Breitbart reports:
On December 21 Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)Mucking up government decrees is almost always a good thing.
introduced legislation to render any executive action on guns impotent by rendering it “advisory only.”
According to The Hill, Paul’s legislation would apply to “any execution action on gun control that either infringes upon congressional authority or potentially violates the Second Amendment.” Once labeled “advisory only,” the action would require Congressional passage before it could take effect. Paul’s legislation would also allow a “state official, member of Congress or person affected by an executive action on gun control to launch a civil lawsuit.”
The legislation is being “fast-tracked” through the Senate and is expected to be added to the Senate calendar and taken up once Senators return from recess.
Paul said, “In the United States, we do not have a king, but we do have a Constitution. We also have the Second Amendment, and I will fight tooth and nail to protect it.”
-RW
(ht Smaulgld)
Suppose it it late 1789, or early 1790, and tere is no Bill of Rights. Where is the power/authority granted to the FedGov to do anything about establishing a religion, preventing peaceable assemblies, abridging speech or to do anything about individual gun ownership? The Bill Of Rights grants no new powers to the FedGov, except for the 3rd amendment. The fight for individual rights must first be couched on the articles followed by the amendments.
ReplyDeleteThis is pretty much what Alexander Hamilton said in Federalist 84:
Delete"I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights."
This is one of those areas where both sides were right. Some people will take the presence of a BoR as meaning they are the ONLY rights you have, and other people would abuse the lack of an enumeration of rights to mean the government can do anything (and we see that all the time).
The compromise demanded by the anti-federalists were the 9th and 10th amendments:
9th: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
10th: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
It should be noted that in 1791 -- after the ratification of the Constitution -- Hamilton seemingly argued the opposite of Federalist 84. He argued that the Bank of the United States could be created through Implied Powers, and the General Welfare and Necessary and Proper clauses gave flexibility to the Constitution. Something specifically argued against by Madison in Federalist 41, where Madison stated:
"Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction."
The Federalist Papers where Hamilton's idea for countering the anti-federalists' objections to the Constitution.
Hamilton was a special kind of asswipe. Aaron Burr was a hero.
I am aware of some of the history. Thanks for the post. I read the Ant-Federalist too, and thought they were much closer to the truth. The misnamed Federalists were salesmen. The Ant-Federalists argued the text.
ReplyDeleteAs Patrick Henry said, I smelled a rat.