Sunday, February 03, 2013 10:07:14 AM
Gun Debate Becomes Conservative Rallying Cry
BY STEVE PEOPLES
Posted: 02/02/2013 11:40 am EST | Updated: 02/03/2013 4:55 am EST
CONCORD, N.H. -- An immigration debate is raging and a budget crisis looms in Congress, but the conservative activists gathered outside the New Hampshire Statehouse had just one thing on their minds: guns.
"The Second Amendment is there to protect us from losing the rest of them," said Adam Brisebois, 34, of Hudson, who cradled his 3-year-old daughter on his right shoulder and a rifle on the left. "If we don't fight, we'll lose our rights."
Thursday's rally, organized by tea party leaders, drew nearly 500 people, many of them waving signs and carrying loaded weapons, to the state capital. Conservative leaders elsewhere report a wave of similar protests as grass-roots activists from Florida to Colorado seize on a new rallying cry for a tea party movement, which is trying to recover from a painful 2012 election season.
Many activists aren't happy with the GOP's sudden embrace of more lenient immigration proposals and they're monitoring the approaching congressional deadline to avoid massive cuts to military programs. But for now at least, the debate over guns and the perceived threat of losing them tops their list.
It's an "organic" movement with little coordination from national conservative organizations, according to Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express. "It's happening by itself," she said.
It doesn't matter that neither President Barack Obama nor congressional Democrats are calling for a wholesale repeal of gun rights. Tea partyers are enraged by the possibility of any erosion of the Second Amendment's "right of the people to keep and bear arms."
The gun control debate in Washington took center stage after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre in December, when a gunman used a semi-automatic assault rifle to kill 26 people, 20 of them children. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats have promised to make gun restrictions a legislative priority. Obama already has proposed requiring background checks for all gun sales and reviving both an assault weapons ban and a 10-round limit on the size of ammunition magazines.
There was little mention of the school shooting at the New Hampshire rally, where the crowd focused squarely on the belief that helped lead to the creation of the tea party movement four years ago: that an overbearing government is trampling on the nation's founding principles.
"There is an assault going on on the Constitution. And that is job one of ours - to protect our flank and protect gun owners," said Tom Gaitens, a Tampa, Fla.-based tea party leader. "To us, this is the fundamental issue on the founding of our nation."
Florida tea party activists already have traveled to Washington to protest new gun restrictions, and conservative leaders in the state are considering a series of gun-related rallies, Gaitens said.
Many protesters are hunters, but say access to hunting is not their prime concern - just as a sign hanging behind the podium at the New Hampshire rally said: "The right to keep arms is not about deer hunting. It is about defending the republic from tyranny."
"I don't have an automatic weapon. I don't want an automatic weapon. But the citizens need to have guns that are equal to the guns that the government has," said Roger Rist, a 69-year-old business owner from Meredith. "I certainly hope I don't have to take up arms against the government. Might we have to? Yeah."
In Colorado, foes of illegal immigration have been quiet as the Democrat-controlled Legislature has moved to allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at state colleges and universities. Similar bills in the past drew dozens of angry witnesses, but only one man from a group opposing illegal immigration testified against it at the Statehouse this month, compared with a parade of supporters of the bill.
In contrast, gun advocates held a spirited rally at the Colorado Statehouse to oppose gun control measures and drew more than 100 people last month. They also held a widely-publicized training recently for teachers and school workers who want to carry guns at the workplace.
In Georgia, tea party conservatives have introduced a range of bills that together would effectively allow Georgians to carry weapons anywhere. They also attempt to exempt certain weapons from federal gun control laws.
"We don't have a single member who thinks we need any new laws on this," said Ken Baxley, a local tea party leader in southeast Georgia's Effingham County, said. "When that tragedy happened, our anger was directed at the shooter, not at the guns."
An Associated Press-GfK poll found last month that 58 percent of Americans felt the gun laws in the United States should be stricter. Among Republicans, 53 percent want the nation's gun laws to stay as they are, while 2 in 3 women favor stricter gun laws, as do 60 percent of independents.
The fate of new gun legislation on Capitol Hill is uncertain at best. And as tea party activists clamor against any changes, the powerful gun lobby is echoing their argument.
"I think without any doubt, if you look at why our Founding Fathers put (the Second Amendment) there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny," Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association said in a congressional hearing last week.
Associated Press writers Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/02/gun-debate_n_2606331.html [with comments]
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A Debunking of Pseudo-Historian David Barton's Book on the Second Amendment
By Chris Rodda [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda ]
Senior Research Director, Military Religious Freedom Foundation [ ];
Author, 'Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History Vol. 1 [ http://www.amazon.com/Liars-For-Jesus-Religious-Alternate/dp/1419644386 ]' and
'Debunking David Barton's Jefferson Lies: #2 - Jefferson Founded a Secular University [ http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-David-Bartons-Jefferson-Lies/dp/1477469303 ]'
Posted: 02/01/2013 11:20 am
Like many a good Christian, pseudo-historian David Barton likes guns and, of course, thinks that every person in America has an unlimited constitutional -- and biblical -- right to own and carry them.
Barton, not surprisingly, has been saying some pretty wild things on the subject recently, many of them on Glenn Beck's web-based TV show, where he went beyond advocating that teachers be armed, saying that the students should be armed, telling this story about an attempted school shooting in the 1850s:
"The great example, in the 1850s you have a school teacher who's teaching. A guy -- he's out in the West -- this guy from New England wants to kill him and find him. So he comes into the school with his gun to shoot the teacher, he decides not to shoot the teacher because all the kids pull their guns out and point it at him and say, 'You kill the teacher, you die.' He says, 'Okay.' The teacher lives. Real simple stuff."
On his own radio show as well as Beck's show, Barton made the incredible claim that gun accidents were virtually unheard of in the founding era, saying:
"I have searched and in the founding era I think I've only ever found two gun accidents and everybody was hauling guns back then. You took your guns to church, you were required by state law in some states to take your guns to church. We didn't have accidents because everyone was familiar with how to use them."
Barton gives no source for his story about those gun-toting kids of the 1850s saving their teacher, making that story impossible to fact check, but many of the other things he's been saying can be checked. This is because they're based on quotes that can be found in his 2000 book, The Second Amendment: Preserving the Inalienable Right of Individual Self-Protection [ http://www.amazon.com/Second-Amendment-David-Barton/dp/0925279773 ], which, of course, contains a plethora of those footnotes he's famous for.
Barton begins his book with the typical arguments -- the all-or-nothing argument that people who support gun control laws think that only the police and the military should be able to have guns, and the argument that any laws whatsoever regulating an individual's right to own guns are unconstitutional.
Barton divides the historical quotes he uses in his book into four chapters -- I. Early Legal Commentaries, II. Views of the Founding Fathers, III. Early Legislative Acts, and IV. State Constitutions -- saying:
"These four categories of information will indisputably demonstrate that a citizen's right to keep and bear arms is an individually guaranteed right and that efforts to restrict or regulate gun possession by ordinary law-abiding citizens -- no matter what "humanitarian" or alleged "historical" arguments might undergird such efforts -- are unequivocal violations of the explicit protections and original intentions of the Constitution."
It would be impossible to cover in a blog post all of the quotes presented by Barton in his book, so I've chosen a handful from each chapter, paying particular attention the ones relevant to the big question today: Are laws regulating guns unconstitutional?
Even with limiting this post to only some of the quotes used by Barton, it is still unusually long for a blog post. This is unavoidable since, in order to put Barton's out-of-context and butchered quotes back in context, it's necessary to quote some fairly lengthy passages from the sources of these quotes. I realize that most people won't have time to read the entire thing, but hope that they'll at least look at enough of the examples to get an idea of how badly Barton distorts history to support his claim that his book will prove that the founders would have found any laws regulating guns to be "unequivocal violations" of the Constitution.
I. Early Legal Commentaries
Before actually getting to his quotes from early legal commentaries, Barton explains that "a common error in constitutional interpretation is the failure to examine a document according to its original meaning," and presents a bunch of quotes from the founders that have nothing to do with the Second Amendment or guns, but merely say that it's important to know what was meant by things at the time that they were written. I couldn't agree more.
So, let's look at what the term "to bear arms" meant at the time that the Second Amendment was written. Would this term have been used in 1789 to mean an individual right of self-protection as Barton claims? Well, no. Up until the modern-day debates over gun control, the words "to bear arms" were interpreted to mean one thing and one thing only -- to serve in a military capacity.
Early dictionary definitions of the term "to bear arms" are clear. Every dictionary from the 1800s and earlier that contained a definition of the specific term "to bear arms" defined this term as meaning to be a soldier. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, for example, published in both England and America in 1888 with the stated aim to "furnish an adequate account of the meaning, origin, and history of English words now in general use," defined "to bear arms" as: "to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight."(1)
Individuals who attempted to use the Second Amendment or the similar provisions in their state constitutions to argue that the right to "bear arms" meant they had the right to carry any weapon in any manner that they chose were not successful. As Justice Nathan Green, who served on the Tennessee Supreme Court from 1831-1852 made it clear in his opinion in the 1840 case of Aymette v. The State of Tennessee, bearing arms and carrying weapons were not synonymous:
"A man in pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms."(2)
Barton then presents a batch of quotes from the founders explaining what an "inalienable right" is, saying that "before establishing that the Second Amendment was intended to secure an individual's right 'to keep and bear arms' as an inalienable right, it is important to establish just what an inalienable right is." He still hasn't presented any quotes having to do with the Second Amendment or guns, but concludes from his generic quotes about etymology and inalienable rights:
"That the Second Amendment simply secured in writing a right which God had already conferred on His creation was confirmed in the legal commentaries that undergirded American law."
Barton then finally gets to his quotes from early legal commentaries, beginning with William Blackstone's 1766 Commentaries on the Laws of England. As he often does when quoting this work, Barton leaves off the "of England" part of the title, simply calling it Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws, and saying how widely used it was in America, giving his readers the impression that this was an American law book. But even this work on the laws of England has to be misquoted by Barton to make it say what he wants it to say -- that bearing arms was considered an absolute right that could never be regulated by any other laws.
From Barton's book:
"Concerning the right of citizens to own and use arms, Blackstone's declared:
"'The ... right of the [citizens] that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defense. ... [This is] the natural right of resistance and self-preservation when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.... [T]o vindicate these rights when actually violated or attacked, the [citizens] are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next, to the right of petitioning the [government] for redress of grievances; and lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense.'"
Now, here are the two passages from Blackstone's that Barton combines and edits to construct that quote. As you can see, what Barton did here was simply to chop out the parts (bolded here) where Blackstone said that the right of individuals to own arms only went as far as was "allowed by law":
"The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute 1 W. & M. st. 2. c. 2. and is indeed a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression."(3)
"And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated or attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and lastly to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense. And all these rights and liberties it is our birthright to enjoy entire; unless where the laws of our country have laid them under necessary restraints."(4)
And, here's what the act from 1 W. & M. referenced by Blackstone said (emphasis mine):
"That the subjects which are protestants, may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law."(5)
So, without Barton's editing, Blackstone's, which Barton calls "the most influential legal commentary at the time of the framing of the Second Amendment," said that the "natural right" to own arms for "self-preservation" could indeed be limited by "laws," "restrictions," and "restraints."
Barton's next example comes from the law lectures of James Wilson, who, in addition to teaching law in Pennsylvania, was one of the framers of the Constitution and one of the original U.S. Supreme Court justices.
According to Barton:
"Not only did the Second Amendment secure what Blackstone had called 'the right of having and using arms' for 'the natural right of resistance and self-preservation' but our Founders further believed that it was a duty for every citizen to be willing to exercise that right when necessary. This was made clear by James Wilson, who declared:
"'Homicide is enjoined [required] when it is necessary for the defense of one's person or house. ... [I]t is the great natural law of self-preservation which, as we have seen, cannot be repealed or superseded or suspended by any human institution. This law, however, is expressly recognized in the constitution of Pennsylvania: 'The right of the citizens to bear arms in the defense of themselves shall not be questioned.'... [E]very man's house is deemed, by the law, to be his castle; and the law, while it invests him with the power, [places] on him the duty of the commanding officer [of his house]. 'Every man's house is his castle ... and if any one be robbed in it, it shall be esteemed his own default and negligence.''" (emphasis Barton's)
What Barton is quoting from here, as he does for several of his examples, is what James Wilson wrote about homicide. Wilson began with two types of what he classified as "enjoined" homicide -- the first related to militia or military service, and the second related to defending oneself or ones personal property. It was in his first example, the one relating to militia or military service:
"1. Homicide is enjoined, when it is necessary for the defence of the United States, or of Pennsylvania. At present, it is not necessary for me, and, therefore, I decline to examine the general and very important subject concerning the rights of war. I confine myself merely to that kind of war, which is defensive: and even that kind I now consider solely as a municipal regulation, established by the constitution of the nation, and that of this commonwealth.
"The constitution of the nation is ordained to 'provide for the common defence.' In order to make 'provision' for that defence, congress have the power to 'provide for arming the militia,' and 'or calling them forth,' 'to repel invasions:' they have power 'to provide a navy,' 'to raise and support armies,' 'to declare war.' Whenever the primary object, 'the common defence,' renders it necessary, the power becomes the duty of congress: and it requires no formal deduction of logick to point to the duty, when necessity shall require, of military bodies, 'raised, supported, and armed.' In Pennsylvania, it is explicitly declared upon the very point, that 'the freemen of this commonwealth shall be armed for its defence.'
"2. Homicide is enjoined, when it is necessary for the defence of one's person or house.
"With regard to the first, it is the great natural law of self preservation, which, as we have seen, cannot be repealed, or superseded, or suspended by any human institution. This law, however, is expressly recognised in the constitution of Pennsylvania. 'The right of the citizens to bear arms in the defence of themselves shall not be questioned.' This is one of our many renewals of the Saxon regulations. 'They were bound,' says Mr. Selden, 'to keep arms for the preservation of the kingdom, and of their own persons.'
"With regard to the second; every man's house is deemed, by the law, to be his castle; and the law, while it invests him with the power, enjoins on him the duty, of the commanding officer. 'Every man's house is his castle,' says my Lord Coke, in one of his reports, 'and he ought to keep and defend it at his peril; and if any one be robbed in it, it shall be esteemed his own default and negligence.' For this reason, one may assemble people together in order to protect and defend his house."(6)
See what Barton did there? By chopping out the words "With regard to the first," and "With regard to the second" and then running together selected sentences from the two separate paragraphs, he has James Wilson saying that it was the constitution of Pennsylvania that gave an individual the right to defend their house, although Wilson attached the constitutional right to bear arms, in both the U.S. and Pennsylvania constitutions, to his first example -- service in the military or the militia.
Now, Wilson obviously wasn't saying that an individual didn't have the right to defend their house; it's just that his legal basis for this right was not the Pennsylvania constitution, but other laws. And Wilson tells us in his footnotes exactly what the sources of these other laws were. So, let's take a look at where James Wilson said the right to defend ones house came from.
Wilson's sources were English jurists Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) and Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676).
It's from Coke that we get the now familiar phrase "every man's house is his castle." Wilson cited Coke's Reports for this. Coke's Reports were reports on specific cases, but it was Coke's Institutes on the Laws of England, the work that most of the founders learned the law from, where Coke explained this in more detail, so that's what I'm going to quote from here.
The chapter of Coke's Institutes where he wrote that "a man's house is his castle" is titled "Against going or riding armed." As its title indicates, this chapter is about a law restricting the carrying of arms. It was in here that Coke explained what the exceptions to this restriction were, one of which was defending ones home:
"And yet in some case a man may not onely use force and armes, but assemble company also. As any may assemble his friends and neighbours, to keep his house against those that come to rob, or kill him, or to offer him violence in it, and is by constuction excepted out of this act; for a mans house is his castle ..."(7)
But Coke made it clear that this exception applied only to a man's own home, continuing:
"But he cannot assemble force, though he be extreamly threatned, to go with him to church, or market, or any other place, but that is prohibited by this act."(8)
The other source cited by Wilson was Sir Matthew Hale's Pleas of the Crown. Hale put the right of a man to defend his own home in his chapter titled "Of burglary, the kinds, and punishment," writing:
"I come to those crimes that specially concern the habitation of a man, to which the laws of this kingdom have a special respect, because every man by the law hath a special protection in reference to his home and dwelling."(9)
And, just like Coke, Hale continued by saying that this applied only to a man's own home:
"And that is the reason, that a man may assemble people together for the safeguard of his own house, which he could not do in relation to a travel, or a journey."(10)
So, both Coke and Hale, the sources cited by James Wilson -- a framer of the Constitution and an original U.S. Supreme Court justice -- said that the carrying of arms could be regulated by laws. If America were to revert today to the laws cited by Wilson, it would be illegal virtually across the board to carry guns in public. It would also be illegal for any private militia group to assemble with arms for any reason other than to protect someone's home. Looks like Barton's first two early legal commentary examples not only don't support his position, but completely contradict it.
Barton goes on to quote a number of other early legal commentaries, carefully editing out anything that would reveal that what he's quoting was either about homicide laws or the militia, turning them into quotes that appear to be about an individual's right to be armed.
To show how far Barton goes in his editing of some of these early legal commentary quotes to make them appear to be about individual rights rather than the militia, let's look at what he quotes from William Rawle's 1825 work, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Here's how Barton quotes Rawle:
"In the Second [Amendment], it is declared.... that 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could, by any rule of construction, be conceived to give the Congress a power to disarm the people. a flagitious [flagrantly wicked] attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a State legislature. But if, in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either [the State or federal government] should attempt it, this Amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both." (emphasis Barton's)
Now, here's the unedited version, with the big chunk edited out by Barton in bold:
"In the second article, it is declared, that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state; a proposition from which few will dissent. Although in actual war, the services of regular troops are confessedly more valuable; yet, while peace prevails, and in the commencement of a war before a regular force can be raised, the militia form the palladium of the country. They are ready to repel invasion, to suppress insurrections, and to preserve the good order and peace of government. That they should be well regulated, is judiciously added. A disorderly militia is disgraceful to itself, and dangerous not to the enemy, but to its own country. The duty of the state government is, to adopt such regulations as will tend to make good soldiers with the least interruptions of the ordinary and useful occupations of civil life. In this all the Union has a strong and visible interest.
"The corollary, from the first position, is, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
"The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could, by any rule of construction, be conceived to give the congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both."(11)
So, William Rawle, in the part of the quote chopped out by Barton, said that the second part of the Second Amendment was a "corollary" from the first part -- that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" referred to "a well regulated militia."
Rawle then went on to separately address an individual's right to be armed, saying that there were laws limiting this right:
"This right ought not, however, in any government, to be abused to the disturbance of the public peace.
"An assemblage of persons with arms, for an unlawful purpose, is an indictable offence, and even the carrying of arms abroad by a single individual, attended with circumstances giving just reason to fear that he purposes to make an unlawful use of them, would be sufficient cause to require him to give surety of the peace. If he refused he would be liable to imprisonment."(12)
Barton gives a bunch of other similarly irrelevant or similarly butchered examples from legal commentaries of the 1800s, and then jumps to a quote from a U.S. Senate committee report to end his chapter on "early" legal commentaries, writing:
Clearly, legal commentaries and commentators across the centuries agreed: there was an inherent, natural right of self-defense and self-preservation of which the "right to keep and bear arms" was intrinsic, belonging to every individual. In fact, the Senate Judiciary Committee has even noted:
"The proposal [for the wording of the Second Amendment] finally passed the House in its present form: '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.' In this form it was submitted into the Senate, which passed it the following day. The Senate in the process indicated its intent that the right be an individual one, for private purposes, by rejecting an amendment which would have limited the keeping and bearing of arms to bearing for the common defense.... The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner." (emphasis Barton's)
What Barton neglects to mention about this quote (except in his endnote) is its date. This is not an historical quote like the quotes it immediately follows. It's not from a from a Senate committee from time of the founders or the 1800s. It's a quote from the modern-day gun control debate -- from a 1982 report of a subcommittee chaired by Senator Orrin Hatch.
II. Views of the Founding Fathers
In this section, Barton gives about twenty quotes from various founders -- almost none of which, when put back in context, have anything to do with an individual's right to own guns.
Some were referring to taking up arms against England. For example, Barton quotes George Washington as saying:
"[N]o man should scruple or hesitate a moment to use arms in defense."
Barton plucks this one from a letter written by Washington to George Mason in 1769 about the British restricting American trade. This is the whole paragraph from that letter:
"That no man shou'd scruple, or hesitate a moment to use a-ms in defence of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends; is clearly my opinion; yet A-ms I wou'd beg leave to add, should be the last resource; the denier resort. Addresses to the Throne, and remonstrances to parliament, we have already, it is said, proved the inefficacy of; how far then their attention to our rights and priviledges is to be awakened or alarmed by starving their Trade and manufactures, remains to be tryed."(13)
Barton quotes John Adams as saying:
"Resistance to sudden violence for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I never surrendered to the public by the compact of society and which, perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.... [T]he maxims of the law and the precepts of Christianity are precisely coincident in relation to this subject."
Where Barton gets this quote from is one of three essays written by anonymously by Adams and published in the Boston Gazette in 1763. Adams was having a debate in the press with Jonathan Sewall, who was also writing anonymously, and a couple of other anonymous writers who joined in, identifying themselves as "X" and "W." What prompted this debate was a fist fight between two members of the Massachusetts Governor's Council (one of whom Adams represented in court) over a remark that one made about the other and refused to apologize for. So, the incident that prompted Adams's more general comments on self-defense had nothing to do with guns; it was a fist fight.
Here's the part of Adams's essay from which Barton plucks his quote (with the parts omitted by Barton in bold):
"... I shall agree with the first of these gentlemen, that "to preach up non-resistance, with the zeal of a fanatic," would be as extraordinary as to employ a bastile in support of the freedom of speech or the press, or an inquisition in favor of liberty of conscience; but if he will leave his own imagination, and recur to what I have written he will not find a syllable against resistance. Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which, perhaps, I could not surrender if I would. Nor is there any thing in the common law of England (for which Mr. X supposes I have so great a fondness,) inconsistent with that right. On the contrary, the dogmas of Plato, the maxims of the law, and the precepts of Christianity, are precisely coincident in relation to this subject."(14)
Adams went on in this essay to say:
"Now the common law seems to me, to be founded on the same great principle of philosophy and religion. It will allow of nothing as a justification of blows, but blows; nor will it justify a furious beating, bruising, and wounding, upon the provocation of a fillip of the finger, or a kick upon the shins; but if I am assaulted, I can justify nothing but laying my hands lightly upon the aggressor for my own defence; nothing but what was absolutely necessary for my preservation. I may parry, or ward off, any blow; but a blow received is no sufficient provocation for fifty times so severe a blow, in return. When life, which is one of the three favorites of the law, comes into consideration, we find a wise and humane provision is made for its preservation. If I am assaulted by another, sword in hand, and if I am even certain of his intention to murder me, the common law will not suffer me to defend myself by killing him, if I can avoid it. Nay, my behavior must absolutely be what would be called cowardice, perhaps, by Mr. X and W, though it would be thought the truest bravery, not only by the greatest philosophers and legislators, but by the best generals of the world; I must run away from such an assailant, and avoid him if I have room, rather than stand my ground and defend myself; but if I have no room to escape, or if I run and am pursued to the wall or into a corner, where I cannot elude his fury, and have no other way to preserve my own life from his violence, but by taking his there, I have an indisputable right to do it, and should be justified in wading through the blood of a whole army, if I had power to shed it and had no other way to make my escape."(15)
Like the similar examples selectively quoted by Barton in his early legal commentaries chapter, Adams was merely saying what constituted justifiable homicide, and said nothing about the completely separate issue of an individual's right to be carrying whatever weapon might happen to be used these cases.
Not surprisingly, most of the founders' quotes used by Barton, when put back in context, clearly had to do with the militia.
Barton quotes George Washington as saying:
"A free people ought ... to be armed."
Here's the full sentence, from Washington's first Annual Message to Congress (what the State of the Union Address used to be called) in 1790, with the parts omitted by Barton in bold:
"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end, a uniform and well digested plan is requisite: and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent on others for essential, particularly for military supplies."(16)
He quotes Patrick Henry as saying:
"The great object is that every man be armed.... Every one who is able may have a gun. But have we not learned by experience that, necessary as it is to have arms, . . . it is still far from being the case?"
Here's a longer, unedited, excerpt from Patrick Henry said in the Virginia ratifying convention, again with the parts omitted by Barton in bold, and also changing what Barton turned into a question to imply that Henry was saying that the people were already commonly armed back into a statement saying that they weren't:
" May we not discipline and arm them, as well as Congress, if the power be concurrent? so that our militia shall have two sets of arms, double sets of regimentals, &c.; and thus, at a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed. The great object is that every man be armed. But can the people afford to pay for double sets of arms, &c.? Every one who is able may have a gun. But have we not learned by experience that, necessary as it is to have arms, and though our Assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavored to have the militia completely armed, it is still far from being the case."(17)
This Patrick Henry quote, like many others from the state ratifying convention debates on the Constitution, was about the issue of who would actually be responsible for paying to arm and train the state militias - the federal government or the state governments -- since the Constitution gave Congress the power of "arming, organizing, and disciplining the militia." What Henry and others wanted was to ensure that if the federal government ever neglected to arm the militia, that the states would have the right to do it themselves. So, obviously, by "every man," Henry meant every man who needed to be supplied with arms to serve in the militia, and was not saying anything about individual rights.
Barton also quotes what George Mason, who was talking about exactly the same thing that Patrick Henry was talking about, said in the Virginia ratifying convention:
"Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great-Britain, the British parliament was advised ... to disarm the people. That it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. But that they should not do it openly; but to weaken them and let them sink gradually."
The unedited version of what Mason said:
"An instance within the memory of some of this house will show us how our militia may be destroyed. Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. But that they should not do it openly; but to weaken them and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia."(18)
Barton also plucks and edits this quote from George Mason from the same speech at the Virginia ratifying convention:
"I consider and fear the natural propensity of rulers to oppress the people. I wish only to prevent them from doing evil.... Divine providence has given to every individual the means of self-defense."
Here, Mason wasn't even talking about the people being disarmed. He was talking about the possibility that the federal government, in order to introduce a standing army, might someday destroy the militia in a completely different way -- not by disarming the people, but by abusing its power to discipline the militia to a point that would make the people not want to serve in it.
Here's what Mason said, put back in context, again with the parts omitted by Barton in bold:
"If at any time our rulers should have unjust and iniquitous designs against our liberties, and should wish to establish a standing army, the first attempt would be to render the service and use of militia odious to the people themselves; subjecting them to unnecessary severity of discipline in time of peace, confining them under martial law, and disgusting them so much, as to make them cry out, give us a standing army! I would wish to have some check to exclude this danger; as, that the militia should never be subject to martial law, but in time of war. I consider and fear the natural propensity of rulers to oppress the people. I wish only to prevent them from doing evil. By these amendments, I would give necessary powers, but no unnecessary power. If the clause stands as it is now, it will take from the state legislatures what divine providence has given to every individual -- the means of self-defense. Unless moderated, in some degree, it will ruin us, and introduce a standing army."(19)
Barton uses a bunch of other similar quotes about the issue of a standing army vs. the militia and federal authority vs. state authority to arm the state militias, similarly edited to make these quotes appear top be about individual rights rather than the militia. It would be redundant to list all of these quotes here, so let's move on to some of Barton's other butchered quotes that, while still related to the militia in some way, brought up other issues.
Barton quotes Richard Henry Lee as saying:
"[T]o preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
This is another quote that, when put back in context, completely debunks one of Barton's biggest claims -- that everyone back in the founding era had guns and knew how to use them -- a claim that Barton relies on for his crazy statements like his recent one about there being no gun accidents in the founding era.
What the "Federal Farmer" (an anti-federalist thought by some historians to have been Richard Henry Lee and by others to have been someone else) was saying was that many citizens, if not required to be armed and trained for militia service, would "generally be without arms, without knowing the use of them."
Here's the quote, from one of the Federal Farmer's letters, from which Barton selectively quotes only part of the last sentence:
"But, say gentlemen, the general militia are for the most part employed at home in their private concerns, cannot well be called out, or be depended upon; that we must have a select militia; that is, as I understand it, particular corps or bodies of young men, and of men who have but little to do at home, particularly armed and disciplined in some measure, at the public expence, and always ready to take the field. These corps, not much unlike regular troops, will ever produce an inattention to the general militia; and the consequence has ever been, and always must be, that the substantial men, having families and property, will generally be without arms, without knowing the use of them, and defenceless; whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them ..."(20)
To show how completely irrelevant some of the quotes that Barton plucks from their context actually are, here's what he quotes from John Jay:
"[M]ankind must be prepared and fitted for the reception, enjoyment, and preservation of universal permanent peace before they will be blessed with it. Are they as yet fitted for it? Certainly not. Even if it was practicable, would it be wise to disarm the good before 'the wicked cease from troubling?'"
This one not only has nothing to do with Americans having guns -- it doesn't even have anything to do with America. It's from a letter John Jay wrote to a friend "on the question, Whether war of every description is forbidden by the gospel?" Jay concluded his lengthy letter, which was apparently prompted by a pamphlet that his friend sent him on the subject, by saying:
" But, whatever may be the time, or the means adopted by Providence for the abolition of war, I think we may, without presumption, conclude, that mankind must be prepared and fitted for the reception, enjoyment, and preservation of universal permanent peace, before they will be blessed with it. Are they as yet fitted for it? Certainly not. Even if it was practicable, would it be wise to disarm the good before 'the wicked cease from troubling?' By what other means than arms and military force, can unoffending rulers and nations protect their rights against unprovoked aggressions from within and from without? Are there any other means to which they could recur, and on the efficacy of which they could rely? To this question I have not as yet heard, nor seen, a direct and precise answer."(21)
III. Early Legislative Acts
Barton begins this chapter:
"The views held by early Americans on the Second Amendment right 'to keep and bear arms' were a reflection of the views previously established by experience and decades of tradition and finally incorporated by law into their own States. Those early laws provide the third source which affirms that the right 'to keep and bear arms' pertains to every individual citizen."
He then proceeds to use as examples the earliest laws of Virginia and the other colonies from the 1600s:
"Consider, for example, a 1623 Virginia law that prevented a citizen from traveling unless he was 'well armed.'" And in 1631, Virginia required:
"'That men go not to work ... without their arms. All men that are fitting to bear arms shall bring their pieces to the church, [and] upon pain of every offense ... pay 2 lb of tobacco.'
"In 1658, Virginia required every householder to have a functioning firearm within his house; and in 1673, the law provided that a citizen who claimed that he was too poor to purchase a firearm would have one purchased for him by the government, which would then require him to pay a reasonable price when able to do so. And a 1676 law declared that 'Liberty is granted to all persons to carry their arms wheresoever they go.'"
Not only were all of these early colonial Virginia laws clearly referring to the citizens as being part of a militia, the 1676 law that Barton claims granted the right "to all persons to carry their arms wheresoever they go" was actually a law restricting this right.
So, let's look at what these early Virginia laws really said, in their historical context and without Barton's editing.
The 1623 law was passed because of an Indian massacre in 1622 in which three hundred and forty-seven English settlers in the Virginia colony were killed by the Powhatan Indians. As part of what was a series of coordinated attacks on the same day, the Indians also set fire to a number of plantations, wiping out much of the crops and livestock that the colonists were depending on to survive the next winter.
In response to the 1622 massacre, the Assembly enacted laws to protect the colonists and their crops against Indian attacks. These laws included requiring all planters to be armed while working in their fields, with a sentinel guarding their weapons as they worked, and that a guard be kept on their fields at night. And, because every able-bodied man was considered essential to the protection of their plantation (a plantation at the time meant an entire settlement, not an individual's farm), the colonists were required by law to protect themselves by traveling only with an armed party, and never to have too many men absent from any plantation at the same time.
Here's the full text of the 1623 Virginia laws that Barton claims are historical evidence "that the right 'to keep and bear arms' pertains to every individual citizen":
"23. That every dwelling house shall be pallizaded for defence against the Indians.
"24. That no man go or send abroad without a sufficient partie will armed.
"25. That men go not to worke in the ground without their arms (and a centinell upon them.)
"26. That the inhabitants go not aboard ships or upon any other occasions in such numbers, as thereby to weaken and endanger the plantations.
"27. That the commander of every plantation take care that there be sufficient of powder and amunition within the plantation under his command and their pieces fixt and their arms compleate.
"28. That there be dew watch kept by night.
"29. That no commander of any plantation do either himselfe or suffer others to spend powder unneccessarily in drinking or entertainments, &c."(22)
These 1623 laws didn't grant any "right" to the citizens. In fact, they actually restricted the colonists' rights by mandating what they were required to do for the protection of their community, and even restricting their right to travel freely. If you were told today that you were required by law to have a gun with you every time you got in your car, would you consider this a right?
The laws of 1631 kept the laws of 1623 in force, and added this section requiring that all men fitting to bear arms bring their guns to church:
"ALL men that are fittinge to beare armes, shall bringe their peices to the church uppon payne of every effence, yf the mayster allow not thereof to pay 2 lb. of tobacco, to be disposed by the church-wardens, who shall levy it by distress, and the servants to be punished."(23)
So, why were Virginia's colonists required by law to bring their guns to church? Is this evidence that "the right 'to keep and bear arms' pertains to every individual citizen," as Barton claims it to be? Well, no. They were required to bring their guns to church because they were required to participate in target practice on Sundays. What Virginia had by 1631 was a pretty "well-regulated militia." Once again, this wasn't a right; it was a requirement.
Like the 1623 and 1631 laws, the 1658 and 1673 laws of Virginia cited by Barton were also to ensure that the militia was properly armed, and had nothing to do with individual rights. But it's the 1676 law that I want to get to here, because this is the one that shows just how incredibly far Barton will go with his misquoting to make something say the exact opposite of what it really said.
Look again at what Barton says about this 1676 law:
"And a 1676 law declared that 'Liberty is granted to all persons to carry their arms wheresoever they go.'"
Now read the entire law that Barton plucks that quote from:
"And whereas by a branch of an act of assembly made in march last, liberty is granted to all persons to carry their armes wheresoever they goe, which liberty hath beene found to be very prejudiciall to the peace and wellfaire of this colony. Bee it therefore further enacted by this present grand assembly, and the authority thereof, and it is hereby enacted, that if any person or persons shall, from and after publication of this act, presume to assemble together in armes to the number of five or upwards without being legally called together in armes the number of five or upwards, they be held deemed and adjudged as riotous and mutinous, and that they be proceeded against and punished accordingly."(24)
As you can see, this 1676 law, passed in response to Bacon's Rebellion [ http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/bacons-rebellion.htm ], severely restricted the right of "all persons to carry their armes wheresoever they goe" by prohibiting any group of more than four armed men from assembling together for any reason other than being called to arms by the government. Barton, however, so grossly misquotes this law that he actually turns the restricting of the right for "all persons to carry their arms wheresoever they go" into the granting of this right.
Barton then gives a few examples of laws from other colonies from the 1600s, which are not necessary to go into here because they were basically the same, and passed for the similar reasons, as the ones in Virginia.
Next, he jumps to a 1770 Georgia law that required the bringing of guns to church. But, like the earlier Virginia law, this Georgia law had a militia-related purpose. Every man who was required to serve in the militia had to bring their guns and a certain amount of ammunition to church to prove that they had the weapons and ammunition required by law for service in the militia. The church wardens or other officials were to verify, by inspecting the men on Easter, Christmas, and twelve other times throughout the year, that every man required to serve in the militia had the required weapons and ammunition in their possession.(25)
So, Barton has thus far not provided a single example of an individual's "right" to bear arms, but rather has provided a bunch of examples of individuals being required by law to serve in the militia. Apparently, he doesn't get the difference between a right to bear arms and a mandate to bear arms.
Barton next spends several pages on a straw man, proving through quotes from various founders that the word "militia" meant all men capable of bearing arms -- a definition that nobody is disputing. He does take care, however, to avoid any mention of the militia being "well-regulated." For example, he quotes Richard Henry Lee as saying:
"[T]he militia shall always ... include, according to the past and general usage of the States, all men capable of bearing arms." (emphasis Barton's)
What did Barton omit and replace with his ellipsis? The words bolded below:
"... the militia shall always be kept well organized, armed, and disciplined, and include, according to the past and general usage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms."(26)
What Barton is quoting here is actually just another snippet from the same paragraph of the same "Federal Farmer" letter that he used for his out-of-context Richard Henry Lee quote in his "Views of the Founding Fathers" chapter.
Barton then moves on to the Militia Act of 1792, writing:
"It was not surprising, therefore, that when the United States Congress passed the first federal law on this subject (the Militia Act of 1792), it defined 'militia of the United States' not as the Continental Army or any other organized military body but rather as including almost every adult male in the United States. Under that act, each adult was required -- by law -- to possess a firearm and a minimum supply of ammunition and military equipment, and this law continued in force into the twentieth century."
There were two militia acts passed in 1792, the first "providing for the authority of the President to call out the Militia," and the second "to provide for the National Defence, by establishing an Uniform Militia throughout the United States." The second of these two acts required "every free able-bodied white male" between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to be enrolled in the militia of their state and to purchase the guns and other items required by the act. Barton is right -- it's not surprising that these acts were passed. The Constitution had given Congress the power to "provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions," so Congress needed to pass laws "providing for" this. What is surprising, however, is that Barton, a very vocal opponent of Obamacare, doesn't see the incredible irony of pointing out a 1792 federal law containing an "individual mandate" that required the citizens of the states to buy something whether they wanted to or not.
Barton continues by saying that the state constitutions also contained provisions similar to the federal government's requirement to serve in the militia, writing:
"Significantly, numerous State constitutions adopted subsequent to the Second Amendment and the Militia Act of 1792 contain similar declarations."
Actually, there's nothing "significant" about this, or anything else in the rest of this chapter of Barton's book for that matter, so let's move on to his quotes from the state constitutions.
IV. State Constitutions
Barton begins this chapter by saying:
"Because the Second Amendment was primarily a reflection of the belief present in the individual Sates, the State constitutions are the fourth source that affirm that 'the right to keep and bear arms' was universally understood to be an individual right. In fact, State constitutions adopted even a century-and-a-half after the Second Amendment still continued to reflect the original understanding."
What Barton does to support this statement is to edit or misrepresent the language of quite a few of the state constitutions he cites in order to do two things: 1) to hide that many of the state constitutions said nothing in their "bearing arms" provisions that could be construed to mean this as an individual right, and 2) to hide that many of the state constitutions either explicitly said that the legislature did have the power to pass laws regulating this right, or restricted it in some way right in their constitutions.
As anyone familiar with state constitutions knows, states often copied the language from the existing constitutions of other states when writing their own constitutions, leading to identical or very similarly worded provisions in multiple state constitutions. This led a good number of states to adopt the following, or something very similar, as their "bearing arms" provision:
"Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state."
For the states that used this exact wording or something like it, Barton doesn't have to lie, since the real wording does include the word "himself," or "themselves," making it refer to individuals as well as the militia, and places no restrictions on this right.
Of course, Barton also lists the six states that didn't say this was an individual right, but worded it like the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, which said: "The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence." Barton just hides that these state constitutions referred only to the "common defense" of the state, and cannot be interpreted to mean an individual right.
But even in states where the wording of the state constitution was interpreted to mean that an individual had a constitutional right to carry weapons, the courts usually did not take this to mean that the legislature couldn't pass laws regulating this right for the sake of public safety.
One states that used the "Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state" language was Alabama, whose first constitution was adopted in 1819. But here's how Henry W. Collier, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama from 1837 to 1849, interpreted this provision in 1840 when someone tried to claim that an Alabama law prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons was unconstitutional under the state's constitution:
"The constitution in declaring that, 'Every citizen has the right to bear arms in defence of himself and the State,' has neither expressly nor by implication, denied to the Legislature, the right to enact laws in regard to the manner in which arms shall be borne. The right guarantied to the citizen, is not to bear arms upon all occasions and in all places, but merely 'in defence of himself and the State.' The terms in which this provision is phrased seems to us, necessarily to leave with the Legislature the authority to adopt such regulations of police, as may be dictated by the safety of the people and the advancement of public morals. The statute of 1 Wm. and M. while it declares the right of the subject, it refers to Parliament to determine what arms shall be borne and how; while our constitution being silent as to the action of the Legislature, does not divest it of a power over the subject, which pertained to it independent of an express grant. ...
"... A statute which, under the pretence of regulating, amounts to a destruction of the right, or which requires arms to be so borne as to render them wholely useless for the purpose of defence, would be clearly unconstitutional. But a law which is intended merely to promote personal security, and to put down lawless aggression and violence, and to that end inhibits the wearing of certain weapons, in such a manner as is calculated to exert an unhappy influence upon the moral feelings of the wearer, by making him less regardful of the personal security of others, does not come in collision with the constitution."(27)
Barton also deceptively lists all of the following state constitutions in his book, using various tricks to hide that these state constitutions all regulated, or gave the legislature the power to regulate, the right to bear arms:
Kentucky 1850: "That the rights of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned; but the General Assembly may pass laws to prevent persons from carrying concealed arms."
Missouri 1875: "The right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question; but nothing herein contained is intended to justify the practice of wearing concealed weapons."
Colorado 1876: That the right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person, and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons.
Georgia 1877: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but the General Assembly shall have power to prescribe the manner in which arms may be borne."
Florida 1885: "The right of the people to bear arms in defense of themselves and the lawful authority of the State, shall not be infringed, but the Legislature may prescribe the manner in which they may be borne."
Idaho 1889: "The people have the right to bear arms for their security and defense; but the legislature shall regulate the exercise of this right by law."
Montana 1889: "The right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but nothing herein contained shall be held to permit the carrying of concealed weapons."
Washington 1889: "The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the state shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men."
Mississippi 1890: "The right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but the legislature may regulate or forbid carrying concealed weapons."
Utah 1895: "The people have the right to bear arms for their security and defense, but the legislature may regulate the exercise of this right by law."
One state constitution noticeably absent in Barton's book is the constitution of his own state of Texas from the same time period as the others he cites. Why would he leave this one out? Well, because this is what the Texas constitution of 1869 said:
"Every person shall have the right to keep and bear arms, in the lawful defence of himself or the State, under such regulations as the Legislature may prescribe."
And prescribe laws the Texas legislature did. In 1871, two years after adopting its 1869 constitution, Texas passed "An Act to regulate the keeping and bearing of deadly weapons." This act prohibited:
"... any person carrying on or about his person, saddle, or in his saddle bags any pistol, dirk, dagger, slung-shot, sword-cane, spear, brass-knuckles, bowie-knife, or any other kind of knife manufactured or sold for the purposes of offense or defense, unless he has reasonable grounds for fearing an unlawful attack on his person, and that such ground of attack shall be immediate and pressing; or unless having or carrying the same on or about his person for the lawful defense of the State, as a militiaman in actual service, or as a peace officer or policeman."(28)
It also made it illegal in Texas to be armed in churches, schools, and pretty much anywhere else where people would be gathered:
"If any person shall go into any church or religious assembly, any school room, or other place where persons are assembled for amusement or for educational or scientific purposes, or into any circus, show, or public exhibition of any kind, or into a ball room, social party, or social gathering, or to any election precinct on the day or days of any election, where any portion of the people of this State are collected to vote at any election, or to any other place where people may be assembled to muster, or to perform any other public duty, (except s may be required or permitted by law,) or to any other public assembly, and shall carry about his person a pistol or other firearm, dirk, dagger, slung-shot, sword-cane, spear, brass-knuckles, bowie-knife, or any other kind of knife manufactured or sold for the purposes of offense or defense, unless an officer of the peace, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall, for the first offense, be punished by fine not less than fifty, nor more than five hundred dollars, and shall forfeit to the county the weapon or weapons so found on his person; and for every subsequent offense may, in addition to such fine and forfeiture, be imprisoned in the county jail for a term not more than ninety days."(29)
Yes, David Barton, who, as I said at the beginning of this very long post, thinks that not only teachers -- but students -- should be armed in schools, and claims that this was what made schools safe in the 1800s, is from a state whose early laws made it illegal to bring any weapon into a school.
*
References:
1. James A.H. Murray, ed., A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society, vol. 1, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), 449.
2. West H. Humphreys, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Tennessee, vol. 2, (St. Louis: G.I. Jones and Company, 1878), 125.
3. Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1775), 143-144.
4. Ibid., 144.
5. 1 W. & M. st. 2. c. 2. was the English Bill of Rights, passed into law in 1689 as "An Act for Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown."
6. Bird Wilson, ed., The Works of the Honourable James Wilson, L.L.D., Late One of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Professor of Law in the College of Philadelphia, vol. 3, (Philadelphia: Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), 83-85.
7. Sir Edward Coke, The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, (London: E. and R. Brooke, 1797), 161.
8. Ibid.
9. Sir Matthew Hale, The History of the Pleas of the Crown, vol. 1, (London: Printed by E. Rider, Little-Britain, for T. Payne, et. al., 1800), 547.
10. Ibid.
11. William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America, (Philadelphia: P.H. Nicklin, 1829), 125-126.
12. Ibid., 126.
13. George Washington to George Mason, April 5, 1969. John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, vol. 2, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931), 501.
14. Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, vol. 3, (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 438.
15. Ibid., 439.
16. Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. 1, (Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1826), 135.
17. Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, vol. 3, (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1866), 386.
18. Ibid., 380.
19. Ibid., 381.
20. Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist, vol. 1, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 342.
21. John Jay to John Murray, April 15, 1818. William Jay, The Life of John Jay: With Selections from his Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers, vol. 2, (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), 397.
22. William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619, vol. 1, (Richmond, VA: Samuel Pleasants, 1809), 127.
23. Ibid., 174.
24. William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619, vol. 2, (New York: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 386.
25. Robert & George Watkins, A Digest of the Laws of the State of Georgia: from its First Establishment as a British Province Down to the Year 1798, Inclusive, and the Principal Acts of 1799, (Philadelphia: R. Aitken, 1800), 157.
26. Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist, vol. 1, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 341.
27. Report of Cases at Law and in Equity, Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Alabama, During 1840, vol. 1, (Tuscaloosa, AL: Hale and Phelan, 1841), 616-617.
28. H.P.N. Gammel, ed., The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897, vol. 6, (Austin, TX: The Gammel Book Company, 1898), 927.
29. Ibid., 927-928.
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TeaParty.org Drops the (Other) H-Bomb
by Leah Nelson on January 28, 2013
Godwin’s Law, an Internet adage started by lawyer and writer Mike Godwin [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Godwin ] in 1990, states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
The law’s point, Godwin explained in a 1995 article for Wired [ http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/godwin.if_pr.html ] magazine, was the Internet seems to lead to glib comparisons between various politicians’ behavior and Hitler and Nazis which “invariably … trivialized the horror of the Holocaust and the social pathology of the Nazis”.
Godwin’s Law proved true once again on Friday, when TeaParty.org, a particularly vicious faction of the nebulous right-wing movement, treated subscribers to an E-mail blast titled “Stop America’s Hitler,” featuring a picture of President Obama sporting a Hitler moustache. If that wasn’t enough, the E-mail also included a photograph of two Nazis executing a victim with a pistol.
“If you were to make a movie today about a nation where only the police and military had guns, would you call it Schindler’s America?” the E-mail asks. “This is exactly what is happening. … It’s INSANITY. We are being stripped bare of our liberties and rights,” and “[t]o this the Tea Party says HELL NO.”
It continued, “Members of the TeaParty, red-blooded Americans and fellow citizens, the time is coming when you must decide. A Lexington and Concorde [sic] moment when you must decide which is greater: the demands of a tyrannical government as they disarm us and eviscerate our liberties or your own personal rights.”
TeaParty.org has already made its decision and is ready to take action. The E-mail blast promotes a fundraising campaign called “Operation Raise Hell,” which will “demand the deportation of Piers Morgan,” write a “big fat check” to support a “Youth Firearms Training Initiative” to be run by Gun Owners of America, and send a Tea Party team to Washington to “get in their faces.”
“Someday,” the fundraising pitch concludes, “your children will thank you for saving their future from Obama’s Soviet-Style Socialist State.”
Let’s get this straight: Unless we arm our children and deport a gun-control-friendly British CNN host, the president of the United States, who is practically the same as Hitler, is going to create some kind of United Soviet Socialist States of America by abolishing guns rights?
That’s a lot to untangle.
First, a word about our sponsors. TeaParty.org, also known as the 1776 Tea Party, is an especially belligerent faction of the Tea Party movement whose founder, Dale Robertson [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/05/28/teaparty-org-founder-labels-obama-with-racial-terms/ ], once showed up at a Houston rally carrying a sign [ http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/06/discredited-tea-party-group-claims-scott-walker-sponsorship ] that read, “Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar [sic].” Its CEO, Steve Eichler, used to be executive director of the Minuteman Project [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2005/summer/arizona-showdown ], a nativist extremist group whose splashiest event was a month-long vigilante gathering on the Arizona border in April 2005.
TeaParty.org boasts that it is “the ONLY tea party praised by Dr. Michael Savage [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/spring/the-rating-game ],” a radio talk show host who was fired from MSNBC in 2003 after describing an unidentified caller to his show as a “sodomite” who should “get AIDS and die.” Its website proudly features original content by Jerome Corsi [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2008/spring/the-nativists?page=0,2 ], an influential conspiracy theorist best known for proposing, at various times, that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/fall/hard-line-birthers-soldier-on-after-cer ]; that the president’s true father is the late labor activist Frank Marshall Davis [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/05/01/corsi-obamas-father-may-have-been-an-american-communist/ ]; and that Obama is gay and married to a Pakistani man [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/winter/conspiracy-theorist-jerome-corsi-plug ]. Really.
The site also includes content from WorldNetDaily [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/fall/world-nuts-daily ], an extreme-right online publication that plugs all manner of conpiracist nonsense (the imminent end of the world, the cause of homosexuality is soybean consumption — you get the idea), and from Alex Jones [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/alex-jones ], an antigoverment conspiracy monger whose response to recent calls for gun control has been so unhinged that even Glenn Beck [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/11/27/in-new-novel-glenn-beck-warns-of-squirrel-worshipping-socialists/ ] – Glenn Beck! [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/summer/glenn-beck-reaches-the-end-of-his-time ] – described him as a “crazy person [ http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/01/glenn-beck-alex-jones-is-a-crazy-person-153677.html ].”
Now that we’ve taken care of explaining who is behind these wild claims about “Schindler’s America,” it’s time to get to the what of the matter – as in, what the heck are these guys talking about?
“Remember, Hitler and his Nazi regime disarmed the people,” Friday’s E-mail blast warns. “The comparison between Hitler and Obama is striking.”
Addressing the problems with this ludicrous “comparison” is a little like explaining why a raven is nothing like a writing desk (h/t Lewis Carroll). But we’ll stick with the salient comparison, which seems to be the idea that Obama is like Hitler in some way that involves gun control.
Gun rights absolutists have for decades claimed that America’s gun control laws were somehow inspired by Hitler, and that the Holocaust itself was somehow caused — or at least not prevented — by gun control.
As Hatewatch has explained at length elsewhere [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/11/29/ammo-company-fudge-facts-and-taste-to-sell-its-wares/ ], the man who did the most to popularize this idea was the late Aaron Zelman, founder of a Wisconsin-based nonprofit called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), which touts itself as “America’s Most Aggressive Defender of Firearms Ownership.” Zelman’s most outrageous claim, outlined at length in his 1993 book ‘Gun Control’: Gateway to Tyranny [ http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Control-Gateway-Tyranny-Weapons/dp/0964230410 ], was that the 1968 Gun Control Act was explicitly based on Hitler’s gun laws. JFPO also claims the state-sanctioned mass murders and genocides in Ottoman Turkey, the USSR, Nazi Germany, China (under both Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao), Guatemala, Uganda, Cambodia, and Rwanda were all caused by variations on gun control laws, and conclude that tens of millions died as a result of gun control, not least among them the victims of Hitler’s reign.
As with many conspiracy theories, there’s a tiny kernel of truth to JFPO’s claim: In 1938, one day after Kristallnacht (a state-sanctioned pogrom that led to the burning of synagogues, destruction of Jewish businesses and property, and is generally considered to have been the beginning of a new phase of anti-Jewish violence in Nazi Germany), the German government issued a decree banning Jews from “acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons,” and requiring those who owned such weapons to turn them in to authorities. The punishment was imprisonment.
Indisputably, then, the Nazis opposed ownership of guns by Jews.
But – as hardly needs to be said – Nazis opposed Jews in general, and laws designed to disenfranchise and drive them out of Germany were implemented long before 1938, when the genocide began in earnest.
Moreover, gun control in Germany did not begin under the Nazis. In fact, except for bans on gun ownership by Jews and other perceived enemies, experts generally agree that the Third Reich’s gun laws were overall more relaxed than those enacted under its predecessor government, the Weimar Republic.
Bernard Harcourt, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, traced the evolution of German guns laws between 1919 and 1938 in an excellent 2004 paper, “On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars [ http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4029&context=flr ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=557183 )].” Harcourt notes that the Weimar Republic, reflecting the Treaty of Versailles’ “draconian” restrictions on weapons possession, banned gun ownership outright in 1919. Its gun laws were relaxed in 1928, but continued to require that all weapons be registered. The 1938 weapons law enacted under Hitler “represented a further liberalization of gun control regulations” [emphasis added] – deregulating the acquisition and sales of guns and ammunition, exempting entire groups from the permit requirement, lowering the age at which it was legal to own a gun from 20 to 18, and extending the validity of permits from one to three years.
“Hitler intended to liberalize gun control laws in Germany for ‘trustworthy’ German citizens, while disarming ‘unreliable’ persons, especially opponents of National Socialism and Jews, [so] {i}t is absurd to even try to characterize this as either pro-or anti-gun control,” Harcourt wrote. “But if forced to, it seems fair to conclude – at least preliminarily – that the Nazis were in favor of less gun control than the Weimar Republic for the ‘trustworthy’ German citizen – while disarming and engaging in a genocide of the Jewish population.”
And that’s about that for TeaParty.org’s supposedly “striking” comparison between Hitler and Obama.
Now to TeaParty.org’s goals – funding a “Youth Firearms Training Initiative” run by Gun Owners of America, deporting Piers Morgan, and going to Washington to “get in their faces.”
Gun Owners of America is an extreme-right organization whose executive director, Larry Pratt [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/summer/meet-the-patriots?page=0,2 ], helped outline the contours of the modern militia movement at an infamous 1992 convention of antigovernment fanatics and white supremacists in Estes Park, Colo. In 1996, Pratt was ejected as national co-chair of Pat Buchanan’s presidential candidates when his ties to the white supremacist convener of the Estes Park gathering were made public. “The Second Amendment ain’t about duck hunting,” he reportedly [ http://www.leonardzeskind.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=75:armed-and-dangerous-the-nra-militias-and-white-supremacists-are-fostering-a-network-of-right-wing-warriors-&catid=21:articles-op-eds-etc&Itemid=35 ] told the group.
Neither, presumably, would the “training institute” Pratt and TeaParty.org intend to run for young people.
Piers Morgan, of course, is the CNN host whose advocacy of gun control has become something of a media circus featuring shouting matches with gun rights absolutists – including Pratt, who Morgan earlier this month called [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/piers-morgan-gun-control-larry-pratt_n_2330948.html ] “an unbelievably stupid man.” A petition demanding Morgan’s deportation started by Alex Jones sidekick Kurt Nimmo [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/08/27/conspiracists-say-recent-shootings-false-flag-attacks-by-government/ ] has garnered tens of thousands of signatures, and TeaParty.org apparently wants donors to think it will use their money will make this absurd fantasy come true.
Then there’s the plan to “get in their faces” in Washington. Given the context, we can only assume this means that TeaParty.org hopes its emissaries will start some kind of argument with gun control advocates.
Well, that’s their right – under the First Amendment, they can petition the government for redress of grievances till they’re blue in the face, making as many Hitler comparisons as they feel their point about gun rights warrants.
Of course, Godwin’s Law about Internet discussion and Nazis has a few corollaries – one of which, according to Wikipedia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law ] (which on matters such as these is as authoritative a source as any, given that Godwin served as general counsel to the Wikimedia foundation from 2007-2010) states that once the comparison is made, the conversation is over and the party that brought up the Nazis “has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.”
So TeaParty.org can go forth and get in “their” faces. Their silly and spurious Hitler comparison only undercuts whatever serious points might be made by gun rights advocates as Americans ponder an updated take on the Second Amendment.
Copyright 2013 Southern Poverty Law Center (emphasis in original)
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/01/28/teaparty-org-drops-the-other-h-bomb/ [with comments] [and see in particular "The Hitler gun control lie", 4th item at (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=83385518 (and preceding and following)] [and to note my take -- 'Godwin's Law (sic - Quip)' is kinda cute, but substantively utterly empty/vapid -- Hitler and the Nazis are hardly incomparable, were not somehow sui generis, within human history -- Godwin's Quip can go blow a goat, comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis are or are not apt based solely and entirely on the respective realities and how they're being compared/characterized as being in parallel]
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Bombs and Racist Propaganda Found in Connecticut Home
by Bill Morlin on January 31, 2013
Just down the road from the scene of the December school massacre in Newtown, Conn., police in Stamford have discovered a home filled with bomb-making materials, assorted firearms, and white supremacist and anti-police propaganda.
Stamford police and FBI agents today identified and interviewed a middle-aged man who apparently had been illegally living in the home, triggering an inspection Wednesday by health inspections. The home is less than 700 feet from a middle school. The suspect, whose name hasn’t been released, has not been charged while authorities discuss whether to proceed with state or federal charges.
Police discovered loaded weapons including rifles and shotguns near entry points to the home, white supremacist and anti-police propaganda, a monitoring system to watch the outside of the home, and a reinforced escape tunnel that ran underground through the backyard, the Stamford Patch [ http://stamford.patch.com/articles/vine-rd-man-not-charged-yet ] reported. They also found bombs that were being prepared with PVC pipes loaded with nuts and bolts that were apparently meant to serve as anti-personnel shrapnel.
In addition to swastikas, a poster inside the home depicted a police funeral with a derogatory message scrawled across it, Stamford Police Chief Jon Fontneau told the newspaper. Loaded firearms were discovered near entry points to the home.
“I’ve been on hundreds, if not thousands, of search warrants,” the chief said, “and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
D.J. McAneny, a reporter for the Stamford Patch, told Hatewatch today that police and explosives experts were at the house at 170-172 Vine Road throughout the night, but had cleared the scene by midday today. Stamford is 25 miles from Newtown, where 26 people were murdered on Dec. 14.
Anne Fountain, director of the Stamford Department of Health and Social Services, said her department had received the initial complaint about the property in May, but workers were refused entrance when they went to the home, the Stamford newspaper reported.
“We had received a complaint of an illegal dwelling with several code violations, but he wouldn’t let us in,” Fountain told the newspaper. “We’d been there a second time prior to [Wednesday]’s visit, so this was on ongoing complaint. We had to obtain a search warrant to access the home, which is why the police were present.”
The Stamford police chief said that when one of his officers, accompanying the health department worker, discovered explosives, they evacuated and police took over the investigation.
Tax records show the property is owned by William Hertle Properties LLC, and Debra Saturno-Galang is listed as co-owner, the Stamford Patch reported.
The police chief said health workers and his officer who initially entered the home were overcome by the smell of urine and feces from the basement, apparently from dogs that weren’t let outside, Fontneau said.
Copyright 2013 Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/01/31/bombs-weapons-and-racist-propaganda-found-in-connecticut-home/ [with comments]
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Victoria Jackson Just Asking, ‘Why Isn’t There A White History Month,’ Is Not Racist
4:15 pm January 31, 2013
Hey onetime comedienne and ukulele molester Victoria Jackson, what are you on about today?
I wrote a uke song called “White Men Are Good” and sang it at a comedy club about 4 years ago. I could feel the audience tense up. Why? Why is there a Black History Month but not a White History Month? Now, that the white race is becoming a minority in America, perhaps we need to make…say, January, White History Month.
Ok, just your typical middling-student-in-middle-school-level philosophy and logic. Nothing new there. But is there anything else you would like to share with the class, Victoria Jackson? Perhaps something about how the country is going to pot because it is no longer run by white men, but you are not a racist [ http://wonkette.com/489745/failed-snl-comedienne-victoria-jackson-continues-being-not-racist-or-crazy-at-all ]?
I’m just really tired of the white male, and especially the white conservative, Christian male being attacked in cartoons, movies, TV shows, politics, Affirmative Action, etc. It’s like in order to fix the “discrimination” problem, culture flipped the racism from “against blacks” to “against whites”. Why do we have to be “against” anyone? Aren’t we all equal?
Just for the record, white men invented rockets, space travel, airplanes, the automobile, the English language, the U.S.A., most medical advances, electricity, television, telescope, microscope, Ivy League Universities, the computer, the Internet, and on and on. I think white men should be praised and respected. White Christian Conservative Men especially, should be loved and adored. They were the backbone and originators of the greatest nation on earth. We need more of them now.
In November, 2012 The Blaze reported that Alec Baldwin tweeted, “…Obama’s re-election signaled the end of white, middle-aged Christian male dominance”.
Maybe that’s why our country is going to pot; our huge deficit, foreign attacks, crashing economy, racial and class warfare, immigration problems, bigger government, disappearing freedom, growing poverty, sky-rocketing unemployment, rancid immorality, more pregnant teens, etc. etc. – “the end of white, middle-aged Christian male dominance.” I’m just saying.
Find a white, middle-aged Christian man today and hug him. And then, encourage him and your white Christian sons to stand up, be leaders again, and save our country from the God-hating communists like Alec Baldwin and Obama.
Take it away, commenters. The thought of explicating that big a pile of shitmouth has sapped us of our will to live.
©2013 Wonkette Media LLC (emphasis in original)
http://wonkette.com/499372/victoria-jackson-just-asking-why-isnt-there-a-white-history-month-is-not-racist [the YouTube, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlB1dHwlydQ , as embedded; with comments]
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Joe Arpaio Makes Urgent Fundraising Plea To Fight 'Radical Extremists' Seeking To Recall Him
02/01/2013
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Friday responded to news that he is the target of a new recall campaign [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/joe-arpaio-recall-effort-arizona_n_2589931.html ], blasting out a frantic email to his supporters asking for money to help fend off the challenge.
"Just three weeks after I was sworn into office for a sixth term as Maricopa County Sheriff, a group of radical extremists filed a recall campaign to forcibly remove me from office," Arpaio wrote. "This is very serious."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/01/joe-arpaio-fundraising_n_2599639.html [with comments]
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Obama Shooting Clays! White House Releases Photo, Mocks 'Skeeters'
Feb 2 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/obama-shooting-clays-white-house-releases-photo-mocks-skeeters/272803/ [with comments]
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Meet Jason Rapert, the Koch-Backed Evangelical Steering Arkansas's Radical Abortion-Restriction Effort
Lee Fang on February 1, 2013 - 5:48 AM ET
On Wednesday, the Arkansas legislature lurched forward [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/arkansas-abortion-bill_n_2594501.html ] with a radical measure to ban most abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected within six weeks of a pregnancy, a requirement experts say will force the state to insert a probe into a woman’s vagina to detect.
The bill also penalizes doctors who perform abortions after the arbitrary cut-off date with a Class D felony, carrying up to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The chief sponsor of the measure is Republican State Senator Jason Rapert, a fiddle-playing [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iEwD7rohZg (next below]
Here he is [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVKS27fLN3k (below, as embedded)] at a Tea Party rally from 2011, not only complaining about Obama’s Ramadan event but also warning the president that his people have had enough of “minorities” running the country (emphasis added):
RAPERT: I hear you loud and clear, Barack Obama. You don’t represent the country that I grew up with. And your values is not going to save us. We’re going to take this country back for the Lord. We’re going to try to take this country back for conservatism. And we’re not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in!
Watch it (via video uploaded [ http://keeparkansaslegal.blogspot.com/2011/04/arkansas-tea-party-footage.html ] by Keep Arkansas Legal, an anti-immigrant group):
While Rapert certainly enjoys wide support in many corners of the evangelical movement (here he is with Rev. John Hagee [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLrp_W3UhZk (next below)]),
Here are some examples: Southwestern Energy Company PAC gave $2,000; ARCH PAC, of Arch Coal, gave $1,000; Eli Lilly and Company gave $500; Lisa Allen, an executive with Cox Communications, gave $1,000; Nucor Corp PAC of AR gave $500; AT&T Arkansas PAC gave $2,000; Verizon gave $1,000; and American Electric Power PAC gave $500.
n 2012, Arkansas was one of several states to become substantially more Republican, with both the state house and senate falling into GOP hands for the first time since Reconstruction. Rapert’s district, a traditionally Democratic stronghold near Conway, was one of the pivotal seats that decided the balance of power. Rapert made abortion a major issue in the campaign, attacking his opponent, State Representative Linda Tyler for not doing enough to curtail abortion rights while serving as chair to the Arkansas House Public Health Committee.
As the The Washington Post’s T.W. Farnam reported [ http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10-01/politics/35500590_1_arkansas-afp-presidential-race ], the Koch brothers–financed Americans for Prosperity (AFP) group made Arkansas a target state last year, and pledged $1 million dollars to key races to both defeat moderate Republican during the primaries, and to wipe the state of its remaining Democrats. Jay Barth, a professor at Hendrix College, a school near Rapert’s district, noted [ http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/plank/109294/in-arkansas-dixie%E2%80%99s-last-democratic-legislature-faces-red-tide ] that AFP’s Arkansas mailers “prime[d] racial sentiments by using an image of an African-American doctor.”
Rapert, a signatory [ http://americansforprosperity.org/files/Rapert_Jason.pdf ] to the Koch’s “No Climate Tax Pledge” and a regular participant in AFP’s political events, also received $2,000 directly from Koch Industries last year for his campaign.
Perhaps business interests were drawn to Rapert for his novel justifications for corporate-friendly legislation. According to the Blue Arkansas Blog, Rapert defended his support for bringing high-interest [ http://www.stoppaydaypredators.org/pdfs/11_0225_mcdaniel1.pdf ] payday lending back to the state by comparing [ http://bluearkansasblog.com/?p=9963 ] such loans to the microfinance loans used to support Third World farmers.
Libertarian billionaire Charles Koch, author of his own ideology he touts as the “Science of Liberty,” is famous for spreading his beliefs (and [ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/03/01/146847/charles-koch-welfare/ ] his business interests [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/03/01/147376/koch-polluter-bailout/ ]) through the aggressive use of political donations to candidates, think tanks, media outlets, universities, career-training institutes and dark-money attack-ad groups. But critics, including myself, point to the hundreds of state and federal Koch-backed politicians who seem to prioritize fairly authoritarian policies. Rapert’s transvaginal probes and government-forced pregnancies do not seem to cohere with any notion of individual liberty I’m familiar with.
Remember Jeb Bush? He’s back making money off of education reforms his nonprofit promotes [ http://www.thenation.com/blog/172551/e-mails-show-jeb-bush-foundation-lobbied-businesses-including-one-tied-bush ].
Copyright © 2013 The Nation (emphasis in original)
http://www.thenation.com/blog/172584/meet-jason-rapert-koch-backed-evangelical-steering-arkansas-radical-abortion-restriction [with comments] [and see (linked in) "Jason Rapert, Arkansas Abortion-Ban Sponsor, Made Racial Remarks At Tea Party Rally", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/01/jason-rapert-arkansas-racial-remarks_n_2599376.html (with comments)]
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Rick Perry: Boy Scouts Should Keep Anti-Gay Policy
By WILL WEISSERT
Posted: 02/02/2013 4:11 pm EST
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Rick Perry said emphatically Saturday that the Boy Scouts of America shouldn't soften its strict no-gays membership policy, and dismissed the idea of bending the organization to the whims of "popular culture."
Perry is an Eagle Scout and in 2008 he authored the book "On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For." It detailed the governor's deep love for the organization and explained why it should continue to embrace traditional, conservative values — including excluding openly gay members and Scout leaders.
America's longest-serving governor addressed the Texas Scouts' 64th annual Report to State, where hundreds of Scouts from around Texas filled the state House of Representatives to announce their delegation's recent accomplishments.
Perry has addressed the gathering several times before, most recently in 2010, but not since the announcement that the Scouts' national leadership is mulling scrapping the mandatory exclusion of gay members. Instead, the group could allow different religious and civic groups that sponsor Scout units to decide for themselves how to address the issue — either maintaining the exclusion or opening up their membership.
Even though the Boy Scouts reaffirmed the no-gays policy just seven months ago, the proposal is expected to be discussed, and possibly voted on, at the meeting of the Scouts' national executive board, which begins Monday in Irving, outside Dallas.
Perry told the youngsters that the Scouts was a key reason he joined the U.S. Air Force and later sought public office, and that society's failure to adhere to the organization's core values was a cause for high rates of teen pregnancy and wayward youth who grow up to be "men joining their fathers in prison."
Speaking to reporters afterward, Perry said: "Hopefully the board will follow their historic position of keeping the Scouts strongly supportive of the values that make Scouting this very important and impactful organization."
"I think most people see absolutely no reason to change the position and neither do I," Perry said. He said his views on the subject haven't changed since writing his book, in which he noted that profits would be donated to the Boy Scouts of America Legal Defense since "they continue to be under attack from the forces of secularism."
Asked if he would feel different about the Scouts if the policy is changed, Perry wouldn't say. But he added: "to have popular culture impact 100 years of their standards is inappropriate."
He also disagreed that allowing members of all sexual preferences would make the Scouts more tolerant: "I think you get tolerance and diversity every day in Scouting."
Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, said Saturday, "It's a shame that Governor Perry has chosen to be on the wrong side of history."
"Governor Perry and the Boy Scouts are both completely out of touch with where America is going on this issue," he said "There should be one national, non-discrimination policy. We can't quite wrap our heads around why that is so difficult to do in 2013."
Perry wrote in his book that he doesn't "believe the teaching of sexual preference fits within the parameters of Scouting's mission," but also made it very clear he'd like to keep gay members from joining.
"Because gay activism is central to their lives, it would unavoidably be a topic of conversation within a Scout troop. This would distract from the mission of Scouting: character building, not sex education," he wrote.
Perry also questioned whether sexual preference is determined at birth or is a matter of personal choice in his book, and wrote that he doesn't believe in "condemning homosexuals that I know personally."
Zach Wahls is an Eagle Scout raised in Iowa by two lesbian moms who has become a leading activist against the no-gays policy. Wahls said by phone Saturday he believes national Scout leaders will soften the membership policy next week, and he hopes the move won't make Perry won't turn his back on the Scouts.
"We've been called bullies and had people say 'you're imposing your will,'" he said. "Our organization isn't calling for the removal of anybody who disagrees with us. We support fully inclusive Scouting."
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/02/rick-perry-boy-scouts-gay-policy_n_2607353.html [with comments]
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Rick Sheehy Resigns: Nebraska Lieutenant Governor Steps Down
By ALISSA SKELTON and GRANT SCHULTE
02/02/13 06:44 PM ET EST
LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy resigned abruptly Saturday in a scandal involving thousands of calls to four women on his state-issued cellphone, including one woman who said she had a romantic relationship with the politician.
Gov. Dave Heineman announced Sheehy's resignation in a hastily called news conference Saturday morning. Sheehy, a Republican, had been considered the front-runner in the 2014 gubernatorial race and had been endorsed by Heineman.
"As public officials, we are rightly held to a higher standard," Heineman said. "I had trusted him, and that trust was broken."
Sheehy resigned after questions were raised about the cellphone calls with four women, none of whom were his wife, who filed for divorce last year. The calls, made over the last four years, were first reported by the Omaha World-Herald, which had made a public records request for Sheehy's phone records.
Records released Saturday by the governor's office show Sheehy made thousands of late-night phone calls to the women. He spoke with some of the women numerous times a day in conversations that lasted anywhere from a few minutes to more than an hour, according to the records.
One woman he frequently called, Dr. Theresa Hatcher of Bellevue, told The Associated Press that she and Sheehy had maintained a long-term relationship after they met at a convention of emergency responders in Texas in 2008. As lieutenant governor, Sheehy leads the state's emergency management efforts, and Hatcher is an emergency room doctor.
"I thought I was the only one," she said. "Apparently, I was grossly mistaken."
[...]
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/02/rick-sheehy-resigns_n_2606512.html [with comments]
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Mahony defends legacy on church abuse in blog
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Published: February 1, 2013
LOS ANGELES — Retired Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony defended his tattered legacy in a sharply worded letter to his successor, a day after Archbishop Jose Gomez stripped him of his administrative duties and bowed to a court order to release thousands of pages of confidential files on sexually abusive priests.
In a letter posted Friday on his personal blog, Mahony challenged Gomez for publicly shaming him and said he developed policies to safeguard children after taking over in 1985, despite being unequipped to deal with the molester priests he inherited.
Mahony had apologized two weeks ago after another release of similar files showed he and other top aides worked behind the scenes to protect the church from the growing scandal, keep offending clerics out of state and prevent public disclosure of sex crimes committed by priests.
Gomez was well aware when he took over in 2011 of the steps Mahony had taken to develop better clergy sex abuse policies and never questioned his leadership until Thursday, Mahony wrote.
"Unfortunately, I cannot return now to the 1980s and reverse actions and decisions made then. But when I retired as the active archbishop, I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth," Mahony wrote.
The letter was remarkable because it revealed infighting between two highly placed church leaders when members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy rarely break ranks publicly, said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who worked for the Vatican's Washington, D.C., embassy who also has served as an expert witness for victims in clerical abuse cases.
"It is so rare because they stick together like glue," he said. "The fact that Gomez said what he said, this had to have been cleared by the Vatican, they had to have discussed this with the Vatican. Mahony took the fall."
Gomez declined an interview request from The Associated Press.
The exchange also indicates the stress Mahony is under following several weeks of damaging disclosures of priest personnel files that reveal he and a top aide, Thomas Curry, who is now a bishop, maneuvered to shield priests from prosecution, kept parishioners in the dark and failed to call police about sex crimes against minors.
Gomez's public rebuke of Mahony, 76, for failing to take swift action against abusive priests adds tarnish to a career already overshadowed by the church sex abuse scandal, but it does little to change his role in the larger church.
The archbishop also accepted a resignation request from Curry, who most recently served as auxiliary bishop in charge of the archdiocese's Santa Barbara region.
The fallout will get worse as parishioners themselves begin to read the thousands of pages of documents that are now posted on the archdiocese website.
The files were to be released as part of a record-breaking $660 million settlement with more than 500 victims of sex abuse, but lawyers for the archdiocese and individual priests waged a five-year battle to keep them sealed. On Thursday, a judge ordered them released without significant redactions after attorneys for The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times intervened.
An attorney for the media organizations contacted the archdiocese Friday with concerns that certain documents were improperly redacted.
Several of the documents in the newly released files echo recurring themes that emerged over the past decade in dioceses nationwide, where church leaders moved problem priests between parishes and didn't call police.
Studies commissioned by the U.S. bishops found more than 4,000 U.S. priests have faced sexual abuse allegations since the early 1950s, in cases involving more than 10,000 children - mostly boys.
In one instance, a draft of a plan with Mahony's name on it calls for sending a molester priest to his native Spain for a minimum of seven years, paying him $400 a month and offering health insurance. In return, the cardinal would agree to write the Vatican and ask them to cancel his excommunication, leaving the door open for him to return as a priest someday.
"I am concerned that the archdiocese may later be seen as liable - for having continued to support this man - now that we have been put on notice that one of the young adults under his influence is suicidal," a top aide wrote in a memo about the priest to Mahony in 1995, urging him to stop paying benefits to the priest.
The cardinal added a handwritten note: "I concur - the faster, the better."
In another case, Mahony resisted turning over a list of altar boys to police who were investigating claims against a visiting Mexican priest who was later determined to have molested 26 boys during a 10-month stint in Los Angeles. "We cannot give such a list for no cause whatsoever," he wrote on a January 1988 memo.
While Gomez's decision to strip Mahony of his administrative duties and reduce his public role was unprecedented in the American Roman Catholic Church, Mahony can still act as a priest, keep his rank as cardinal and remain on a critical Vatican panel that elects the next pope.
Victims were quick to point out the contrast between Mahony's pared-down local standing and his continued position as a cardinal who travels frequently to Rome and remains in good standing there.
The decision "is little more than window dressing. Cardinal Mahony is still a very powerful prelate," Joelle Casteix, the Western regional director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said at a Friday news conference outside the Los Angeles cathedral. "He's a very powerful man in Rome and still a very powerful man in Los Angeles."
The Vatican declined to comment Friday when asked if the Holy See would follow Gomez's lead and take action against Mahony.
Tod Tamberg, the archdiocese spokesman, said he did not know if Pope Benedict XVI was aware of Gomez's actions. Mahony was in Rome several weeks ago for meetings unrelated to Thursday's announcement.
Mahony is a member of three Vatican departments, including the Holy See's all-important economic affairs office, and he remains a member of the College of Cardinals. At 76, he is still eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope.
The Vatican's former sex crimes prosecutor, Bishop Charles Scicluna, has said Canon Law provides for sanctioning bishops who show "malicious or fraudulent negligence" in their work, but he acknowledged that such laws have never been applied in the case of bishops who covered up sex abuse cases.
In the past, even high-ranking members of the church hierarchy who have spoken out about how senior church officials handled clergy abuse crisis have been rebuked by the Holy See.
In 2010, for example, Viennese Cardinal Cristoph Schoenborn criticized the former Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, in an interview for his handling of a notorious sex abuse case. Schoenborn didn't use Sodano's name in his critique but was nonetheless forced to come to Rome to explain himself to the pope and Sodano.
The Vatican publicly rebuked Schoenborn, saying that only the pope has authority to deal with accusations against a cardinal.
The Vatican's silence about Gomez's actions indicates that officials there were aware of it, said Patrick Wall, a former Benedictine monk and priest and vocal church critic who consults on clergy abuse cases.
"Gomez was as brilliant as a sniper the way he orchestrated this because he did not overstep his authority against the pope and yet at the same time it appears that some type of penalty is being imposed," said Wall. "It's brilliant and this has never happened in the U.S."
Mahony will reduce his public appearances, including numerous guest lectures nationwide on immigration reform, Tamberg said. However, he remains a priest in good standing and will continue to live in a North Hollywood parish and can celebrate the sacraments with no restrictions, he said.
Mahony, who retired in 2011 after more than a quarter-century at the helm of the archdiocese, has publicly apologized for mistakes he made in dealing with priests who molested children.
He repeated that apology in his blog post Friday.
"I have stated time and time again that I made mistakes, especially in the mid-1980s," he wrote. "I apologized for those mistakes, and committed myself to make certain that the Archdiocese was safe for everyone."
Associated Press writers Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, Michael Blood and Christina Hoag in Los Angeles, and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2013/02/01/2378352/mahony-defends-legacy-on-church.html [with comment]
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BY STEVE PEOPLES
Posted: 02/02/2013 11:40 am EST | Updated: 02/03/2013 4:55 am EST
CONCORD, N.H. -- An immigration debate is raging and a budget crisis looms in Congress, but the conservative activists gathered outside the New Hampshire Statehouse had just one thing on their minds: guns.
"The Second Amendment is there to protect us from losing the rest of them," said Adam Brisebois, 34, of Hudson, who cradled his 3-year-old daughter on his right shoulder and a rifle on the left. "If we don't fight, we'll lose our rights."
Thursday's rally, organized by tea party leaders, drew nearly 500 people, many of them waving signs and carrying loaded weapons, to the state capital. Conservative leaders elsewhere report a wave of similar protests as grass-roots activists from Florida to Colorado seize on a new rallying cry for a tea party movement, which is trying to recover from a painful 2012 election season.
Many activists aren't happy with the GOP's sudden embrace of more lenient immigration proposals and they're monitoring the approaching congressional deadline to avoid massive cuts to military programs. But for now at least, the debate over guns and the perceived threat of losing them tops their list.
It's an "organic" movement with little coordination from national conservative organizations, according to Amy Kremer, chairman of the Tea Party Express. "It's happening by itself," she said.
It doesn't matter that neither President Barack Obama nor congressional Democrats are calling for a wholesale repeal of gun rights. Tea partyers are enraged by the possibility of any erosion of the Second Amendment's "right of the people to keep and bear arms."
The gun control debate in Washington took center stage after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre in December, when a gunman used a semi-automatic assault rifle to kill 26 people, 20 of them children. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats have promised to make gun restrictions a legislative priority. Obama already has proposed requiring background checks for all gun sales and reviving both an assault weapons ban and a 10-round limit on the size of ammunition magazines.
There was little mention of the school shooting at the New Hampshire rally, where the crowd focused squarely on the belief that helped lead to the creation of the tea party movement four years ago: that an overbearing government is trampling on the nation's founding principles.
"There is an assault going on on the Constitution. And that is job one of ours - to protect our flank and protect gun owners," said Tom Gaitens, a Tampa, Fla.-based tea party leader. "To us, this is the fundamental issue on the founding of our nation."
Florida tea party activists already have traveled to Washington to protest new gun restrictions, and conservative leaders in the state are considering a series of gun-related rallies, Gaitens said.
Many protesters are hunters, but say access to hunting is not their prime concern - just as a sign hanging behind the podium at the New Hampshire rally said: "The right to keep arms is not about deer hunting. It is about defending the republic from tyranny."
"I don't have an automatic weapon. I don't want an automatic weapon. But the citizens need to have guns that are equal to the guns that the government has," said Roger Rist, a 69-year-old business owner from Meredith. "I certainly hope I don't have to take up arms against the government. Might we have to? Yeah."
In Colorado, foes of illegal immigration have been quiet as the Democrat-controlled Legislature has moved to allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at state colleges and universities. Similar bills in the past drew dozens of angry witnesses, but only one man from a group opposing illegal immigration testified against it at the Statehouse this month, compared with a parade of supporters of the bill.
In contrast, gun advocates held a spirited rally at the Colorado Statehouse to oppose gun control measures and drew more than 100 people last month. They also held a widely-publicized training recently for teachers and school workers who want to carry guns at the workplace.
In Georgia, tea party conservatives have introduced a range of bills that together would effectively allow Georgians to carry weapons anywhere. They also attempt to exempt certain weapons from federal gun control laws.
"We don't have a single member who thinks we need any new laws on this," said Ken Baxley, a local tea party leader in southeast Georgia's Effingham County, said. "When that tragedy happened, our anger was directed at the shooter, not at the guns."
An Associated Press-GfK poll found last month that 58 percent of Americans felt the gun laws in the United States should be stricter. Among Republicans, 53 percent want the nation's gun laws to stay as they are, while 2 in 3 women favor stricter gun laws, as do 60 percent of independents.
The fate of new gun legislation on Capitol Hill is uncertain at best. And as tea party activists clamor against any changes, the powerful gun lobby is echoing their argument.
"I think without any doubt, if you look at why our Founding Fathers put (the Second Amendment) there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny," Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association said in a congressional hearing last week.
Associated Press writers Nicholas Riccardi in Denver and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/02/gun-debate_n_2606331.html [with comments]
--
A Debunking of Pseudo-Historian David Barton's Book on the Second Amendment
By Chris Rodda [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda ]
Senior Research Director, Military Religious Freedom Foundation [ ];
Author, 'Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History Vol. 1 [ http://www.amazon.com/Liars-For-Jesus-Religious-Alternate/dp/1419644386 ]' and
'Debunking David Barton's Jefferson Lies: #2 - Jefferson Founded a Secular University [ http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-David-Bartons-Jefferson-Lies/dp/1477469303 ]'
Posted: 02/01/2013 11:20 am
Like many a good Christian, pseudo-historian David Barton likes guns and, of course, thinks that every person in America has an unlimited constitutional -- and biblical -- right to own and carry them.
Barton, not surprisingly, has been saying some pretty wild things on the subject recently, many of them on Glenn Beck's web-based TV show, where he went beyond advocating that teachers be armed, saying that the students should be armed, telling this story about an attempted school shooting in the 1850s:
"The great example, in the 1850s you have a school teacher who's teaching. A guy -- he's out in the West -- this guy from New England wants to kill him and find him. So he comes into the school with his gun to shoot the teacher, he decides not to shoot the teacher because all the kids pull their guns out and point it at him and say, 'You kill the teacher, you die.' He says, 'Okay.' The teacher lives. Real simple stuff."
On his own radio show as well as Beck's show, Barton made the incredible claim that gun accidents were virtually unheard of in the founding era, saying:
"I have searched and in the founding era I think I've only ever found two gun accidents and everybody was hauling guns back then. You took your guns to church, you were required by state law in some states to take your guns to church. We didn't have accidents because everyone was familiar with how to use them."
Barton gives no source for his story about those gun-toting kids of the 1850s saving their teacher, making that story impossible to fact check, but many of the other things he's been saying can be checked. This is because they're based on quotes that can be found in his 2000 book, The Second Amendment: Preserving the Inalienable Right of Individual Self-Protection [ http://www.amazon.com/Second-Amendment-David-Barton/dp/0925279773 ], which, of course, contains a plethora of those footnotes he's famous for.
Barton begins his book with the typical arguments -- the all-or-nothing argument that people who support gun control laws think that only the police and the military should be able to have guns, and the argument that any laws whatsoever regulating an individual's right to own guns are unconstitutional.
Barton divides the historical quotes he uses in his book into four chapters -- I. Early Legal Commentaries, II. Views of the Founding Fathers, III. Early Legislative Acts, and IV. State Constitutions -- saying:
"These four categories of information will indisputably demonstrate that a citizen's right to keep and bear arms is an individually guaranteed right and that efforts to restrict or regulate gun possession by ordinary law-abiding citizens -- no matter what "humanitarian" or alleged "historical" arguments might undergird such efforts -- are unequivocal violations of the explicit protections and original intentions of the Constitution."
It would be impossible to cover in a blog post all of the quotes presented by Barton in his book, so I've chosen a handful from each chapter, paying particular attention the ones relevant to the big question today: Are laws regulating guns unconstitutional?
Even with limiting this post to only some of the quotes used by Barton, it is still unusually long for a blog post. This is unavoidable since, in order to put Barton's out-of-context and butchered quotes back in context, it's necessary to quote some fairly lengthy passages from the sources of these quotes. I realize that most people won't have time to read the entire thing, but hope that they'll at least look at enough of the examples to get an idea of how badly Barton distorts history to support his claim that his book will prove that the founders would have found any laws regulating guns to be "unequivocal violations" of the Constitution.
I. Early Legal Commentaries
Before actually getting to his quotes from early legal commentaries, Barton explains that "a common error in constitutional interpretation is the failure to examine a document according to its original meaning," and presents a bunch of quotes from the founders that have nothing to do with the Second Amendment or guns, but merely say that it's important to know what was meant by things at the time that they were written. I couldn't agree more.
So, let's look at what the term "to bear arms" meant at the time that the Second Amendment was written. Would this term have been used in 1789 to mean an individual right of self-protection as Barton claims? Well, no. Up until the modern-day debates over gun control, the words "to bear arms" were interpreted to mean one thing and one thing only -- to serve in a military capacity.
Early dictionary definitions of the term "to bear arms" are clear. Every dictionary from the 1800s and earlier that contained a definition of the specific term "to bear arms" defined this term as meaning to be a soldier. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, for example, published in both England and America in 1888 with the stated aim to "furnish an adequate account of the meaning, origin, and history of English words now in general use," defined "to bear arms" as: "to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight."(1)
Individuals who attempted to use the Second Amendment or the similar provisions in their state constitutions to argue that the right to "bear arms" meant they had the right to carry any weapon in any manner that they chose were not successful. As Justice Nathan Green, who served on the Tennessee Supreme Court from 1831-1852 made it clear in his opinion in the 1840 case of Aymette v. The State of Tennessee, bearing arms and carrying weapons were not synonymous:
"A man in pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms."(2)
Barton then presents a batch of quotes from the founders explaining what an "inalienable right" is, saying that "before establishing that the Second Amendment was intended to secure an individual's right 'to keep and bear arms' as an inalienable right, it is important to establish just what an inalienable right is." He still hasn't presented any quotes having to do with the Second Amendment or guns, but concludes from his generic quotes about etymology and inalienable rights:
"That the Second Amendment simply secured in writing a right which God had already conferred on His creation was confirmed in the legal commentaries that undergirded American law."
Barton then finally gets to his quotes from early legal commentaries, beginning with William Blackstone's 1766 Commentaries on the Laws of England. As he often does when quoting this work, Barton leaves off the "of England" part of the title, simply calling it Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws, and saying how widely used it was in America, giving his readers the impression that this was an American law book. But even this work on the laws of England has to be misquoted by Barton to make it say what he wants it to say -- that bearing arms was considered an absolute right that could never be regulated by any other laws.
From Barton's book:
"Concerning the right of citizens to own and use arms, Blackstone's declared:
"'The ... right of the [citizens] that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defense. ... [This is] the natural right of resistance and self-preservation when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.... [T]o vindicate these rights when actually violated or attacked, the [citizens] are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next, to the right of petitioning the [government] for redress of grievances; and lastly, to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense.'"
Now, here are the two passages from Blackstone's that Barton combines and edits to construct that quote. As you can see, what Barton did here was simply to chop out the parts (bolded here) where Blackstone said that the right of individuals to own arms only went as far as was "allowed by law":
"The fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute 1 W. & M. st. 2. c. 2. and is indeed a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression."(3)
"And, lastly, to vindicate these rights, when actually violated or attacked, the subjects of England are entitled, in the first place, to the regular administration and free course of justice in the courts of law; next to the right of petitioning the king and parliament for redress of grievances; and lastly to the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense. And all these rights and liberties it is our birthright to enjoy entire; unless where the laws of our country have laid them under necessary restraints."(4)
And, here's what the act from 1 W. & M. referenced by Blackstone said (emphasis mine):
"That the subjects which are protestants, may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law."(5)
So, without Barton's editing, Blackstone's, which Barton calls "the most influential legal commentary at the time of the framing of the Second Amendment," said that the "natural right" to own arms for "self-preservation" could indeed be limited by "laws," "restrictions," and "restraints."
Barton's next example comes from the law lectures of James Wilson, who, in addition to teaching law in Pennsylvania, was one of the framers of the Constitution and one of the original U.S. Supreme Court justices.
According to Barton:
"Not only did the Second Amendment secure what Blackstone had called 'the right of having and using arms' for 'the natural right of resistance and self-preservation' but our Founders further believed that it was a duty for every citizen to be willing to exercise that right when necessary. This was made clear by James Wilson, who declared:
"'Homicide is enjoined [required] when it is necessary for the defense of one's person or house. ... [I]t is the great natural law of self-preservation which, as we have seen, cannot be repealed or superseded or suspended by any human institution. This law, however, is expressly recognized in the constitution of Pennsylvania: 'The right of the citizens to bear arms in the defense of themselves shall not be questioned.'... [E]very man's house is deemed, by the law, to be his castle; and the law, while it invests him with the power, [places] on him the duty of the commanding officer [of his house]. 'Every man's house is his castle ... and if any one be robbed in it, it shall be esteemed his own default and negligence.''" (emphasis Barton's)
What Barton is quoting from here, as he does for several of his examples, is what James Wilson wrote about homicide. Wilson began with two types of what he classified as "enjoined" homicide -- the first related to militia or military service, and the second related to defending oneself or ones personal property. It was in his first example, the one relating to militia or military service:
"1. Homicide is enjoined, when it is necessary for the defence of the United States, or of Pennsylvania. At present, it is not necessary for me, and, therefore, I decline to examine the general and very important subject concerning the rights of war. I confine myself merely to that kind of war, which is defensive: and even that kind I now consider solely as a municipal regulation, established by the constitution of the nation, and that of this commonwealth.
"The constitution of the nation is ordained to 'provide for the common defence.' In order to make 'provision' for that defence, congress have the power to 'provide for arming the militia,' and 'or calling them forth,' 'to repel invasions:' they have power 'to provide a navy,' 'to raise and support armies,' 'to declare war.' Whenever the primary object, 'the common defence,' renders it necessary, the power becomes the duty of congress: and it requires no formal deduction of logick to point to the duty, when necessity shall require, of military bodies, 'raised, supported, and armed.' In Pennsylvania, it is explicitly declared upon the very point, that 'the freemen of this commonwealth shall be armed for its defence.'
"2. Homicide is enjoined, when it is necessary for the defence of one's person or house.
"With regard to the first, it is the great natural law of self preservation, which, as we have seen, cannot be repealed, or superseded, or suspended by any human institution. This law, however, is expressly recognised in the constitution of Pennsylvania. 'The right of the citizens to bear arms in the defence of themselves shall not be questioned.' This is one of our many renewals of the Saxon regulations. 'They were bound,' says Mr. Selden, 'to keep arms for the preservation of the kingdom, and of their own persons.'
"With regard to the second; every man's house is deemed, by the law, to be his castle; and the law, while it invests him with the power, enjoins on him the duty, of the commanding officer. 'Every man's house is his castle,' says my Lord Coke, in one of his reports, 'and he ought to keep and defend it at his peril; and if any one be robbed in it, it shall be esteemed his own default and negligence.' For this reason, one may assemble people together in order to protect and defend his house."(6)
See what Barton did there? By chopping out the words "With regard to the first," and "With regard to the second" and then running together selected sentences from the two separate paragraphs, he has James Wilson saying that it was the constitution of Pennsylvania that gave an individual the right to defend their house, although Wilson attached the constitutional right to bear arms, in both the U.S. and Pennsylvania constitutions, to his first example -- service in the military or the militia.
Now, Wilson obviously wasn't saying that an individual didn't have the right to defend their house; it's just that his legal basis for this right was not the Pennsylvania constitution, but other laws. And Wilson tells us in his footnotes exactly what the sources of these other laws were. So, let's take a look at where James Wilson said the right to defend ones house came from.
Wilson's sources were English jurists Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) and Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676).
It's from Coke that we get the now familiar phrase "every man's house is his castle." Wilson cited Coke's Reports for this. Coke's Reports were reports on specific cases, but it was Coke's Institutes on the Laws of England, the work that most of the founders learned the law from, where Coke explained this in more detail, so that's what I'm going to quote from here.
The chapter of Coke's Institutes where he wrote that "a man's house is his castle" is titled "Against going or riding armed." As its title indicates, this chapter is about a law restricting the carrying of arms. It was in here that Coke explained what the exceptions to this restriction were, one of which was defending ones home:
"And yet in some case a man may not onely use force and armes, but assemble company also. As any may assemble his friends and neighbours, to keep his house against those that come to rob, or kill him, or to offer him violence in it, and is by constuction excepted out of this act; for a mans house is his castle ..."(7)
But Coke made it clear that this exception applied only to a man's own home, continuing:
"But he cannot assemble force, though he be extreamly threatned, to go with him to church, or market, or any other place, but that is prohibited by this act."(8)
The other source cited by Wilson was Sir Matthew Hale's Pleas of the Crown. Hale put the right of a man to defend his own home in his chapter titled "Of burglary, the kinds, and punishment," writing:
"I come to those crimes that specially concern the habitation of a man, to which the laws of this kingdom have a special respect, because every man by the law hath a special protection in reference to his home and dwelling."(9)
And, just like Coke, Hale continued by saying that this applied only to a man's own home:
"And that is the reason, that a man may assemble people together for the safeguard of his own house, which he could not do in relation to a travel, or a journey."(10)
So, both Coke and Hale, the sources cited by James Wilson -- a framer of the Constitution and an original U.S. Supreme Court justice -- said that the carrying of arms could be regulated by laws. If America were to revert today to the laws cited by Wilson, it would be illegal virtually across the board to carry guns in public. It would also be illegal for any private militia group to assemble with arms for any reason other than to protect someone's home. Looks like Barton's first two early legal commentary examples not only don't support his position, but completely contradict it.
Barton goes on to quote a number of other early legal commentaries, carefully editing out anything that would reveal that what he's quoting was either about homicide laws or the militia, turning them into quotes that appear to be about an individual's right to be armed.
To show how far Barton goes in his editing of some of these early legal commentary quotes to make them appear to be about individual rights rather than the militia, let's look at what he quotes from William Rawle's 1825 work, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Here's how Barton quotes Rawle:
"In the Second [Amendment], it is declared.... that 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could, by any rule of construction, be conceived to give the Congress a power to disarm the people. a flagitious [flagrantly wicked] attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a State legislature. But if, in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either [the State or federal government] should attempt it, this Amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both." (emphasis Barton's)
Now, here's the unedited version, with the big chunk edited out by Barton in bold:
"In the second article, it is declared, that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state; a proposition from which few will dissent. Although in actual war, the services of regular troops are confessedly more valuable; yet, while peace prevails, and in the commencement of a war before a regular force can be raised, the militia form the palladium of the country. They are ready to repel invasion, to suppress insurrections, and to preserve the good order and peace of government. That they should be well regulated, is judiciously added. A disorderly militia is disgraceful to itself, and dangerous not to the enemy, but to its own country. The duty of the state government is, to adopt such regulations as will tend to make good soldiers with the least interruptions of the ordinary and useful occupations of civil life. In this all the Union has a strong and visible interest.
"The corollary, from the first position, is, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
"The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could, by any rule of construction, be conceived to give the congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both."(11)
So, William Rawle, in the part of the quote chopped out by Barton, said that the second part of the Second Amendment was a "corollary" from the first part -- that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" referred to "a well regulated militia."
Rawle then went on to separately address an individual's right to be armed, saying that there were laws limiting this right:
"This right ought not, however, in any government, to be abused to the disturbance of the public peace.
"An assemblage of persons with arms, for an unlawful purpose, is an indictable offence, and even the carrying of arms abroad by a single individual, attended with circumstances giving just reason to fear that he purposes to make an unlawful use of them, would be sufficient cause to require him to give surety of the peace. If he refused he would be liable to imprisonment."(12)
Barton gives a bunch of other similarly irrelevant or similarly butchered examples from legal commentaries of the 1800s, and then jumps to a quote from a U.S. Senate committee report to end his chapter on "early" legal commentaries, writing:
Clearly, legal commentaries and commentators across the centuries agreed: there was an inherent, natural right of self-defense and self-preservation of which the "right to keep and bear arms" was intrinsic, belonging to every individual. In fact, the Senate Judiciary Committee has even noted:
"The proposal [for the wording of the Second Amendment] finally passed the House in its present form: '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.' In this form it was submitted into the Senate, which passed it the following day. The Senate in the process indicated its intent that the right be an individual one, for private purposes, by rejecting an amendment which would have limited the keeping and bearing of arms to bearing for the common defense.... The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner." (emphasis Barton's)
What Barton neglects to mention about this quote (except in his endnote) is its date. This is not an historical quote like the quotes it immediately follows. It's not from a from a Senate committee from time of the founders or the 1800s. It's a quote from the modern-day gun control debate -- from a 1982 report of a subcommittee chaired by Senator Orrin Hatch.
II. Views of the Founding Fathers
In this section, Barton gives about twenty quotes from various founders -- almost none of which, when put back in context, have anything to do with an individual's right to own guns.
Some were referring to taking up arms against England. For example, Barton quotes George Washington as saying:
"[N]o man should scruple or hesitate a moment to use arms in defense."
Barton plucks this one from a letter written by Washington to George Mason in 1769 about the British restricting American trade. This is the whole paragraph from that letter:
"That no man shou'd scruple, or hesitate a moment to use a-ms in defence of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends; is clearly my opinion; yet A-ms I wou'd beg leave to add, should be the last resource; the denier resort. Addresses to the Throne, and remonstrances to parliament, we have already, it is said, proved the inefficacy of; how far then their attention to our rights and priviledges is to be awakened or alarmed by starving their Trade and manufactures, remains to be tryed."(13)
Barton quotes John Adams as saying:
"Resistance to sudden violence for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I never surrendered to the public by the compact of society and which, perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.... [T]he maxims of the law and the precepts of Christianity are precisely coincident in relation to this subject."
Where Barton gets this quote from is one of three essays written by anonymously by Adams and published in the Boston Gazette in 1763. Adams was having a debate in the press with Jonathan Sewall, who was also writing anonymously, and a couple of other anonymous writers who joined in, identifying themselves as "X" and "W." What prompted this debate was a fist fight between two members of the Massachusetts Governor's Council (one of whom Adams represented in court) over a remark that one made about the other and refused to apologize for. So, the incident that prompted Adams's more general comments on self-defense had nothing to do with guns; it was a fist fight.
Here's the part of Adams's essay from which Barton plucks his quote (with the parts omitted by Barton in bold):
"... I shall agree with the first of these gentlemen, that "to preach up non-resistance, with the zeal of a fanatic," would be as extraordinary as to employ a bastile in support of the freedom of speech or the press, or an inquisition in favor of liberty of conscience; but if he will leave his own imagination, and recur to what I have written he will not find a syllable against resistance. Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which, perhaps, I could not surrender if I would. Nor is there any thing in the common law of England (for which Mr. X supposes I have so great a fondness,) inconsistent with that right. On the contrary, the dogmas of Plato, the maxims of the law, and the precepts of Christianity, are precisely coincident in relation to this subject."(14)
Adams went on in this essay to say:
"Now the common law seems to me, to be founded on the same great principle of philosophy and religion. It will allow of nothing as a justification of blows, but blows; nor will it justify a furious beating, bruising, and wounding, upon the provocation of a fillip of the finger, or a kick upon the shins; but if I am assaulted, I can justify nothing but laying my hands lightly upon the aggressor for my own defence; nothing but what was absolutely necessary for my preservation. I may parry, or ward off, any blow; but a blow received is no sufficient provocation for fifty times so severe a blow, in return. When life, which is one of the three favorites of the law, comes into consideration, we find a wise and humane provision is made for its preservation. If I am assaulted by another, sword in hand, and if I am even certain of his intention to murder me, the common law will not suffer me to defend myself by killing him, if I can avoid it. Nay, my behavior must absolutely be what would be called cowardice, perhaps, by Mr. X and W, though it would be thought the truest bravery, not only by the greatest philosophers and legislators, but by the best generals of the world; I must run away from such an assailant, and avoid him if I have room, rather than stand my ground and defend myself; but if I have no room to escape, or if I run and am pursued to the wall or into a corner, where I cannot elude his fury, and have no other way to preserve my own life from his violence, but by taking his there, I have an indisputable right to do it, and should be justified in wading through the blood of a whole army, if I had power to shed it and had no other way to make my escape."(15)
Like the similar examples selectively quoted by Barton in his early legal commentaries chapter, Adams was merely saying what constituted justifiable homicide, and said nothing about the completely separate issue of an individual's right to be carrying whatever weapon might happen to be used these cases.
Not surprisingly, most of the founders' quotes used by Barton, when put back in context, clearly had to do with the militia.
Barton quotes George Washington as saying:
"A free people ought ... to be armed."
Here's the full sentence, from Washington's first Annual Message to Congress (what the State of the Union Address used to be called) in 1790, with the parts omitted by Barton in bold:
"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end, a uniform and well digested plan is requisite: and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent on others for essential, particularly for military supplies."(16)
He quotes Patrick Henry as saying:
"The great object is that every man be armed.... Every one who is able may have a gun. But have we not learned by experience that, necessary as it is to have arms, . . . it is still far from being the case?"
Here's a longer, unedited, excerpt from Patrick Henry said in the Virginia ratifying convention, again with the parts omitted by Barton in bold, and also changing what Barton turned into a question to imply that Henry was saying that the people were already commonly armed back into a statement saying that they weren't:
" May we not discipline and arm them, as well as Congress, if the power be concurrent? so that our militia shall have two sets of arms, double sets of regimentals, &c.; and thus, at a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed. The great object is that every man be armed. But can the people afford to pay for double sets of arms, &c.? Every one who is able may have a gun. But have we not learned by experience that, necessary as it is to have arms, and though our Assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavored to have the militia completely armed, it is still far from being the case."(17)
This Patrick Henry quote, like many others from the state ratifying convention debates on the Constitution, was about the issue of who would actually be responsible for paying to arm and train the state militias - the federal government or the state governments -- since the Constitution gave Congress the power of "arming, organizing, and disciplining the militia." What Henry and others wanted was to ensure that if the federal government ever neglected to arm the militia, that the states would have the right to do it themselves. So, obviously, by "every man," Henry meant every man who needed to be supplied with arms to serve in the militia, and was not saying anything about individual rights.
Barton also quotes what George Mason, who was talking about exactly the same thing that Patrick Henry was talking about, said in the Virginia ratifying convention:
"Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great-Britain, the British parliament was advised ... to disarm the people. That it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. But that they should not do it openly; but to weaken them and let them sink gradually."
The unedited version of what Mason said:
"An instance within the memory of some of this house will show us how our militia may be destroyed. Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. But that they should not do it openly; but to weaken them and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia."(18)
Barton also plucks and edits this quote from George Mason from the same speech at the Virginia ratifying convention:
"I consider and fear the natural propensity of rulers to oppress the people. I wish only to prevent them from doing evil.... Divine providence has given to every individual the means of self-defense."
Here, Mason wasn't even talking about the people being disarmed. He was talking about the possibility that the federal government, in order to introduce a standing army, might someday destroy the militia in a completely different way -- not by disarming the people, but by abusing its power to discipline the militia to a point that would make the people not want to serve in it.
Here's what Mason said, put back in context, again with the parts omitted by Barton in bold:
"If at any time our rulers should have unjust and iniquitous designs against our liberties, and should wish to establish a standing army, the first attempt would be to render the service and use of militia odious to the people themselves; subjecting them to unnecessary severity of discipline in time of peace, confining them under martial law, and disgusting them so much, as to make them cry out, give us a standing army! I would wish to have some check to exclude this danger; as, that the militia should never be subject to martial law, but in time of war. I consider and fear the natural propensity of rulers to oppress the people. I wish only to prevent them from doing evil. By these amendments, I would give necessary powers, but no unnecessary power. If the clause stands as it is now, it will take from the state legislatures what divine providence has given to every individual -- the means of self-defense. Unless moderated, in some degree, it will ruin us, and introduce a standing army."(19)
Barton uses a bunch of other similar quotes about the issue of a standing army vs. the militia and federal authority vs. state authority to arm the state militias, similarly edited to make these quotes appear top be about individual rights rather than the militia. It would be redundant to list all of these quotes here, so let's move on to some of Barton's other butchered quotes that, while still related to the militia in some way, brought up other issues.
Barton quotes Richard Henry Lee as saying:
"[T]o preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
This is another quote that, when put back in context, completely debunks one of Barton's biggest claims -- that everyone back in the founding era had guns and knew how to use them -- a claim that Barton relies on for his crazy statements like his recent one about there being no gun accidents in the founding era.
What the "Federal Farmer" (an anti-federalist thought by some historians to have been Richard Henry Lee and by others to have been someone else) was saying was that many citizens, if not required to be armed and trained for militia service, would "generally be without arms, without knowing the use of them."
Here's the quote, from one of the Federal Farmer's letters, from which Barton selectively quotes only part of the last sentence:
"But, say gentlemen, the general militia are for the most part employed at home in their private concerns, cannot well be called out, or be depended upon; that we must have a select militia; that is, as I understand it, particular corps or bodies of young men, and of men who have but little to do at home, particularly armed and disciplined in some measure, at the public expence, and always ready to take the field. These corps, not much unlike regular troops, will ever produce an inattention to the general militia; and the consequence has ever been, and always must be, that the substantial men, having families and property, will generally be without arms, without knowing the use of them, and defenceless; whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them ..."(20)
To show how completely irrelevant some of the quotes that Barton plucks from their context actually are, here's what he quotes from John Jay:
"[M]ankind must be prepared and fitted for the reception, enjoyment, and preservation of universal permanent peace before they will be blessed with it. Are they as yet fitted for it? Certainly not. Even if it was practicable, would it be wise to disarm the good before 'the wicked cease from troubling?'"
This one not only has nothing to do with Americans having guns -- it doesn't even have anything to do with America. It's from a letter John Jay wrote to a friend "on the question, Whether war of every description is forbidden by the gospel?" Jay concluded his lengthy letter, which was apparently prompted by a pamphlet that his friend sent him on the subject, by saying:
" But, whatever may be the time, or the means adopted by Providence for the abolition of war, I think we may, without presumption, conclude, that mankind must be prepared and fitted for the reception, enjoyment, and preservation of universal permanent peace, before they will be blessed with it. Are they as yet fitted for it? Certainly not. Even if it was practicable, would it be wise to disarm the good before 'the wicked cease from troubling?' By what other means than arms and military force, can unoffending rulers and nations protect their rights against unprovoked aggressions from within and from without? Are there any other means to which they could recur, and on the efficacy of which they could rely? To this question I have not as yet heard, nor seen, a direct and precise answer."(21)
III. Early Legislative Acts
Barton begins this chapter:
"The views held by early Americans on the Second Amendment right 'to keep and bear arms' were a reflection of the views previously established by experience and decades of tradition and finally incorporated by law into their own States. Those early laws provide the third source which affirms that the right 'to keep and bear arms' pertains to every individual citizen."
He then proceeds to use as examples the earliest laws of Virginia and the other colonies from the 1600s:
"Consider, for example, a 1623 Virginia law that prevented a citizen from traveling unless he was 'well armed.'" And in 1631, Virginia required:
"'That men go not to work ... without their arms. All men that are fitting to bear arms shall bring their pieces to the church, [and] upon pain of every offense ... pay 2 lb of tobacco.'
"In 1658, Virginia required every householder to have a functioning firearm within his house; and in 1673, the law provided that a citizen who claimed that he was too poor to purchase a firearm would have one purchased for him by the government, which would then require him to pay a reasonable price when able to do so. And a 1676 law declared that 'Liberty is granted to all persons to carry their arms wheresoever they go.'"
Not only were all of these early colonial Virginia laws clearly referring to the citizens as being part of a militia, the 1676 law that Barton claims granted the right "to all persons to carry their arms wheresoever they go" was actually a law restricting this right.
So, let's look at what these early Virginia laws really said, in their historical context and without Barton's editing.
The 1623 law was passed because of an Indian massacre in 1622 in which three hundred and forty-seven English settlers in the Virginia colony were killed by the Powhatan Indians. As part of what was a series of coordinated attacks on the same day, the Indians also set fire to a number of plantations, wiping out much of the crops and livestock that the colonists were depending on to survive the next winter.
In response to the 1622 massacre, the Assembly enacted laws to protect the colonists and their crops against Indian attacks. These laws included requiring all planters to be armed while working in their fields, with a sentinel guarding their weapons as they worked, and that a guard be kept on their fields at night. And, because every able-bodied man was considered essential to the protection of their plantation (a plantation at the time meant an entire settlement, not an individual's farm), the colonists were required by law to protect themselves by traveling only with an armed party, and never to have too many men absent from any plantation at the same time.
Here's the full text of the 1623 Virginia laws that Barton claims are historical evidence "that the right 'to keep and bear arms' pertains to every individual citizen":
"23. That every dwelling house shall be pallizaded for defence against the Indians.
"24. That no man go or send abroad without a sufficient partie will armed.
"25. That men go not to worke in the ground without their arms (and a centinell upon them.)
"26. That the inhabitants go not aboard ships or upon any other occasions in such numbers, as thereby to weaken and endanger the plantations.
"27. That the commander of every plantation take care that there be sufficient of powder and amunition within the plantation under his command and their pieces fixt and their arms compleate.
"28. That there be dew watch kept by night.
"29. That no commander of any plantation do either himselfe or suffer others to spend powder unneccessarily in drinking or entertainments, &c."(22)
These 1623 laws didn't grant any "right" to the citizens. In fact, they actually restricted the colonists' rights by mandating what they were required to do for the protection of their community, and even restricting their right to travel freely. If you were told today that you were required by law to have a gun with you every time you got in your car, would you consider this a right?
The laws of 1631 kept the laws of 1623 in force, and added this section requiring that all men fitting to bear arms bring their guns to church:
"ALL men that are fittinge to beare armes, shall bringe their peices to the church uppon payne of every effence, yf the mayster allow not thereof to pay 2 lb. of tobacco, to be disposed by the church-wardens, who shall levy it by distress, and the servants to be punished."(23)
So, why were Virginia's colonists required by law to bring their guns to church? Is this evidence that "the right 'to keep and bear arms' pertains to every individual citizen," as Barton claims it to be? Well, no. They were required to bring their guns to church because they were required to participate in target practice on Sundays. What Virginia had by 1631 was a pretty "well-regulated militia." Once again, this wasn't a right; it was a requirement.
Like the 1623 and 1631 laws, the 1658 and 1673 laws of Virginia cited by Barton were also to ensure that the militia was properly armed, and had nothing to do with individual rights. But it's the 1676 law that I want to get to here, because this is the one that shows just how incredibly far Barton will go with his misquoting to make something say the exact opposite of what it really said.
Look again at what Barton says about this 1676 law:
"And a 1676 law declared that 'Liberty is granted to all persons to carry their arms wheresoever they go.'"
Now read the entire law that Barton plucks that quote from:
"And whereas by a branch of an act of assembly made in march last, liberty is granted to all persons to carry their armes wheresoever they goe, which liberty hath beene found to be very prejudiciall to the peace and wellfaire of this colony. Bee it therefore further enacted by this present grand assembly, and the authority thereof, and it is hereby enacted, that if any person or persons shall, from and after publication of this act, presume to assemble together in armes to the number of five or upwards without being legally called together in armes the number of five or upwards, they be held deemed and adjudged as riotous and mutinous, and that they be proceeded against and punished accordingly."(24)
As you can see, this 1676 law, passed in response to Bacon's Rebellion [ http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/bacons-rebellion.htm ], severely restricted the right of "all persons to carry their armes wheresoever they goe" by prohibiting any group of more than four armed men from assembling together for any reason other than being called to arms by the government. Barton, however, so grossly misquotes this law that he actually turns the restricting of the right for "all persons to carry their arms wheresoever they go" into the granting of this right.
Barton then gives a few examples of laws from other colonies from the 1600s, which are not necessary to go into here because they were basically the same, and passed for the similar reasons, as the ones in Virginia.
Next, he jumps to a 1770 Georgia law that required the bringing of guns to church. But, like the earlier Virginia law, this Georgia law had a militia-related purpose. Every man who was required to serve in the militia had to bring their guns and a certain amount of ammunition to church to prove that they had the weapons and ammunition required by law for service in the militia. The church wardens or other officials were to verify, by inspecting the men on Easter, Christmas, and twelve other times throughout the year, that every man required to serve in the militia had the required weapons and ammunition in their possession.(25)
So, Barton has thus far not provided a single example of an individual's "right" to bear arms, but rather has provided a bunch of examples of individuals being required by law to serve in the militia. Apparently, he doesn't get the difference between a right to bear arms and a mandate to bear arms.
Barton next spends several pages on a straw man, proving through quotes from various founders that the word "militia" meant all men capable of bearing arms -- a definition that nobody is disputing. He does take care, however, to avoid any mention of the militia being "well-regulated." For example, he quotes Richard Henry Lee as saying:
"[T]he militia shall always ... include, according to the past and general usage of the States, all men capable of bearing arms." (emphasis Barton's)
What did Barton omit and replace with his ellipsis? The words bolded below:
"... the militia shall always be kept well organized, armed, and disciplined, and include, according to the past and general usage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms."(26)
What Barton is quoting here is actually just another snippet from the same paragraph of the same "Federal Farmer" letter that he used for his out-of-context Richard Henry Lee quote in his "Views of the Founding Fathers" chapter.
Barton then moves on to the Militia Act of 1792, writing:
"It was not surprising, therefore, that when the United States Congress passed the first federal law on this subject (the Militia Act of 1792), it defined 'militia of the United States' not as the Continental Army or any other organized military body but rather as including almost every adult male in the United States. Under that act, each adult was required -- by law -- to possess a firearm and a minimum supply of ammunition and military equipment, and this law continued in force into the twentieth century."
There were two militia acts passed in 1792, the first "providing for the authority of the President to call out the Militia," and the second "to provide for the National Defence, by establishing an Uniform Militia throughout the United States." The second of these two acts required "every free able-bodied white male" between the ages of eighteen and forty-five to be enrolled in the militia of their state and to purchase the guns and other items required by the act. Barton is right -- it's not surprising that these acts were passed. The Constitution had given Congress the power to "provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions," so Congress needed to pass laws "providing for" this. What is surprising, however, is that Barton, a very vocal opponent of Obamacare, doesn't see the incredible irony of pointing out a 1792 federal law containing an "individual mandate" that required the citizens of the states to buy something whether they wanted to or not.
Barton continues by saying that the state constitutions also contained provisions similar to the federal government's requirement to serve in the militia, writing:
"Significantly, numerous State constitutions adopted subsequent to the Second Amendment and the Militia Act of 1792 contain similar declarations."
Actually, there's nothing "significant" about this, or anything else in the rest of this chapter of Barton's book for that matter, so let's move on to his quotes from the state constitutions.
IV. State Constitutions
Barton begins this chapter by saying:
"Because the Second Amendment was primarily a reflection of the belief present in the individual Sates, the State constitutions are the fourth source that affirm that 'the right to keep and bear arms' was universally understood to be an individual right. In fact, State constitutions adopted even a century-and-a-half after the Second Amendment still continued to reflect the original understanding."
What Barton does to support this statement is to edit or misrepresent the language of quite a few of the state constitutions he cites in order to do two things: 1) to hide that many of the state constitutions said nothing in their "bearing arms" provisions that could be construed to mean this as an individual right, and 2) to hide that many of the state constitutions either explicitly said that the legislature did have the power to pass laws regulating this right, or restricted it in some way right in their constitutions.
As anyone familiar with state constitutions knows, states often copied the language from the existing constitutions of other states when writing their own constitutions, leading to identical or very similarly worded provisions in multiple state constitutions. This led a good number of states to adopt the following, or something very similar, as their "bearing arms" provision:
"Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state."
For the states that used this exact wording or something like it, Barton doesn't have to lie, since the real wording does include the word "himself," or "themselves," making it refer to individuals as well as the militia, and places no restrictions on this right.
Of course, Barton also lists the six states that didn't say this was an individual right, but worded it like the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, which said: "The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence." Barton just hides that these state constitutions referred only to the "common defense" of the state, and cannot be interpreted to mean an individual right.
But even in states where the wording of the state constitution was interpreted to mean that an individual had a constitutional right to carry weapons, the courts usually did not take this to mean that the legislature couldn't pass laws regulating this right for the sake of public safety.
One states that used the "Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state" language was Alabama, whose first constitution was adopted in 1819. But here's how Henry W. Collier, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama from 1837 to 1849, interpreted this provision in 1840 when someone tried to claim that an Alabama law prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons was unconstitutional under the state's constitution:
"The constitution in declaring that, 'Every citizen has the right to bear arms in defence of himself and the State,' has neither expressly nor by implication, denied to the Legislature, the right to enact laws in regard to the manner in which arms shall be borne. The right guarantied to the citizen, is not to bear arms upon all occasions and in all places, but merely 'in defence of himself and the State.' The terms in which this provision is phrased seems to us, necessarily to leave with the Legislature the authority to adopt such regulations of police, as may be dictated by the safety of the people and the advancement of public morals. The statute of 1 Wm. and M. while it declares the right of the subject, it refers to Parliament to determine what arms shall be borne and how; while our constitution being silent as to the action of the Legislature, does not divest it of a power over the subject, which pertained to it independent of an express grant. ...
"... A statute which, under the pretence of regulating, amounts to a destruction of the right, or which requires arms to be so borne as to render them wholely useless for the purpose of defence, would be clearly unconstitutional. But a law which is intended merely to promote personal security, and to put down lawless aggression and violence, and to that end inhibits the wearing of certain weapons, in such a manner as is calculated to exert an unhappy influence upon the moral feelings of the wearer, by making him less regardful of the personal security of others, does not come in collision with the constitution."(27)
Barton also deceptively lists all of the following state constitutions in his book, using various tricks to hide that these state constitutions all regulated, or gave the legislature the power to regulate, the right to bear arms:
Kentucky 1850: "That the rights of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned; but the General Assembly may pass laws to prevent persons from carrying concealed arms."
Missouri 1875: "The right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question; but nothing herein contained is intended to justify the practice of wearing concealed weapons."
Colorado 1876: That the right of no person to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person, and property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall be called in question; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to justify the practice of carrying concealed weapons.
Georgia 1877: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but the General Assembly shall have power to prescribe the manner in which arms may be borne."
Florida 1885: "The right of the people to bear arms in defense of themselves and the lawful authority of the State, shall not be infringed, but the Legislature may prescribe the manner in which they may be borne."
Idaho 1889: "The people have the right to bear arms for their security and defense; but the legislature shall regulate the exercise of this right by law."
Montana 1889: "The right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but nothing herein contained shall be held to permit the carrying of concealed weapons."
Washington 1889: "The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the state shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men."
Mississippi 1890: "The right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but the legislature may regulate or forbid carrying concealed weapons."
Utah 1895: "The people have the right to bear arms for their security and defense, but the legislature may regulate the exercise of this right by law."
One state constitution noticeably absent in Barton's book is the constitution of his own state of Texas from the same time period as the others he cites. Why would he leave this one out? Well, because this is what the Texas constitution of 1869 said:
"Every person shall have the right to keep and bear arms, in the lawful defence of himself or the State, under such regulations as the Legislature may prescribe."
And prescribe laws the Texas legislature did. In 1871, two years after adopting its 1869 constitution, Texas passed "An Act to regulate the keeping and bearing of deadly weapons." This act prohibited:
"... any person carrying on or about his person, saddle, or in his saddle bags any pistol, dirk, dagger, slung-shot, sword-cane, spear, brass-knuckles, bowie-knife, or any other kind of knife manufactured or sold for the purposes of offense or defense, unless he has reasonable grounds for fearing an unlawful attack on his person, and that such ground of attack shall be immediate and pressing; or unless having or carrying the same on or about his person for the lawful defense of the State, as a militiaman in actual service, or as a peace officer or policeman."(28)
It also made it illegal in Texas to be armed in churches, schools, and pretty much anywhere else where people would be gathered:
"If any person shall go into any church or religious assembly, any school room, or other place where persons are assembled for amusement or for educational or scientific purposes, or into any circus, show, or public exhibition of any kind, or into a ball room, social party, or social gathering, or to any election precinct on the day or days of any election, where any portion of the people of this State are collected to vote at any election, or to any other place where people may be assembled to muster, or to perform any other public duty, (except s may be required or permitted by law,) or to any other public assembly, and shall carry about his person a pistol or other firearm, dirk, dagger, slung-shot, sword-cane, spear, brass-knuckles, bowie-knife, or any other kind of knife manufactured or sold for the purposes of offense or defense, unless an officer of the peace, he shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall, for the first offense, be punished by fine not less than fifty, nor more than five hundred dollars, and shall forfeit to the county the weapon or weapons so found on his person; and for every subsequent offense may, in addition to such fine and forfeiture, be imprisoned in the county jail for a term not more than ninety days."(29)
Yes, David Barton, who, as I said at the beginning of this very long post, thinks that not only teachers -- but students -- should be armed in schools, and claims that this was what made schools safe in the 1800s, is from a state whose early laws made it illegal to bring any weapon into a school.
*
References:
1. James A.H. Murray, ed., A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles: Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society, vol. 1, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), 449.
2. West H. Humphreys, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Tennessee, vol. 2, (St. Louis: G.I. Jones and Company, 1878), 125.
3. Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1775), 143-144.
4. Ibid., 144.
5. 1 W. & M. st. 2. c. 2. was the English Bill of Rights, passed into law in 1689 as "An Act for Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown."
6. Bird Wilson, ed., The Works of the Honourable James Wilson, L.L.D., Late One of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Professor of Law in the College of Philadelphia, vol. 3, (Philadelphia: Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), 83-85.
7. Sir Edward Coke, The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, (London: E. and R. Brooke, 1797), 161.
8. Ibid.
9. Sir Matthew Hale, The History of the Pleas of the Crown, vol. 1, (London: Printed by E. Rider, Little-Britain, for T. Payne, et. al., 1800), 547.
10. Ibid.
11. William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America, (Philadelphia: P.H. Nicklin, 1829), 125-126.
12. Ibid., 126.
13. George Washington to George Mason, April 5, 1969. John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, vol. 2, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1931), 501.
14. Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, vol. 3, (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 438.
15. Ibid., 439.
16. Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, vol. 1, (Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1826), 135.
17. Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, vol. 3, (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1866), 386.
18. Ibid., 380.
19. Ibid., 381.
20. Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist, vol. 1, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 342.
21. John Jay to John Murray, April 15, 1818. William Jay, The Life of John Jay: With Selections from his Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers, vol. 2, (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), 397.
22. William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619, vol. 1, (Richmond, VA: Samuel Pleasants, 1809), 127.
23. Ibid., 174.
24. William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619, vol. 2, (New York: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 386.
25. Robert & George Watkins, A Digest of the Laws of the State of Georgia: from its First Establishment as a British Province Down to the Year 1798, Inclusive, and the Principal Acts of 1799, (Philadelphia: R. Aitken, 1800), 157.
26. Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist, vol. 1, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 341.
27. Report of Cases at Law and in Equity, Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Alabama, During 1840, vol. 1, (Tuscaloosa, AL: Hale and Phelan, 1841), 616-617.
28. H.P.N. Gammel, ed., The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897, vol. 6, (Austin, TX: The Gammel Book Company, 1898), 927.
29. Ibid., 927-928.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/a-debunking-of-pseudohist_b_2595270.html [with comments]
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TeaParty.org Drops the (Other) H-Bomb
by Leah Nelson on January 28, 2013
Godwin’s Law, an Internet adage started by lawyer and writer Mike Godwin [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Godwin ] in 1990, states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
The law’s point, Godwin explained in a 1995 article for Wired [ http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/godwin.if_pr.html ] magazine, was the Internet seems to lead to glib comparisons between various politicians’ behavior and Hitler and Nazis which “invariably … trivialized the horror of the Holocaust and the social pathology of the Nazis”.
Godwin’s Law proved true once again on Friday, when TeaParty.org, a particularly vicious faction of the nebulous right-wing movement, treated subscribers to an E-mail blast titled “Stop America’s Hitler,” featuring a picture of President Obama sporting a Hitler moustache. If that wasn’t enough, the E-mail also included a photograph of two Nazis executing a victim with a pistol.
“If you were to make a movie today about a nation where only the police and military had guns, would you call it Schindler’s America?” the E-mail asks. “This is exactly what is happening. … It’s INSANITY. We are being stripped bare of our liberties and rights,” and “[t]o this the Tea Party says HELL NO.”
It continued, “Members of the TeaParty, red-blooded Americans and fellow citizens, the time is coming when you must decide. A Lexington and Concorde [sic] moment when you must decide which is greater: the demands of a tyrannical government as they disarm us and eviscerate our liberties or your own personal rights.”
TeaParty.org has already made its decision and is ready to take action. The E-mail blast promotes a fundraising campaign called “Operation Raise Hell,” which will “demand the deportation of Piers Morgan,” write a “big fat check” to support a “Youth Firearms Training Initiative” to be run by Gun Owners of America, and send a Tea Party team to Washington to “get in their faces.”
“Someday,” the fundraising pitch concludes, “your children will thank you for saving their future from Obama’s Soviet-Style Socialist State.”
Let’s get this straight: Unless we arm our children and deport a gun-control-friendly British CNN host, the president of the United States, who is practically the same as Hitler, is going to create some kind of United Soviet Socialist States of America by abolishing guns rights?
That’s a lot to untangle.
First, a word about our sponsors. TeaParty.org, also known as the 1776 Tea Party, is an especially belligerent faction of the Tea Party movement whose founder, Dale Robertson [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/05/28/teaparty-org-founder-labels-obama-with-racial-terms/ ], once showed up at a Houston rally carrying a sign [ http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/06/discredited-tea-party-group-claims-scott-walker-sponsorship ] that read, “Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar [sic].” Its CEO, Steve Eichler, used to be executive director of the Minuteman Project [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2005/summer/arizona-showdown ], a nativist extremist group whose splashiest event was a month-long vigilante gathering on the Arizona border in April 2005.
TeaParty.org boasts that it is “the ONLY tea party praised by Dr. Michael Savage [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/spring/the-rating-game ],” a radio talk show host who was fired from MSNBC in 2003 after describing an unidentified caller to his show as a “sodomite” who should “get AIDS and die.” Its website proudly features original content by Jerome Corsi [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2008/spring/the-nativists?page=0,2 ], an influential conspiracy theorist best known for proposing, at various times, that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/fall/hard-line-birthers-soldier-on-after-cer ]; that the president’s true father is the late labor activist Frank Marshall Davis [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/05/01/corsi-obamas-father-may-have-been-an-american-communist/ ]; and that Obama is gay and married to a Pakistani man [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/winter/conspiracy-theorist-jerome-corsi-plug ]. Really.
The site also includes content from WorldNetDaily [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/fall/world-nuts-daily ], an extreme-right online publication that plugs all manner of conpiracist nonsense (the imminent end of the world, the cause of homosexuality is soybean consumption — you get the idea), and from Alex Jones [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/alex-jones ], an antigoverment conspiracy monger whose response to recent calls for gun control has been so unhinged that even Glenn Beck [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/11/27/in-new-novel-glenn-beck-warns-of-squirrel-worshipping-socialists/ ] – Glenn Beck! [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2011/summer/glenn-beck-reaches-the-end-of-his-time ] – described him as a “crazy person [ http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/01/glenn-beck-alex-jones-is-a-crazy-person-153677.html ].”
Now that we’ve taken care of explaining who is behind these wild claims about “Schindler’s America,” it’s time to get to the what of the matter – as in, what the heck are these guys talking about?
“Remember, Hitler and his Nazi regime disarmed the people,” Friday’s E-mail blast warns. “The comparison between Hitler and Obama is striking.”
Addressing the problems with this ludicrous “comparison” is a little like explaining why a raven is nothing like a writing desk (h/t Lewis Carroll). But we’ll stick with the salient comparison, which seems to be the idea that Obama is like Hitler in some way that involves gun control.
Gun rights absolutists have for decades claimed that America’s gun control laws were somehow inspired by Hitler, and that the Holocaust itself was somehow caused — or at least not prevented — by gun control.
As Hatewatch has explained at length elsewhere [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/11/29/ammo-company-fudge-facts-and-taste-to-sell-its-wares/ ], the man who did the most to popularize this idea was the late Aaron Zelman, founder of a Wisconsin-based nonprofit called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), which touts itself as “America’s Most Aggressive Defender of Firearms Ownership.” Zelman’s most outrageous claim, outlined at length in his 1993 book ‘Gun Control’: Gateway to Tyranny [ http://www.amazon.com/Gun-Control-Gateway-Tyranny-Weapons/dp/0964230410 ], was that the 1968 Gun Control Act was explicitly based on Hitler’s gun laws. JFPO also claims the state-sanctioned mass murders and genocides in Ottoman Turkey, the USSR, Nazi Germany, China (under both Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao), Guatemala, Uganda, Cambodia, and Rwanda were all caused by variations on gun control laws, and conclude that tens of millions died as a result of gun control, not least among them the victims of Hitler’s reign.
As with many conspiracy theories, there’s a tiny kernel of truth to JFPO’s claim: In 1938, one day after Kristallnacht (a state-sanctioned pogrom that led to the burning of synagogues, destruction of Jewish businesses and property, and is generally considered to have been the beginning of a new phase of anti-Jewish violence in Nazi Germany), the German government issued a decree banning Jews from “acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons,” and requiring those who owned such weapons to turn them in to authorities. The punishment was imprisonment.
Indisputably, then, the Nazis opposed ownership of guns by Jews.
But – as hardly needs to be said – Nazis opposed Jews in general, and laws designed to disenfranchise and drive them out of Germany were implemented long before 1938, when the genocide began in earnest.
Moreover, gun control in Germany did not begin under the Nazis. In fact, except for bans on gun ownership by Jews and other perceived enemies, experts generally agree that the Third Reich’s gun laws were overall more relaxed than those enacted under its predecessor government, the Weimar Republic.
Bernard Harcourt, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, traced the evolution of German guns laws between 1919 and 1938 in an excellent 2004 paper, “On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars [ http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4029&context=flr ( http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=557183 )].” Harcourt notes that the Weimar Republic, reflecting the Treaty of Versailles’ “draconian” restrictions on weapons possession, banned gun ownership outright in 1919. Its gun laws were relaxed in 1928, but continued to require that all weapons be registered. The 1938 weapons law enacted under Hitler “represented a further liberalization of gun control regulations” [emphasis added] – deregulating the acquisition and sales of guns and ammunition, exempting entire groups from the permit requirement, lowering the age at which it was legal to own a gun from 20 to 18, and extending the validity of permits from one to three years.
“Hitler intended to liberalize gun control laws in Germany for ‘trustworthy’ German citizens, while disarming ‘unreliable’ persons, especially opponents of National Socialism and Jews, [so] {i}t is absurd to even try to characterize this as either pro-or anti-gun control,” Harcourt wrote. “But if forced to, it seems fair to conclude – at least preliminarily – that the Nazis were in favor of less gun control than the Weimar Republic for the ‘trustworthy’ German citizen – while disarming and engaging in a genocide of the Jewish population.”
And that’s about that for TeaParty.org’s supposedly “striking” comparison between Hitler and Obama.
Now to TeaParty.org’s goals – funding a “Youth Firearms Training Initiative” run by Gun Owners of America, deporting Piers Morgan, and going to Washington to “get in their faces.”
Gun Owners of America is an extreme-right organization whose executive director, Larry Pratt [ http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/summer/meet-the-patriots?page=0,2 ], helped outline the contours of the modern militia movement at an infamous 1992 convention of antigovernment fanatics and white supremacists in Estes Park, Colo. In 1996, Pratt was ejected as national co-chair of Pat Buchanan’s presidential candidates when his ties to the white supremacist convener of the Estes Park gathering were made public. “The Second Amendment ain’t about duck hunting,” he reportedly [ http://www.leonardzeskind.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=75:armed-and-dangerous-the-nra-militias-and-white-supremacists-are-fostering-a-network-of-right-wing-warriors-&catid=21:articles-op-eds-etc&Itemid=35 ] told the group.
Neither, presumably, would the “training institute” Pratt and TeaParty.org intend to run for young people.
Piers Morgan, of course, is the CNN host whose advocacy of gun control has become something of a media circus featuring shouting matches with gun rights absolutists – including Pratt, who Morgan earlier this month called [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/piers-morgan-gun-control-larry-pratt_n_2330948.html ] “an unbelievably stupid man.” A petition demanding Morgan’s deportation started by Alex Jones sidekick Kurt Nimmo [ http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2012/08/27/conspiracists-say-recent-shootings-false-flag-attacks-by-government/ ] has garnered tens of thousands of signatures, and TeaParty.org apparently wants donors to think it will use their money will make this absurd fantasy come true.
Then there’s the plan to “get in their faces” in Washington. Given the context, we can only assume this means that TeaParty.org hopes its emissaries will start some kind of argument with gun control advocates.
Well, that’s their right – under the First Amendment, they can petition the government for redress of grievances till they’re blue in the face, making as many Hitler comparisons as they feel their point about gun rights warrants.
Of course, Godwin’s Law about Internet discussion and Nazis has a few corollaries – one of which, according to Wikipedia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law ] (which on matters such as these is as authoritative a source as any, given that Godwin served as general counsel to the Wikimedia foundation from 2007-2010) states that once the comparison is made, the conversation is over and the party that brought up the Nazis “has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.”
So TeaParty.org can go forth and get in “their” faces. Their silly and spurious Hitler comparison only undercuts whatever serious points might be made by gun rights advocates as Americans ponder an updated take on the Second Amendment.
Copyright 2013 Southern Poverty Law Center (emphasis in original)
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/01/28/teaparty-org-drops-the-other-h-bomb/ [with comments] [and see in particular "The Hitler gun control lie", 4th item at (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=83385518 (and preceding and following)] [and to note my take -- 'Godwin's Law (sic - Quip)' is kinda cute, but substantively utterly empty/vapid -- Hitler and the Nazis are hardly incomparable, were not somehow sui generis, within human history -- Godwin's Quip can go blow a goat, comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis are or are not apt based solely and entirely on the respective realities and how they're being compared/characterized as being in parallel]
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Bombs and Racist Propaganda Found in Connecticut Home
by Bill Morlin on January 31, 2013
Just down the road from the scene of the December school massacre in Newtown, Conn., police in Stamford have discovered a home filled with bomb-making materials, assorted firearms, and white supremacist and anti-police propaganda.
Stamford police and FBI agents today identified and interviewed a middle-aged man who apparently had been illegally living in the home, triggering an inspection Wednesday by health inspections. The home is less than 700 feet from a middle school. The suspect, whose name hasn’t been released, has not been charged while authorities discuss whether to proceed with state or federal charges.
Police discovered loaded weapons including rifles and shotguns near entry points to the home, white supremacist and anti-police propaganda, a monitoring system to watch the outside of the home, and a reinforced escape tunnel that ran underground through the backyard, the Stamford Patch [ http://stamford.patch.com/articles/vine-rd-man-not-charged-yet ] reported. They also found bombs that were being prepared with PVC pipes loaded with nuts and bolts that were apparently meant to serve as anti-personnel shrapnel.
In addition to swastikas, a poster inside the home depicted a police funeral with a derogatory message scrawled across it, Stamford Police Chief Jon Fontneau told the newspaper. Loaded firearms were discovered near entry points to the home.
“I’ve been on hundreds, if not thousands, of search warrants,” the chief said, “and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
D.J. McAneny, a reporter for the Stamford Patch, told Hatewatch today that police and explosives experts were at the house at 170-172 Vine Road throughout the night, but had cleared the scene by midday today. Stamford is 25 miles from Newtown, where 26 people were murdered on Dec. 14.
Anne Fountain, director of the Stamford Department of Health and Social Services, said her department had received the initial complaint about the property in May, but workers were refused entrance when they went to the home, the Stamford newspaper reported.
“We had received a complaint of an illegal dwelling with several code violations, but he wouldn’t let us in,” Fountain told the newspaper. “We’d been there a second time prior to [Wednesday]’s visit, so this was on ongoing complaint. We had to obtain a search warrant to access the home, which is why the police were present.”
The Stamford police chief said that when one of his officers, accompanying the health department worker, discovered explosives, they evacuated and police took over the investigation.
Tax records show the property is owned by William Hertle Properties LLC, and Debra Saturno-Galang is listed as co-owner, the Stamford Patch reported.
The police chief said health workers and his officer who initially entered the home were overcome by the smell of urine and feces from the basement, apparently from dogs that weren’t let outside, Fontneau said.
Copyright 2013 Southern Poverty Law Center
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2013/01/31/bombs-weapons-and-racist-propaganda-found-in-connecticut-home/ [with comments]
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Victoria Jackson Just Asking, ‘Why Isn’t There A White History Month,’ Is Not Racist
by Rebecca Schoenkopf
4:15 pm January 31, 2013
Hey onetime comedienne and ukulele molester Victoria Jackson, what are you on about today?
I wrote a uke song called “White Men Are Good” and sang it at a comedy club about 4 years ago. I could feel the audience tense up. Why? Why is there a Black History Month but not a White History Month? Now, that the white race is becoming a minority in America, perhaps we need to make…say, January, White History Month.
Ok, just your typical middling-student-in-middle-school-level philosophy and logic. Nothing new there. But is there anything else you would like to share with the class, Victoria Jackson? Perhaps something about how the country is going to pot because it is no longer run by white men, but you are not a racist [ http://wonkette.com/489745/failed-snl-comedienne-victoria-jackson-continues-being-not-racist-or-crazy-at-all ]?
I’m just really tired of the white male, and especially the white conservative, Christian male being attacked in cartoons, movies, TV shows, politics, Affirmative Action, etc. It’s like in order to fix the “discrimination” problem, culture flipped the racism from “against blacks” to “against whites”. Why do we have to be “against” anyone? Aren’t we all equal?
Just for the record, white men invented rockets, space travel, airplanes, the automobile, the English language, the U.S.A., most medical advances, electricity, television, telescope, microscope, Ivy League Universities, the computer, the Internet, and on and on. I think white men should be praised and respected. White Christian Conservative Men especially, should be loved and adored. They were the backbone and originators of the greatest nation on earth. We need more of them now.
In November, 2012 The Blaze reported that Alec Baldwin tweeted, “…Obama’s re-election signaled the end of white, middle-aged Christian male dominance”.
Maybe that’s why our country is going to pot; our huge deficit, foreign attacks, crashing economy, racial and class warfare, immigration problems, bigger government, disappearing freedom, growing poverty, sky-rocketing unemployment, rancid immorality, more pregnant teens, etc. etc. – “the end of white, middle-aged Christian male dominance.” I’m just saying.
Find a white, middle-aged Christian man today and hug him. And then, encourage him and your white Christian sons to stand up, be leaders again, and save our country from the God-hating communists like Alec Baldwin and Obama.
Take it away, commenters. The thought of explicating that big a pile of shitmouth has sapped us of our will to live.
©2013 Wonkette Media LLC (emphasis in original)
http://wonkette.com/499372/victoria-jackson-just-asking-why-isnt-there-a-white-history-month-is-not-racist [the YouTube, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlB1dHwlydQ , as embedded; with comments]
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Joe Arpaio Makes Urgent Fundraising Plea To Fight 'Radical Extremists' Seeking To Recall Him
02/01/2013
Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Friday responded to news that he is the target of a new recall campaign [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/joe-arpaio-recall-effort-arizona_n_2589931.html ], blasting out a frantic email to his supporters asking for money to help fend off the challenge.
"Just three weeks after I was sworn into office for a sixth term as Maricopa County Sheriff, a group of radical extremists filed a recall campaign to forcibly remove me from office," Arpaio wrote. "This is very serious."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/01/joe-arpaio-fundraising_n_2599639.html [with comments]
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Obama Shooting Clays! White House Releases Photo, Mocks 'Skeeters'
Feb 2 2013
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/obama-shooting-clays-white-house-releases-photo-mocks-skeeters/272803/ [with comments]
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Meet Jason Rapert, the Koch-Backed Evangelical Steering Arkansas's Radical Abortion-Restriction Effort
Lee Fang on February 1, 2013 - 5:48 AM ET
On Wednesday, the Arkansas legislature lurched forward [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/arkansas-abortion-bill_n_2594501.html ] with a radical measure to ban most abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected within six weeks of a pregnancy, a requirement experts say will force the state to insert a probe into a woman’s vagina to detect.
The bill also penalizes doctors who perform abortions after the arbitrary cut-off date with a Class D felony, carrying up to six years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. The chief sponsor of the measure is Republican State Senator Jason Rapert, a fiddle-playing [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iEwD7rohZg (next below]
financial planner with his own evangelical [ http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/202/202563515/202563515_201012_990.pdf ] outreach center that hosts mission trips to Uganda, Ghana and the Philippines. He has been among the loudest anti-abortion politicians in the state, and has sponsored a number of other radical bills, including a very strange [ http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/02/26/no-hearing-monday-on-raperts-constitutional-convention-plan ] effort to organize a constitutional convention to give state legislatures power over the national debt limit.
Here he is [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVKS27fLN3k (below, as embedded)] at a Tea Party rally from 2011, not only complaining about Obama’s Ramadan event but also warning the president that his people have had enough of “minorities” running the country (emphasis added):
RAPERT: I hear you loud and clear, Barack Obama. You don’t represent the country that I grew up with. And your values is not going to save us. We’re going to take this country back for the Lord. We’re going to try to take this country back for conservatism. And we’re not going to allow minorities to run roughshod over what you people believe in!
Watch it (via video uploaded [ http://keeparkansaslegal.blogspot.com/2011/04/arkansas-tea-party-footage.html ] by Keep Arkansas Legal, an anti-immigrant group):
In another part of the same speech, Rapert proudly declares himself a birther and attacks the state Supreme Court for knocking down a ban on gay adoptions [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/07/arkansas-supreme-court-ban-gay-adoption_n_846174.html ] as example of “minority interests [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGZA578WTMM (next below)]
running roughshod over you and me.”
While Rapert certainly enjoys wide support in many corners of the evangelical movement (here he is with Rev. John Hagee [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLrp_W3UhZk (next below)]),
what interests me is how many white-shoe corporations stepped in to support his candidacy last year. A look at his final campaign finance report reveals direct corporate dollars and corporate political action committees sponsored by companies supposedly friendly to women:
Here are some examples: Southwestern Energy Company PAC gave $2,000; ARCH PAC, of Arch Coal, gave $1,000; Eli Lilly and Company gave $500; Lisa Allen, an executive with Cox Communications, gave $1,000; Nucor Corp PAC of AR gave $500; AT&T Arkansas PAC gave $2,000; Verizon gave $1,000; and American Electric Power PAC gave $500.
n 2012, Arkansas was one of several states to become substantially more Republican, with both the state house and senate falling into GOP hands for the first time since Reconstruction. Rapert’s district, a traditionally Democratic stronghold near Conway, was one of the pivotal seats that decided the balance of power. Rapert made abortion a major issue in the campaign, attacking his opponent, State Representative Linda Tyler for not doing enough to curtail abortion rights while serving as chair to the Arkansas House Public Health Committee.
As the The Washington Post’s T.W. Farnam reported [ http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-10-01/politics/35500590_1_arkansas-afp-presidential-race ], the Koch brothers–financed Americans for Prosperity (AFP) group made Arkansas a target state last year, and pledged $1 million dollars to key races to both defeat moderate Republican during the primaries, and to wipe the state of its remaining Democrats. Jay Barth, a professor at Hendrix College, a school near Rapert’s district, noted [ http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/plank/109294/in-arkansas-dixie%E2%80%99s-last-democratic-legislature-faces-red-tide ] that AFP’s Arkansas mailers “prime[d] racial sentiments by using an image of an African-American doctor.”
Rapert, a signatory [ http://americansforprosperity.org/files/Rapert_Jason.pdf ] to the Koch’s “No Climate Tax Pledge” and a regular participant in AFP’s political events, also received $2,000 directly from Koch Industries last year for his campaign.
Perhaps business interests were drawn to Rapert for his novel justifications for corporate-friendly legislation. According to the Blue Arkansas Blog, Rapert defended his support for bringing high-interest [ http://www.stoppaydaypredators.org/pdfs/11_0225_mcdaniel1.pdf ] payday lending back to the state by comparing [ http://bluearkansasblog.com/?p=9963 ] such loans to the microfinance loans used to support Third World farmers.
Libertarian billionaire Charles Koch, author of his own ideology he touts as the “Science of Liberty,” is famous for spreading his beliefs (and [ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/03/01/146847/charles-koch-welfare/ ] his business interests [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/03/01/147376/koch-polluter-bailout/ ]) through the aggressive use of political donations to candidates, think tanks, media outlets, universities, career-training institutes and dark-money attack-ad groups. But critics, including myself, point to the hundreds of state and federal Koch-backed politicians who seem to prioritize fairly authoritarian policies. Rapert’s transvaginal probes and government-forced pregnancies do not seem to cohere with any notion of individual liberty I’m familiar with.
Remember Jeb Bush? He’s back making money off of education reforms his nonprofit promotes [ http://www.thenation.com/blog/172551/e-mails-show-jeb-bush-foundation-lobbied-businesses-including-one-tied-bush ].
Copyright © 2013 The Nation (emphasis in original)
http://www.thenation.com/blog/172584/meet-jason-rapert-koch-backed-evangelical-steering-arkansas-radical-abortion-restriction [with comments] [and see (linked in) "Jason Rapert, Arkansas Abortion-Ban Sponsor, Made Racial Remarks At Tea Party Rally", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/01/jason-rapert-arkansas-racial-remarks_n_2599376.html (with comments)]
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Rick Perry: Boy Scouts Should Keep Anti-Gay Policy
By WILL WEISSERT
Posted: 02/02/2013 4:11 pm EST
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Rick Perry said emphatically Saturday that the Boy Scouts of America shouldn't soften its strict no-gays membership policy, and dismissed the idea of bending the organization to the whims of "popular culture."
Perry is an Eagle Scout and in 2008 he authored the book "On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For." It detailed the governor's deep love for the organization and explained why it should continue to embrace traditional, conservative values — including excluding openly gay members and Scout leaders.
America's longest-serving governor addressed the Texas Scouts' 64th annual Report to State, where hundreds of Scouts from around Texas filled the state House of Representatives to announce their delegation's recent accomplishments.
Perry has addressed the gathering several times before, most recently in 2010, but not since the announcement that the Scouts' national leadership is mulling scrapping the mandatory exclusion of gay members. Instead, the group could allow different religious and civic groups that sponsor Scout units to decide for themselves how to address the issue — either maintaining the exclusion or opening up their membership.
Even though the Boy Scouts reaffirmed the no-gays policy just seven months ago, the proposal is expected to be discussed, and possibly voted on, at the meeting of the Scouts' national executive board, which begins Monday in Irving, outside Dallas.
Perry told the youngsters that the Scouts was a key reason he joined the U.S. Air Force and later sought public office, and that society's failure to adhere to the organization's core values was a cause for high rates of teen pregnancy and wayward youth who grow up to be "men joining their fathers in prison."
Speaking to reporters afterward, Perry said: "Hopefully the board will follow their historic position of keeping the Scouts strongly supportive of the values that make Scouting this very important and impactful organization."
"I think most people see absolutely no reason to change the position and neither do I," Perry said. He said his views on the subject haven't changed since writing his book, in which he noted that profits would be donated to the Boy Scouts of America Legal Defense since "they continue to be under attack from the forces of secularism."
Asked if he would feel different about the Scouts if the policy is changed, Perry wouldn't say. But he added: "to have popular culture impact 100 years of their standards is inappropriate."
He also disagreed that allowing members of all sexual preferences would make the Scouts more tolerant: "I think you get tolerance and diversity every day in Scouting."
Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, said Saturday, "It's a shame that Governor Perry has chosen to be on the wrong side of history."
"Governor Perry and the Boy Scouts are both completely out of touch with where America is going on this issue," he said "There should be one national, non-discrimination policy. We can't quite wrap our heads around why that is so difficult to do in 2013."
Perry wrote in his book that he doesn't "believe the teaching of sexual preference fits within the parameters of Scouting's mission," but also made it very clear he'd like to keep gay members from joining.
"Because gay activism is central to their lives, it would unavoidably be a topic of conversation within a Scout troop. This would distract from the mission of Scouting: character building, not sex education," he wrote.
Perry also questioned whether sexual preference is determined at birth or is a matter of personal choice in his book, and wrote that he doesn't believe in "condemning homosexuals that I know personally."
Zach Wahls is an Eagle Scout raised in Iowa by two lesbian moms who has become a leading activist against the no-gays policy. Wahls said by phone Saturday he believes national Scout leaders will soften the membership policy next week, and he hopes the move won't make Perry won't turn his back on the Scouts.
"We've been called bullies and had people say 'you're imposing your will,'" he said. "Our organization isn't calling for the removal of anybody who disagrees with us. We support fully inclusive Scouting."
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/02/rick-perry-boy-scouts-gay-policy_n_2607353.html [with comments]
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Rick Sheehy Resigns: Nebraska Lieutenant Governor Steps Down
By ALISSA SKELTON and GRANT SCHULTE
02/02/13 06:44 PM ET EST
LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy resigned abruptly Saturday in a scandal involving thousands of calls to four women on his state-issued cellphone, including one woman who said she had a romantic relationship with the politician.
Gov. Dave Heineman announced Sheehy's resignation in a hastily called news conference Saturday morning. Sheehy, a Republican, had been considered the front-runner in the 2014 gubernatorial race and had been endorsed by Heineman.
"As public officials, we are rightly held to a higher standard," Heineman said. "I had trusted him, and that trust was broken."
Sheehy resigned after questions were raised about the cellphone calls with four women, none of whom were his wife, who filed for divorce last year. The calls, made over the last four years, were first reported by the Omaha World-Herald, which had made a public records request for Sheehy's phone records.
Records released Saturday by the governor's office show Sheehy made thousands of late-night phone calls to the women. He spoke with some of the women numerous times a day in conversations that lasted anywhere from a few minutes to more than an hour, according to the records.
One woman he frequently called, Dr. Theresa Hatcher of Bellevue, told The Associated Press that she and Sheehy had maintained a long-term relationship after they met at a convention of emergency responders in Texas in 2008. As lieutenant governor, Sheehy leads the state's emergency management efforts, and Hatcher is an emergency room doctor.
"I thought I was the only one," she said. "Apparently, I was grossly mistaken."
[...]
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/02/rick-sheehy-resigns_n_2606512.html [with comments]
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Mahony defends legacy on church abuse in blog
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Published: February 1, 2013
LOS ANGELES — Retired Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony defended his tattered legacy in a sharply worded letter to his successor, a day after Archbishop Jose Gomez stripped him of his administrative duties and bowed to a court order to release thousands of pages of confidential files on sexually abusive priests.
In a letter posted Friday on his personal blog, Mahony challenged Gomez for publicly shaming him and said he developed policies to safeguard children after taking over in 1985, despite being unequipped to deal with the molester priests he inherited.
Mahony had apologized two weeks ago after another release of similar files showed he and other top aides worked behind the scenes to protect the church from the growing scandal, keep offending clerics out of state and prevent public disclosure of sex crimes committed by priests.
Gomez was well aware when he took over in 2011 of the steps Mahony had taken to develop better clergy sex abuse policies and never questioned his leadership until Thursday, Mahony wrote.
"Unfortunately, I cannot return now to the 1980s and reverse actions and decisions made then. But when I retired as the active archbishop, I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth," Mahony wrote.
The letter was remarkable because it revealed infighting between two highly placed church leaders when members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy rarely break ranks publicly, said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who worked for the Vatican's Washington, D.C., embassy who also has served as an expert witness for victims in clerical abuse cases.
"It is so rare because they stick together like glue," he said. "The fact that Gomez said what he said, this had to have been cleared by the Vatican, they had to have discussed this with the Vatican. Mahony took the fall."
Gomez declined an interview request from The Associated Press.
The exchange also indicates the stress Mahony is under following several weeks of damaging disclosures of priest personnel files that reveal he and a top aide, Thomas Curry, who is now a bishop, maneuvered to shield priests from prosecution, kept parishioners in the dark and failed to call police about sex crimes against minors.
Gomez's public rebuke of Mahony, 76, for failing to take swift action against abusive priests adds tarnish to a career already overshadowed by the church sex abuse scandal, but it does little to change his role in the larger church.
The archbishop also accepted a resignation request from Curry, who most recently served as auxiliary bishop in charge of the archdiocese's Santa Barbara region.
The fallout will get worse as parishioners themselves begin to read the thousands of pages of documents that are now posted on the archdiocese website.
The files were to be released as part of a record-breaking $660 million settlement with more than 500 victims of sex abuse, but lawyers for the archdiocese and individual priests waged a five-year battle to keep them sealed. On Thursday, a judge ordered them released without significant redactions after attorneys for The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times intervened.
An attorney for the media organizations contacted the archdiocese Friday with concerns that certain documents were improperly redacted.
Several of the documents in the newly released files echo recurring themes that emerged over the past decade in dioceses nationwide, where church leaders moved problem priests between parishes and didn't call police.
Studies commissioned by the U.S. bishops found more than 4,000 U.S. priests have faced sexual abuse allegations since the early 1950s, in cases involving more than 10,000 children - mostly boys.
In one instance, a draft of a plan with Mahony's name on it calls for sending a molester priest to his native Spain for a minimum of seven years, paying him $400 a month and offering health insurance. In return, the cardinal would agree to write the Vatican and ask them to cancel his excommunication, leaving the door open for him to return as a priest someday.
"I am concerned that the archdiocese may later be seen as liable - for having continued to support this man - now that we have been put on notice that one of the young adults under his influence is suicidal," a top aide wrote in a memo about the priest to Mahony in 1995, urging him to stop paying benefits to the priest.
The cardinal added a handwritten note: "I concur - the faster, the better."
In another case, Mahony resisted turning over a list of altar boys to police who were investigating claims against a visiting Mexican priest who was later determined to have molested 26 boys during a 10-month stint in Los Angeles. "We cannot give such a list for no cause whatsoever," he wrote on a January 1988 memo.
While Gomez's decision to strip Mahony of his administrative duties and reduce his public role was unprecedented in the American Roman Catholic Church, Mahony can still act as a priest, keep his rank as cardinal and remain on a critical Vatican panel that elects the next pope.
Victims were quick to point out the contrast between Mahony's pared-down local standing and his continued position as a cardinal who travels frequently to Rome and remains in good standing there.
The decision "is little more than window dressing. Cardinal Mahony is still a very powerful prelate," Joelle Casteix, the Western regional director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said at a Friday news conference outside the Los Angeles cathedral. "He's a very powerful man in Rome and still a very powerful man in Los Angeles."
The Vatican declined to comment Friday when asked if the Holy See would follow Gomez's lead and take action against Mahony.
Tod Tamberg, the archdiocese spokesman, said he did not know if Pope Benedict XVI was aware of Gomez's actions. Mahony was in Rome several weeks ago for meetings unrelated to Thursday's announcement.
Mahony is a member of three Vatican departments, including the Holy See's all-important economic affairs office, and he remains a member of the College of Cardinals. At 76, he is still eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope.
The Vatican's former sex crimes prosecutor, Bishop Charles Scicluna, has said Canon Law provides for sanctioning bishops who show "malicious or fraudulent negligence" in their work, but he acknowledged that such laws have never been applied in the case of bishops who covered up sex abuse cases.
In the past, even high-ranking members of the church hierarchy who have spoken out about how senior church officials handled clergy abuse crisis have been rebuked by the Holy See.
In 2010, for example, Viennese Cardinal Cristoph Schoenborn criticized the former Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, in an interview for his handling of a notorious sex abuse case. Schoenborn didn't use Sodano's name in his critique but was nonetheless forced to come to Rome to explain himself to the pope and Sodano.
The Vatican publicly rebuked Schoenborn, saying that only the pope has authority to deal with accusations against a cardinal.
The Vatican's silence about Gomez's actions indicates that officials there were aware of it, said Patrick Wall, a former Benedictine monk and priest and vocal church critic who consults on clergy abuse cases.
"Gomez was as brilliant as a sniper the way he orchestrated this because he did not overstep his authority against the pope and yet at the same time it appears that some type of penalty is being imposed," said Wall. "It's brilliant and this has never happened in the U.S."
Mahony will reduce his public appearances, including numerous guest lectures nationwide on immigration reform, Tamberg said. However, he remains a priest in good standing and will continue to live in a North Hollywood parish and can celebrate the sacraments with no restrictions, he said.
Mahony, who retired in 2011 after more than a quarter-century at the helm of the archdiocese, has publicly apologized for mistakes he made in dealing with priests who molested children.
He repeated that apology in his blog post Friday.
"I have stated time and time again that I made mistakes, especially in the mid-1980s," he wrote. "I apologized for those mistakes, and committed myself to make certain that the Archdiocese was safe for everyone."
Associated Press writers Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, Michael Blood and Christina Hoag in Los Angeles, and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2013/02/01/2378352/mahony-defends-legacy-on-church.html [with comment]
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