FOR YEARS, ONLY 2A FOLKS PAID ATTENTION
by Alan Korwin, The Uninvited Ombudsman, ©2019
(Dec. 14, 2019) — An increasing number of Americans are becoming aware of an ignored “holiday,” formerly the purview mainly of gun activists and Second Amendment supporters—the day the Bill of Rights was ratified, Dec. 15, 1791.
Articles 3 through 12, proposed amendments to the then new U.S. Constitution, were renamed and became the U.S. Bill of Rights. A landmark in the record of human liberty, nothing like it had ever been attempted. It now faces threats as never before.
While gun rights previously took most of the heat, all civil rights are in more jeopardy in 2019. Gun-rights advocates promoted the date, because they saw Second Amendment guarantees of the right to arms as fundamental to protection of the rest. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, http://www.jpfo.org, has vigorously promoted the date for decades, under a banner, of “All of the Bill of Rights for all citizens,” knowing gun rights were carried on its coattails.
Journalists, who as a group often disparage the Second Amendment and the armed populace it encourages, now face a torrent of anti-Bill of Rights sentiment and laws, largely from left-wing college students and professors, who believe free speech, which derives its nearly absolute powers from the First Amendment, falls out of favor. Along with it, the right to practice religion without government interference, and even the right to assemble, have come under withering scrutiny, including physical and moral attack. Varieties of “political correctness,” euphemisms for marxism/socialism are to blame, promoting fear, hatred, racism, intolerance, “required diversity,” offensiveness, narratives and group think as reasons to curtail free exchange of ideas and speech.
Pundits note that so-called “red-flag gun laws,” as well as current congressional efforts to impeach the U.S. president, rely heavily on removal of due process protections under the 4th through 6th Amendments. These include bedrocks of freedom such as innocence until guilt is proven, the ability to confront your accuser and compel witnesses to appear in your defense, and public trials by jury, all of which have been abrogated. Other guarantees of the Bill of Rights have been ignored, with no penalties—or even charges—brought against the perpetrators, one of the most glaring flaws in the Constitution—it provides no specific penalties for abuse of its terms, short of revolt.
Bill of Rights Day can be easily celebrated by simply reading The Bill of Rights, alone or with friends, privately or aloud in public: http://www.gunlaws.com/BOR-CommitteeReport1.htm
The Ten (10) Commandments are laws that everyone in the world must observe as written and without modification in order to avoid sinning against God.
The First Ten (10) Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, aka the Bill of Rights, are commandments that ALL lawmakers must observe as written and without modification in order to avoid sinning against We The People of the United States of America.