It’s Eric on Gun Control and the Second Amendment. Someone responded to me via email, and I responded to them. I thought others might want to see my response because it might give you clearer insight on where I stand on gun control.
The person essentially said that neither the State nor the Federal Government should infringe on people’s right to bear arms.
This is Eric’s reply to the above (with some editing):
The right to bear arms is very interesting. I try in my mind to take things to extremes to see where they will lead me. If the Federal and the State government can not regulate arms at all, we could have corporations enriching uranium and selling atomic weapons to who knows who.
If what you are really saying is that you want the government to have no right whatsoever to regulate small arms, I might support that. It just gets a little bit tricky defining small arms. You could say no missiles. But would you allow all guns, even ones in tanks?
The Constitution’s right “to keep and bear arms” was intended to restrict the Federal government, as were nearly all of the issues in the bill of rights. The following is an interesting Yahoo “answer” that tells us that James Madison and others were afraid that adding a Bill of Rights would make the Constitution a list of things the Federal Government can’t do, when in fact it is a short list of the things it can do. ( http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081012195350AAhs4TS ) James Madison later supported the Bill of Rights, but many have since forgotten that back story. The Bill of Rights was almost exclusively reaffirming specific limits on the Federal Government, and was generally unrelated to the state government. Now the government has incorrectly gone in the other direction, and almost everything is allowed by the Feds except things the Constitution expressly lists that it can’t do. And even then it breaks those limits.
I don’t think our country has enough of the general will to create a Constitutional Amendment which states that State governments cannot restrict gun ownership or the bearing of weapons. Therefore, I see arms as a state’s rights issue. Also, I’m still not sure if I would be ready to support no restrictions by state governments. Age restrictions on owning and concealing a weapon might be a good thing for some states to implement, or some other regulation that perhaps you could think of.
My filling on gun control is the federal or state gov’t should be able to restrict it’s citizens from using automatic weapons or bombs, anything of the nature. This would limit us to hand guns (semi-auto), shotguns, and rifles. Semi-auto I am fine with but once you get into auto I think that needs restricting. Now that being said I think the gov’t should be allowed to require you to register a weapon. The gov’t requires you to register a motor vehicle so what sense does it make that they couldn’t require you to register a deadly weapon. I think for the most part where gun control laws are now is pretty good. We all have the choice to get a gun we just have to let the gov’t know we own one.
You’re right about the car thing. most people have to register their cars with the State. But it’s with the State and not the Federal government. If there is to be any registration for guns, or gun regulation, they need to be at the State level, because the Constitution doesn’t give the Federal Government any power over gun control.
But is that even an issue then. What regulation is there at the Federal level that regulates guns? Every gun regulation I have ever seen has been at the State level.
Yes the dealer has to be licensed by the federal gov’t but that has no bearing on an individual’s right to bear arms that is still regulated by the state gov’t. The federal gov’t is simply regulating who can hold and sell hundreds of guns.
Also as a web programmer what were your views on SOPA/PIPA. Would you try to bring these back up from the table? If you wouldn’t what kind of legislation would you try to pass to stop online piracy without limiting the internet of free speech?
I’m against SOPA/PIPA. They give the federal government too much power, and might be used to shut down websites without giving the sites’ creators a proper trial or due process of the law.
Online piracy is a problem for record labels and movie studios, but I tend to think that they should protect themselves from piracy rather than rely on government. The system we currently have, where holders of copyrighted information must bring their complaints to courts, is the best solution; However, I think the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) goes too far in certain areas, and we need to look at ways to scale back certain laws about copyright because they can hamper people freedom from creating new, valuable works derived from older works.
1. Thomas Jefferson believed in re-writing the constitution every 19 years. His thought process was that the dead should not rule the living. Given that the original constitution was not prepared to deal with the technological and societal changes of the last 200+ years, do you think it would be wise to have a new constitution rather than have our parties bicker over who can better twist our founding fathers’ words to suit their own needs?
1. If congress largely ignores our existing Constitution, why would they follow a new one? The beauty of our Constitution is that it can be amended. So we in fact do have a new Constitution every time we amend it. I have thought quite a lot about the dead ruling the living, and there is no easy solution to it. On the one hand, it makes sense for children to be ruled under the same laws as their parents, and it seems reasonable that citizens can leave the country when they turn 18 if they don’t like the Supreme Law of the Land. But on the other hand, we are the greatest country in the world, so there is a lot of reason to stay. If we had to have a new Constitution every 19 or 20 years, it would need 3/4 majority ratification from the states, and I don’t think that that much agreement would happen very often, since it’s pretty rare that even one amendment gets ratified. I’m guessing that the only reasonable solution to a stalemate in being forced to amend the Constitution every 20 years would be to keep the standing Constitution in force, since it would be worse to have no Constitution whatsoever.
I wish we could each be ruled only by laws which we explicitly agree to, but as far as I can tell it’s too impracticable to implement this in the modern world which we currently live in. The best human solution I can think of is a Constitutional Republic where the rights of the individual are protected from the tyranny of the majority. Beyond this, let’s keep laws as local and close to the individual as possible, which means states’ rights and local rule are best. The beauty of local government is that you can move 3 miles away to the next township over if you don’t like the laws of your present township.
2. I’m against the war on drugs. It’s an absolute failure because the crime it creates outweighs any benefits of the less drug usage we may obtain because of the war on drugs. Just like how the prohibition of alcohol was a failure, we need to give up the drug war which is also a failure. Alcoholism is a social ill that shouldn’t be criminalized, but rather treated as a disorder called addiction. In the same way drug use can be a social ill which should be treated as addiction. The best way to treat addiction is help from individuals, family, friends, community organizations, churches, and finally perhaps local and or state governments.
As well as the drug war being a failure, to make a substance illegal or controlled at a federal level is absolutely unconstitutional. The federal war on drugs would take an amendment to the Constitution to be done legally. At least an older generation of legislators knew that they needed an amendment to the Constitution to illegalize alcohol at a federal level. I don’t agree with a drug war at the state level, but that’s for each state to decide for themselves.
1) What would you support and vote for or suggest regarding troops overseas and our endless wars?
Less troops overseas and no endless wars. If we followed the Constitution much of this would be solved because we would only have well-defined, declared wars. And because war is tied to legislators when it is declared, it is likely to be shorter and not as likely.
2) The War on Drugs has been largely a failure-but do you suggest that we should be legalizing dangerous drugs such as cocaine, heroine, PCP, etc.?
At a federal level everything should be legal: this is the only way to come in line with the Constitution. Beyond this every state will decide, as many already have, which drugs should be illegal or regulated. It is a state-level issue according to the Constitution.
3) Universal Healthcare is a human right- do you support this?
It is not a right whatsoever, because it needs to be paid for and therefore infringes on the peoples’ rights who are paying for the healthcare, because it denies them the right to do what they wish with a certain portion of their money. There should be nothing related to domestic healthcare at the federal level according to the Constitution. If healthcare is to be mandated or regulated at all, it would be at the state level.
4) What are your views regarding gun control?
The 2nd amendment was originally intended to be a limit on the Federal government. So I believe that there should be no law or regulations related to arms at the federal level. The states may regulate if they choose to do so. However, the Supreme Court recently ruled that cities can’t ban guns according to the Constitution, although I don’t necessarily agree that this is a proper interpretation of the Constitution. I believe states can regulate guns, and shouldn’t limit them, but it is a state issue and not for me to decide.
5) What are your views regarding income taxes?
I hate them. According to at least one Supreme Court decision individual income taxes are unconstitutional, only corporate income taxes are allowed. Right now they are necessary in order to support all of the unconstitutional federal programs. We need to get out or our unconstitutional, undeclared wars right away, and save money there. And then we need to repeal the 2010 healthcare legislation and the Department of Education, and then start whittling away at almost every other domestic federal program, because almost all of them are unconstitutional. In this way we can do an across the board income tax cut and then do away with he income tax altogether by amending the Constitution to repeal the 16th amendment.
6) What would you do, if elected, for civil liberties?
I will work to repeal the Patriot Act and the NDAA. Beyond this almost any infringement of liberty at the Federal level is unconstitutional, so I will be against those infringements. It is up to the states to infringe our civil liberties according to the U.S. Constitution, but I don’t know why they would want to and hope that they don’t. Special interests are powerful, so hopefully the fact that there are 50 states to choose from can help the individual states to keep in check.
We need to stop putting so much pressure on Iran, and start talking to them. I’m against the death penalty because it tends to cost more than putting someone in jail their whole life, and mistakes will be made.
Israel and Palestine are tough subjects, where we need to try not to get involved. We handcuff Israel by telling them to do and not to do certain things. They are a sovereign nation and need to be treated as such. But I do believe Palestine should be treated as sovereign as well. But it isn’t our business. Britain wrote up the original agreement between those two countries, so if any third parties should be involved it is them.
We need what Thomas Jefferson believed in, “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
I respect your responses and you are 100 percent correct on many issues, but I still am at odds with your position on universal healthcare.
Here is why:
Question: Is Universal Health Care a Human Right?
Answer: According to the most widely accepted international human rights treaties, yes.
Article 25 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) reads (emphasis mine):
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Likewise, Article 12 of the U.N. International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966) reads:
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
2. The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for:
(a) The provision for the reduction of the stillbirth-rate and of infant mortality and for the healthy development of the child;
(b) The improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene;
(c) The prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases;
(d) The creation of conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness.
Because the United States is a signatory to both treaties, and U.S. policymakers played a role in drafting both treaties, it would stand to reason that health care would be accepted as part of the American understanding of human rights. And it is, at least by most–according to a 2007 CBS News/New York Times poll, 64% of Americans believe that the government has a responsibility to ensure universal health care.
This has historically been the position of left-leaning parties, such as the Democratic Party and the Green Party. But right-leaning parties, such as the Republican Party and the Libertarian Party, hold a different view. “Health care is a privilege,” Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) explained in a March 2009 interview. “[I]t’s not necessarily a right.” Not that fiscal conservatives are necessarily monsters–many of them volunteer to help provide essential medical services, in the United States and abroad–but as a general rule, fiscal conservatives don’t believe that tax dollars should be used to fund universal health care. They believe this responsibility should fall on the private sector, and if the private sector isn’t able to comprehensively meet needs, calling on the government to pick up the slack simply isn’t an option. They see health care as something that good people can grant to those who don’t have it, but they don’t see it as something to which every human being is entitled.
But international human rights law is unambiguous on the matter: Universal health care is a right, and the government must step in and provide it if the private sector fails to do so. If there are such things as human rights, under the international framework, then health care is definitely among them.
———————————————————————————————————————-
So you see, humans have a right to universal health care; especially when the private sector is not adequately doing so.
I like your positions on civil liberties and foreign policy- I will not endorse yet, but how can I help your campaign? And as a side, how are you polling?
I was tied for 4th out of seven two polls ago, and the most recent poll I polled 6th out of 7, however, with the margin of error I could have been 3rd. You can help my campaign by “Liking” my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eric-Martin/334281929947836 Email me after this at ericmartinforcongress@gmail.com and I should be able to set you up to help with my Facebook campaign.
It’s Eric on Gun Control and the Second Amendment. Someone responded to me via email, and I responded to them. I thought others might want to see my response because it might give you clearer insight on where I stand on gun control.
The person essentially said that neither the State nor the Federal Government should infringe on people’s right to bear arms.
This is Eric’s reply to the above (with some editing):
The right to bear arms is very interesting. I try in my mind to take things to extremes to see where they will lead me. If the Federal and the State government can not regulate arms at all, we could have corporations enriching uranium and selling atomic weapons to who knows who.
If what you are really saying is that you want the government to have no right whatsoever to regulate small arms, I might support that. It just gets a little bit tricky defining small arms. You could say no missiles. But would you allow all guns, even ones in tanks?
The Constitution’s right “to keep and bear arms” was intended to restrict the Federal government, as were nearly all of the issues in the bill of rights. The following is an interesting Yahoo “answer” that tells us that James Madison and others were afraid that adding a Bill of Rights would make the Constitution a list of things the Federal Government can’t do, when in fact it is a short list of the things it can do. ( http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081012195350AAhs4TS ) James Madison later supported the Bill of Rights, but many have since forgotten that back story. The Bill of Rights was almost exclusively reaffirming specific limits on the Federal Government, and was generally unrelated to the state government. Now the government has incorrectly gone in the other direction, and almost everything is allowed by the Feds except things the Constitution expressly lists that it can’t do. And even then it breaks those limits.
I don’t think our country has enough of the general will to create a Constitutional Amendment which states that State governments cannot restrict gun ownership or the bearing of weapons. Therefore, I see arms as a state’s rights issue. Also, I’m still not sure if I would be ready to support no restrictions by state governments. Age restrictions on owning and concealing a weapon might be a good thing for some states to implement, or some other regulation that perhaps you could think of.
Please let me know what you think.
My filling on gun control is the federal or state gov’t should be able to restrict it’s citizens from using automatic weapons or bombs, anything of the nature. This would limit us to hand guns (semi-auto), shotguns, and rifles. Semi-auto I am fine with but once you get into auto I think that needs restricting. Now that being said I think the gov’t should be allowed to require you to register a weapon. The gov’t requires you to register a motor vehicle so what sense does it make that they couldn’t require you to register a deadly weapon. I think for the most part where gun control laws are now is pretty good. We all have the choice to get a gun we just have to let the gov’t know we own one.
You’re right about the car thing. most people have to register their cars with the State. But it’s with the State and not the Federal government. If there is to be any registration for guns, or gun regulation, they need to be at the State level, because the Constitution doesn’t give the Federal Government any power over gun control.
But is that even an issue then. What regulation is there at the Federal level that regulates guns? Every gun regulation I have ever seen has been at the State level.
Yeah, it’s an issue. From what I understand every dealer needs to be federally licensed.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Smartphone
Yes the dealer has to be licensed by the federal gov’t but that has no bearing on an individual’s right to bear arms that is still regulated by the state gov’t. The federal gov’t is simply regulating who can hold and sell hundreds of guns.
Also as a web programmer what were your views on SOPA/PIPA. Would you try to bring these back up from the table? If you wouldn’t what kind of legislation would you try to pass to stop online piracy without limiting the internet of free speech?
I’m against SOPA/PIPA. They give the federal government too much power, and might be used to shut down websites without giving the sites’ creators a proper trial or due process of the law.
Online piracy is a problem for record labels and movie studios, but I tend to think that they should protect themselves from piracy rather than rely on government. The system we currently have, where holders of copyrighted information must bring their complaints to courts, is the best solution; However, I think the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) goes too far in certain areas, and we need to look at ways to scale back certain laws about copyright because they can hamper people freedom from creating new, valuable works derived from older works.
1. Thomas Jefferson believed in re-writing the constitution every 19 years. His thought process was that the dead should not rule the living. Given that the original constitution was not prepared to deal with the technological and societal changes of the last 200+ years, do you think it would be wise to have a new constitution rather than have our parties bicker over who can better twist our founding fathers’ words to suit their own needs?
2. Are you for or against the war on drugs?
1. If congress largely ignores our existing Constitution, why would they follow a new one? The beauty of our Constitution is that it can be amended. So we in fact do have a new Constitution every time we amend it. I have thought quite a lot about the dead ruling the living, and there is no easy solution to it. On the one hand, it makes sense for children to be ruled under the same laws as their parents, and it seems reasonable that citizens can leave the country when they turn 18 if they don’t like the Supreme Law of the Land. But on the other hand, we are the greatest country in the world, so there is a lot of reason to stay. If we had to have a new Constitution every 19 or 20 years, it would need 3/4 majority ratification from the states, and I don’t think that that much agreement would happen very often, since it’s pretty rare that even one amendment gets ratified. I’m guessing that the only reasonable solution to a stalemate in being forced to amend the Constitution every 20 years would be to keep the standing Constitution in force, since it would be worse to have no Constitution whatsoever.
I wish we could each be ruled only by laws which we explicitly agree to, but as far as I can tell it’s too impracticable to implement this in the modern world which we currently live in. The best human solution I can think of is a Constitutional Republic where the rights of the individual are protected from the tyranny of the majority. Beyond this, let’s keep laws as local and close to the individual as possible, which means states’ rights and local rule are best. The beauty of local government is that you can move 3 miles away to the next township over if you don’t like the laws of your present township.
2. I’m against the war on drugs. It’s an absolute failure because the crime it creates outweighs any benefits of the less drug usage we may obtain because of the war on drugs. Just like how the prohibition of alcohol was a failure, we need to give up the drug war which is also a failure. Alcoholism is a social ill that shouldn’t be criminalized, but rather treated as a disorder called addiction. In the same way drug use can be a social ill which should be treated as addiction. The best way to treat addiction is help from individuals, family, friends, community organizations, churches, and finally perhaps local and or state governments.
As well as the drug war being a failure, to make a substance illegal or controlled at a federal level is absolutely unconstitutional. The federal war on drugs would take an amendment to the Constitution to be done legally. At least an older generation of legislators knew that they needed an amendment to the Constitution to illegalize alcohol at a federal level. I don’t agree with a drug war at the state level, but that’s for each state to decide for themselves.
I have several questions:
1) What would you support and vote for or suggest regarding troops overseas and our endless wars?
2) The War on Drugs has been largely a failure-but do you suggest that we should be legalizing dangerous drugs such as cocaine, heroine, PCP, etc.?
3) Universal Healthcare is a human right- do you support this?
4) What are your views regarding gun control?
5) What are your views regarding income taxes?
6) What would you do, if elected, for civil liberties?
-Thank You.
1) What would you support and vote for or suggest regarding troops overseas and our endless wars?
Less troops overseas and no endless wars. If we followed the Constitution much of this would be solved because we would only have well-defined, declared wars. And because war is tied to legislators when it is declared, it is likely to be shorter and not as likely.
2) The War on Drugs has been largely a failure-but do you suggest that we should be legalizing dangerous drugs such as cocaine, heroine, PCP, etc.?
At a federal level everything should be legal: this is the only way to come in line with the Constitution. Beyond this every state will decide, as many already have, which drugs should be illegal or regulated. It is a state-level issue according to the Constitution.
3) Universal Healthcare is a human right- do you support this?
It is not a right whatsoever, because it needs to be paid for and therefore infringes on the peoples’ rights who are paying for the healthcare, because it denies them the right to do what they wish with a certain portion of their money. There should be nothing related to domestic healthcare at the federal level according to the Constitution. If healthcare is to be mandated or regulated at all, it would be at the state level.
4) What are your views regarding gun control?
The 2nd amendment was originally intended to be a limit on the Federal government. So I believe that there should be no law or regulations related to arms at the federal level. The states may regulate if they choose to do so. However, the Supreme Court recently ruled that cities can’t ban guns according to the Constitution, although I don’t necessarily agree that this is a proper interpretation of the Constitution. I believe states can regulate guns, and shouldn’t limit them, but it is a state issue and not for me to decide.
5) What are your views regarding income taxes?
I hate them. According to at least one Supreme Court decision individual income taxes are unconstitutional, only corporate income taxes are allowed. Right now they are necessary in order to support all of the unconstitutional federal programs. We need to get out or our unconstitutional, undeclared wars right away, and save money there. And then we need to repeal the 2010 healthcare legislation and the Department of Education, and then start whittling away at almost every other domestic federal program, because almost all of them are unconstitutional. In this way we can do an across the board income tax cut and then do away with he income tax altogether by amending the Constitution to repeal the 16th amendment.
6) What would you do, if elected, for civil liberties?
I will work to repeal the Patriot Act and the NDAA. Beyond this almost any infringement of liberty at the Federal level is unconstitutional, so I will be against those infringements. It is up to the states to infringe our civil liberties according to the U.S. Constitution, but I don’t know why they would want to and hope that they don’t. Special interests are powerful, so hopefully the fact that there are 50 states to choose from can help the individual states to keep in check.
Also, what are your views on the Death Penalty and Iran?
Also, do you support Israeli actions or are you in favor of recognizing the rights of Palestinians?
We need to stop putting so much pressure on Iran, and start talking to them. I’m against the death penalty because it tends to cost more than putting someone in jail their whole life, and mistakes will be made.
Israel and Palestine are tough subjects, where we need to try not to get involved. We handcuff Israel by telling them to do and not to do certain things. They are a sovereign nation and need to be treated as such. But I do believe Palestine should be treated as sovereign as well. But it isn’t our business. Britain wrote up the original agreement between those two countries, so if any third parties should be involved it is them.
We need what Thomas Jefferson believed in, “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
Mr. Martin,
I respect your responses and you are 100 percent correct on many issues, but I still am at odds with your position on universal healthcare.
Here is why:
Question: Is Universal Health Care a Human Right?
Answer: According to the most widely accepted international human rights treaties, yes.
Article 25 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) reads (emphasis mine):
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Likewise, Article 12 of the U.N. International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966) reads:
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
2. The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for:
(a) The provision for the reduction of the stillbirth-rate and of infant mortality and for the healthy development of the child;
(b) The improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene;
(c) The prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases;
(d) The creation of conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness.
Because the United States is a signatory to both treaties, and U.S. policymakers played a role in drafting both treaties, it would stand to reason that health care would be accepted as part of the American understanding of human rights. And it is, at least by most–according to a 2007 CBS News/New York Times poll, 64% of Americans believe that the government has a responsibility to ensure universal health care.
This has historically been the position of left-leaning parties, such as the Democratic Party and the Green Party. But right-leaning parties, such as the Republican Party and the Libertarian Party, hold a different view. “Health care is a privilege,” Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) explained in a March 2009 interview. “[I]t’s not necessarily a right.” Not that fiscal conservatives are necessarily monsters–many of them volunteer to help provide essential medical services, in the United States and abroad–but as a general rule, fiscal conservatives don’t believe that tax dollars should be used to fund universal health care. They believe this responsibility should fall on the private sector, and if the private sector isn’t able to comprehensively meet needs, calling on the government to pick up the slack simply isn’t an option. They see health care as something that good people can grant to those who don’t have it, but they don’t see it as something to which every human being is entitled.
But international human rights law is unambiguous on the matter: Universal health care is a right, and the government must step in and provide it if the private sector fails to do so. If there are such things as human rights, under the international framework, then health care is definitely among them.
———————————————————————————————————————-
So you see, humans have a right to universal health care; especially when the private sector is not adequately doing so.
I like your positions on civil liberties and foreign policy- I will not endorse yet, but how can I help your campaign? And as a side, how are you polling?
I was tied for 4th out of seven two polls ago, and the most recent poll I polled 6th out of 7, however, with the margin of error I could have been 3rd. You can help my campaign by “Liking” my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eric-Martin/334281929947836 Email me after this at ericmartinforcongress@gmail.com and I should be able to set you up to help with my Facebook campaign.