In the wake of the terrorist attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., there have been many talking points coming from the Left. They have decried homophobia and worried about Islamophobia, but most of all they’ve attacked guns.
The ignorance is overwhelming sometimes. The Washington Post printed an article rife with inaccuracies and the sloppiness we can expect these days.
“The men who wrote the 2nd amendment would never recognize an AR-15,” Christopher Ingraham claims, making the inane argument that modern firearms are not protected by the Second Amendment. He attacks Wayne LaPierre of the NRA for his absolutist position:
Of course, semiautomatic firearms technology didn’t exist in any meaningful sense in the era of the founding fathers. They had something much different in mind when they drafted the Second Amendment. The typical firearms of the day were muskets and flintlock pistols. They could hold a single round at a time, and a skilled shooter could hope to get off three or possibly four rounds in a minute of firing.
I wonder if Ingraham was hedging his bets here by using the phrase, “in a meaningful sense of the word,” because this kind of technology did exist. The late 18th Century was a time of great innovation with much happening in the realm of weaponry. The Founding Fathers could probably more easily imagine coming changes in weaponry than they could imagine changes in communication technology, but no one on the Left ever claims the First Amendment does not protect the Internet or media produced with computers, let alone the air waves.
At the time the Second Amendment was written, there were already functional autoloaders. The Puckle gun was an early flintlock with a revolving cylinder that was made in the early 1700s and could fire nine rounds a minute. While only a few were made, they paved for the way for other innovations later in the 18th Century.
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It is ridiculous to claim the Founding Fathers didn’t have autoloaders in mind, as the ill-educated such as Ingraham claim; they clearly saw the innovation that was coming. They didn’t specify what kind of weapons; they simply used the phrase “arms” in the Bill of Rights. This would cover whatever arms were anticipated for the future.
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If the Second Amendment only protects 18th Century flintlocks, then shouldn’t the First Amendment only protect means of communication in use at the time the Constitution was written? When did liberals turn into originalists?
The Constitution was written with a quill and ink. Books and newspapers were printed on presses that printed one page at a time and were hand operated. Radio and television waves, let alone the Internet, could not have even be imagined. Are these means of communication protected? Or because they “didn’t exist in any meaningful sense,” should they not be protected?
Perhaps there should be a movement to force the liberal media to only use methods of communication in use at the time the Constitution was written. It makes as much sense as Ingraham’s position.
- Discussion
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What does the Constitution cover?https://t.co/AHfw5PcAlc
— Conservative Review (@CR) June 14, 2016
The second amendment provides unlimited arms to the extent as may be necessary for the people to remain in full control of the federal government experiment.
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