One would assume that in order to make it as a writer, editor or publisher at an outlet that prints in English, one would need to actually understand…well, English.
But it turns out that’s not always the case, as evidenced by one lefty journalist who apparently thinks the words “keep and bear arms” doesn’t actually mean “keep and bear arms.”Â
In perhaps one of the most hilarious and historically ignorant takes blasted on social media – and that’s saying something – Talking Points Memo founder and editor Josh Marshall wants to remind us that the individual right to own and use firearms is completely made up.”
“Just to remind everyone, the individual right to own and use firearms is completely made up and the product of NRA funded activism,” Marshall tweeted to his 360,000-plus followers.
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Just to remind everyone, the individual right to own and use firearms is completely made up and the product of NRA funded activism.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 13, 2021
Um….huh?
While it’s possible for many political issues to fall within an interpretive gray area, I’m pretty sure the Second Amendment was – and still is – written in about as plain language as it could possibly have been. Let’s take a gander, shall we?
Per the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution:
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.
That amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution following the end of the American Revolution. Why? Well, in part because prior to the start of the war, one of the colonists’ primary grievances with the King George III of England was his instruction to the British military to seize Americans’ firearms and ammunition. Beginning in the late 1760s, British troops began confiscating privately owned guns, promising to eventually return them…which, of course, never happened. That involuntary seizure of weapons, as much as any tax or other human rights violation, is a major part of what eventually led to the Revolution.
Naturally, this forcible commandeering of citizens’ guns didn’t sit well with a people who yearned both to be free and to be able to defend themselves when necessary, so the Founders later codified the right of “the people” (not “the military” or “the army”) to “keep and bear arms” lest the newly-created U.S. government ever grow a head big enough to try and strip its people of their ability to push back against a tyrannical regime….
…or morons like Marshall, whose attempts to rewrite history – and the constitution – have reached brand new levels of wilfull ignorance.