Because oftentimes in the press, and certainly online, you'll only see half the Constitution.
In fact, I've had this tweeted to me several times this week.
They say, look, man, the Second Amendment is so clear.
It says right there, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
That is, wow, man, I didn't think about that.
That is really clear.
Oh, wait a minute.
How about the other part of the amendment, the first half of the amendment?
Oh, let's read the whole amendment for a second.
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.
Okay, straw man alert.
Listen, I understand that liberals try and paint conservatives as stupid and conservatives try and paint liberals as stupid.
I also understand there are low information voters on both sides, okay?
In this situation, Cenk is trying to point to the Second Amendment activists as the least educated among the gun control debate, people who wouldn't have ever even picked up a constitution or read the Second Amendment.
Let me ask you this.
Would it stand to reason that in this debate, the people more likely to understand the Second Amendment would be people who've gone through the process of purchasing a firearm, maybe becoming licensed since concealed carry and are by law required as they go through this course to understand their Second Amendment rights as it relates maybe becoming licensed since concealed carry and are by law required as they go through this course Wouldn't it stand to reason, Your Honor, that?
That they might be more likely or required to have read the Second Amendment as opposed to Cenk's audience who there's no necessity to read the Constitution at all to simply hold the opinion that we should ban guns.
Go check out the pro-gun sites, whether it's the NRA, go to a concealed carry course.
When I've gone to firearm safety courses, they've given us pocket constitutions.
Again, look at the groups and make your own inferences.
Now let's get to the facts of which he provides very little, but I promise you I'll do my due diligence.
The Founding Fathers debated these to no end.
They debated literally every comma of the Second Amendment.
The very last edit they did was to take out a comma.
This is true.
Absolutely.
And this very point soundly makes Cenk's strongest argument against him.
More on that later on.
They had the first part, the right to keep and bear arms, in the first half of the sentence, in the first copy of this amendment, and then they switched it after debating it.
So if they just wanted to write the second half of the amendment, the right to keep and bear arms for the people, they could have just written that.
It's not like they didn't think about it.
They thought about it.
They debated it.
And they decided, no, no, no, no, no.
It's very important.
In order for us to have militias, we need to have arms.
This is for the point of a militia.
See, that's a very important qualifier.
That was the whole point of the amendment.
See, this is where Schenck's argument starts to fall apart.
Like he said, the Founding Fathers were incredibly careful in their wording with the Constitution, and they did!
They chose to leave all of this in.
So every word, the fact that both clauses are in their matters, they consciously, the Founding Fathers, chose to include both militia, comma, the right of the people shall not be infringed.
See, it says militia, as Cenk said, very careful, comma, separation, the right of the people shall not be infringed.
Why were they so hell-bent on not just the militia, not just soldiers with guns, but the people having the right to bear arms?
Cenk explains this with his very next sentence.
In the north, they had militias.
And they were there to protect the community, and sometimes they rose up against the federal government, and George Washington had to go fight those militias on behalf of the United States of America.
Aha!
Okay, so this is very important.
If George Washington had to fight militias, meaning people with guns, not necessarily soldiers with guns, what would have been the easiest way for George Washington to ensure that these battles didn't happen again maybe elsewhere in the country?
It's an easy answer.
Ban guns.
Confiscate them from the people.
But George Washington didn't.
Why?
For the very same reason that, as Cenk said, they expressly allowed the people.
To bear arms in the first place.
Because the people with weapons became a militia and had just finished fighting off a tyrannical government for two years.
The biggest empire the world had ever seen up until that point.
And to avoid said tyranny in the future, even with Washington knowing full well that he could become a tyrant himself, they put the Second Amendment in for the people as a failsafe.
In the South, they were largely slave patrols.
They wanted to have everybody be able to carry arms so that if there was a slave insurrection, they would be armed and be able to shoot the slaves.
Look into the history of it.
That's exactly right.
Okay, this is the big difference between someone like Schenk and myself.
I'm an entertainer, a comedian.
I don't claim to be a journalist.
But when we make factual statements at Latter with Crowder, like the Bernie video or the Detroit video, each had over 30 to 40 sources.
Young Turks claims to be a news network, and of course, Cenk's not funny, but they don't provide sources.
How does Cenk justify his argument?
That's the history.
It's up.
It's absolutely right.
What I say is it's exactly right.
Look at the history.
Well, you're a journalist, Cenk.
How about showing us the history?
Documents, written accounts, legal precedent.
I'm a comedian, I'm an entertainer, and I do it.
Why can't you?
In order to protect those communities, the militias had to be armed.
That's why the sentence is structured very clearly that way.
If you're a strict constructionist, you can't ignore an enormously important part of the sentence.
You're being wildly disingenuous if you do.
The fact that the Supreme Court read the first half of the sentence out of its interpretation is insane.
That's just basically saying, I don't really care what the Constitution says.
I'm just going to ignore parts of it I don't like.
That's what the right-wingers, who are the judicial activists on the court, did in the case of the Second Amendment.
Okay, again, no sources, no facts.
Cenk just describes motive and lack of intelligence to his opponent here.
Now, considering that gun control is the single biggest losing issue for Democrats, and one in which even far-left Democrats are willing to give, as seen with someone like Bernie Sanders in Vermont, what's more plausible?
That, as Cenk argues here...
The Supreme Court ruling to which he's referring to, we'll bring up on screen as I know he didn't, were just stupid right-wingers or that they too had access to the information I just provided and Cenk withheld from you.
Again, make your own inference.
Looking at the case specifically, something Cenk won't tell you.
Is that even though the ruling was in favor of the current interpretation of the Second Amendment, the dissenting arguments are just as important.
Dissenting Justice Stevens argued that the Second Amendment only protects the rights of individuals to bear arms as part of a well-regulated state militia, not for other purposes, even if they are lawful.
Now why doesn't Cenk tell you this?
Maybe because even among Cenk's leftist pro-gun control audience, this argument, the one that needs to be made legally, would be wildly unpopular.
The only way to have ruled against a Supreme Court ruling allowing for private citizens to have guns would not be incremental gun control, would not be some kind of a tiered assault weapons ban, but a total...
Again, we're talking legal here.
Justice Breyer agreed with Stevens, but added that even if possession were to be allowed for other reasons, any law regulating elusive firearms would have to be unreasonable or inappropriate to violate the Second Amendment.
The dissenting judges acknowledged that to legally rule in the other direction would require no rights for private citizens to own guns, for hunting, for protection, for target shooting, nothing.
They argue that maybe the government could subjectively grant the privilege to own firearms to some, but the right to To bear arms would be all but non-existent, period.
And that's why people like Schenk and leftists have to lie to their constituency about gun control.
Because legally, we're talking legally now, when it comes down to it, the only leg they have to stand on would be wildly unpopular even within their own party.
The other interesting part here is what do they mean by the people?
It says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The people could mean two different things.
It could mean every person.
Now, if it means every person, then you think, okay, good, then I've got the right to bear arms.
That means me.
Or it could mean the people of the United States.
So, for example, they're referring to the security of a free state, and the state is trying to protect itself against the federal government in the context of the founding fathers.
So it could mean the people of that state.
Okay, I'll address it, but this last part is...
Erroneous.
Let's move on.
No one would interpret that as meaning that every single person gets to have nuclear arms.
They would interpret that to mean, well, since we need a strong military, and that's essential for a free state, You cannot ban nuclear arms from the people of the United States.
Ah, okay, and there it is.
Nukes!
Oh no!
Here's the thing, it doesn't.
It doesn't say that.
Now, can we address that in a future video?
Sure, but this video is getting long, so how about we stick to what actually exists instead of getting into silly hypotheticals that act only as a vehicle for chink to do as really bad, stupid conservative voice.
If you think about arms, What does arms mean?
Back then it meant muskets.
Are there reasonable regulations on what arms means?
Of course.
Does anybody think we should have nuclear arms?
No.
Does anybody think we should all have a right to RPGs?
I hope not.
Look, you know what else is arms?
Landmines.
You think we all have a right to have landmines and plant them?
Even in our own yard?
No, what if Fluffy, your next door neighbor's dog comes by, or your next door neighbor's kid comes by as he's walking the street?
You don't have the right to have landmines?
Okay, Cenk is either lying or a very uninformed person here.
Firstly, why would they need to specify that the military had the right to weapons?
Has any military not had the right to weapons?
Oh my gosh, what a whole second!
Our military's going out there with sparks!
We need a right into law!
Is that to have guns?
What are we thinking?
We've been doing it wrong since the beginning of ever!
We've addressed this argument before in depth.
Click this video.
Muskets were not the only weapons around at that time.
There were high-capacity, rapid-fire assault weapons like the Girondoni air rifle, the Puckle Gun, the Belt and Flintlock, the Pepperbox Revolver, And yes, the Founding Fathers were completely aware of it.
They had the chance to ban those or expressly outline an exclusion in the Second Amendment, but they didn't.
It's for that same reason that James Madison wrote a letter of mark and reprisal to a private ship asking if they had the right to own cannons to protect themselves from piracy.
Again, real, factual, observable history here.
We'll provide the links because they don't.
What was Madison's response?
Well, let's use the Chang technique in some modern language.
It was...
Dude, of course you have the right to cannons to protect yourself from pirates.
Bitches, that's why I wrote the Second Amendment.
So, let's follow Cenk's logic here.
If a million dollars hundreds of years ago adjusted for inflation would, let's say, be over a billion dollars today, I'm not good at math, let's just assume, a cannon expressly protected under the Second Amendment hundreds of years ago when adjusted for inflation, But at least be a high-capacity rifle, if not a drone with high-capacity magazines hanging from its webcams.
Not talking feelings or opinions here, pure history and law.
Can we have any regulation of any of our rights?
Well, of course we get a reasonable regulation of any of our rights.
Freedom of speech is perhaps the most important right we have as Americans, but I can't go into a crowded theater and yell fire because that poses a danger to people.
You'd think Chink would be better equipped.
The yelling fire in a crowded theater to try and regulate speech argument, that's the kind of argument you'd skim past in a high school debate club so you could get to the arguments that were more compelling.
Well, you can't yell fire in a crowded theater, so speech is like freedom of speech is regulated, right?
You can't yell fire in a crowded theater.
That wasn't a stupid liberal voice, just chinks.
No, no, not right.
Okay.
The problem with yelling fire, chink is not the speech.
It's a call to action.
So let me use an extreme example to make a point, and then even a less extreme example than yours to make a point.
Let's say a racist walks into a Black Lives Matter bar.
Now it's never actually happened, but let's assume for the sake of argument.
And he yells in front of all people, hey, I am actually a racist.
I'm a white supremacist.
I hate all black people.
And I believe that you are not equal to white people.
Is that protected?
Yeah, as horrible as it sounds, it is protected.
Now, let's change that situation to less extreme example than yelling fire in a crowded theater.
But that same white supremacist, oh brother, where art thou, KKK member, walks into the Black Lives Matter club and he says, hey, I don't know if you saw, but that black guy just robbed a liquor store.
You should go beat him up.
Get him.
And it's not true.
That's not legal.
It's not the speech.
It's the call to action.
That's why you can be an accessory to murder.
Without stabbing somebody.
Cenk seems like a bright enough guy.
I don't know why he'd make this argument.
I don't know why he would act like he doesn't even have a basic understanding of freedom of speech here.
Being wildly disingenuous.
Oh, well, I guess that makes sense.
Let's focus on that for one more second, too.
Yes, it's well regulated.
But if a militia was there to protect their community for whatever purpose back in the day, depending on where you lived, the north or the south, and they needed the arms to protect the community, what would be the modern-day equivalent of that?
Now, today we don't have muskets anymore.
I'm not sure Washington and Jefferson meant AR-17s or AK-47s.
Things that fire 13 bullets in a second is what they would have considered reasonable arms.
He just said AR-17 in case there were any doubt left as to how little Shank knows about firearms.
He literally just said AR-17.
Or maybe he's a genius.
Maybe he's talking about the AR-17 shotgun that was made in 1964, and they only produced, I think, about 1,200 worth, and he just knows a ton.
He's like the hipster of guns.
Or maybe he's just really f***ing stupid and knows as much about firearms as he does the Second Amendment.
Again, make your own inferences.
Again, watch my previous video of You Have Time.
We went into this in a bit more depth.
A perfect counterargument here would be the Belton Flintlock, a high-capacity rifle.
About which the Founding Fathers not only knew, but they were fanboys as seen between the correspondence of Belton and Congress.
Belton described the gun as capable of firing up to 16 or 20 balls in 16, 10, or 5 seconds of time.
Matter of fact, Congress actually commissioned Belton to build or modify 100 muskets for the military on May 3rd, 1777.
The only reason the order was dismissed on May 15th...
Was because when Congress received Belton's bid, they considered it to be an extraordinary allowance.
Basically, the gun was really cool, but it was too expensive.
Did the Founding Fathers outlaw it?
No.
Did they expressly outline that the people couldn't have a right to it?
Nope.
Could they have?
Sure, but they never did.
They never did.
And unlike Shank, who just says, look it up, read the history, it's exactly right.
I will provide all of these sources at the original post of this video at louderwithcrowder.com for you to view at your reading.
As a matter of fact, every single point of his conjecture can be refuted with historical evidence, documents and legal precedent at the link below.
But what's the crux of his argument?
How does he close it out?
Oh, what protects our community today?
Police forces.
So if I just take out the ancient language and putting modern language, it reads like this.
A well-regulated police force being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
When you read it like that, does that sound like every single person gets to have a gun?
No, it sounds like, yeah, you get to have a gun if you're part of the police force that is protecting the security of a free state.
And you're well-regulated.
It's not that complicated.
Ah, and how's that working out for you, this awkward moment where you've argued for years that a systemically corrupt, racist American judicial institution now becomes the one to whom you demand we willingly give over our rights to autonomy, self-protection, and now, for some reason, our unwavering trust.
And guess what?
Police forces are nothing new.
They existed back then, too.
That's why the Second Amendment wasn't written for the police force or the militia.
It was the reason that, comma, the right of the people was expressly written to keep everything else in check.
The Founding Fathers asserted that.
The overwhelming amount of historical documentation proves that.
And the Supreme Court ruled that.
And no amount of unsubstantiated, unsourced YouTube videos will change that.
Hey, Angry Young Turk audience, be sure to hit the dislike button below.
But if for some reason you like a video with historical documentation and references, click one of these next to me.
They're also more entertaining because not only links, I provide jokes, and you might just be offended enough to be entertained.