Minnesota has been made a hot mess by irresponsible, unresponsive and self-serving leadership, and a 150 year-old Supreme Court decision addresses several issues related to it, including our Right to Keep and Bear Arms. It may hold the key to its resolution and understanding.
In U S v. CRUIKSHANK, 92 U.S. 542 (1875), the Court found that the First Amendment right to assembly “was not intended to limit the powers of the State governments in respect to their own citizens, but to operate upon the National Government alone,” thus “for their protection in its enjoyment … the people must look to the States. The power for that purpose was originally placed there, and it has never been surrendered to the United States”.
The ruling said that all U.S. citizens are subject to two governments, their state government and the other the national government, and then defined the scope of each:
The Government of the United States, although it is, within the scope of its powers, supreme and beyond the States, can neither grant nor secure to its citizens rights or privileges which are not expressly or by implication placed under its jurisdiction. All that cannot be so granted or secured are left to the exclusive protection of the States.
In addition the Justices held that the Second Amendment restricts only the powers of the national government, and that it does not restrict private citizens from denying other citizens the right to keep and bear arms, or any other right in the Bill of Rights. The Justices held that the right of the people to keep and bear arms exists, and that it is a right that exists without the Constitution granting such a right, by stating “Neither is it [the right to keep and bear arms] in any manner dependent upon that instrument [the Constitution] for its existence.” Their ruling was that citizens must look to “municipal legislation” when other citizens deprive them of such rights rather than the Constitution.
The right there specified is that of “bearing arms for a lawful purpose.” This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed, but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow citizens of the rights it recognizes, to what is called, in The City of New York v. Miln, 11 Pet. 139, the “powers which relate to merely municipal legislation, or what was, perhaps, more properly called internal police,” “not surrendered or restrained” by the Constitution of the United States.
The Court also ruled that the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses applied only to state action, and not to actions of individuals: “The fourteenth amendment prohibits a State from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; but this adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another.”
“The rights of life and personal liberty are natural rights of man. ‘To secure these rights,’ says the Declaration of Independence, ‘governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ The very highest duty of the States, when they entered into the Union under the Constitution, was to protect all persons within their boundaries in the enjoyment of these 'unalienable rights with which they were endowed by their Creator.’ Sovereignty, for this purpose, rests alone with the States. It is no more the duty or within the power of the United States to punish for a conspiracy to falsely imprison or murder within a State, than it would be to punish for false imprisonment or murder itself.” U S v. CRUIKSHANK, 92 U.S. 542 (1875)
U.S. v Cruikshank is often quoted as a pro-2A decision and on the surface it is. But as they say, “The Devil s in the details!”
Here we have one of the three branches of government placing a subtle and arbitrary limit on the phrase “… shall not be infringed” by intimating that infringement is an action barred to Congress. It is the 1st Amendment that begins, “Congress shall make no law …”, not the 2nd Amendment. By improperly stating that only ‘Congress’ shall not infringe on that Right, the Court simultaneously reserved ITS Right to decide what ‘infringement’ is and inserted ‘government’ as the legal arbiter of that Right.
The courts’ treatment of this Right as a Civil Right, I contend, is an improper characterization, and it should rightfully be treated as a Natural Law Human Right, as indicated by the use of the word “unalienable” instead of “inalienable” to describe the Human Rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” defined in a paragraph above. Why? The answer has been right in front of us since July 4th, 1776.
Read The Declaration of Independence. Not only is it a ‘declaration’ of the complaints against the Crown and a justification for going to war against King George lll’s tyrannical rule, it is also recognized as the greatest statement on the Rights of Man ever written AND, in its first two paragraphs, details the founding principle of Natural Law on which our Constitutionally-limited Representative Republic and our equal Rights as free, self-governing individuals are based. Natural Law is the mechanism our patriot founders used to SECURE our Rights “for themselves and their posterity” – for US.- for all time, not grant government the power to limit those Rights which the Courts have already held to be ‘individual Rights’.
The principles expressed in the Declaration are an outline for those principles of government incorporated in the design of our Constitution. 30,000 patriots lost their lives, businesses, homes and fortunes in pursuit of those principles of freedom expressed in it as objections to tyranny, that the source of our Rights is that they are a gift from the Creator - not government – … that they equally exist in all of us and are UNALIENABLE: Again, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness – That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
I stress the use of the word ‘unalienable’ – not ‘inalienable’. The two words have separate and distinct LEGAL definitions in Law Dictionaries especially applicable in this case because the Declaration is a legal document and, realizing this, the Committee on the Declaration of the Continental Congress specifically changed ‘inalienable’ to ‘unalienable’ in the final draft.
UNALIENABLE.
The state of a thing or right which cannot be sold.
Things which are not in commerce, as public roads, are in their nature unalienable. Some things are unalienable, in consequence of particular provisions in the law forbidding their sale or transfer, as pensions granted by the government. The natural rights of life and liberty are UNALIENABLE. Bouviers Law Dictionary 1856 Edition
“Unalienable: incapable of being alienated, that is, sold and transferred.” Black’s Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition, page 1523:
There are no circumstances listed in the definition that would lead one to conclude anything except that unalienable Rights cannot under any circumstances be sold and/or transferred in any way. They are absolute Rights, beyond the reach of government..
“Inalienable Rights“, in contrast, are Civil Rights which are not capable of being surrendered or transferred without the consent of the one possessing such rights**.**The SCOTUS confirmed this in Morrison v. State, Mo. App., 252 S.W.2d 97, 101. Your vote to elect your government representatives may be considered your consent.
Since having the Human Right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is in fact an unalienable Right (having the Right to control your own Life and fulfill your destiny), it is made worthless by government usurping the power to regulate the instruments with which the individual can provide the effective level of self-defense necessary to preserve his/her life. Self-defense has been recognized by ALL civilizations throughout history as the single defense against a charge of murder that, once upheld by a court of law or by a jury, results in total exoneration of the accused.
The legal ownership, possession and use of firearms is the 21st Century equivalent of the 12th Century Long Bow, a weapon whose possession by serfs and vassals was forbidden by the King because of its long range and effectiveness. Sound familiar?
This does not preclude, however, the necessity for the individual to employ Common Sense and good judgement in the exercise of this Right. Nor does it exist as a Right in those individuals who assert it if/when they are breaking the law, helping others to do the same or standing in opposition to law enforcement.
The only way to settle this is to assert the 2nd Amendment’s status as a fundamental, unalienable, Natural Law Right enabling the universal Right of Self-Defense and to get government to release its stranglehold ability to regulate the effectiveness of that defense.
Employing the 2nd Amendment in that Natural Law form is not without limits. Those limits are found in the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …”. One cannot indiscriminately use self-defense of one’s life, family or any innocent life in need of protection as a justification if in that use one endangers, injures or takes the life of another innocent individual. Accepting personal responsibility for ones actions is the soul of freedom, making its existence possible and securing it for the future.
Practice, make sure your aim is true and know you are responsible for any damage done by any projectiles fired by you … even in a defensive scenario.
