PA Bill Number: HB1472
Title: In primary and election expenses, further providing for reporting by candidate and political committees and other persons and for late contributions ...
Description: In primary and election expenses, further providing for reporting by candidate and political committees and other persons and for late contrib ...
Last Action: Referred to STATE GOVERNMENT
Last Action Date: Apr 22, 2024
The New York Times's Dumb Second Amendment Argument :: 04/18/2015
I understand that to many people who work at the New York Times, guns are frightening animistic objects. But Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor of the Times, just took the following swipe at Ted Cruz, under the headline "Ted Cruz’s Strange Gun Argument," and it is his argument, not Ted Cruz's, that is strange to say the least:
Americans who believe the Second Amendment gives them an individual right to own guns (as opposed to a more general right to bear arms, as our editorial board argues) often make cogent arguments for their position. I believe that allowing people to own guns is not incompatible with imposing reasonable restrictions on their ownership, but I have heard sensible people strongly argue the opposite side.
But there are ridiculous arguments against gun control, perhaps the silliest of which is that the framers of the Constitution wanted to preserve the possibility, or even encourage the idea, of armed rebellion against the government. It’s a particularly absurd argument when it comes from a member of Congress who is running for president.
So, if we're tracking this argument here, Rosenthal thinks it's mystifying that the American founders who just successfully fought an armed rebellion against their own government and felt justified in their cause, would preclude the possibility of a future generation doing so? Let me direct Mr. Rosenthal to the Declaration of Independence:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Certainly, we can all agree governments should not be "changed for light and transient causes." But if, per America's founding document, it is our right and duty to cast off tyrannical governments, how does Rosenthal think that happens? Pillow fights? The founders's own example suggests a lot of guns would be involved. And the fact that these same men would later declare firearm ownership a God-given right should be an unsubtle clue to help connect the dots here. Rosenthal may find the prospect of armed insurrection horrifying to his urban liberal sensibilities, but it's almost impossible to argue allowing for this possibility was not a significant part of the historical rationale behind the Second Amendment -- and it's a rationale Americans would be foolish to stop believing in.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/new-york-timess-dumb-second-amendment-argument_922409.html
