Shot in the Dark

Things The Founding Fathers Never Foresaw

My entire adult life, I’ve considered the Bill of Rights inviolable – with the idea that they’re timeless principles, without which the idea of “Freedom” is pretty much meaningless. I took to heart the saying attributed to Ben Franklin – “He who would trade freedom for security deserves neither”.

But recent events have caused me, after much difficult thinking, to have a change of heart.

It’s time to change one of the Amendments in the BIll of Rights. Not *repeal* it – just change it. *To save lives*.

I’ll be announcing the amendment, and why, on the show tomorrow. 1PM on AM1280.

Posted

in

,

by

Mitch Berg

Tags:

Comments

13 responses to “Things The Founding Fathers Never Foresaw”

  1. Mr. D Avatar
    Mr. D

    Repeal the 3rd, but only for Michael Bloomberg, Heather Martens, and the Reverened Nancy Nord Bence (or whatever the hell her name is). It’s for the children!

  2. Bill C Avatar
    Bill C

    If it can save JUST ONE LIFE…..

  3. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Absolutely. When that archaic obstacle to common sense government is gone, we will no longer pay to house refugees and illegal immigrants awaiting deportation – we’ll assign them to citizens based on ability to pay.

    Mr. Bloomberg will probably be housing an entire village.

  4. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    JD with the post of the day! Heck, a week! You go JD!

  5. Penigma Avatar
    Penigma

    Mitch, I’m afraid I have to call BS. If you really felt the Bill of Rights was inviolable, how could you agree with McDonald or Heller or the incorporation of the 2nd Amendment on the states. It is preposterous to argue the second fragment of the sentence of the wording of the 2nd Amendment stands alone. When you say Because X, I believe Y, that does not mean Y is solo. For 230 years SCOTUS agreed, but a stacked, hyper-partisan SCOTUS appointed by NRA bought and paid right-wing President’s finally got their way and used logical word salad to argue otherwise, that in fact somehow the Because X was alone, despite not even being a sentence. So, in Heller in part and in full in McDonald, those sycophants on SCOTUS licked the boots of the NRA and gave in. Well, now that’s the law and the constitution so, I guess we live with it including the absurdly NON-Originalist enshrinement of “the right to hunt” noted in dicta in Heller- but here’s the other part, now you “small gov’mint” types are trying to get passed a law which will obviate the various state laws on concealed carry, instead forcing a federal law down their various throats. So much for the 10th Amendment, so much for local governance. States who don’t agree with the NRA’s perverted vision that more guns will save lives (in a country with 42% of all civilian firearms, the most by far of any nation and where we have the most gun deaths, ironically I guess, no coincidence, nope) – and who passed laws saying, “Sorry bud, but you’re insecurity and paranoia alone aren’t a reason for us to risk you getting mad on a highway and shooting someone.” They don’t get to make that choice, in your mind, because well, gunz gunz gunz, no matter the Constitution.

    So, Sorry Mitch, but B as in Bull S as in Sugar. If you respected the Constitution in the way you claim to, you’d have been up in ARMS over Guantanamo, up in arms when W put Muslims in prison for years without charge, and up in arms when SCOTUS invented rights in McDonald that never before existed, as you righties like to say, if it wasn’t written, it isn’t in there. Last but not least, you’d be up in arms that the federal government is going to take away the right of states to pass laws as they chose to affect their own safety. Liberty is an easy word to throw around but the Constitution is not a suicide pact nor is it silent on what is and is NOT permissible with respect to firearms. SCOTUS has gone well beyond that wording, and the NRA has gone farther still. If you respect the Constitution as you say you do, stand up to the NRA and say that if a state wants to limit CC licenses, that’s the breaks but that’s the Constitution.

  6. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Pen,

    You’ll find the answers tomorrow on the show .

    If you have questions during the show, call 651-289-4488.

  7. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Actually, as Yale and Columbia professor Akhil Reed Amar demonstrates in The Bill of Rights, Creation and Reconstruction, the 2nd Amendment was the first one to be incorporated against the states as a result of the 14th Amendment. Of course, if you read “Brady” sources like Penigma does, you won’t learn about these precedents that make clear that there’s nothing new in Heller or MacDonald.

    And really, let’s put things in perspective. Mass killings using “scary looking black rifles” killed 302 people from 2004 to 2014, a bit over thirty per year. When the law enforcement equation went to Hell in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray, homicides in Baltimore alone went up by about 110 annually in a city of just over 600,000 people.

    If you have limited resources, do you help Baltimore (Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, etc..) figure out what the Hell happened and possibly save thousands of lives each year, or do you infringe on the rights of millions of law-abiding gun owners and maybe save a thousand lives in a century?

    Choose carefully.

  8. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    BB, for pen, slavery is the only option.

  9. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Let’s all take a minute to relish Penigma claiming the 14th Amendment does NOT require the states to abide by the federal constitution, and consider all the States’ Rights that will be resurrected now that the states are free of federal interference. Whites only lunch counters. Segregated schools. Abortion and sodomy and marriage laws. Breathtaking.

  10. MacArthur Wheeler Avatar
    MacArthur Wheeler

    peev has a new blogger on his site, Laci The Dog, who claims to be a lawyer, and who runs on at great length about Heller, McDonald, and the 14th and how the 2nd only defines a collective right not an individual right – its mostly sophomoric drivel but Laci is obviously the “expert” source for peev’s opinion.

  11. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Let’s take one more minute to ponder Penigma’s anguish that for 230 years, the Supreme Court didn’t recognize a private right to bear arms, proof that it never existed as a Constitutionally protected right.

    Using that logic, there is no right to gay marriage, since it went unrecognized just as long. Abortion is right up there, too. Rolling back these cases is going to cause a lot of hair-pulling on the Left but what can we do? Penigma insists on it.

  12. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    Say Peevee? Don’t forget to bring the deed to your house to the polls for inspection next year, if you want to receive a ballot.

    And please tell DG not to bother showing up at all.

  13. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    Can we have some Jeopardy theme music while waiting in moderation?

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.