Kansas Initiative a 2nd Second Amendment?

[NikeBauer21]

A Second 2nd Amendment? Kansas Initiative Would Reaffirm Right to Bear Arms

by Douglas Kennedy | September 16, 2010

On a recent morning, Patricia Stoneking aimed her Glock model 23, .40 caliber semi-automatic handgun at a paper target inside the Bullet Hole shooting range in Overland Park, Kansas."That's how you do it," she said as she wound the maimed figure (two holes inches from its center), back into the firing area.

To Stoneking, who runs the Bullet Hole, owning firearms is not just a right but and obligation."People need to arm themselves," she told a reporter, and not just for protection against criminals. Stoneking, who also heads the Kansas State Rifle Association (KSRA), believes Americans must bear arms for protections against the government. "We have to put limits on our government, and that's what the [right to bear arms] does."

Stoneking and the KSRA are now supporting a ballot initiative that would give state residents a perpetual right to bear arms in the Kansas Constitution. It's a measure Stoneking says is absolutely necessary. Gun control advocates are calling it absolutely redundant. "The U.S. Supreme Court," said an exasperated Paul Helmke, "in two different decisions over the last two years has determined that the 2nd amendment is applicable to the states."

Helmke is from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and he says Stoneking already has a national constitutional right to bear arms that would trump anything an individual state could do. "This is completely ridiculous and unnecessary," he said.

Helmke also says he gets "nervous" when gun advocates "talk about taking up arms against the government." He explained, "When someone thinks that they, on their own, can decide that somehow the government is tyrannical and that they can start a revolution, start a civil war, then we're not following the process that our founding fathers set up."

Stoneking disagrees claiming that's exactly what the founding fathers intended. "They knew government could become tyrannical," she said. "We have the right to defend ourselves from a rogue government."

Kansas voters will decide on the measure November 2nd.

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/20...est=latestnews

[anonymouse]

This is what the change would be:

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.ph...n_1_%282010%29

Constitutional changes

If Kansas voters enact the measure, Section 4 of the Kansas Bill of Rights would read as follows:

A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and state, for lawful hunting and recreational use, and for any other lawful purpose.[4]

The text of Section 4 of the Kansas Bill of Rights currently reads:

The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security; but standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and shall not be tolerated, and the military shall be in strict subordination to the civil power.

Poor Helmke! He's nervous!

[knight0334]

Quote from the caption above:

Helmke also says he gets "nervous" when gun advocates "talk about taking up arms against the government." He explained, "When someone thinks that they, on their own, can decide that somehow the government is tyrannical and that they can start a revolution, start a civil war, then we're not following the process that our founding fathers set up."

Stoneking disagrees claiming that's exactly what the founding fathers intended. "They knew government could become tyrannical," she said. "We have the right to defend ourselves from a rogue government."

Actually the Founding Fathers intended for us, the People, to do exactly that when a government becomes tyrannical.

Second Paragraph of the Declaration of Independence;

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

[ungawa]

Gun control advocates are calling it absolutely redundant. "The U.S. Supreme Court," said an exasperated Paul Helmke, "in two different decisions over the last two years has determined that the 2nd amendment is applicable to the states."

Then why does he give a crap?

I think I know the answer.

[Yellowfin]

If Paul Helmke dislikes it, then full speed ahead!

[press1280]

A new amendment in KS reverses a horrible court precedent(Salina v. Blaksley) that interpreted the 2A and KS amendment as a "collective" right and was used by anti-gun courts to basically nullify the 2A until Heller.
This will guarantee an individual right in KS in case the antis on SCOTUS get another member and try to overturn Heller and McDonald.

[Philbert]

Quote from the caption above:

[/i]

Actually the Founding Fathers intended for us, the People, to do exactly that when a government becomes tyrannical.

[/i]

The declaration was written by the delegates of the Continental Congress, who represented the People. They were not private individuals who decided unilaterally to declare war on the government a la Richard Poplawski, which is what Helmke is talking about.