Andrew McCarthy explains at National Review Online why “emergency” conditions fail to justify an assault on the U.S. Constitution.
To hear the Democrat-media complex tell it, guns themselves are responsible for last month’s carnage at a gay nightclub in Orlando — not the jihadist (a registered Democrat) who pulled the triggers again and again while screaming “Allahu akbar” and pledging allegiance to ISIS. This “blame the guns” meme spearheads the Left’s latest campaign against the Second Amendment.
President Obama and his allies in Congress seek to deny the constitutional gun-ownership rights of Americans merely suspected of terror ties — even as the Left champions the non-existent immigration rights of aliens from regions notorious for terror ties. The backbone of the Democrats’ stratagem is a specious “constitutional” claim, one whose logic would empower the government to strip every civil right the Constitution is designed to protect against government encroachment.
As posited by Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) at a Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Democrats claim that many constitutional liberties are routinely restricted in emergency circumstances — in particular, Fourth Amendment rights against warrantless search and arrest. Hence, the argument goes, Second Amendment rights, too, may be stripped away if Democrats can concoct an emergency — such as the ongoing crisis in which guns, apparently with minds of their own, mow down infidels.
At the hearing, Republicans, led by Senator John Cornyn (R., Tex.), made the point that the right to keep and bear arms is rooted in both self-defense and insurance against government’s propensity toward tyranny. The right pre-existed the Constitution. Thus, the Second Amendment is not its source. The right to keep and bear arms is natural and inalienable; the Second Amendment protects it, and Congress has no legitimate power to restrict it.
