The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:
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.
It might be a good idea to remember that the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution are referred to as “The Bill of Rights.” They were included in the U.S. Constitution to allay the fears many of the signers of the U.S. Constitution had of a growing, intrusive government. These amendments were added to protect the rights of individuals against a powerful central government.
The U.S. Constitution also delineates a government that includes checks and balances. There are three separate branches of government and a separation of powers between those three branches. The U.S. Constitution lays out the responsibilities of each branch in order of the importance the Founding Fathers ascribed to them–the Legislative Branch is first, the Executive Branch is second, and the Judicial Branch (intended to be the weakest of the three) is third. The Legislative Branch is expected to create and pass laws, the President is expected to enforce existing laws, and the Judicial Branch (the Supreme Court) was set up to have original Jurisdiction in all cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party. In all the other Cases the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction.
The President does not have the ability to write or rewrite law. His job is to enforce the law. Congress gets to write the law.
Putting the problems with the U.S. Constitution aside, there are a few other problems with this executive order. First of all, doctors are expected to contact the FBI about patients they identify as mentally ill. That sounds harmless enough, but what standards will be used to determine mental illness? Remember that ObamaCare has a provision allowing doctors to question patients about gun ownership. Are doctors going to be asked to report anyone who owns a gun as mentally ill? What about people who don’t believe that man-made global warming is a reality? Are doctors going to be asked to consider those people to be mentally ill?
Larry Pittman, a North Carolina State Legislator, posted a statement on Facebook today about President Obama’s executive action.
His statement included the following:
There are many reasons to be upset about Obama’s executive order today. One of the things that particularly struck me was the part about doctors contacting the FBI about patients they would identify as mentally ill. This is a follow-up to Obamacare’s provision for doctors to question patients about gun ownership.
This is pretty scary because, as Rush Limbaugh was saying today, this is the way taken by the Chinese Communist government to eliminate opposition to the government by having people who disagree with them declared mentally ill so they could be put away somewhere. It is also akin to Hitler’s ploy of having children inform against their parents. When a President who hates the Second Amendment, who has been trying to weaken and eliminate it all along, finally comes right out and employs the tactics of past tyrants, I find it hard to believe he does not have in mind the same purpose as they did. Disarm the people, and you no longer have to serve the people. You can control the people. People who don’t think that is what he intends need to get their heads out of the sand.
I shudder to think how this will be used against our patriotic veterans. Will they be targeted by this mental illness ploy because they might have PTSD?
All we need is for anti-gun doctors to start telling the FBI to come get anyone who owns a gun because we are mentally ill.
…I know there will be lawsuits to try to counteract what Obama has just done; but I’m pretty shaky about how that might go, despite past court victories for the Second Amendment. Too bad our Governor will not call an emergency session of our General Assembly to have us vote to declare this latest unconstitutional act of Obama null and void in North Carolina. I would vote to do so in a heart beat.
There is also this business about not being able to sell a gun without having a federal license to sell guns. What if you want to sell a gun to your grown son or daughter? It is a draconian requirement that you could not do so without government interference. Folks, I try not to be alarmist; but I think we really have reason to worry about what is going to come of this latest “Obamination.”
There are some serious problems with President Obama’s executive action on guns. There is a logical reason he was not able to get Congress to pass a law doing what his executive action did–it would have been a bad law.
