The Arizona House of Representatives has passed a measure that if enacted would expand that state’s already existing ban on using state and local law-enforcement personnel and resources to execute federal firearms regulations, all of which, it should be noted, are unconstitutional.
Sponsored by a group of Republican lawmakers, H.B. 2394 passed the state House on February 21 by a party-line vote of 31-29.
The bill is an amendment of a law passed in 2021 in the Grand Canyon State that prohibits the state and all the state’s counties and municipalities from “using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the United States government that is inconsistent with any law” of the state of Arizona regarding the regulation of firearms.
At least 31 Arizona legislators understand that there is no constitutional authority granted by the states to the federal government to infringe whatsoever on the ownership and use of weapons.
Every state legislator is required by Article VI of the U.S. Constitution to swear or affirm to “support this Constitution.” It could hardly be said that a legislator was supporting the Constitution if he were voting to allow it to be violated by the federal government!
There are many supporters of federal gun restrictions who insist that the Second Amendment was never designed to protect an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. One such supporter is the current occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, who infamously declared:
The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon…. There has always been the ability to limit — rationally limit the type of weapon that can be owned and who can own it.
Despite the despot’s declarations, a study of American history most certainly does reveal that the Founders intended individuals to be armed in whatever manner they deemed necessary to rid themselves of politicians who would try to tyrannically rob them of their liberty.
In fact, our Founding Fathers were not concerned about protecting a man’s right to keep his home and family safe from “danger.” Our Founding Fathers protected the individual’s right to keep and bear arms because they knew that such was the only way to avoid being enslaved by tyrants.
They knew from their study of history that a tyrant’s first move is always to disarm the people, generally claiming it is for their safety, and then establish a standing army to convince the people that they didn’t need arms to protect themselves, for the tyrant and his professional soldiers would do it for them. Sound familiar?
Consider this gem from Blackstone, a man of immense and undeniable influence on the Founders and their understanding of rights, both civil and natural.
In Volume I of his Commentaries on the Laws of England, Blackstone declares:
The right of the subject … of having arms for their defence … is indeed a public allowance … 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.
Would anyone in America — or the world, for that matter — argue that the “sanctions of society and laws” are sufficient to “restrain the violence of oppression”?
Thus, the people must be armed.
Commenting on Blackstone’s Commentaries, eminent Founding Era jurist and constitutional scholar St. George Tucker put a finer point on the purpose of protecting the natural right of all people to keep and bear arms. He wrote:
This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…. The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.
I doubt readers of this magazine need to be convinced that the men who founded our union believed that the right of the people to be armed was an essential expression of a person’s God-given right to defend his life, liberty, and property.
And make no mistake about it, the very text of the Second Amendment supports this position, as well:
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.
While there are admittedly an abundance of commas in that sentence, there is one period — after “infringed” — and yet Congress after Congress, Supreme Court after Supreme Court, and president after president has had an obsession with treating that one period as if it were just another comma!
If state nullification of unconstitutional acts of the federal government is to be successfully deployed and defended, states’ lawmakers must remember that the Constitution is a creature of the states and that the federal government was given very few and very limited powers over objects of national importance. Any act of Congress, the courts, or the president that exceeds that small scope is null, void, and of no legal effect. No exceptions.
James Madison said it best in The Federalist, No. 45:
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.
As with any federal proposals to put a comma at the end of the Second Amendment and then add any number of conditional clauses after it, there are state lawmakers who, like the Arizona legislators who either sponsored or voted in favor of H.B. 2394, have authored bills that would preempt any such effort by the plutocrats on the Potomac to permanently deny the American people from keeping, owning, and bearing weapons or ammunition.
