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Originally Posted by pknopp
No. There are valid reasons some can not. Due Process. You can legally have this right removed through due process but that is a small number of people.
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Poor little pknopp has been refuted on this point time again, and spanked over and over in the forum.
His usual response is to not respond, except to repeat his fib about "due process" over and over. And then he waits a while until he apparently figures that enough time has gone by that people will forget his latest humiliation, and that he can start claiming the 2nd amendment can be violated by "due process" again, as though he had never been refuted.
Why was the 2nd is written without qualifications? It says "Since X is so, the people's RKBA cannot be taken away or restricted." It does NOT say "except by due process of law". And it does NOT say "unless the person is a felon or other type of extreme criminal", and etc.
To make up an extreme example: Some guy goes into a restaurant, pulls out a gun and blows away half a dozen people. The cops show up and surround him, and one cop says, "Give me your gun right now." The guy says, "Sorry, the 2nd amendment says my right to KBA cannot be taken away or restricted, PERIOD, so you have no authority to make me give you my gun." And this with gunsmoke in the air and bodies bleeding on the floor next to him.
So what does the cop do? Cracks him over the head with a billy club and takes his gun away anyway.
Many of the people who wrote the 2nd were lawyers, and knew well the effect that certain words have when included, or omitted, from legislation. And yet they chose to omit ANY exceptions to the ban on government taking people's guns away. Strictly speaking, that would even include the extreme example I just gave: Cops can't legally take away the gun of a murderer at the scene of his crime.
Many people use this as the reason why the 2nd amendment MUST have been intended to implicitly allow for exceptions: It's impossible that the Framers could have intended for murderers to retain their weapons immediately after committing their murders. Yet a truly strict reading of the 2nd, forbids any govt official (including police) from taking the mass-murderer's gun.
So what could the Framers' intention have been, in omitting any exceptions?
Remember that it is GOVERNMENT that is being forbidden from taking away people's weapons. And the foremost reason it's forbidden, is so that the people can use them against government itself, if/when the government becomes tyrannical. And the Framers knew that if government were given even the tiniest exception, there would be a tendency to turn that tiny loophole into more and more twisted, warped excuses to take guns away anyway, far beyond the "reasonable" exception of being able to take away a mass-murderer's gun at the scene of his crime.
The only way the Framers could find of avoiding the far-greater evil of a tyrannical government disarming its people, was to make NO EXCEPTIONS WHATSOEVER to an explicit ban on government disarming even one of us.
So where does that leave us on the question of the cops taking the mass murderer's gun at the restaurant?
It's inconceivable that the Framers would want the murderer to retain his gun even as they haul him off to jail.
But it's VERY conceivable that the Framers would want government to have NOT THE SLIGHTEST EXCUSE, NO MATTER HOW "REASONABLE", to take away the weapons of their populace in general. Because the slightest excuse, the tiniest exception, could be stretched into a huge loophole. And the Framers regarded a government that could somehow finagle its way into disarming its own people, as a far greater threat than the occasional murderous nutcase in a restaurant.
And history has proven the Framers right, time and again.
Should we amend the Constitution, changing the 2nd amendment to officially empower government to take away the right of, say, murderers, to own and carry guns?
Some would think it's obvious that we should, to make the law "really" right. But consider the potential cost.
My own guess is, the Framers intended for the principle of Jury Nullification to apply here. The restaurant mass-murderer tells the cops they have no power to take his gun. The cop responds by cracking the guy's skull with his billy club, hard, and taking away his gun anyway. Did the cop violate the strict words of the 2nd amendment by doing so? Maybe yes. But is there a judge or jury in the world that will convict the cop for it? Probably not.
And yet when government makes the slightest move toward disarming even a little of its populace by legislation, they can be met with the absolute, no-exceptions ban codified by the 2nd amendment. No loopholes, no nothing. ANY legislation that infringes on the absolute right to KBA, is unconstitutional. Period.
The ONLY entity that can legally take away a person's right to keep and bear arms, is a JURY of his peers.
I suspect that's how the Framers expected this particular law to work.
Can I prove it? No. When I meet one of the Framers, I'll ask him. Until that time, I can only guess, based on the records they have left behind. If anyone can come up with a better guess, I'd be happy to hear it.
I never said the cops shouldn't take the murderer's gun away. The murderer said that, with bodies still bleeding around him. Whereupon the cop whacked him over the head with a billy club and took it from him anyway.
And later when the murderer brought charges against the cop for violating his 2nd amendment rights, the jury let the cop walk. The cop had no more worries since double jepoardy isn't allowed. And the murderer went to the chair as he deserved. And that's exactly how the system should work.
The ONLY entity that can legally take away that murderer's right to keep and bear arms, is a JURY of his peers. And the jury can only do it on a case-by case basis, since a jury doesn't even exist until a case is brought in court.
And when some govt official tried to take the gun of a law-abiding citizen, the jury did NOT let the govt official walk. In that case, they threw him into jail with all those nice criminals, where they could discuss obeying the Constitution, and the advantages of jury nullification, all they wanted. And, again, that's exactly how the system should work. And was designed to work, in fact, by those founders the leftist fanatics keep desperately denigrating and insulting.
Yes, the right guaranteed by the 2nd amendment, IS absolute... because of the many horrifying examples that happen when it isn't. And imperfect as we are, the closer we come to making it that way, the safer and more prosperous (and, BTW, the freer) our society will be.
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