Support the Right to Bear Arms in Your State

 

Following the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, the federal government has disgustingly but unsurprisingly taken advantage of the tragic event to impose its leftist political anti-gun agenda. In New York, the Democrat-controlled State Senate and Assembly passed the NY Safe Act, which was then signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo. This law limits a magazine to only seven bullets and bans certain long guns with a pistol grip and other such menacing-looking guns, dubbed “assault rifles” or “military-style weapons.” 

 

Although Governor Cuomo is considered a top contender for the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, his approval ratings have since taken a 15-point drop, according to a poll released by Quinnipiac University on January 30, 2013. The drop demonstrates that the people of New York are not happy with the new gun control legislation in Albany. That same discontent, which is supportive of the Second Amendment, is not confined to New York alone. 

 

People in dozens of other states, with legislatures more receptive to the will of the people and the U.S. Constitution, have begun to make themselves heard in opposition to any measure that would infringe on their right to keep and bear arms as secured by the Second Amendment. Furthermore, all across the country sheriffs and legislators are acting to nullify President Obama’s gun controls.  

 

There are currently twenty states and counting that have introduced bills in their legislatures that are still pending that would nullify any federal law, executive order, agency regulation or rule intended in any way to ban, restrict or limit the firearms, firearm attachments, or magazine sizes manufactured, purchased, or kept by the residents within the borders of their state; providing criminal penalties for any official, agent, or officer of the federal government that would attempt to enforce such a federal measure within their state’s borders. 

 

The twenty states that have introduced these pro right to bear arms bills that would uphold the Second Amendment are: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. If you live in one of these states, simply click on your state to send an email to your state legislators in support of your state's right to bear arms legislation. Otherwise scroll down to send an email asking your state legislators to introduce such a bill in your state.        

 

Here is an example of such a bill that has already passed in the Wyoming House by a vote of 46-13 on February 1, 2013: House Bill 104, the Firearm Protection Act.

 

Such a nullification law is not without historical precedent. Historian Thomas Woods has written an excellent brief history of state nullification of federal laws in his article, "The States’ Rights Tradition Nobody Knows." In recent years dozens of states have introduced nullification-type legislation to stop Real ID, affirm the Tenth Amendment, reject a federal mandate to buy healthcare insurance, and reject federal firearm laws for guns manufactured, sold, and used intrastate (known as Firearms Freedom Acts or FFA). A total of eight states have passed FFAs.  

 

The purpose of these new pro right to bear arms bills, introduced in twenty or more state legislatures across the country, is to guarantee that the right of the people to bear arms in these states is not curtailed or trampled on in any manner or form by the federal government. The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads, “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.” 

 

At the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, in December 1791, it was understood that the militia meant the free able-bodied citizenry of the country. In 1788, Richard Henry Lee, signatory to the Declaration of Independence and subsequent Articles of Confederation, explained the meaning of the term militia, as understood at the time, and the imperative for citizens to be armed. Lee wrote, “A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves ... and include all men capable of bearing arms…. To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms....”

 

During the Massachusetts Convention to Ratify the Constitution in 1788, Samuel Adams also explained, “…The said Constitution [is to] be never construed … to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” 

 

In volume 1, page 300, of St. George Tucker’s edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries: With Notes and Reference (1803), which was the most popular legal commentary of its day, Tucker stated:

 

The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever ... the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

St. George Tucker was an attorney and a military officer who was wounded twice during the American Revolution, and was one of the leaders of the 1786 Annapolis Convention, which paved the way for the subsequent Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. Tucker was a law professor at the College of William and Mary, and served as a justice in the Supreme Court of Virginia. President James Madison later appointed him as a federal judge. 

 

The right to keep and bear arms is one of the most essential components enshrined in the Bill of the Rights in order to secure the preservation of one’s liberty and property. These proposed nullification bills help secure this right by rejecting any new infringements by the federal government and by imposing criminal charges on any federal agent that would enforce any such violation of the U.S. Constitution.

 

Please email your state legislators and urge them to author, introduce, and support a right to bear arms protection bill in your state. 

 

Scroll down to send a prewritten, editable message. Be sure to personalize your message for maximum impact.

 

Phone calls can also be very effective, and of course, the most effective way to educate your state legislators is by making personal visits to their offices. Click here for contact information.

Thanks.

Your Friends at The John Birch Society