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If it were not clear before the Bruen (2nd Amendment) and Dobbs (abortion) decisions, it is crystal clear now: America is in real danger of splitting apart.  I’ve already written on the Dobbs decision; this article focuses on the schism over the Second Amendment.  Consider these headlines:

Seventy-one people were shot, eight of them fatally, during the July 4th weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.

More than 50 people were shot over the Fourth of July weekend in Mayor Eric Adam’s (D) New York City.

Our Democrat/Socialist/Communist Congress is no longer hiding its intentions:

Representative Mondaire Jones (D-NY) said Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that if the Democrats win two more Senate seats in the upcoming midterm election, they will get rid of the filibuster to pass gun legislation.

Nor are the rulers of other D/S/C cities:

…Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said only cops should have guns even though the only victims, in this case, are police officers…[skip]

‘I was in Canada two weeks ago and never thought about a gun,’ he said. ‘The only people I knew who had guns in Canada were police officers.’

‘That’s the way it should be here,’ Kenney stated.

There is little remaining comity in Congress:

Swallwell is comparing Boebert to the Highland Park murderer

Boebert told Fox News Digital she gets ‘that Eric Swalwell isn’t a fan of our Constitutional rights and is desperate to distract from his repeated political failures, but the only straight line that needs to be drawn is from Eric Swalwell to Fang Fang to the Chinese Communist Party.’

‘I will make sure that line gets drawn when we take back the House,’ Boebert continued. ‘Law-abiding gun owners won’t be smeared and disarmed every time a California failed presidential candidate rolls out of bed with a Chinese spy and tries to blame us for the conduct of others.

I could go on endlessly illustrating the hatred not only of gun owners, but of Americans who fully support the Constitution, who recognize in it the glue that holds us all together, who willingly obey the supreme law of the land and the rule of law that flows from it.  The Bruen decision, along with Heller and McDonald, have acknowledged the right to keep and bear arms as an unalienable, individual right, which applies not only in the home, but elsewhere.  If there is a right to self-defense, this is unremarkable for one must be able to defend their life, and the lives of others wherever they are.  This right extends to the weapons commonly owned and carried by Americans.  The most obvious, circa 2022 is the semiautomatic handgun, but shotguns and rifles, including the AR-15–America’s most popular rifle–also qualify.  In addition, “may issue” laws are unconstitutional, and states may not ban the bearing of arms by declaring the entire state a “special” or “sensitive” zone.  Which is why we visit New York State:

New York Governor Kathy Hochul once again signed sweeping gun legislation into law on Friday that created several severe new restrictions on obtaining a gun in the state, including drastically increasing concealed carry regulations and requiring applicants to turn over social media history.

Acccording to the the legislation, part of Hochul’s new criteria to obtain a concealed carry permit will be an applicant giving the government a list containing three years of history of their current and inactive social media accounts. Applicants must also have 16 hours of firearm training, provide four character references, and list the contact information for any domestic partners or adults of any kind they live with.

Potential applicants will also be required to show ‘good moral character,’ meaning ‘the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself and others.’

At a press conference regarding the new legislation, Hochul said ‘we are creating a definitive list of sensitive locations where individuals will not be able to carry firearms.’

This list includes ‘schools, summer camps, libraries, daycares, parks and playgrounds, places children gather, theaters, museums, entertainment venues, places of worship for religious observation, polling places, educational institutions, and health medical facilities. Federal State Local government buildings, homeless and domestic violence shelters, places where alcohol is consumed, restaurants, bars, public transportation, subway buses, airports and at public demonstrations and rallies, and in Times Square.’

In other words, New York State, in clear violation of the Constitution, is banning guns pretty much everywhere, establishing near-universal gun-free/free-fire zones.  Obviously, these restrictions are focused on New York City where D/S/C politicians try to force everyone onto public transportation, while continuing to disarm them.  NYC’s subways have become notoriously dangerous.

Another new rule is a ‘Default of No Concealed Carry on Private Property and Businesses Unless Deemed Permissible by Property Owners.’ Hochul said of this law, ‘We are making ‘no open carry’ the default position for private businesses. That means that any business, grocery store, retail, private home, place that wants to allow guns on their premises will have to demonstrate that and establish that they put a sign out there that says concealed carry guns are welcome here.’

This law will make it all but impossible, particularly in any city, for anyone to avoid arrest, which is, of course, the point.  Carrying a handgun is theoretically legal, but practically impossible, and New York residents, particularly in NYC, can be certain if they violate the slightest provision of New York’s anti-liberty/gun laws, prosecutors will be delighted to throw them in prison for years.  These would be the same prosecutors loath to punish violent, armed felons in any way.

It is, by the way, illegal to wear body armor in New York State.  Criminals, who don’t obey any law, virtually never wear body armor.  The only possible reason the New York legislature banned body armor is to ensure the law-abiding remain at the mercy of criminals, a base D/S/C constituiency.

Will these laws be struck down?  It’s highly likely, but unless state courts follow the Constitution—and in blue states many do not—it could take years before federal courts rule.  Some Federal circuits also tend to ignore the Constitution.  It could take a decade or more for the Supreme Court to agree to hear such cases–a properly packed court would not–which is what D/S/Cs like Hochul are counting on.

Every Fourth of July, Powerline posts a part of a 1926 Independence Day speech by President Calvin Coolidge.  This paragraph is particularly pertinent:

Calvin Coolidge

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

This, gentle readers, is the crux of the problem.  We have in America, July, 2022, two primary political philosophies.  One recognizes the Constitution and all its parts and amendments as final.  Of course the Constitution may be amended, but amendment is difficult.  The Founders wisely didn’t want it changed for “light and transient reasons.”  But absent amendment, the Constitution, including the Second Amendment, is final.  In fact, all unalienable rights are final; they are not granted by government, nor can government rescind them.  Either the Constitution speaks to a given issue, or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, it falls to the states or the people to decide.  Because it is final, there are limits on government, and representatives and judges are not free to ignore those limits because they think their favored policies a morally superior good.

The other political philosophy holds the Constitution outmoded.  They, the self-imagined elite, the intellectually and morally superior, recognize the Constitution only so long as it gives them what they want.  The moment it does not, they either find what they want in its emanations and penumbras, or they ignore it altogether.  They used to say the Constitution was “living,” which meant it is not final, but constantly evolving as the intellectual and moral elite evolve, but they now just generally call it, and those who support it, racist and a variety of other vile epithets.  Their arguments for their policies are not legal or logical, but emotional, just as the Bruen dissent’s arguments were hysterically emotional, having nothing to do with the Constitution or law.  Mostly, they find they hate the Constitution as much, if not more, than they hate America and Americans.

The Second Amendment, therefore, is a primary battleground.  In response to the latest lunatic who murders multiple people, those holding to the Constitution will abide no limitation of the Second Amendment, because it is, absent Amendment, final.  It is also the right that secures all other rights.  If one does not have the right to self-defense, and the best means to secure that right, regardless of size, strength, gender, age, vigor or disability, what does any other right matter?  They look at Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, and Highland Park and understand those places are a gun banner’s dream.  Every ban, every restriction anti-liberty/gun cracktivists want is in place in those blue utopias, and none of those laws prevent third world war zone levels of violent crime.  None of them keep maniacs from obtaining guns and killing people.

But what about gun violence!  We must stop gun violence!  Here we see one of the strengths of D/S/Cs: the cynical, false manipulation of language.  Inanimate objects do not commit violence; they cannot commit violence.  Were this not so, why don’t we speak of “foot violence” or “hand violence,” because thousands are kicked and beaten to death every year?  Why don’t we speak of “motor vehicle violence,” because far more Americans die by motor vehicle than guns every year?  We are even told “silence is violence,” if we don’t say what D/S/Cs want in precisely the terms they want it said.

One need not be particularly well versed in history to know never were people’s rights to free speech and guns taken away for good and benign reasons.  So where do we now stand?  Until recently, most Americans knew there were lines they dare not cross, because once crossed, there may be no going back.  We are a society built on trust, and once trust is lost, it may never be regained.  Our participation in the Republic is voluntary, but many, it seems, no longer want to volunteer.

What are we to make of calls for the assassination of Supreme Court Justices, but not all, only those Justices who hold to the Constitution?  What are we to make of the attempted assassination of one of those Justices, and of the refusal of our D/S/C President and Attorney General to enforce the very specific federal law protecting those justices?  How does America step back across that line?

If Republicans retake one or both houses of Congress in November, will D/S/Cs dial back their anti-liberty/gun rhetoric, their calls for the deaths of their political enemies, their attempts to take the liberty of Normal Americans, or will they continue to cross lines, to redouble their efforts to establish permanent one-party rule?  Will a Republican President ever again be able to govern without fending off impeachments, even when out of office?

And can our Republic survive as a house divided?  If half-ish of America wants nothing more than to be left alone to live under the Constitution and the rule of law, and halfish refuses to leave them alone, demands the opposite, and demonstrates its bad faith and intentions by disarming Americans, yet allowing criminals to run free, how long can a constitutional America endure?

Will we find ourselves falling back to the usual political battles for the dissolution of the Constitution, and with it, individual liberties?  Or will the angry, anti-American left who will not leave others alone force us into a Second Civil War to determine which philosophy will prevail?  They think rural America will be easily conquered.  They also thought inflation was “transitory.”  If some things aren’t final, if they’re not beyond argument, we’ve never been closer.

UPDATE, 07-06-22, 1015 MT:  Still not convinced D/S/Cs hate the Constitution—and Normal Americans?  Try this:  

Georgetown University Law School Professor Rosa Brooks said on MSNBC during Tuesday’s broadcast of ‘The ReidOut’ that Americans were “slaves” to the U.S. Constitution she said was written by ‘a tiny group of white slave-owning men.’ [skip]

The MSNBC guest added, ‘This is us. This is 100% us, and it’s because we are essentially slaves to a document that was written more than 230 years ago by a tiny group of white slave-owning men. And we cannot break out of the bondage that we have imposed on ourselves from feeling like we have to– everything by our Supreme Court is decided in reference to this ancient document which is just not serving us well. It is causing enormous problems and enormous tragedies at this point.’

See gentle readers?  That damned ancient Constitution is why we can’t have nice things, and social justice, and woke for all, and pronouns, and no police, and socialist/communist utopia.  Freedom is slavery!  Free speech is censorship!  The D/S/C Party loves you!