CORRECTION! In the original post, I erroneously said that Adrian Fontes lost in a race for Secretary of State in a race against a Trumper. In fact, Fontes won the Democratic primary and will face a Trumper in November. His opponent insists that Trump won the 2020 election despite multiple recounts and even a Republican-sponsored recount (by the “cyber ninjas”).
Adrian Fontes recently ran for Secretary of State in Arizona and won the Democratic primary. He will face off against a Trumper in the fall.. He is a former Marine and combat veteran. In this post on MSNBC, he carefully explains the real meaning of the Second Amendment. The Constitution and the amendment are not ambiguous.
Fontes will face off in November against Mark Finchem. Finchem attended the January 6 insurrection.
“This is the defining race for our Republic,” said Fontes, the former Maricopa County recorder, who oversaw elections in 2018 and, most notably, 2020. “It will let the world know whether we will surrender to foolish conspiracies or whether we will support our Republic that Benjamin Franklin so eloquently said needs to be kept.”
Fontes carried nine of the 15 counties, including Maricopa, where he served as county recorder from 2017-2021. The Democratic race revolved around the need to defend Arizona’s election process and protect democracy. But late in the campaign, questions arose about Bolding’s ties to a nonprofit he runs and whether he had properly distanced himself from its political support for his campaign.
Fontes touted himself as the only candidate who could take on “a Trump sycophant and Jan. 6 insurrectionist,” a clear reference to Finchem….
Finchem, a state lawmaker, has maintained the election was fraudulent, and rode this platform of election denial and reform to a resounding 17.5 percentage point margin of victory in the GOP primary on Tuesday night, besting three opponents. He has called his win a mandate.
Finchem wants to eliminate early voting, a position the Arizona Republican Party is pushing in a case before the state Supreme Court, and along with Lake is asking a federal judge to bar the use of electronic machines in the Nov. 8 election.
The Republican Finchem continues to support Trump’s lies and efforts to destroy democracy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great clarification that is so needed! Everyone should watch this brief video. Every person with a grudge should not have easy access to deadly weapons while citing the 2nd Amendment.
It doesn’t matter what it means.
The only thing that matters is what 5 individuals on the Supreme Court want it to mean.
It’s no exaggeration to say that we have “a government by and for 5 people”
Until that is changed, nothing else will.
In Just us we Trust”
When gist depends
On Just us friends
The words mean just
“In Just us Trust”
In Just us we Trust”
When gist depends
On Just us friends
The words mean just
“In Just us Trust”
The hilarious thing is that it doesn’t even matter what the Supremes privately believe the words mean. All that matters is what they want the words to mean.
This is veritably baked into the system by the concept of judicial review, which is a subjective process.
It is truly the Humpty Dumpty approach to law.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less
Humpty Dumpty
Sat on a Court
Humpty Dumpty
Ruled from a fort
All of the women and all of the men
Can’t put democracy together again.
Humpty Dumpty Review
“Doesn’t matter what it means”
All that matters” Humpty screams
“Is what I choose the Law to mean
Red means blue and blue means green”
Inciddntally, one can NOT conclude from that that red means green. This is Humpty-Dumptean logic we are talking about here)
Also known as FOOLean logic
Beautifully said, SomeDAM!!! Just us. The Humpty Dumpty approach to law.
Perfect
Foolean logic is pretty awesome, too. Definitely one I wish I had come up with! I plan to use it, but I will credit you!
This is an amazing truthful analysis of what the Second Amendment actually means. This Mr. Fontes nailed it.
The problem we have is that the people who need to hear what Mr. Fontes said and understand it will not be the people watch the video. And, for many, far too many, they probably do not have the capability to read and actually understand what the Constitution and Second Amendment. It is far beyond the mental and emotional capabilities to do so.
He is mostly right, though he omits that “the militia” of the Constitution is a state organization AND a federal one. At the time before the Constitution, the militia was solely a state operation. Madison and Washington, following the debacle of Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts, wanted ultimate control of the militia in the federal government. This was not true under the Articles of Confederation, which made Shays’ Rebellion possible. This was a much greater reason for the Constitution’s creation than Americans realize.
This is also why when someone joins the National Guard, which is the modern militia of the Constitution, they swear loyalty to the United States AND to their state.
Okay, I buy the insure domestic tranquility part . What you are leaving out is why some states /framers wanted the ultimate control of their militias to rest with the States. And thus the Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment did not give ultimate control of the militia to the states. It did not repeal the militia clauses of Article I. Certainly no one in Congress suggested such a thing in their debates on the amendment.
The National Guard can be, and has been, federalized, placing it under the control of the federal executive branch. The National Guard has been sent overseas to assist the armed forces. Read Article I. All the Second Amendment did was assure the states that the federal government wouldn’t disarm the militia. That’s it.
I beg to differ Patric Henry and George Mason were adamantly opposed to giving control over the militias exclusively to the Congress. The second amendment was Madison’s effort to appease the objections that those fellow Virginians represented in Virginia and the South. .
“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. ”
Who was going to regulate that militia the States. There would be no need to enumerate that point in an amendment if it was understood in the original body Constitution . That the States had that right.
“To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;”
To which Henry objected
“Let me here call your attention to that part ,which gives the Congress power ‘to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States.’ . . .
“By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defense is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither—this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory.”
Congratulations! You have discovered that the Second Amendment voided entirely the militia provisions of Article 1 and Article 2, something NO CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR EVER NOTICED, UP TO AND INCLUDING JAMES MADISON AND THE FIRST CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, until today!
Go collect your Nobel Prize.
I honestly don’t get this obsession with federal and state control of National Guard troops and the immediate equating them with the constitutional idea of militias. It reminds me of the Monty Python bit when the lady (John Cleese) touts her theory alone as being a brontosaurus is narrow at the ends and thick in the middle. It’s not the point. The shared federal-state jurisdiction and funding for the National Guard has never been at issue. Eisenhower and Little Rock put that one to bed for good.
You come oh so close to the answer, but never break the tape. WHY do they swear loyalty? I know I explained this a long time ago and Diane posted it again, so I’m not going into detail. The answer: the swore these things to protect the nation and needed to supply their own guns in order to do so. That’s it.
The obsession with who controls the militias at the founding of the Nation is the question of the purpose of the second amendment. . And like much of our history the answer is intimately entwined with slavery .
“If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress insurrections. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress. Congress, and Congress only, can call forth the militia.” Patric Henry
“In this situation,I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone.” Patric Henry
That property had two legs and Black skin.
Patric is too long gone to notice I left the K off
(Sigh.)
Article 1 provides that Congress arms the militia, and dictates the training (which would include weapons training) that the militia receives.
The National Guard is the codification of the militia clauses of Article 1. The National Guard IS the militia of the Constitution. The Militia Act of 1903 put this argument to bed.
The ONLY constitutional militias are the National Guard and a few state-chartered militias. My father was a member of the oldest state-chartered militia, the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, chartered in 1638.
Your first paragraph is full of assumptions that are not in the Constitution. This obsession with settled semantics really is becoming a Monty Python sketch without any humor. The term provide in the Constitution does not mean “do”, it means “facilitate” so that it will be done. The framers created boundaries. They did not issue directives. Alito would disagree with this.
The language of the Constitution is not precatory. The Constitution is the plan for a government. How it works, who does what, who’s responsible for what. Where the powers lie.
The anti-Federalists certainly understood that. With regard to the militia, it represented an unprecedented grant of power to Congress. The anti-Federalists recognized this immediately. And everyone knew why Madison pushed for the expanded power over the militia: No more Shays’ Rebellions. No more Articles of Confederation.
And the state militias were a disaster. Washington had little use for them, having watched their “effectiveness” going back to the French and Indian Wars. Madison was horrified that the other states stood by while Massachusetts had to suppress the insurrection on its own. This is why the power over the militia was so important. And it was a complete reordering of the military power. (Hence the authority to have a standing army.)
If you think differently, consult the Supremacy Clause. It brooked no argument as to who did what, and who was boss. These were not suggestions or aspirations. They were the supreme law of the land.
jsrtheta
We are talking about the second Amendment its origins and its meaning ,the mind set of the framers at the time . We are not talking about how the issue of Militias and the Guard played out over time. And right in my first comment I state . Henry objected to giving the “exclusive” !!!!!!!!!! control to the Congress . No where did I state that the Congress did not have control . Nor that the second Amendment took that control away to give it to the States .
Not until Marbury v. Madison 1803 did the principle of Judaical revue become established. Clearly Jefferson and Madison did not think it constitutional for the Courts and not the Congress to decide what was Constitutional . And who would know better than Madison and Jefferson what Madison put into the constitution. But that is not the way it played out is it .
The point being; it is irrelevant how the issues eventually play out . These are political decisions . I am not anywhere arguing that the States and the Federal Government don’t share the responsibility of maintaining the National Guard both having the right to call it out. Not arguing that the Federal government did not always have the right to call out the Militias as in Article 1 section 8 clause 14-16 . The question is why was there a need to insert the Second Amendment into the Bill of Rights . Madison did not think there was, he thought Henry and Mason were were inventing powers of the Federal Government to curb slavery that he never put into the constitution.
“I was struck with surprise,when I heard him express himself alarmed with respect to the emancipation of slaves. There is no power to warrant it, in that paper. If there be, I know it not.” James Madison on Henry’s concerns about control of the Militias.
But that amendment was until very recently interpreted as a right of the States to maintain and to call up their militia when needed . A right inserted to placate Southern Slave holders whose concern was slave rebellions. Not tax rebellions .
A partial reason it became ” necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.”
as Hanna Jones argues and she does not argue that slavery was the only reason nor the primary reason but a reason none the less.
“he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.” From Jefferson’s deleted passage on slavery . After he excoriated the Crown for fostering the slave trade. .
Of course now we have the States rights advocates on the Taliban Court arguing that Henry was wrong that Madison was mentally incompetent (sarcasm ) that what Madison really meant to do was give those rights to the People. To hell with States rights to regulate those arms. States Rights reserved for other issues.
Like many others who talk about the meaning of the Second Amendment and the Constitution, you rely on Mason and Henry. It’s like quoting the Republican Party on the meaning of the Democratic Party platform.
Wills has noted this, as have others. You are looking for support in the words of the people who lost the argument, which is odd. Mason refused to sign the Constitution, while Henry didn’t even go to the convention. Yet you would have us believe that their thoughts are authoritative. They’re not. They were certainly important in their time, or at least Henry was, but they were opponents of the Constitution, not spokesmen for its meaning. They were the losers.
Madison, who DID author the original draft of what became the Second Amendment, never wrote about its purpose. We do know that the anti-Federalists fretted that Congress would disarm the militias by simply not arming them to begin with (which demonstrates they thought that power was given solely to Congress, as indeed it was), and some think that the amendment was a way to respond to that fear.
I don’t think there was a lot of fear among the framers that anyone meant to disband the militias. I think the fear among the anti-Federalists was not the end of the militia, but rather a fear that there would be an actual government superior to the states. This the anti-Federalists feared most. Madison and Washington understood very well that without a strong central government, foreign powers would pick off the states one by one. And they were right.
jr, I honestly don’t know what you are arguing. Nothing you write makes sense. So let’s go back to that first paragraph again. Where does “Article 1 provides that Congress arms the militia, and dictates the training (which would include weapons training) that the militia receives.” Your characterization of “arms the militia” is dubious. But just where exactly does Article I “dictate[ ] the training…the militia receives”?
“To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;”
Seems rather clear.
jsrtheta
Considering we agree on most of the facts for example that the militias were an ineffective fight force during the Revolution . That the larger framework was the battle between the Federalists and the anti Federalist .
I suppose where we disagree is the usefulness of using
” the Republican Party on the meaning of the Democratic Party platform”.
Actually the more Republicans dislike the Democratic Platform (Because of the economic interests and values Republicans represent ) the more I like it . No better example of that than last night when Republicans killed a provision to control insulin prices for those under 65. To make me appreciate what was accomplished in the Bill.
“some think that the amendment was a way to respond to that fear.”
If not an attempt to make a concession to the Anti Federalists than what would the purpose be.
I don’t think you are arguing for an interpretation of the second amendment other than that it granted states internal control over their militias . Or that it was frivolously just added .
I believe Adrian Fontes won the Democratic Primary
Joel thanks for the correction. I was away from my cellphone all day and just made the correction.
United States Republican fascists want lethal weapons of mass destruction in the hands of their fanatics so these militant gangs of domestic terrorists are armed and ready for another attempt to achieve the goals of Hitler’s failed Final Solution.
This man says what generations of Supreme Court Justices have said about #2. It was not until Heller that any other view came into jurisprudence. Heller pulled the veneer off originalism. For good. Just not for everybody.
The most risible claim is that Scalia was an “originalist”. Well, he certainly invented an “original” history, because the historical analysis in Heller sprang fully-formed from Tony’s id.
If there’s an afterlife, Scalia had much to answer for.
Haaa!!! You nailed precisely the kinds of originalists Scalia, Alito, and their henchmen are. Perfect.
Judge Richard Posner’s takedown of Scalia’s “originalism” was brutal.
It’s online somewhere.
Thanks, jsr. I will look that up.
https://newrepublic.com/article/106441/scalia-garner-reading-the-law-textual-originalism
Thank you so much! Now I’ve got it bookmarked.
Posner has an amazing mind. He’s also a major cat guy.
I have had a lifelong professional interest in literary criticism and a lifelong amateur interest in law. I’m generally amused by the naiveté of judicial writing about interpretation because I know something of the enormous literature on the varieties of interpretive approaches and the pitfalls of these. Let’s just say, it’s never as simple as the judges and lawyers make it out to be.
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/24/approaches-to-literary-criticism/
Thanks for the link! But I’m already intimidated! (JK)
Thanks for the book suggestion. The Wills book looks great. Ordering a copy.
I freaking ❤ Chicago!
I miss it every day.
This will amuse you, JSR:
In 2011, the Florida state legislature inadvertently made sex illegal. It did so by passing s.828.126 F.S., a bill “prohibiting knowing sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal.” Since humans are animals, the letter, if not the intent, of this law made any sex illegal in the state of Florida!
Let the Scalias of the world consult the dictionary on that one and then NOT propagate their kind!
species: sapiens; Genus: Homo; Family: Hominidae; Order: Primates; Class: Mammalia; Phylum: Chordata, Kingdom, ANIMALIA; Domain, Eukaryota
No one is safe when the state legislatures are in session. Especially these days.
And I’m never going back to Florida again.
If I remember correctly, this was the first bill that Rick Scott ever signed as governor of Flor-uh-duh.
Please don’t be. One of my favorite first lines in a book, ever was that of a book called “Calculus Made Easy” by a fellow with the euphonious name Silvanus Thompson: “What one d——d fool can do, another can.”
A key distinction that even literary scholars often don’t get is between meaning as intention (When I said, come over for Netflix and a movie, I meant come over for Netflix and a movie) and meaning as significance (But you know what that usually means, right?)
Posner: “Judges are not competent historians.” This is certainly the case with Alito. |
You’re right about the Posner piece. It’s magnificent.
Lawyers are terrible historians. I have spent years trying to discipline myself to read history intelligently, but lawyers are advocates, and easily tempted by phrases and facts that seem just right, without realizing it’s SO much more complicated.
Another great thinker, IMHO, is Garry Wills. His book A Necessary Evil is marvelous. I wish I’d met him when I lived in Chicago.
Thanks to Bob and JSR:
From the Posner article:
“The decisive objection to the quest for original meaning, even when the quest is conducted in good faith, is that judicial historiography rarely dispels ambiguity. Judges are not competent historians. Even real historiography is frequently indeterminate, as real historians acknowledge. ”
Makes an historian proud
You should be!
Wow! Seemed to get a little field a far here. My wife ran against Finchem twice for AZ State House. He is despicable and there is no level to which he won’t stoop. We are in serious trouble if he becomes AZ Secretary of State. Want to help preserve democracy? Donate to Adrian Fontes’ campaign.
Hi, Linda, thanks for the bad news about Finchem. I’m sending money to Fontes.
Interesting–until this level-headed, conscientious Marine sharpshooter gave us this contextual, Constitutional tutorial, I’d never considered the import of the whole document.