Lies the government told you (17 page)

The Supreme Court in
Heller
noted that the right to keep and bear arms was not dependent upon the Constitution for its existence and therefore was a natural right that neither the state nor federal government has a right to infringe without due process. Natural Law teaches that there are certain rights and freedoms that are not granted to us by the government but rather come from human nature. Since these rights do not come from the government, the government cannot take them away. For example, the government cannot declare that all people must worship one god and that worshipping any other god is unlawful. The freedom of religion is a natural right and therefore no government can take that right away, absent due process.

If the government does try to take a natural right away, an independent judiciary can step in and protect the individual. It is therefore important to remember that if the government attempts to usurp a right that derives from nature—like the right of self-defense— we are protected from the government by the courts, which have the ability and the duty to prevent the government from such an attempt. The court must enforce the Natural Law and ensure that it is not taken away without procedural due process.

Like Natural Law, when the Constitution grants us certain rights and states that those rights cannot be infringed, this means that the government cannot take away those rights without due process of law. “Due process” is a term used in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Fifth states that “no person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” The Fourteenth Amendment states, “nor shall any
State
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” (emphasis added).

In essence, both these amendments require that any deprivations of rights inherent in our humanity or directly protected by the Constitution cannot be taken away by any government without, at the least, a notice to the person of charges or proceedings, a hearing at which the person may speak and that is presided over by an impartial judge and a neutral jury; basically, a fair jury trial. It was the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause that the Supreme Court used in order to incorporate most of the Bill of Rights against the states in a series of decisions.

Unfortunately, rather than incorporating the entire Bill of Rights in one round, the Supreme Court used a case-by-case basis to decree that each Amendment protects the people from state governments. This resulted in almost, but not all, of the first eight amendments being applied against the states. The Supreme Court never issued a decision that expressly incorporated the Second Amendment to the states, until
Heller
.

This loophole in
Heller
has garnered notice, and the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear an appeal of
NRA v. Chicago
, which is a case involving a local ban on handguns in the City of Chicago. The lower court held that the Second Amendment did not apply to the states unless it was directly incorporated by the Supreme Court. In a similar case,
Maloney v Cuomo
, the court held that
Heller
, and therefore the Second Amendment, was only applicable to the federal government and that therefore the states were allowed to infringe on the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
²⁶
The
Maloney
court erroneously stated that “it is settled law . . . that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the Federal government seeks to impose on this right.”

To back up its phony settled-law argument, the
Maloney
court utilized
Presser v. Illinois
, which is Supreme Court precedent from 1886. This was a case decided far before the Supreme Court developed the incorporation doctrine, and therefore, as the
Heller
court noted, “did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases.” The
Maloney
court, desperate to preserve its own political agenda, utilized a translucent shield to protect this agenda. Courts rarely use precedent that is over 120 years old, which has not been ratified in later decisions and laws. For example, a court would never think to use the analysis from one hundred years before
Miranda
to determine whether a confession was properly obtained. Or if it tried, the outcry would be deafening. This is what the
Maloney
court did. The Supreme Court will hear an appeal of
Maloney
as well.

Is this what the Founding Fathers imagined when they wrote the Bill of Rights, that the people’s rights to defend themselves against a tyrannical government applied only as to the federal government, and the state could be as tyrannical as it wanted? To be fair, there is only one sensible reading of
Heller
on the question of whether the Second Amendment restrains only the federal government, or all governments. By writing that
the
right to keep and bear arms, like
the
freedom of speech, precedes the existence of the United States, by characterizing it as “ancient,” and by describing its use against tyrants throughout history, the Supreme Court found and declared that the individual right to keep and bear arms is “fundamental” (meaning natural, not government created) and thus is immune from
all
government interference, absent a state interest of the highest order and due process.

Historical Ignorance Is Not Bliss

The philosopher Santayana once said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And it seems that we have not learned from history and we shall let the government lie to us once again. Currently there is a hue and cry about renewing the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. In 2007, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), a strong supporter of renewing the Assault Weapons Ban, spoke of the mass murders at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School to justify the need for a ban on high-capacity assault rifles. The guns used in those tragic events were not assault weapons, but a legal variety of firearm. Yet, the government will lie and lie again to serve its own ends until the general public supinely believes it. One should consider what the result would have been if one student present at either of these massacres had firearms training and was able to carry a weapon to take down the killers. How many lives would have been saved?

President Obama has stated that he “has seen the impact of fully automatic weapons in the hand of criminals . . . [and] [t]hus supports making permanent the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban. These weapons such as AK-47s belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets. These are also not weapons that are used by hunters and sportsmen.” Such a short statement, yet so full of either mistaken beliefs or continuing government fraud.

As John Lott points out: First, the Assault Weapons Ban did not, as discussed, ban fully automatic weapons; second, the firing mechanisms banned are the exact same as those in the semiautomatic weapons used by hunters and sportsmen. Third and foremost, the percentage of deaths attributed to fully automatic weapons is so miniscule that no person could attribute them to the high murder rate of any city.
²⁷
As should be clear, we do not know any better and we have not learned that governments, no matter from which party, are adept at deception.

Since, as noted earlier, there is no evidence that an assault weapons ban reduced crime in the United States, even when the research was compiled by bureaucrats in the Clinton administration who were assuredly searching hard, the federal government recently attempted to reinstate the assault weapons ban, this time claiming that it “will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.”
²⁸
In
Mexico
? Apparently, even though the expiration of the ban has not had
an effect on overall violent crime rates in the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder feels that new laws in this country will help cure Mexico of its gun violence, even though we have not through our drug laws managed to cure it of its drug problems. And the basis of this lie is that more than 7,700 guns sold in the U.S. have been traced to Mexico.

What no one has determined is the number of those guns falling under the Assault Weapons Ban.
²⁹
Yet the government throws the statistic out to the public, holding it to represent something that they do not know it does. But why question that; as long as we buy the lies and create scapegoats of American gun owners, does it really matter what the truth is? Apparently, not to the government.

Conclusion

Some would argue that registration and licensing weapons are not really infringements, but would anyone seriously argue that citizens must register with the police and obtain a license in order to exercise freely their political or religious beliefs? What would happen if the government attempted to force people to register or obtain a permit if they object to unreasonable searches and seizures? Once this dichotomy is noted, a rational person will never resort to such an argument again to justify disparate treatment of the right to bear arms.
³⁰

Noah Webster once said that “before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword because the whole body of the people are armed.” The gun bans and registration laws have in effect continued the transfer of power from the people, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, to the government, progressively walking toward an end where the people will be helpless and the government all-powerful. Why would the government not take the opportunity to disarm us, while espousing the lies that it is not disarmament, that we continue to have a right to keep and bear arms, and that any regulations are only to ensure our safety?

If after reading this, you are too disturbed by the fact that the government can dictate whether or not you choose to protect yourself, then you may want to stop here. The lies the government tells you, about safety, security, liberty, and privacy are only going to get more unbelievable, including the fact that the government cannot only prevent you from receiving medical life-saving measures but also force you to ingest items you would otherwise refuse.

Lie #7
“Your Body Is Your Temple”

If we do not have control over our own bodies, we have control over little else. If anything belongs to us, reason would tell us that the thing we enter into and leave this world with—our body— belongs to
each of us
. Everything we do, our thoughts, our speech, our movements, and all physical action, come from our bodies. Therefore, having control over our bodies is one of the most fundamental rights we can possess.

In
The Libertarian Manifesto
, Professor Murray Rothbard argues:

The case against outlawing narcotic and hallucinogenic drugs is far weaker than the case against Prohibition, an experiment which the grisly era of the 1920s has hopefully discredited for all time. For while narcotics are undoubtedly more harmful than is alcohol, the latter can also be harmful, and outlawing something because it may harm the user leads straight down the logical garden path to our totalitarian cage, where people are prohibited from eating candy and are forced to eat yogurt “for their own good.”
¹

This totalitarian cage Rothbard described is already looming on the horizon. And some cages are already here.

The Oreo Police

In late 2006, New York City established laws banning trans fat, a type of unsaturated fat, from all city restaurants, as well as creating a requirement that fast-food restaurants post calorie counts alongside menus and other food offerings. Subsequently, several other governments have passed similar legislation, including the entire State of California, several Massachusetts cities, and some upstate counties in New York. Trans fat has been linked to heart disease and was commonly used to prepare fried and baked foods.

While many of us would agree that foods laden with trans fats are not a healthy option and should not be consumed in large quantities, shouldn’t
we
be able to make that choice? Decisions about what we feed our children and ourselves are exceptionally personal and certainly should not be subject to government paternalism. These policies treat Americans as babies who cannot be trusted to make decisions regarding what goes into their own mouths and the mouths of their children. This government-knows-best attitude is nowhere grounded in the Constitution and is profoundly offensive to the Natural Law. So while it may seem that we are free to eat what we want, the government is duping us by taking many food choices off of shelves and menus or adversely influencing our choices. Like parents hiding Halloween candy from their child, the government is hiding choices from us. Except, we’re not children and the government has no lawful authority to act as our parent.

Besides stripping us of our rights, do these health-police food policies even make us healthier? Learning to choose healthful foods amidst other choices is one of the ways people learn to take care of themselves. By eliminating variety, it may lead people to believe that they no longer need to be vigilant or even responsible in making decisions about what goes into their bodies. Why bother, when you can have the government do that instead? In taking away foods that contain trans fat, the government is not making the store shelves “safe” but it could create that mistaken impression in the minds of some consumers; there are still plenty of foods out there that could have a detrimental effect on a person’s health. Indeed, countless food items and behaviors could have an injurious effect on your health if you never learn moderation.

The health police want to destroy your freedom of choice, and their tactics are not likely to improve health. Even the
New York Times
has a problem with all this. A December 2008
Times
article argued that the “health halo” created by trans fat–free foods and other types of foods that claim to be more healthful are actually helping to keep us fat.
²
The theory goes that because we think that foods are made more healthful through these policies, we let our guard down and tend to eat more. Consequently, we don’t actually become thinner or healthier as a result of these policies that cost taxpayers loads of money, deprive us of our rights, and make insulting assumptions about our decision-making abilities.