A most impressive letter on the 2nd Amendment from a trial attorney, who isn’t so arrogant to call himself a “Constitutional Scholar”…but maybe he should!
Dear Folks,
I am writing this letter to every elected official for whom I believe I am a constituent- on both a state and federal level. During the near constant anti-gun bombardment we have all been forced to endure since Sandy Hook, a recurring question posed by the media and anti-gun politicians has been: “Why do regular citizens need military-style assault weapons”? Indeed, the President has stated that he does not believe that citizens should own battle rifles at all. The purpose of this message is to respectfully remind you why the Second Amendment exists and point out a few modern day, real-time examples of why it is no less relevant and necessary in 2013 than it was in 1776.
By way of background, I am a trial attorney in Portland, Oregon. I am married, have three small children, and am a founder and co-owner of my law firm. While I would not be so arrogant as to call myself a “Constitutional scholar”, I have done extensive reading on Constitutional history and most of the major Constitutional case law from the United States Supreme Court. I am a member of the Oregon State Bar and the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States.
First, the Second Amendment does not protect the citizens’ right to hunt. Even a cursory reading on the subject makes it explicitly clear that the framers intended the provision as a guarantee that the citizenry would be sufficiently armed to resist a tyrannical government. The fact that such an uprising has not been necessary since the Revolution is no reason to jettison our best and only real protection for keeping our country free and our liberties secure. It is hard to believe that, given the current approval ratings for politicians, any American is ready to guarantee that they would never need to resist a government run amok. For those who claim a citizenry is no match for a modern army (thereby no longer having any use for “battle rifles”), I encourage you to examine some recent history, including the Afghans running out the Russian military, or the extreme difficulty our military has had in that region in the past decade.
After the Sandy Hook incident, staff writer Steve Duin of the Oregonian newspaper wrote a series of gun-bashing articles, the kind that have been typical from nearly every “mainstream” news outlet. In one of his rants, Mr. Duin wrote, in apparent amazement, that some people have the audacity to suggest that the Second Amendment was written to protect citizens from our own government:
Over the course of 15 thought-provoking minutes, Ed Dean — one of a half-dozen guys at the Grant Pass gun dealer’s booth — argued that the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Bill of Rights “to protect you not only from the criminal element but from the government.”
Our government, mind you. A famous breeding ground, since 1776, of despots and jack-booted thugs. I would encourage Mr. Duin and you to learn from some history on “gun control”. Tyrants always institute gun control prior to democide: 1911 Gun control instituted in Turkey, 1.5 million unarmed Armenians massacred. 1938, Germany expanded its gun control and then proceeded to kill 13 million people. In the 1920′s, the USSR and China instituted gun control and proceeded to massacre 20 million, each. 1991, the United Nations in Bosnia instituted gun control. 1995, UN “troops” watched as 7,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys were slaughtered. 1956, Cambodia instituted gun control. By 1974, at least one million unarmed Cambodians were slaughtered. In Rwanda, Darfur, and Sudan, millions of unarmed civilians have been massacred. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” It would seem that Mr. Duin, like many of his propagandist colleagues, believes that those who insist on preserving and protecting our rights against oppressive government should be wearing aluminum hats. I would now point to several recent examples from the Obama administration alone, that typify exactly why millions of Americans are and should remain suspicious of their government, and why we will never voluntarily give up our guns, or submit to incremental steps designed to facilitate future confiscation or restriction.
1. The Obama administration’s Justice Department killed dozens, and perhaps hundreds, (including Americans) with Operation “Fast and Furious”
It is obvious that the traffic of illegal firearms is a problem. That is why Eric Holder and his henchmen in the Obama Justice Department should be prosecuted for sending thousands of illegal guns into Mexico, knowing they would be used to kill. For those of you who may not remember,
shortly after taking office in 2008, Obama and Mr. Holder tried unconvincingly to suggest to the American people that gun control in the U.S. was necessary because our guns were somehow responsible for causing the rampant drug-cartel shootings that have killed thousands of Mexicans. The illegal and ill-conceived “gun walking” experiment called Operation Fast and Furious was designed by our government to show us that we should curtail our freedoms to stop violence in another country. In the incident described in the following article, 16 people, including 14 teenagers, were killed with illegal guns that our government purposefully sent to Mexico:
2. Obama encouraged and signed into law the unlimited detention of American citizens from American soil
From my research, no major news outlet ever even reported that, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (Section 1031), Obama signed into law the abolition of the protections guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments for American citizens “suspected” of being a terrorist. This bill, called by some, the “Unlimited Detention Bill” allows my government to take me to Guantanamo Bay or some other gulag with no lawyer, no trial, no due process, and no limit on the time they could detain me. This is precisely the kind of thing that makes a thinking citizen question the motives and integrity of his government. So that there is no mistake, here is a clip of Michigan Democrat Senator Carl Levin making clear that it was Obama’s administration that asked the drafters of the legislation to apply the unlimited detention/no trial provisions to American citizens, when American citizens were originally exempt from those provisions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BI6bMwXs_8
3. Obama, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, has authorized and committed the unilateral assassination OF HIS OWN CITIZENS, and convinced himself it’s legal
In the best example yet of why American citizens living in 2013 should be wary of their government, several news outlets just released a memorandum in which Obama’s Justice Department rationalized the President’s killing of American citizens as somehow legal- with every aspect of such plans, from selection of the individual to be killed to the “execution” of the assassination plan carried out exclusively within the executive branch, and all of it in secret:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/05/obama-kill-list-doj-memo
One might also question why over 1.5 billion rounds of hollow-point ammunition have been purchased by domestic federal agencies in the past 18 months- including Department of Homeland Security and The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association? Why is the federal government demanding the banning of weapons for the American people and simultaneously arming domestic agencies with truly astounding amounts of ammunition?
In conclusion, I would like to respectfully suggest that you focus your attention on the real business of the state and country- allowing business to function in a free market and stop pretending that it is the role of government to create jobs, and addressing a growing debt problem that is soon going to become untreatable. Nuclear weapons did not crush the Soviet Union- debt did. Thank you for your time, and God Bless the United States and the Constitution each of you swore to uphold.
Very truly yours,
-Nick Dazer
