Biden Calls on Congress to Restrict Gun Ownership

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President Joe Biden on Feb. 14 urged Congress to strengthen existing laws concerning gun ownership on the third anniversary of the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

“The Parkland students and so many other young people across the country who have experienced gun violence are carrying forward the history of the American journey. It is a history written by young people in each generation who challenged prevailing dogma to demand a simple truth: we can do better. And we will,” Biden said in a statement.

“This Administration will not wait for the next mass shooting to heed that call. We will take action to end our epidemic of gun violence and make our schools and communities safer. Today, I am calling on Congress to enact commonsense gun law reforms, including requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets.”

In the afternoon of Feb. 14, 2018, a man identified by authorities as Nikolas Cruz, now 22, walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and opened fire with an AR-15 rifle. The shooting left 17 dead, including 14 students. Cruz, who is currently awaiting trial, could face the death penalty.

After the shooting, a number of Parkland students and parents began agitating for stricter gun control laws, arguing that Cruz shouldn’t have been able to obtain a gun. But others pointed to failures by law enforcement, including safety officer Scot Peterson, who has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges for not entering the school building to confront Cruz, and urged restraint on new measures.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-calls-on-congress-to-restrict-gun-ownership_3696206.html

Below is an extract from Federalist Paper 46 by James Madison... where Madison specifically calls on the right of citizens to be well-armed, for the protection of the State, local government, and individual liberty from oppressive FEDERAL POWER:

"On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the latter.

The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.

Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.

Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it. The argument under the present head may be put into a very concise form, which appears altogether conclusive. Either the mode in which the federal government is to be constructed will render it sufficiently dependent on the people, or it will not. On the first supposition, it will be restrained by that dependence from forming schemes obnoxious to their constituents. On the other supposition, it will not possess the confidence of the people, and its schemes of usurpation will be easily defeated by the State governments, who will be supported by the people. On summing up the considerations stated in this and the last paper, they seem to amount to the most convincing evidence, that the powers proposed to be lodged in the federal government are as little formidable to those reserved to the individual States, as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the purposes of the Union; and that all those alarms which have been sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation of the State governments, must, on the most favorable interpretation, be ascribed to the chimerical fears of the authors of them." End of quote ...

See:Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters for the entire quote.

Madison saw the need for a well-armed citizenry... one armed with weapons comparable to the Federal Government and their standing Army as he saw the inevitable struggle between the government and the rights of the individuals as a problem that could only be moderated with the underlying ability of the citizen to defend himself against overreaching federal power... concentrated government power.

Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters

Protecting the 2nd Amendment - The Right to Keep And Bear Arms.

Replies

Richard Liptak February 16, 2021 at 10:40am

Marbury v Madison

“A law repugnant to the Constitution is void. An act of Congress repugnant to the Constitution cannot become a law. The Constitution supersedes all other laws and the individual’s rights shall be liberally enforced in favor of him, the clearly intended and expressly designated beneficiary.”
Hilary Joseph Hogan February 16, 2021 at 7:44am

They will have to kill me before I'll give up my right to bear arms.
- Jeff Noncent > Hilary Joseph Hogan February 16, 2021 at 7:52am
  
  Exactly
- Ronald A. Nelson COL, USA, Retired > Jeff Noncent February 16, 2021 at 9:51am
  
  They will gladly assist in your request... the left wants to eliminate 20 million or more of us to head off a counter-revolution.
- Carline D. Long Jr. > Ronald A. Nelson COL, USA, Retired February 16, 2021 at 9:56am
  
  What did they used to tell the bully, I will get a couple bites out of that sandwhich before that meal is done!
Jeff Noncent February 16, 2021 at 7:15am
1. Biden and Kamala Harris need to be impeached immediately
Ronald A. Nelson COL, USA, Retired February 16, 2021 at 6:13am

Below is an extract from Federalist Paper 46 by James Madison... where Madison specifically calls on the right of citizens to be well-armed, for the protection of the State, local government, and individual liberty from oppressive FEDERAL POWER:

"On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the latter.

The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.

Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.

Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it. The argument under the present head may be put into a very concise form, which appears altogether conclusive. Either the mode in which the federal government is to be constructed will render it sufficiently dependent on the people, or it will not. On the first supposition, it will be restrained by that dependence from forming schemes obnoxious to their constituents. On the other supposition, it will not possess the confidence of the people, and its schemes of usurpation will be easily defeated by the State governments, who will be supported by the people. On summing up the considerations stated in this and the last paper, they seem to amount to the most convincing evidence, that the powers proposed to be lodged in the federal government are as little formidable to those reserved to the individual States, as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the purposes of the Union; and that all those alarms which have been sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation of the State governments, must, on the most favorable interpretation, be ascribed to the chimerical fears of the authors of them." End of quote ...

See:Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters for the entire quote.

Madison saw the need for a well-armed citizenry... one armed with weapons comparable to the Federal Government and their standing Army as he saw the inevitable struggle between the government and the rights of the individuals as a problem that could only be moderated with the underlying ability of the citizen to defend himself against overreaching federal power... concentrated government power.

Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page - 2nd Amendment Supporters

Protecting the 2nd Amendment - The Right to Keep And Bear Arms.
- Paul Simmon > Ronald A. Nelson COL, USA, Retired February 16, 2021 at 1:46pm
  
  You do know that the Federalist Papers are not part of the legal codex, right? I wonder why you bring them up. To interpret the written legal codex and thereby creating case law?
- Skeptical > Paul Simmon February 16, 2021 at 2:33pm
  
  Paul, the original Constitution contained about 4,543 words, a surprisingly short document for its intent. I suspect that was to literarily exemplify the ideal, "that government is best which governs least" later credited to Henry David Thoreau.
  
  But doing so opened a door for additive misinterpretation, to be corrupted into the "living Constitution" concept ("the Constitution says whatever I need for it to say, at any time"). To avoid misreading, the participant authors composed public articles to flesh out the spirit of intent behind the wordage. I think of them as author affidavits to posterity.
  
  Are the Federalist Papers codified? No. They do not need to be anymore than the Declaration of Independence is. But without the Declaration, the spirit of the Constitution suffers some obscurement; so also with loss of the Federalist Papers.
  
  Anyway, that is my humble take on it.
- Ronald A. Nelson COL, USA, Retired > Skeptical February 16, 2021 at 2:41pm
  
  The Federalist Papers were written to convince the Colonial Governments and the public to RATIFY the Constitution... they are the ultimate document for defining the intent of the Constitution... and served to convince the Colonies and the Public to ratify the Constitution. How a Judge or lawyer can truly claim to be a Scholar of Constitutional law without knowing the Federalist Papers inside out is beyond me... and frankly is what is wrong with the legal profession today.... they are ignorant of their history and the founding documents.
  
  However, we don't need to be ignorant of our founding documents... we can read and learn from them. We can then take that knowledge to the streets and debate with the best of the so-called legal minds the intent of our Constitution. We don't need the so-called learned minds of a Corrupt liberal and biased legal intelligencia to dictate the terms of our Constitution... we have them in the Federalist Papers and the founding documents for our own perusal and interpretation.

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