Dakota Beacon

Our final installment in our Bill of Rights series is the Tenth Amendment.  It is a sort of “grand finale” in that it wraps things up beautifully. It is applicable every day.  We should think first about the Tenth Amendment whenever we hear about one more proposed bill to limit our freedom or “fix” some problem.  The project of Virginia’s Governor Northam and that state’s legislature’s effort to pass anti-gun legislation is a case in point.  

Here’s the Tenth Amendment:

Amendment X:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

A few years ago the Brady Bill was enacted.  It was proposed that local sheriff’s departments were to administer it.  One sheriff in Arizona - Richard Mack - refused to comply because he refused to violate the Constitution.  He took the matter to court. He thought it would be a Second Amendment issue. The attorney who represented him, however, had other things in mind.  He informed him that the Brady Bill would be challenged on the basis of the Tenth Amendment. The case found its way to the Supreme Court, where it was found in violation of the Tenth Amendment it attempting to use the resources of the county sheriffs’ departments to enforce the law.  It had far-reaching effects. Sheriff Mack went on to run for Congress, albeit not successfully. He remains a strong advocate for the Second Amendment and encourages everyone to become competent with guns and respect the Constitution. Mack was in the Grand Forks and Thief River Falls areas a few years ago to discuss the importance of our Constitutionally protected natural rights.

I have said this before.   Robert Davis and Teresa Mull have said it better:  “…Background checks contain a fatal flaw; looking backwards doesn’t predict the future.”

I am referring to the mass shootings that have been fueling gun-grabbing legislation and pontificating in America for the past several years.  Every time there is a shocking event where innocent people tragically have lost their lives or been terribly injured, the knee-jerk reaction of everyone from school children to professional protesters to politicians, has been to attempt to pass laws stripping Americans of their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

I have said there is no practical point in trying to get inside the heads of the perpetrators.  Instead of trying to profile these people or figure out how to keep guns out of their hands, the appropriate response would be to limit their ability to act on their impulses.  Get rid of gun-free zones. Encourage the average citizen to arm himself. Promote gun ranges where people can develop and maintain their skills with firearms. Support the Second Amendment.  

There are some other more long-term efforts which we should pursue - one of the main ones being to diminish and discourage the over-prescription of psychotropic drugs.  These have been implicated in nearly every mass shooting with the possible exception of those which are related to Islamic or other terrorism. Which brings me to a second long-term effort:  limiting and screening immigrants and stopping illegal immigration.  

One thing that we know will help to discourage mass shootings will be to end the practice of having “gun-free” zones.  There are volumes of cases where a would-be mass shooter was stopped in his tracks by an ordinary American citizen armed with a gun.  In many cases no shot needed to be fired. It is so simple. It makes perfect sense. People only avoid it because they are contrary to logic and/or have an agenda unrelated to stopping mass shootings.  

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