http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/05/01/you-are-the-hope-paul-craig-roberts/

Dear Readers:

If there is hope, you are it. You are motivated to find truth. You can think outside the box. You can see through propaganda. You are the remnant with the common sense that once was a common American virtue. You come to this site, because you get explanations that are not agenda-driven, that are not BS, that are not right-wing or left-wing, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. You get explanations based on my lifetime of unique education and experience. Some of you are young enough to be equipped with the energy and courage to organize whatever resistance there may be to the Gestapo State that is descending on the United States of America. This is your site. Support it.

Until the George W. Bush Regime, I never thought that it could happen here. I could not imagine law professors and Department of Justice (sic) officials writing legal memos justifying, in the name of a hyped “war on terror,” the termination of civil rights for United States Citizens. We were the land of the free. The Constitution was our bedrock. Yet, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were easily taken away from the inattentive American people.

The Constitution did not protect native inhabitants and slaves who were not considered part of the American population, but the universal suppression in the US of non-whites’ rights produced in the end the civil rights movement that brought moral awareness of the wrongs and successfully hitched its cause to the founding documents of the country.

Where today is moral awareness as Washington bombs civilian populations around the globe? Where is the moral conscience of the the civil rights movement as the First Black President, the first member of the oppressed class to sit in the Oval Office, validates the Bush Regime’s assertion of the right of the unaccountable executive to ignore habeas corpus and due process? Not satisfied with this crime, Obama asserted the right of the executive branch to murder any citizen suspected, without proof being offered to a court, of undefined “support of terrorism.” Today all Americans have fewer rights than blacks had prior to the Civil Rights Act.

Anything, including a column critical of war and the police state, can be declared to be “in support of terrorism.” As the tyrant Bush put it: “You are with us, or you are against us.”

The print and TV media and many Internet sites got the message: Serve Washington’s agenda, and will you will prosper. Advertisers and the CIA will pump money into your coffers. Challenge us and you will be demonized and could face a military tribunal, indefinite detention, or assassination. Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are being persecuted for telling the truth.

So far, Washington has convinced the public that Washington’s terror is mainly limited to Muslims, who are obligingly demonized by print, TV, and much of the Internet media. However, if Muslim American citizens lack civil liberty, so do all other American citizens. Those who are safe are those who ally with the tyrant and remain subservient.

To ally with the tyrant, a United States citizen must have no moral conscience, no sense of justice, no compassion for the innocent and dispossessed. These are the worst kind of Americans; yet, they are the only ones who can succeed in the present environment.

Every time I write a column that is the truth or the truth as I am able to discover it, instead of hawking the propaganda line, I move up on the list of those who are persona non grata in the Empire.

A writer can find himself demonized and declared a kook simply by reporting findings from distinguished scientists, high-rise architects, structural engineers, first responders, and an international collection of high government officials. Not too long ago a writer or reporter for the Huffington Post discovered to his surprise that Pat Buchanan and I disagreed with all the wars that had been launched to protect us from terrorism. He asked me for an interview, and I agreed.

An hour or so after the interview was posted on the Huffington Post, I received an emergency call or email. He had been criticized for interviewing me, “for giving you a forum when you are a 9/11 sceptic.” He was unsure that it was possible for a Reagan presidential appointee to be a 9/11 sceptic and asked if I was.

I replied that I had reported the findings of scientists, architects, engineers, and the public testimony of first responders, because I thought these were qualified people whose opinions at least ranked equally with the politicians on the 9/11 Commission and the talking heads on Fox “News” and CNN, none of whom could pass a high school test in the laws of physics, much less high-rise architecture and structural engineering.

The Huffington Post writer panicked. Instead of taking down the interview, he felt impelled to assure readers and his boss that he had been deceived. He wrote at the beginning and ending of the interview that he did not know he was interviewing someone about the Iraq War who had given ink to those conspiracy theorists who raised questions about the truthfulness of the US government. He wrote that my views on the wars should be disregarded, because I wrote that scientists, architects, engineers, and first responders provided evidence contrary to the government’s claims.

And there you have it.

The Huffington Post has far more readers than I do, and far more money. There is no limit on the ability of the Huffington Post to tell and sell the lies of the Agenda.

I can remember when I was a Wall Street Journal editor and columnist, a Business Week columnist, a Scripps Howard News Service columnist and appeared regularly in the major mainstream print media and even from time to time on TV talking head programs. Today, the editor or producer who gave me a forum would be fired instantly, and they all know it.

It is discouraging that after so many transparent lies and orchestrations–weapons of mass destruction, al-Qaeda connections, Iranian nukes–the majority of Americans still believe the government. Americans are even buying into the line that Syria is ruled by a brutal dictator whose overthrow justifies Washington’s alliance with its 9/11 enemy, al-Qaeda, in order to overthrow a secular ruler who constrains al-Qaeda.

Washington has come full circle. Its enemy is now its ally. Washington wasted trillions of dollars and countless lives in eleven years of war and constructed a domestic police state all in order to combat al Qaeda with whom Washington is now allied against the Syrian government.

The public’s response to the Boston Marathon Bombing is even more discouraging. Not even King George and his Redcoats could achieve what Homeland Security just pulled off–locking down 100 square miles of Boston and its suburbs with heavily armed troops tramping through citizens’ homes barking harsh orders, all justified by a hunt for one 19-year old suspect. It was the Third Reich’s Gestapo in operation right here in “freedom and democracy” America. Ron Paul is correct that the suspension of civil liberty is a greater threat than the bombing. Note the government’s euphemism for martial law–”shelter-in-place.”

Two brothers have been convicted in the media and by the Obama Regime, including the president’s own words, of a bombing without the public ever being presented with any evidence except anonymous unattributed reports and a film of the alleged brothers walking with backpacks, which were ubiquitous.

I am old enough to remember when it was impermissible for government and media to convict a person prior to the jury’s verdict. Americans once lived in a free country governed by the rule of law in which a person was innocent until proven guilty.

What was the reason or evidence for naming the brothers suspects? Was any reason given, or was the film of the two walking with backpacks simply shown over and over, hour after hour, day after day, with the media reporting that these are the suspects. In other words, was it beat into your brain that they were suspects because there they are in the film? If not, why was the same film shown repeatedly? Fox “News” was still showing the film on April 26, eleven days after the bombing and might still be showing it. Did you experience: “Here are the suspects. See them. They have backpacks. See. We know that they are suspects, because, see, there they are.”

When is the last time the media investigated anything? A good candidate for investigation is the post-bombing rampage the brothers allegedly went on, robbing a 7/11 store (later contradicted by local police), killing a campus policeman, shooting a transit cop, high-jacking a SUV and releasing the owner.

Why would terrorists seeking to escape in order to strike again call attention to themselves in such outlandish ways and release a car-jacked owner to alert the police of the tag number? If the brothers were willing to kill police with gunfire and innocents with bombs, why release the guy whose vehicle they stole so he could inform the police of the license plate and make the brothers’ capture easier? What is the evidence, other than “reports from authorities,” that these events occurred or had any more connection to the brothers than the falsely reported 7/11 robbery that local police disavowed? Why does the US media simply accept whatever government authorities say?

Where is the evidence of a first shoot-out and a second shoot-out? The second shoot- out consisted of the authorities bombarding a motionless youth bleeding from wounds in a boat with multiple volleys of stun grenades and then multiple gunshots. The unconscious 19 year old was unarmed and unable to respond to the boat owner who discovered him. As he lies there, he is shot many times, including through the throat, and is on life support. But the very next day, according to the presstitute media, he is providing hand-written confessions.

Was the purpose of the reports of a murderous rampage to create fear among the population so that they would accept martial law and home invasions by armed troops ordering American citizens out of their homes with hands over their heads on the pretext that they might be harboring the Boston Marathon Bomber?

The videos of the street celebration in which Bostonians thank the police and of the two Boston families, if not scripted by actors, shows Americans who far from opposing the police state welcome it. A father says that he with his daughter in his arms was forced out of his home by troops pointing automatic rifles at their heads, but that he was thankful for the safety the police provided him by violating every civil right that the Constitution gave him. A woman says it was scary but that “the police are just doing their jobs.” Are Americans now so brainwashed that they attribute their safety to the presence of a Gestapo Police State?

Why have detention facilities been built? Why did Homeland Security purchase a billion or more rounds of ammunition? Why does Homeland Security have 2,700 tanks and a para-military force? Why aren’t these questions being investigated?

The US Constitution is the product of 900 years of human efforts to restrain brutal government and to make government subject to law. It only took Bush and Obama eleven years to get rid of it.

OLDDOGS COMMENTS

I SEE NO WAY THAT ANOTHER CIVIL WAR CAN BE AVOIDED!

OUR PRESENT FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS WORSE THAN GREAT BRITAIN WAS, AND DUE TO THE ADVANCEMENT IN WEAPONS, ONLY A LONG AND BLOODY HIT AND RUN SUSTAINED EFFORT ON THE PART OF PATRIOTS WILL FREE US ONCE AGAIN. LOCK AND LOAD FOLKS, THE SHIT IS CLOSE TO THE FAN. WHO HAS THE BALLS TO SUPPORT THE MEN WHO WILL FREE YOU FROM TYRANNY? WILL THE SOUTH RISE AGAIN? DAMN RIGHT THEY WILL!!!

Edward J. Erler
California State University,
San Bernardino
EDWARD J. ERLER is professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino. He earned his B.A. from San Jose State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School. He has published numerous articles on constitutional topics in journals such as Interpretation, the Notre Dame Journal of Law, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. He was a member of the California Advisory Commission on Civil Rights from 1988-2006 and served on the California Constitutional Revision Commission in 1996. He is the author of The American Polity and co-author of The Founders on Citizenship and Immigration.

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on February 13, 2013, at Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C.

We are currently mired in a frantic debate about the rights of gun owners. One example should suffice to prove that the debate has become hysterical: Second Amendment supporters, one prominent but less than articulate member of Congress alleges, have become “enablers of mass murder.”

Special animus has been directed against so-called assault rifles. These are semi-automatic, not automatic weapons ­the latter have been illegal under federal law since the 1930s ­because they do not require a trigger pull for every round fired. Some semi-automatic firearms, to be sure, can be fitted with large-capacity magazines. But what inspires the ire of gun control advocates seems to be their menacing look,­ somehow they don’t appear fit for polite society. No law-abiding citizen could possibly need such a weapon, we are told ­after all, how many rounds from a high-powered rifle are needed to kill a deer? And we are assured that these weapons are not well-adapted for self-defense ­that only the military and the police need to have them.

Now it’s undeniable, Senator Dianne Feinstein to the contrary notwithstanding, that semi-automatic weapons such as the AR-15 are extremely well-adapted for home defense ­especially against a crime that is becoming more and more popular among criminals, the home invasion. Over the past two decades, gun ownership has increased dramatically at the same time that crime rates have decreased. Combine this with the fact that most gun crimes are committed with stolen or illegally obtained weapons, and the formula to decrease crime is clear: Increase the number of responsible gun owners and prosecute to the greatest extent possible under the law those who commit gun-related crimes or possess weapons illegally.

Consider also that assault rifles are rarely used by criminals, because they are neither easily portable nor easily concealed. In Chicago, the murder capital of America ­a city with draconian gun laws ­pistols are the weapon of choice, even for gang-related executions. But of course there are the horrible exceptions ­the mass shootings in recent years ­and certainly we must keep assault weapons with high-capacity magazines out of the hands of people who are prone to commit such atrocities.

The shooters in Arizona, Colorado, and Newtown were mentally ill persons who, by all accounts, should have been incarcerated. Even the Los Angeles Times admits that “there is a connection between mental illness and mass murder.” But the same progressives who advocate gun control also oppose the involuntary incarceration of mentally ill people who, in the case of these mass shootings, posed obvious dangers to society before they committed their horrendous acts of violence. From the point of view of the progressives who oppose involuntary incarceration of the mentally ill­ you can thank the ACLU and like-minded organizations ­it is better to disarm the entire population, and deprive them of their constitutional freedoms, than to incarcerate a few mentally ill persons who are prone to engage in violent crimes.

And we must be clear­ the Second Amendment is not about assault weapons, hunting, or sport shooting. It is about something more fundamental. It reaches to the heart of constitutional principles ­it reaches to first principles. A favorite refrain of thoughtful political writers during America’s founding era held that a frequent recurrence to first principles was an indispensable means of preserving free government ­and so it is.

The Whole People Are the Militia
The Second Amendment reads as follows: “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.” The immediate impetus for the amendment has never been in dispute. Many of the revolutionary generation believed standing armies were dangerous to liberty. Militias made up of citizen-soldiers, they reasoned, were more suitable to the character of republican government. Expressing a widely held view, Elbridge Gerry remarked in the debate over the first militia bill in 1789 that “whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia.”

The Second Amendment is unique among the amendments in the Bill of Rights, in that it contains a preface explaining the reason for the right protected: Militias are necessary for the security of a free state. We cannot read the words “free State” here as a reference to the several states that make up the Union. The frequent use of the phrase “free State” in the founding era makes it abundantly clear that it means a non-tyrannical or non-despotic state. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), rightly remarked that the term and its “close variations” were “terms of art in 18th-century political discourse, meaning a free country or free polity.”

The principal constitutional debate leading up to the Heller decision was about whether the right to “keep and bear arms” was an individual right or a collective right conditioned upon service in the militia. As a general matter, of course, the idea of collective rights was unknown to the Framers of the Constitution ­and this consideration alone should have been decisive. We have James Madison’s own testimony that the provisions of the Bill of Rights “relate [first] . . . to private rights.”

The notion of collective rights is wholly the invention of the Progressive founders of the administrative state, who were engaged in a self-conscious effort to supplant the principles of limited government embodied in the Constitution. For these Progressives, what Madison and other Founders called the “rights of human nature” were merely a delusion characteristic of the 18th century. Science, they held, has proven that there is no permanent human nature­ that there are only evolving social conditions. As a result, they regarded what the Founders called the “rights of human nature” as an enemy of collective welfare, which should always take precedence over the rights of individuals. For Progressives then and now, the welfare of the people ­not liberty ­is the primary object of government, and government should always be in the hands of experts. This is the real origin of today’s gun control hysteria, the idea that professional police forces and the military have rendered the armed citizen superfluous; that no individual should be responsible for the defense of himself and his family, but should leave it to the experts. The idea of individual responsibilities, along with that of individual rights, is in fact incompatible with the Progressive vision of the common welfare.

This way of thinking was wholly alien to America’s founding generation, for whom government existed for the purpose of securing individual rights. And it was always understood that a necessary component of every such right was a correspondent responsibility. Madison frequently stated that all “just and free government” is derived from social compact, ­the idea embodied in the Declaration of Independence, which notes that the “just powers” of government are derived “from the consent of the governed.” Social compact, wrote Madison, “contemplates a certain number of individuals as meeting and agreeing to form one political society, in order that the rights, the safety, and the interests of each may be under the safeguard of the whole.” The rights to be protected by the political society are not created by government, they exist by nature­ although governments are necessary to secure them. Thus political society exists to secure the equal protection of the equal rights of all who consent to be governed. This is the original understanding of what we know today as “equal protection of the laws”, the equal protection of equal rights.

Each person who consents to become a member of civil society thus enjoys the equal protection of his own rights, while at the same time incurring the obligation to protect the rights of his fellow citizens. In the first instance, then, the people are a militia, formed for the mutual protection of equal rights. This makes it impossible to mistake both the meaning and the vital importance of the Second Amendment: The whole people are the militia, and disarming the people dissolves their moral and political existence.

Arms and Sovereignty
 

The Preamble to the Constitution stipulates that, “We the people . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States.” It is important to note that the people establish the Constitution; the Constitution does not establish the people. When, then, did “we the people” become a people? Clearly, Americans became a people upon the adoption of its first principles of government in the Declaration of Independence, which describes the people both in their political capacity, as “one people,” and in their moral capacity, as a “good people.” In establishing the Constitution, then, the people executed a second contract, this time with government. In this contract, the people delegate power to the government to be exercised for their benefit. But the Declaration specifies that only the “just powers” are delegated. The government is to be a limited government, confined to the exercise of those powers that are fairly inferred from the specific grant of powers.

Furthermore, the Declaration specifies that when government becomes destructive of the ends for which it is established­ the “Safety and Happiness” of the people ­then “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” This is what has become known as the right of revolution, an essential ingredient of the social compact and a right which is always reserved to the people. The people can never cede or delegate this ultimate expression of sovereign power. Thus, in a very important sense, the right of revolution (or even its threat) is the right that guarantees every other right. And if the people have this right as an indefeasible aspect of their sovereignty, then, by necessity, the people also have a right to the means to revolution. Only an armed people are a sovereign people, and only an armed people are a free people­, the people are indeed a militia.

The Declaration also contains an important prudential lesson with respect to the right to revolution: “Prudence . . . will dictate,” it cautions, “that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” It is only after “a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Object,” and when that object “evinces a design to reduce [the People] to absolute Despotism,” that “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” Here the Declaration identifies the right of revolution, not only as a right of the people, but as a duty as well ­indeed, it is the only duty mentioned in the Declaration.

The prudential lessons of the Declaration are no less important than its assertion of natural rights. The prospect of the dissolution of government is almost too horrible to contemplate, and must be approached with the utmost circumspection. As long as the courts are operating, free and fair elections are proceeding, and the ordinary processes of government hold out the prospect that, whatever momentary inconveniences or dislocations the people experience can be corrected, then they do not represent a long train of abuses and usurpations and should be tolerated. But we cannot remind ourselves too often of the oft-repeated refrain of the Founders: Rights and liberties are best secured when there is a “frequent recurrence to first principles.”

The Current Legal Debate
 

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that for the first time held unambiguously that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual the right to keep and bear arms for purposes of self-defense. Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia quoted Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, a work well known to the Founders. Blackstone referred to “the natural right of resistance and self-preservation,” which necessarily entailed “the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense.” Throughout his opinion, Justice Scalia rightly insisted that the Second Amendment recognized rights that pre-existed the Constitution. But Justice Scalia was wrong to imply that Second Amendment rights were codified from the common law­, they were in fact, “natural rights,” deriving their status from the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

In his Heller dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens boldly asserted that “there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.” In a perverse way, Justice Stevens was correct for the same reason Justice Scalia was wrong: What the Framers did was to recognize the natural right of self-defense. Like the right to revolution, the right to self-defense or self-preservation can never be ceded to government. In the words of James Wilson­ a signer of the Declaration, a member of the Constitutional Convention, and an early justice of the Supreme Court­“ the great natural law of self-preservation . . . cannot be repealed, or superseded, or suspended by any human institution.”

Justice Stevens, however, concluded that because there is no clause in the Constitution explicitly recognizing the common law right of self-defense, it is not a constitutional right and therefore cannot authorize individual possession of weapons. What Justice Stevens apparently doesn’t realize is that the Constitution as a whole is a recognition of the “the great natural law of self-preservation,” both for the people and for individuals. Whenever government is unwilling or unable to fulfill the ends for which it exists­ the safety and happiness of the people ­the right of action devolves upon the people, whether it is the right of revolution or the individual’s right to defend person and property.

Justice Scalia noted that those who argued for a collective-rights interpretation of the Second Amendment have the impossible task of showing that the rights protected by the Second Amendment are collective rights, whereas every other right protected by the Bill of Rights is an individual right. It is true that the Second Amendment states that “the people” have the right to keep and bear arms. But other amendments refer to the rights of “the people” as well. The Fourth Amendment, for example, guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizure.” But there seems to be universal agreement that Fourth Amendment rights belong to individuals.

And what of the First Amendment’s protection of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances?” Justice Stevens argues that these rights are collective rights. After all, he avers, “they contemplate collective actions.” It is true, the Justice concedes, that the right to assemble is an individual right, but “its concern is with action engaged in by members of a group, rather than any single individual.” And the right to petition government for a redress of grievances is similarly, he says, “a right that can be exercised by individuals,” even though “it is primarily collective in nature.” Its collective nature, he explains, means that “if they are to be effective, petitions must involve groups of individuals acting in concert.” Even though individuals may petition government for redress, it is more “effective” if done in concert with others, even though “concert” is not necessary to the existence or the exercise of the right.

With respect to assembly, Justice Stevens argues, there cannot be an assembly of one. An “assembly” is a collection of individual rights holders who have united for common action, or to promote a common cause. But who could argue that the manner in which the assemblage takes place, or the form that it takes, significantly qualifies or limits the possession or exercise of the right? We might as well argue that freedom of speech is a collective right because freedom of speech is most effectively exercised when there are auditors; or that freedom of the press is a collective right because it is most effectively exercised when there are readers. Justice Stevens’ argument is thus fanciful, not to say frivolous.

The Court in Heller did indicate, however, that there could be some reasonable restrictions on gun ownership. “Longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,” for example, will continue to meet constitutional muster. Laws that forbid “carrying firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings” are also reasonable regulations, as are “conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” The prohibition on “dangerous and unusual weapons” including automatic firearms ­fall outside Second Amendment guarantees as well.

For the moment, Second Amendment rights seem safe, but in the long term a political defense will be a more effective strategy. As Abraham Lincoln once remarked, “Whoever moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.” Shaping and informing public sentiments, ­public opinion­ is political work, and thus it is to politics that we must ultimately resort.
OLDDOGS COMMENTS!

All of the underlined text above is just claiming that the constitution is malatable, in the hands of public and political opinion, which is BULL S.! It’s an attempt to gain control of  week minds and form a majority of idiots.

In the current climate of public opinion, Congress will have little appetite for passing an assault gun ban. More likely, it will be satisfied with passing legislation aimed at gun trafficking and tightening background checks. We must remember, however, President Obama’s pledge: “If Congress won’t act then I will.” He has already issued 23 gun-related executive orders, and some of them are rather curious. One of them notes that there is nothing in the Affordable Care Act that prevents doctors from asking patients about guns in the home; another directs “the Centers for Disease Control to research the cause and prevention of gun violence.” MORE B. S.!

The President’s power to act through executive orders is as extensive as it is ill-defined. Congress routinely delegates power to executive branch agencies, and the courts accord great deference to agency rule-making powers, often interpreting ambiguous legislative language or even legislative silence as a delegation of power to the executive. Such delegation provokes fundamental questions concerning the separation of powers and the rule of law. Many have argued that it is the price we have to pay for the modern administrative state­ that the separation of powers and the rule of law have been rendered superfluous by the development of this state. Some of the boldest proponents of this view confidently insist that the triumph of the administrative state has propelled us into a post-constitutional era where the Constitution no longer matters. TOTAL B.S.!

The Gun Control Act of 1968 gives the President the discretion to ban guns he deems not suitable for sporting purposes. Would the President be bold enough or reckless enough to issue an executive order banning the domestic manufacture and sale of assault rifles? Might he argue that these weapons have no possible civilian use and should be restricted to the military, and that his power as commander-in-chief authorizes him so to act? Or perhaps sometime in the near future he will receive a report from the Centers for Disease Control that gun violence has become a national health epidemic, with a recommendation that he declare a national health emergency and order the confiscation of all assault weapons. Congress could pass legislation to defeat such an executive order; but could a divided Congress muster the votes? ­and in any case, the President could resort to his veto power. Individuals would have to resort to the courts; but as of yet, we have had no ruling that assault weapons are not one of the exceptions that can be banned or regulated under Heller. We could make the case that assault rifles are useful for self-defense and home defense; but could we make the case that they are essential? Would the courts hold that the government had to demonstrate a compelling interest for a ban on assault rifles, as it almost certainly would have to do if handguns were at issue?

Are these simply wild speculations? Perhaps­, probably! But they are part of the duty we have as citizens to engage in a frequent recurrence to first principles!

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