Senator Chris Murphy was on the latest episode of Meet the Press with Tim Russert Rolling in His Grave to discuss gun regulation in the wake of a Virginia court ruling handgun bans for 18-to-20-year-olds unconstitutional following SCOTUS ruling that for-cause concealed carry licensing in New York was unconstitutional.
Murphy commented, “If the Supreme Court eventually says that states or the Congress can’t pass universal background checks or can’t take these assault weapons off the streets, I think there will be a popular revolt over that policy of course that’s already pretty illegitimate is going to be in full crisis mode.”
FOX News: Chris Murphy warns of ‘popular revolt’ if SCOTUS finds ‘universal background checks’ unconstitutional
A popular revolt? This is guns we’re talking about, not some pisswater beer brand courting a transgender influencer.
Senator Murphy is addressing that SCOTUS decision that set the new framework for testing the constitutionality of gun laws. Now, a gun law must be “consistent with our Nation’s history and tradition” of firearms regulation.
So, you see, since the Founding Fathers in their time had no ban on 18-year-olds having guns, we can’t ban them. Since our agrarian ancestors didn’t require cause to conceal weapons, we can’t.
It logically follows, then, that since our pre-electricity forebears never did any universal background checks, they’re going to be forbidden for us. And because our ignorant-of-germ-theory predeccessors never banned any type of gun, we will be prevented by SCOTUS from doing so.
What’s that you say? Assault rifles didn’t exist in the 18th century, so, of course, we can ban them? Oh, silly thinking person using common sense, you’re absolutely wrong.
See, while the laws we pass about guns have to be consistent with 18th century history and traditions, the guns themselves don’t have to be. Because when the Framers wrote “right to bear arms,” the word “arms” in the 18th century meant “every firearm that exists or ever will exist in the future, regardless of form and function.”
Wise men, these Founders who still thought bloodletting and mercury treatments were medicine, who thought of non-white people as animals and savages, and who thought the Moon caused kidney stones, to be able to see three centuries into the future and understand that the need for Minutemen to be instantly ready to grab their muskets, powder, and shot to repel a Redcoat invasion of their Colonial hamlet is justification enough for someone to secretly stockpile modern assault rifles capable of wiping out an entire British platoon in a minute at 300 yards in their city of a million people today.
I’m sorry, did you bring up the fact that in the Old West, many towns actually did ban the bearing of arms?
The laws of Tombstone at the time required visitors, upon entering town to disarm, either at a hotel or a lawman’s office. (Residents of many famed cattle towns, such as Dodge City, Abilene, and Deadwood, had similar restrictions.)
Smithsonian Magazine: Gun Control Is as Old as the Old West
Yup, you’re right. That whole “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” was all about Marshall Virgil Earp and his deputies, brothers Wyatt and Morgan and friend Doc Holliday, trying to enforce that gun ban against the cowboys who wouldn’t follow the law and disarm.
The craziest part is that in O.K. Corral times, the Second Amendment read exactly the same way it does now! Somehow the 18th century Founders were wise enough to know that 18-year-olds should be able to walk about town openly carrying battlefield rifles that can fire a full 30-round magazine in 45 seconds with up to 1,000 yards accuracy, but then in the 19th century lawmakers and courts thought they could ban simple six-shooters and .22 rifles? Good thing our 21st century Court got us back to the wisdom of people who thought Blacks were 3/5ths human.
Get ready for it, because SCOTUS will eventually get around to eradicating all meaningful gun regulation. You’ll see roadside stands of guns and ammo like fireworks stands or dudes selling oranges.
All we need to do to stop it is enough of Senator Murphy’s imagined revolt to convince Democrats like him to use their power when they have it to push through expansion of SCOTUS to thirteen justices, set term limits and ethics laws for them, win enough seats in the House and Senate to provide a 2/3rds support for a Constitutional Amendment, and win enough statehouses to provide 3/4ths support for ratification.
Right. The party that’s running neck-and-neck against Trump. Dems can’t even mount a popular revolt against Trumpism in the wake of losing abortion rights, a failed pandemic response, economic collapse, an openly corrupt SCOTUS, daily gun massacres, failing schools, and their opponent being a twice-impeached, sexually-assaulting, insurrection-formenting, dictator-coddling, racist, misogynist, serial grifter, conman, idiot traitor.
I won’t be holding my breath. I will be stockpiling ammo. I’d rather we weren’t the “every idiot gets a gun” country, but since we are and will be for the rest of my life, I need to protect my family from idiots.
