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The Evil Practice of Carrying Weapons Secretly

The Assassination of Julius Caesar.
By Vincenzo Camuccini (public domain)

“We are of the opinion, then, that so far as the act of 1837 seeks to suppress the practice of carrying certain weapons secretly, that it is valid, inasmuch as it does not deprive the citizen of his natural right of self-defence, or of his constitutional right to keep and bear arms. But that so much of it, as contains a prohibition against bearing arms openly, is in conflict with the Constitution, and void; and that, as the defendant has been indicted and convicted for carrying a pistol, without charging that it was done in a concealed manner, under that portion of the statute which entirely forbids its use, the judgment of the court below must be reversed, and the proceeding quashed.” Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. (1 Kel.) 243 (1846).

There is an old adage that goes “Rome was not built in a day.” Just as true is the fact that Roman civilization did not collapse in a day.

Like it or not, carrying a weapon concealed has, for half a millennium, been viewed as the act of a coward, criminal or assassin in both American law and English common law under which the English colonies in America were governed before obtaining independence.

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (public domain)

In 2008, in its first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, the US Supreme Court said that concealed carry is not a right and is subject to 19th century prohibitions. That seminal decision on the Second Amendment is District of Columbia v. Heller.

This means that concealed carry can be banned in public with the possible narrow exception for travelers and persons while actually on a journey.

The American Civil War marked the pinnacle of American honor. Unfortunately, wars do not allow for reasoned debate. An entire generation of honorable men was wiped out leaving widows and orphans to pick up the pieces in a war torn nation. Only time will tell if this marked the long decline of our Republic. One thing is undeniable, within three generations honor has nearly disappeared and Americans have stopped referring to our nation as a Republic.

In hindsight, we can pick an event which signaled the collapse of Roman civilization and that event was Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon River with his army in 49 B.C. Twenty years of civil wars and political power sharing killed what was left of the Roman Republic.

Rome pretended it was still a republic. Rome maintained the trappings of a Republic but from 27 BC until 395 AD when the last of the Roman emperors died, Rome was a republic in name only.

The first things to go with the death of the Roman Republic were Roman virtues. Roman virtues were given lip service by the Roman emperors even by those emperors who had descended into public depravity.

We are seeing something similar today with concealed carry and its supporters.

Concealed carry, which has always been cowardly and criminal conduct, has slowly been decriminalized these past thirty years.

Incredibly, the proponents of concealed carry brag about their cowardice! Don’t believe me? Do a web search on the two terms “tactical advantage” and “concealed carry” and read the results of your web search and watch the videos.

And with cowardice comes contempt for the truth.

The Soviets lied about everything. They lied even when it did not benefit them to lie. To get a glimpse into the mind of the Soviets I recommend George Orwell’s book 1984.

Fascists will lie if they perceive the lie to benefit them and if that lie catches on, they will exaggerate the lie, making it bigger and bigger. “The Big Lie” is the hallmark of fascism. However, lying about everything does not keep the trains running on time which is why the fascists were selective in their choice of lies.

Fascism never caught on in the United States. In the US we are plagued with millions of leftists and left-wing institutions.

The National Rifle Association is a hybrid of the far left Soviets and leftist fascists. The NRA lies to the public when it says it supports Open Carry and opposes gun-free school zones. Since April of 2010 the NRA lawyers have been in Federal court arguing in support of California’s Open Carry bans and in support of California’s gun-free school zones. That is textbook “Big Lie” behavior from the NRA.

The National Rifle Association has asked the United States Supreme Court to overturn its decision from 2008 which said that Open Carry is the right guaranteed by the Constitution and which said that concealed carry is not a right. This latest case in which the NRA seeks to overturn the Heller decision is Peruta v. California, formally Peruta v. San Diego.

Although the NRA is, in fact, asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Heller decision, in its petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the Peruta case, the NRA claims that when the US Supreme Court said that Open Carry is the right guaranteed by the Constitution and that concealed carry is not a right and can therefore be banned, what the Supreme Court said was the exact opposite.

That is textbook Soviet behavior from the NRA.

Keep in mind that about the only thing that all nine justices of the Supreme Court agreed upon in the Heller decision was that concealed carry is not a right and therefore can be banned.

The nine justices of the US Supreme Court do not live in a vacuum. And I worry about their ability and willingness to defend the Constitution. Lord knows they have failed to defend the Bill of Rights in decision after decision, since before I was born.

It would be nice, before the end of the current term this month, to read that the Supreme Court has denied the Peruta cert petition and reaffirmed its support of the Second Amendment Open Carry right defined in the Heller decision.

If the Supreme Court grants the petition and overturns the Heller decision then we will know for certain that the American Civil War was our Rubicon in which our Republic died and the slow decline of our civilization began.

But whatever the Supreme Court does, or doesn’t do, in the next two weeks, the plague of leftists remain and the fact that the leftists control the largest so called gun-rights organization in the United States (the NRA) should worry you.

There is another old adage which goes “The best way to fight poverty is to not be poor” from which we can extrapolate to “The best way to fight the enemies of the Second Amendment is to not be a member of the NRA (or any of its state organizations) or the SAF, or CalGuns or the GOA, or GOC or any other person or organization which supported the Peruta v. San Diego concealed carry lawsuit.”

“In Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 251 (1846), the Georgia Supreme Court construed the Second Amendment as protecting the “natural right of self-defence” and therefore struck down a ban on carrying pistols openly. Its opinion perfectly captured the way in which the operative clause of the Second Amendment furthers the purpose announced in the prefatory clause, in continuity with the English right…Likewise, in State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann. 489, 490 (1850), the Louisiana Supreme Court held that citizens had a right to carry arms openly: “This is the right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, and which is calculated to incite men to a manly and noble defence of themselves, if necessary, and of their country, without any tendency to secret advantages and unmanly assassinations.”” District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008) at 2809

“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152-153; Abbott 333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489-490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251…” District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct. 2783 (2008) at 2816

“But the majority implicitly, and appropriately, rejects that suggestion by broadly approving a set of laws – prohibitions on concealed weapons…” Heller dissent at 2851

“We therefore hold that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller.” McDonald v. City of Chicago, Ill., 130 S. Ct. 3020 (2010) at 3050.

“[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms (art. 2) is not infringed by laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons…” Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 US 275 – Supreme Court (1897) at 282.

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