Second Amendment is defunct

Friday, November 18, 2011

To the Editor:

Jesse McIlwain of Nashua has recently been charged with possession of homemade bombs. What’s wrong with that?

The Second Amendment says: “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.”

Bombs are an “arm,” so the right to own bombs should be constitutionally protected. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion for District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) said civilian weaponry is necessary to “assure the existence of a ‘citizens’ militia’ as a safeguard against tyranny.”

By this light, bombs are necessary because firearms alone are useless to confront the modern national-defense state, but the Supreme Court will never rule that ordinary citizens have the right to keep and bear bombs or other sophisticated weaponry because they’re too dangerous.

The Second Amendment is defunct.

A militia isn’t necessary to defend a state. That’s why there isn’t one. We have the Pentagon. Restricted to firearms, a militia would be less effective against tyranny than protest demonstrations. The Arab Spring proved that.

No state is free. They’re all subject to the United States. The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause says no state can make a law to contravene constitutional federal law. States can’t leave the nation to become new countries. The United States has constitutional power to prevent secession in order to perform its obligation under Article IV, Section 4. 1869’s Texas v. White decision also ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional by finding that the Union is perpetual.

The Second Amendment says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but existing regulations regarding how a right is exercised are infringements. Necessary for public safety, the infringements proceed. Violating the Second Amendment, they’re ruled constitutional through legalistic prestidigitation.

Justice Scalia is mistaken. In his opinion, Scalia neglected to define what separated tyranny from the legitimate application of force behind law. All law is tyranny in the minds of the unruly. Anyone carrying out the amendment’s alleged purpose to confront tyranny is a menace to domestic security.

If Scalia is right, then Mr. McIlwain should be considered innocent of wrongdoing. Any restriction of his right to keep and bear an arm effective to confront tyranny is an infringement. By such logic, citizens should be able to own rocket-propelled grenades, flamethrowers and shoulder-fired missiles when guns alone won’t be effective.

Is the District of Columbia restrained by the thought of an armed and angry citizenry? No, and we’re safer for it. Attacking the government isn’t a right, and no one should endanger his neighbors. That’s why it was wrong of Mr. McIlwain to violate the law.

STEPHEN D. CLARK

Merrimack