As you might remember, Marianne Williamson was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in the last cycle (and she is running again!) who always struck us as spacey, but occasionally she would make a solid hit against her Democratic opponents.
So, the other day, she thought she was making a good point about the Second Amendment:
When the Founders wrote the Second Amendment, the largest guns they had were muskets.
The modern bullet had not yet been invented.
They could only shoot one bullet at a time.
Today’s assault weapon would be like the power of a cannon to them.
The Second Amendment is NOT a…
— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) April 12, 2023
The text is cut off, but if you click on the tweet you will see she is saying, ‘The Second Amendment is NOT a legitimate reason not to ban assault weapons. Ban them now.’
But there was just one problem.
We’ll let this guy explain it:
“When the Founders wrote the Second Amendment, the largest guns they had were muskets.” – false. Cannons & other crew served weapons, including multi-gunned warships, were in the private hands of the Founders. They also possessed rifles w/ superior range & accuracy to muskets.
— Kage no Mishi (@KageNoMishiDesu) April 14, 2023
So, when she wrote, ‘Today’s assault weapon would be like the power of a cannon to them,’ she thought she was making an argument for why the Second Amendment doesn’t cover assault weapons. But if you know the founders allowed for the private ownership of cannons, it actually cuts the other way. Cannons are like assault weapons, therefore the founders would have allowed us to have assault weapons, too.
Of course, that is the funniest thing wrong with her argument. Here are some other replies tearing her tweet apart in less hilarious ways:
This is wrong and absurd on every count.https://t.co/KnYF72um3Y
— Brad Polumbo 🇺🇸⚽️🏳️🌈 (@brad_polumbo) April 13, 2023
The founders wanted people to be able to defend themselves against tyrannical government authorities. Are you suggesting we "trust the institutions"?
— Max Borders (@socialevol) April 12, 2023
Only the government should own guns. pic.twitter.com/nsJP4M6iF6
— WindTalker (@nmlinguaphile) April 13, 2023
You know you are wrong. pic.twitter.com/W6HEIcprab
— Eric 🚀 🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@Carlkeck1) April 12, 2023
It intentionally uses the broad term, "arms," to cover all arms past, present, and future.
Not only is the Second Amendment all the reason you need to not ban any kind of firearms, it's also the only reason you need to repeal every single gun control law in the country.
— Eric Spencer (@JustEric) April 14, 2023
— Michael Winter (@Winterborn123) April 13, 2023
I suggest you look up Thomas Jeffersons favorite gun. The puckle gun.
— Alex Vernelli (@Alex_Vernelli) April 14, 2023
This is your periodic reminder:
While it may be possible to outsmart the founders, anyone smart enough to do it is smart enough to not try, and anyone who wants to try isn't smart enough to do it. https://t.co/6yglBK6VsR
— Eric Spencer (@JustEric) April 14, 2023
— Michael Winter (@Winterborn123) April 13, 2023
That’s one of our favorite memes.
In our opinion, the best way to address the, ‘but the founders only had muskets,’ argument is to say something like this: The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, not muskets. Is an AR-15 considered an ‘arm’ under the Second Amendment? Well, if a woman is carrying an AR-15, would you say she was armed? Or unarmed?
Meanwhile, a few people pointed out that this Luddite argument would apply to other amendments:
— Free Speech Is Not Hate Speech (@FreeSpeechMonk) April 13, 2023
Please restrict your communications to that which is written with a quill pen on parchment paper.
— krittr 🏴☠️ (@krittr) April 13, 2023
— Gryphon (@Gryph911) April 12, 2023
Wait'll you hear about the First Amendment and the internet https://t.co/CGsWT5Q4dS
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) April 13, 2023
Still, the problem with saying, ‘If you say the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to the AR-15, then the First Amendment wouldn’t apply to the Internet!’ to a Leftist is the Leftist might say, ‘I agree!’
We haven’t seen very much support for freedom of expression from the Left lately.
And we do think these issues are connected. To pull out one of our favorite quotes from President John F. Kennedy:
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
However, if you are afraid of the people, not only do you seek censorship, but you really, really don’t want regular people to be armed.
But to return to humor, we are not even 100% sure if this next person is for or against the Second Amendment, but this is pretty funny:
— Darth Autismus 🧢⬆️ (@DarthAutismus) April 12, 2023
Seems plausible.
If you run on this, clinching the nomination oughta be a cinch.
— TimmerMcGraw, CFI 🇺🇸🔎 (@TimmerMcGraw) April 13, 2023
He’s not … wrong.
On the other hand …
Y'all best listen to her. She's in contact with the Founder's spirits, so she knows things. https://t.co/gaCUzO36bt
— Clair Nova (@ClairNova4k) April 14, 2023
Okay, we take back all of our criticism. We were wrong to doubt her!
Jokes aside, we will leave you, dear reader, with one of the greatest modern policy arguments for the Second Amendment ever put to paper: Alex Kozinski’s dissent in Silveira v. Lockyer, 328 F. 3d 567 (9th Cir. 2003). Although it was a dissent, it was amazing, and the views of this son of holocaust survivors have won out over time:
All too many of the other great tragedies of history — Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few — were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. … If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.
My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
Amen to that. For that reason, the Second Amendment is arguably the most important right we have.
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