Gun Ruling Should Have Been 9-0

RUSH: You know, everybody is jumping up and down for joy over the Supreme Court Second Amendment ruling today, and perhaps rightly so. But the fact that it’s a 5-4 vote, if this court were actually following the Constitution that gun vote should have been nine to nothing, it should have been unanimous. That’s a no-brainer. Even the Bill of Rights is up for grabs with this crowd and the left. Folks, we are hanging by a thread, we are hanging by a very thin thread. Rush Limbaugh here, great to have you back after a wonderful weekend I hope you had. Telephone number is 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

I want to get into the guts of this gun ruling today because there’s some fascinating stuff in the ruling. Alito wrote the majority opinion. There were concurrences by Justice Thomas, which is a fascinating one, by the way, as well as Antonin Scalia, 5-4 vote. I remember when this case was brought, a lot of people said, ‘What do you mean the Second Amendment might not apply to the states? How can that be?’ Everybody assumed that the Bill of Rights applied to individuals everywhere. That’s what this case was about. It’s a Chicago gun case. And it is a fascinating look here because the Supreme Court in this ruling not only confirmed that the Second Amendment means what it says, but it uses discrimination and abuses against blacks after the Civil War to make the point. I mean the left is going to have a conniption fit once they read this ruling because the justification, in part, for the ruling is that freed slaves would not be free, were they denied the right to keep and bear arms. And so there were several rulings demanding that in addition to their newfound freedom they also be granted access to Amendment 2 and Amendment number 14.

It’s an amazing case when you look at this, because the conservative position, in order to be free, the Constitution must be interpreted as to what it says, and it must apply to everybody. The United States Constitution is the single greatest document defining and attesting freedom that has ever been written. Magna Carta, a good predecessor, but the US Constitution is irreplaceable. The Second and Fourteenth Amendments prevented recently freed slaves from remaining de facto slaves forever. If they were denied, for example, recently freed slaves denied the right to keep and bear arms, they still totally were not free. That’s what this court has said today. And yet there were four justices who disagreed with this. There were four justices who disagreed with the notion that the Second Amendment says what it says and means what it means.

Now, Robert Byrd passed away last night and of course if you listen to the State Controlled Media, he had a brief flirtation with the Ku Klux Klan. He was an Exalted Cyclops. That was his title. I don’t know what Exalted Cyclops means. Cyclops was a one-eyed monster when I was growing up. But he says he discovered his leadership capabilities while there with the Klan and he spent the rest of his life apologizing and trying to make amends for being a member of the Klan. But I wonder what a young Robert Byrd would have said about the Supreme Court ruling today, a young Robert Byrd, what would he have said? What would his reaction have been if the court decision had come when he was a young man that recently freed slaves, to be free, must have access to Amendment 2. The right to keep and bear arms was necessary to fully break the bonds of slavery. That has been affirmed before and it is used as a major justification for the ruling today.

Clarence Thomas, Justice Thomas on pages 42 to 46 gives a really necessary history lesson that everyone should read. I don’t have time to read 42 to 46 and those are just four pages of his ruling. But it is very informative, and it’s a great history lesson. Everybody who cares about how free men are kept free needs to read this ruling. He documents how blacks were almost denied their right to keep and bear arms and thus subjected to less than full citizenship and left defenseless against those that sought to continue to control them even after the days of slavery. As I said, the US Constitution is the greatest legal document of freedom written. It puts teeth into individual and human rights. The right to bear arms has a fascinating history. The left has been doing everything it can to revise and to rewrite that history and to say that it doesn’t mean what it says, and this is just gonna — well, they won’t admit it, but I mean it’s going to blow them out of the water.

The right to bear arms, the fascinating history that accompanies it and an important role in the freeing of black Americans from discrimination and de facto bondage and slavery, the Second Amendment was a key element to that reaffirmed today. Starting on page 26 of the majority opinion, the case McDonald v. Chicago, the court supports its conclusion that the right to bear arms applies to states as well as individuals in a manner that will drive liberals nuts. They demonstrate how vital the Second Amendment was to recently freed slaves, page 26. ‘The most explicit evidence of Congress’ aim appears in§14 of the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866, which provided that ‘the right … to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and disposition of estate, real and personal, including the constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and enjoyed by all the citizens … without respect to race or color, or previous condition of slavery.” That is from page 26 of the ruling today, and in order to affirm their notion that the Second Amendment applies to everybody, not just areas of the federal government, the Bill of Rights, they cite post-slavery and the right of former slaves to have guns.

I cannot wait for the civil rights coalitions to get hold of this and read it. I can’t wait to see how they try to tear this apart. I’m still struck. Four justices of the US Supreme Court voted as though the Second Amendment didn’t exist or as though they thought the Second Amendment was wrong or they think. Section 14 of this ruling thus explicitly guaranteed that all citizens, black and white, would have the constitutional right to bear arms. So I guess we could say constitutional decision here, conservative court, 5-4 has used the illegal discrimination against blacks as proof of the value and intent the Second Amendment. I mean this is a glory, glory hallelujah day. I wonder what Reverend Wright would say? He’s back on the warpath. I wonder what the Justice Brothers would have to say about this. And the liberals, if they weren’t hypocrites, ought to be cheering this reasoning and this decision. Disarming blacks post-slavery was key to preventing them from ever becoming free. The attempt was made even after slavery was declared illegal and it was ended, after the civil war they still tried to keep blacks from getting guns. And everybody back then knew, and it was reaffirmed today, well, you’re not going to really be free, and you’re really not going to be an American if you’re denied the right to keep and bear arms simply because of your race.

Of all the ways this court could have affirmed their decision to choose this, and Justice Thomas’ opinion on this, as I say, is a genuine momentous history lesson. What liberal can argue with this? In a Chicago case, no less, in a Chicago case. Now, here’s page 28, the court’s opinion. ‘In debating the Fourteenth Amendment, the 39th Congress referred to the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right deserving of protection. Senator Samuel Pomeroy described three ‘indispensable’ ‘safeguards of liberty under our form of Government.’ 39th Cong. Globe 1182. One of these, he said, was the right to keep and bear arms: ‘Every man . . . should have the right to bear arms for the defense of himself and family and his homestead. And if the cabin door of the freedman is broken open –‘ freedman is a new freed slave. ‘If the cabin door of the freedman is broken open and the intruder enters for purposes as vile as were known to slavery, then should a well-loaded musket be in the hand of the occupant to send the polluted wretch to another world, where his wretchedness will forever remain complete.’ That’s in today’s ruling! And that is, again, from Samuel Pomeroy from the 39th Congress.

Well, okay. ‘In debating the Fourteenth Amendment, the 39th Congress referred to the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right –‘ I’m reading directly from page 28 of the ruling here. ‘In debating the Fourteenth Amendment, the 39th Congress referred to the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right deserving of protection. Senator Samuel Pomeroy described three ‘indispensable’ ‘safeguards of liberty under our form of Government.’ One of these, he said, was the right to keep and bear arms: ‘Every man . . . should have the right to bear arms for the defense of himself and family and his homestead,’ meaning house. ‘If the cabin door,’ the front door, ‘of the newly freed slave is broken open,’ somebody storms in, ‘and the intruder enters for purposes as vile as were known to slavery,’ as in a lynching, ‘then should a well-loaded musket,’ meaning a fully loaded shotgun ‘be in the hand of the [freed slave] to send the polluted wretch–‘ i.e., the intruder ‘–to another world,’ — i.e., hell ‘–where his wretchedness will forever remain complete.’ That is quoted page 28 in the ruling of the Supreme Court today.

Page 29: ‘Evidence from the period immediately following the Amendment’s ratification confirms that that right was considered fundamental. In an 1868 speech addressing the disarmament of freedmen…’ newly freed slaves. Freedmen, by the way, one word, it’s an actual term used back then ‘… Representative Stevens emphasized the necessity of the right: ‘Disarm a community and you rob them of the means of defending life. Take away their weapons of defense and you take away the inalienable right of defending liberty.’ ‘The fourteenth amendment, now so happily adopted, settles the whole question.” And in debating the Civil Rights Act of 1871, Congress routinely referred to the right to keep and bear arms and decried the continued disarmament of blacks in the South.’ Page 28-29 of the Supreme Court ruling today. So the Supreme Court not only confirmed that the Second Amendment means what it says but it used or uses discrimination and abuses against blacks post-Civil War, newly freed slaves to make their point. I hope somebody asks the solicitor general Elena Kagan about this today or at some point. Her confirmation hearings, otherwise known as the rubber-stamp committee, gets underway in about 11 minutes.

I gotta take a brief time-out, folks, but it is a glory, glory hallelujah day. The only downside is that there were four Supreme Court justices that voted against this, that voted against the Second Amendment. We are hanging by a thread here. If the Constitution mattered to the left and these four justices on the left may as well epitomize the rest of the left in this country and around the world. According to them, the Constitution is wrong, this doesn’t exist, it shouldn’t be in there and if they had their way, it wouldn’t be 5-4. That’s how close we are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: A further history lesson on freed slaves and the Second Amendment: The effort to give newly freed slaves guns, the effort to allow them to keep and bear arms was to protect them from being lynched for voting for Republicans. The newly freed slaved knew who it was who had freed them. It was Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party. They also knew who it was that sought to deny them their newly found freedom, and that was the Democrat Party. And the Democrat Party had a terrorist organization supporting them at that time known as the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was always made up of a bunch of Democrats, and the Democrat Party (even as recently as the 1950s, early sixties) was opposed to civil rights. So the entire effort to give newly freed slaves guns, the right to keep and bear arms, was to protect them, allow them to protect themselves from being lynched for voting Republicans.

So in a way you can see things really haven’t changed all that much: Don’t vote Democrat and you are facing certain consequences. Here’s page 47 of the court’s opinion, Justice Thomas writing: ‘As Frederick Douglass explained, ‘[T]he Legislatures of the South can take from him the right to keep and bear arms, as they can — they would not allow a Negro to walk with a cane where I came from, they would not allow five of them to assemble together. … [I]n what new skin this old snake will come forth,” an address delivered in New York, May 10, 1865, reprinted The Frederick Douglass Papers. Douglas explained that a black man has never had the right to either keep or bear arms.’ Justice Thomas was citing all this to affirm the court’s ruling in all of this. You probably, folks, not to… Well, you’ll probably be hearing this take by the middle of the week.

The original take on this decision will be along predictable media liberal lines. They’ll talk about, ‘Ooh, it’s close. It’s 5-4 and the court remanded it back to lower courts in certain instances where maybe with a few different adjustments, gun ownership could be denied,’ and they’ll look down the road. ‘What do we have to do in order to reverse this stupid ruling and turn the 5-4 ruling into a 5-4 ruling for us?’ That’s how they’re gonna take it. That’s how they’ll look at it in the next couple days. Look for them to do that. They’ll know what happened. Look for them to totally ignore it. (interruption) Will Obama lambaste the court? I hope he does. Obama doesn’t read anything he talks about. He probably won’t read this ruling. That’s why I hope he does lambaste the court on this. (laughing)

Would that not be great? Would that not be great? I mean, he has already lambasted the Supreme Court in the last State of the Union show. Maybe he’ll do it in the next one coming up about this. You know, I’ve run into a lot of liberals lately, starting at my wedding. Yes, there were some liberals. They were spouses of invited guests at the wedding and reception, and I was struck by how unhappy they are. I was struck by how cynical. I mean, I walked you people to them. I said, ‘Hi, such-and-such! I’m really glad you’re here. It’s so good to see you.’ ‘Well, I was dragged here by my husband or wife,’ and then later on in the evening one of them said to me, ‘I think you’ve gone off the rails about ten years ago, but I nevertheless like seeing a happy man.’

Nobody was talking politics. They had to bring it up. Why are they unhappy? Have you run into a liberal lately that’s happy? You haven’t? And then of course this (chuckles) G8, G20 thing? It wasn’t that. It was the G-whiz! (laughing) These people all lined up against Obama. Obama wants to continue spending through the roof and these guys are saying, ‘No, no, no! We’ve tried it your way for 30 years. It doesn’t work,’ and that’s the point. After a year and a half, we’re supposed to be in utopia now. All this spending, all these new ways to ‘create jobs’ with stimulus, all poor people in homes, everybody having a job. It isn’t working, is it? And they got supermajorities in the House, close to it in the Senate (they used to have it), and it isn’t working. Every item of their utopian agenda is falling apart right in front of them on their watch. That’s why they’re miserable.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So essentially the Second Amendment of the Constitution was voted on today, and it passed 5-4. Four members of the United States Supreme Court wanted the Second Amendment, essentially, repealed. I can think of no more powerful way to put what happened today. The Second Amendment was voted on and it passed 5-4, after having been ratified centuries ago. Supreme Court justices vote on the Constitution. They determine whether something is constitutional or not. The Second Amendment got voted on today, and it squeaked by 5-4. Now, anybody… The Kagan hearings just now got underway with Senator Pat ‘Leaky’ Leahy with his opening statement here. We won’t hear from Kagan ’til tomorrow (chuckles), ’cause every one of these blowhards is going to have their opening statement on the committee.

Elena Kagan has no judicial record. She is a blank slate on purpose. She is Barack Obama. That’s why she has been appointed. Anybody who wants Elena Kagan to vote on the Constitution wants the Constitution repealed. I want somebody to point out for me where Ms. Kagan has written favorably on any specific language of the Constitution. I want to see speeches, opinions, articles, anything where she praises the actual language of that document. I know that she has said that the Bork hearings are the model. She has also said that when there’s not much of a record of a prospective nominee, that the committee needs to dig really deep. Well, let’s see if they do. Barack Obama is appointing people of the Supreme Court to vote down the Constitution.

They don’t just want to amend it. They don’t want to go to the trouble of amending it. The short-circuit way is to get enough of Obama’s people on the court and throughout the federal judiciary so they can simply repeal it by fiat, by virtue of their rulings. The Second Amendment! Imagine if it was the First Amendment, free speech. Imagine if I were to tell you the First Amendment was voted on today and it passed 5-4. The Second Amendment was voted on today, and it passed 5-4. Now, this ruling today talks about how blacks having been freed as slaves still faced lynchings, and they were voting Republican, and that’s why they were given the right to keep and bear arms. Lest we forget, this very committee, some years ago, tried to give Justice Thomas himself ‘a high-tech lynching’ for being a Republican.

My, how things have not changed in the Democrat Party! They tried to give him ‘a high-tech lynching’ simply because he was a Republican, and so today Justice Thomas in his opinion affirms the Second Amendment on the basis of freed slaves. So a question: Will Obama sick his Justice Department, Eric Holder on New York City and the rest of the cities and states where guns are effectively banned in defiance of the Constitution and today’s ruling? Because that’s what today’s ruling means. Remember this all started in DC and it moved onto this McDonald case in Chicago. So now you’ve got gun bans in New York City and a lot of cities and a lot of states are now in defiance of the Constitution.

The act that effectively bans guns in New York City is called the Sullivan Act. It was pushed through by one of the most corrupt politicians to ever hold sway in New York City. His name was Timothy Sullivan, who was part of the Tammany Hall gang who ran New York. During the late 19th and early twentieth century, Sullivan controlled much of the city’s criminal activities between 14th Street and the Battery in New York City. He is credited, Tim Sullivan, as being one of the earliest ward representatives to use his position to enable the activities of criminal street gangs. Now, the Sullivan Act is a state law that required a permit to carry or own a concealed weapon, which eventually became law on May 29, 1911.

However with many residents unable to afford the $3 registration fee issued by the corrupt New York Police Department, it guaranteed his bodyguards could be legally armed while using the law against their political opponents. Now, for whatever it’s worth, this Sullivan guy was in the advanced stages of the clap, syphilis, in 1911 when the Sullivan Act was passed. He was judged mentally incompetent and finally committed to a sanitarium in 1912. According to the incompetency hearing, Sullivan elicited paranoid delusions, believed he was being spied upon and his food was being poisoned. This is the man responsible for the current gun ban in New York City! So that’s a little bit of history on all of this, but it is a ‘Glory, glory hallelujah!’ kind of day.