution.
The Constitution's framers were only too aware of the excesses of government. They saw their task as carefully limiting the powers of the federal government, giving as much power as possible to the states and to the people themselves. The Ninth Circuit Court's opinion is a great step backward in history, making us more like subjects of King George than citizens of a democracy. Let us hope that Californians will come to their senses and rescue constitutional government from extinction.
Go to:
Download Adobe Acrobat for PDF Files
