Molon Labe

Unlawful Statutes

Rule by edict and whim is the way in which monarchs and dictators rule serfs, peasants and the proletariat in monarchies and dictatorships, systems where rights are replaced by privileges granted by an absolute ruler.  Governance by a constitution and law is the way chief magistrates and legislatures govern free citizens in a constitutional republic, a system in which the rights of the governed form the basis of law.  In such a system privileges, where they exist, such as a driving privilege, are granted not by the governors but established by statute.  In the former there are no limitations on the powers of the rulers, in the latter limitations are imposed on the powers of the governors by those governed through their constitution.  The United States of America is a Constitutional Republic so two thing follow; firstly, the powers of the governing bodies; the executive, legislative, and judiciary are delineated and limited in the constitution and secondly, uniquely to our constitution, the inalienable and unalienable rights of the governed are codified in our constitution while not being limited to those which are delineated in it.

In our constitution the powers and authority of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are carefully delineated in Articles I, II, and III respectively; the most basic rights of the people are enshrined in the “Bill of Rights”, the first ten amendments; and the only lawful method to add to, change, or clarify the constitution or any of its amendments is codified in Article V.  These elements form the entire structure of our government, the foundation for all our laws, and the assurance that the people’s will, through the legislatures of their sovereign states, will be the ultimate and only arbitrators of the Constitution.   

Various specific authorities and powers were ceded to the Congress by the sovereign states in Article I of the Constitution which gives legitimacy to statutes and acts created by the federal legislature.  However, statutes and acts created by Congress based on unconstitutional, usurped authorities or powers are null and void;  citizens are under no lawful obligation to comply with them, law enforcement agencies are under no lawful obligation to enforce them, and courts are under no lawful obligation to adjudicate violation of them.    In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force . . .". 

Article II Section 2 of the Constitution delineates the entirety of the function, authority, responsibilities, and powers of the President.  Nowhere there in, or in any other place in the Constitution, can the term “executive order” be found nor in any place in the document can such a power be derived by reasonable implication or construction through related powers.  The very concept of an “executive order” runs counter to the notion of a chief executive in a constitutional republic, reflects government by edict rather than by law and is contrary to the dictum of three coordinate departments of government, independent of each other fashioned so as to check and balance one another.

"But the Chief Justice says, 'There must be an ultimate arbiter somewhere.'  True, there must; but does that prove it is either party? The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union, assembled by their deputies in convention, at the call of Congress or of two-thirds of the States. Let them decide to which they mean to give an authority claimed by two of their organs. And it has been the peculiar wisdom and felicity of our Constitution, to have provided this peaceable appeal, where that of other nations is at once to force." --Thomas Jefferson

Successive Supreme Courts since 1803, as well as various inferior courts, have violated Article V of the Constitution through the exercise of the fraudulent and extra-constitutional authority of “judicial review” to establish the judiciary as the sole arbiters of the Constitution.  This usurped power has resulted in the de facto amendment of the Constitution from the bench without the requisite ratification by the states.  Article III, Section 2 paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Constitution which layout the authority, powers, and jurisdictions of the judiciary makes no mention of “judicial review”, of the judiciary’s authority to interpret the Constitution, nor does it extend to the court the authority to amend the Constitution from the bench.   Once again looking to no less of an intimate of the Constitution than Thomas Jefferson for confirmation of this lack of authority we find it in this quote, "You seem... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions: a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is "boni judicis est ampliare juris-dictionem," and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions or time and party, its members would become despots."

Even the most casual reading of the preceding leads to only one conclusion; the offices of the federal government have, over the course of time, departed from the elements of constitutional governance through various ploys and by appropriating authorities and powers not found in the Constitution.  With respect to the Second Amendment in particular, over the course of the past 78 years, since the first attempt at federal gun-control legislation in the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934, the federal government has sought to unlawfully infringe on the people’s inalienable right “ . . . to keep and bear arms, . . .” using every guise from the government’s  tax authority to perverting the Commerce Clause (Article I Section 8) of the Constitution and most recently, the use of the non-existent Presidential power of the “executive order”.  

I would pose that, since the statutes and acts thus far instituted to this end, limiting or placing conditions on the Second Amendment, lack Constitutional legitimacy based on the points I've discussed, they are null and void and should be rescinded.  If logical restrictions and conditions or clarifications are need with respect to the Second Amendment then they must conform to the Constitution, be subjected to the amendment process, there must be some real relationship between public safety and the limitation or condition,  and there must be a balance between the supposed public safety imperative and the original intent of the Second Amendment.  Limitations based on the appearance of a firearm or on magazine capacity, after examining the facts, would fail these criteria as would restrictions from ownership of a firearm based solely  on conviction of a non-violent felony or suffering from a benign mental disorder.  In respect to the former, there is no evidence that military appearance alone portends any greater public danger than does a firearm with a non-military appearance nor does the capacity of a magazine represent a greater or lesser danger when one considers the ease and short period of time  in which magazines may be exchanged.  As to the latter, the restriction on felons, there is absolutely no real relationship between someone who is convicted of a non-violent felony, for example tax evasion, and the probability that such a felon will commit a violent act in the future anymore than there is between someone who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder and the probability that the suffer, due to this mental disorder, will commit a violent act with a firearm in the future.

The only reason for rushing through changes to the Second Amendment outside of Article V, as is currently being pursued,  is that the public safety imperative is but a beard behind which the real agenda, the disarming of the people for nefarious reasons, can be hidden.