Thread: Gun Legislation
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Old 08-22-2019, 01:42 PM   #228
ReelinRod
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Upper Bucks County PA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wdmso View Post
where does it say they cant?


That's the singular truth you need to accept.

And the spring from which your incorrect ideas flow, has been discovered. You are so profoundly backwards in your thinking I realize now it is probably useless to even try to correct you. How does your position mesh with the 10th Amendment?

I'll state my argument anyway, just for those who might be interested.

The specific enumeration of powers in the Constitution limits the powers of the government . . . IOW, the feds can only do what the Constitution says it can do.


If it ain't there it can not be done!


That correct "singular truth" was the main reason the Federalists opposed adding a bill of rights to the Constitution. They believed it was dangerous to add declarations that things shall not be done when no power was ever granted to do those things . . . that it was absurd to provide against the abuse of an authority which was ever granted to government!*

They also argued that the attempt to list rights was not only impossible, it was also dangerous. Our rights are innumerable, they are everything not conferred to government through the Constitution and someone, someday might assume and argue that that was the entire list of rights and something not listed was actually under the domain of government.

Of course the Federalists "lost" the argument and a bill of rights was added but Madison, being a Federalist, composed and proposed two provisions that codified Federalist argument against the bill of rights into the Constitution. They became the 9th and 10th Amendments:
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Do you recognize how profoundly wrong your thinking is?






* Federalist 84, arguing against adding a bill of rights:
"I . . . affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights."


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Last edited by ReelinRod; 08-22-2019 at 01:47 PM..



You can’t truly call yourself “peaceful” unless you are capable of great violence.
If you are incapable of violence, you are not peaceful, you are just harmless.
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