The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #155297 Message #3669891
Posted By: GUEST,gillymor
17-Oct-14 - 09:39 AM
Thread Name: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
Subject: RE: BS: Anyone defend US gun law?
For the record Thomas Jefferson did not author the 2nd amendment. He advocated for a bill of rights but was not present at the Constitutional Convention as he was out of the country as the U.S. Minister to France. James Madison and possibly George Mason are thought to be the main writers of the 2nd.
Jefferson did argue that constitutions and laws should expire after 19 years and that each succeeding generation should write their own according to their own circumstances:
" Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of nineteen years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. It may be said, that the succeeding generation exercising, in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if the constitution or law had been expressly limited to nineteen years only. In the first place, this objection admits the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of repeal is not an equivalent. It might be, indeed, if every form of government were so perfectly contrived, that the will of the majority could always be obtained, fairly and without impediment. But this is true of no form. The people cannot assemble themselves; their representation is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every practical man, that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:459, Papers 15:396
If Jefferson were around today he certainly would have seen our "enslavement to previous generations" in the 2nd amendment.