My Two Cents on the 2nd Amendment.

We as Americans often point out that one of the strengths of our form of government is that it is a system of "checks and balances".  No one branch of government is supposed to have so much power as to be able to over run the authority of the others.  When the Constitution was first proposed to the various states the first, largest and loudest objection to it was the absence of a Bill of Rights.  This was quickly corrected, established and included as the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

Very infrequently if ever do I hear of them be put into the context of "checks and balances".  That is what they are however, checks against the tendency of government to grow more powerful and controlling.  Balances, reminders to the politicians that sovereignty resides with the states and the individual not just with the central government.

Sadly many now regard state sovereignty as an anachronism, a vestigial remnant of times long past.  Personal liberty, freedom of action and responsibility for the consequence of action have become equally lost in the miasma of the modern welfare state.  We teach that "you can't make it on your own."  You need help from government.  The criminal is no longer responsible for his actions.  "It's not his fault, society made him that way."  The Newtown Connecticut shooter didn't kill all those people, guns and our "gun culture" made him do it.

One of the standard arguments of the left in calling for limitations on the 2nd amendment is that the founders could not have foreseen the advent of modern semi-automatic weapons, and asks us to draw the assumption that this invalidates the protections of the 2nd amendment.  If one were to apply this logic to the protections of the 1st amendment, they would not then apply any of the forms of modern electronic media.  If the founders could not have foreseen radio, photography, television, high speed printing or the internet are they then exempt from the protections of the 1st amendment? 

Quite simply the guarantees of liberties in the Bill of Rights are based on principles not technologies.  But then the absence of logic and principle is the standard operating procedure of the left.

Sadder still this is largely the result of a moral relativist social attitude that wants the benefits of freedom but is not willing to accept any absolutes of inviolable rights that make that freedom possible.