Background Checks

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

As noted in previous blog posts, there are a multitude of legislative and thus political issues rising to the forefront of national discourse. The Madison Conservative will approach all of them from the point of any given issue and its ramifications and realities as they may relate to the United States Constitution. There are many from the entire political and media spectrum that have chosen, and will choose, to address these issues as they relate to the ’feelings’ involved. While a component for some, the Madison Conservative considers such perspectives to be useless, pointless and cowardly. Government is not based upon feelings, or any other emotional foundation.

Once stripped of the emotional, all that remains are the harsh and complex realities that these issues require substantive and thoughtful solutions and cannot be addressed with simple catch-phrases and bumper sticker ideology.

This particular post will consider the attempts made by the political class to answer the concerns of the electorate in the aftermath of the horrific Newtown school shooting.

The issue, once stripped of the emotional content, is not resolved by banning weapons and stronger background checks, despite what the political class and their media flacks would try to have the American people believe.

The framers and founders had sufficient experience with tyranny and an unrestricted government. They wrote their new Constitution with the deliberate intent of limiting the scope and power of the government. While many point to the second amendment as their sole defense and bulwark to spurn any further gun control, that is a limited view and disregards the wider breadth of the peoples right to thwart off an ever encroaching government.

This is little doubt of the framers fears when the second, third and fourth amendments are taken together to appreciate that they had no illusions of a utopian federal government but rather had a clear and concise understanding of the need to curtail an unchecked federal bureaucracy.

To wit:

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Third Amendment:

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

The Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

One hundred and thirteen words that limit the ability for the sweeping gun control the Obama administration and liberals in Congress wish to impose upon the people.

{It should be noted before proceeding that Chicago, Illinois has the strictest gun laws in the nation. It is also currently the murder capital of the nation. The founding fathers wisdom is still prescient today.}

The three amendments, taken as a whole, expressly limit the ability of the government to impose their will upon the people without cause, and provides for their ability to fight back.

It is that simple – the federal authorities cannot infringe upon the rights of the people to bear arms, to allow the government to take control of a citizens dwelling for any purpose, unless specifically providing due legal cause. It is unconstitutional to take private information – their medical history, in this case – and make it public, which is in effect what the political left is advocating.

It is impossible to square gun bans and limitless background checks with the Constitution.

It cannot constitutionally be done – it is that simple.

Of course, those rights do not come completely unfettered of responsibility. One may not use freedom of speech to shout ‘fire’, absent one, in a crowded theater. One may have the right to bear arms – that does not extend to owning tanks and nuclear missiles.

In addition, despite what the left would attempt to have the electorate believe, there are indeed background checks in place for weapons purchasers. There are a multitude of laws that have been enacted to regulate gun purchases, but they lay fallow and absent any manner of enforcement. Adding new layers of impotence serves no point – the law abiding citizen is already predisposed to  following the law; it is the criminal who will find a way to circumvent any new legislation, especially attempts to add new guidelines to background checks.

For those who want background checks extended to include any history of mental illness, there seems no ability to answer two fundamental questions inherent in that choice:

1 – Define what mental illness is, and at what point does it remove a citizens rights, and

2 – How will that information be provided and data-based? It would seem that many would attempt to extend The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) to allow the personal medical information of a patient to be streamed into some national informational registry.

That is unacceptable, and no longer would allow a citizen to be secure in their property or personal papers and would constitute an illegal search and seizure, in this case a seizure of information.

These are not easy issues to grapple with, and a national debate must be had.

It cannot allow to be had by those offering quick salves to the problem. The American people must remain vigilant against an ever expanding federal government who is acting, the people are told, only in the nations best interest – to ‘save the children’, a convenient ruse used by many authoritarian regimes as a means to a tyrannical end.

We owe ourselves and our posterity more than subservient acquiescence.