“No ma’am”: Marine sends message to Feinstein

UPDATED: Jan. 2 | 9:14

Marine Corporal Joshua Boston submitted a heart-felt letter to gun-grabbing Dianne Feinstein via CNN iReport. Corporal Boston served in Afghanistan in 2004-5. The letter reflects the views of real Americans across the country.

I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

For the most part, his letter is correct. But the underlined passage is incorrect. The National government does have the right to know what you own. In fact, they are supposed to pay for your training on how to use them. This is NOT, however, a means to take them away. He is correct that the government does not need to know what you have to take them away.

He is absolutely correct that they are not supposed to create licenses and fingerprint cards to own a weapon. They are not allowed to limit the weapons that you can own. The National Firearms Act is unconstitutional according to Federalist Paper No. 29. We are supposed to be able to own any weapon in the United States military arsenal and we are supposed to be trained equal to them. The reason, according to that same document, is so that we can attack and defeat a tyrannical government—even if that government is the National government. I can produce quote-after-quote which explains that the Second Amendment is for that very reason.

Another reason is so that the States can protect themselves from invasion. Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution allows that States cannot:

…engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

No one can contend that Arizona, New Mexico and Texas have been invaded and the National government cannot—or chooses not to—secure the southern border. This clause gives those States the right to engage in War because of the actions of the National government. While I do not expect that the States should have a call to arms, exactly, it certainly allows the States to secure their border. And they have a right to protect their citizens from injury or death by whatever force necessary.

Thomas Jefferson even felt that we had an obligation to protect the European nations from tyranny. In a letter from Jefferson to John Adams of September 1821 he wrote:

“And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the 4th. of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism. On the contrary they will consume those engines, and all who work them.”

The Declaration of Independence clearly states the purpose of government:

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.

The notion that they derive their just powers from the governed is echoed in the three words that begin the Constitution of the United States of America—”We the people…” We are the government.

The Second Amendment was not only meant to allow us to protect ourselves from our government, but to also allow us to protect our communities against occurrences such as school and theater shootings. The media does not seem to give mass coverage to events like the mall shooter in Oregon stopped by a young man with a concealed carry permit. The man stopped at a theater in San Antonio, Texas by an off duty deputy. And we do not know how many others go unreported by the media.

Hamilton expressed a view of human frailties when he wrote in Federalist Paper No. 25:

For it is a truth, which the experience of ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.

So Corporal Joshua Boston you are absolutely correct when you wrote:

We, the people, deserve better than you.

It is absolutely laudable when we see a man who actually took his oath to defend the Constitution seriously. He is an example to those in Washington.