When are law enforcement justified in shooting a fleeing suspect?
Steven Miller Answered August 9, 2018
Hardly ever. The person doing the shooting must be able to articulate an objectively reasonable belief, NOT JUST a subjectively reasonable belief, that the state’s self-defense criteria have been met.
Every government officer has a duty to secure your blessings of liberty. This includes your right to keep and bear arms. A non-shooter who is fleeing, is not a threat. Open-carry is a right just like any other Constitutionally guaranteed right. The fleeing non-shooter’s rights are “susceptible to restriction only to prevent grave and immediate injury to interests the state may lawfully protect.”
If everyone were to think like a bully, then we could say that an agitated person with a gun in a holster is an imminent threat to everyone else. It doesn’t matter who he works for.
Examples:
US Supreme Court’s John Elk v. US, 177 US 529: “… where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer had the right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no right. … the facts might show that no offense had been committed.”
Housh v. Illinois, 75 Ill 491: “An arrest without warrant … or that fails to allege a crime is without jurisdiction, and one who is being arrested, may resist arrest and break away. If the arresting officer is killed by one who is so resisting, the killing will be no more than an involuntary manslaughter.”
West Virginia v. Gum, 69 SE 463: “What rights then has a citizen in resisting an unlawful arrest? An arrest without warrant is a trespass, an unlawful assault upon the person, and how far one thus unlawfully assaulted may go in resistance is to be determined, as in other cases of assault…. And the authorities are uniform that where one is about to be unlawfully deprived of his liberty he may resist the aggressions of the offender, whether of a private citizen or a public officer, to the extent of taking the life of the assailant….”
Washington State v. Rousseau, 40 Wn.2d at 94: “It is the law that a person illegally arrested by an officer may resist that arrest, even to the extent of the taking of life, if his own life or any great bodily harm is threatened.”
As for already-arrested escapees who are unarmed — United States Supreme Court TENNESSEE v. GARNER (1985):
“Held: The Tennessee statute is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes the use of deadly force against, as in this case, an apparently unarmed, nondangerous fleeing suspect; such force may not be used unless necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others. Pp. 7-22. [471 U.S. 1, 2] ”
just like the other rights that the Supreme Court ruled are “susceptible to restriction only to prevent grave and immediate injury to interests the state may lawfully protect.”
Also see the U.S. Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989)
ONLY YOU CAN ERASE THE THIN BLUE LINE
The lower courts often find that “standby officers” who have an opportunity to intervene to prevent unreasonable use of force can be held liable for their failure to do so.
If you witness police brutality, file a criminal complaint against the good cops who did nothing. Once you file a criminal complaint, you are protected from retaliation. ANY police contact after that can be called retaliation, and you can file another complaint (it will not go anywhere, but when the police chief runs for reelection it can be used against him).
Here is a contrary opinion:
An editorial in the New York Times How Cops Get Away With Murder, May 30, 2020, page A26 explains how qualified immunity is used by the courts to deprive victims of police abuse any meaningful civil rights remedy.
Are you a slave to the IRS? Do you sign government documents under the penalty of perjury?
Do you Pay Caesar his tribute and Pharaoh his tale of bricks? (the terminology Tale of bricks is from Genesis 5:18).
In the Bible, slaves under Pharaoh had a 20% income tax during a time of national emergency (Genesis 47:23-26). The other 80% was their living allowance. How does this living allowance compare to your take-home allowance?
Now that we must confess our slave status to the IRS, I have a timely reminder of just how harsh the penalty of perjury really is. Why would someone who does not understand the tax laws sign a perjury oath signature on a government form?
Tucker’s Blackstone was an 1803 law textbook that updated a British law textbook Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England with commentaries on U.S. Constitutional law and the laws in Virginia.
Appendix Note H, The State of Slavery, compares Virginia slave laws, much improved after our independence, to those of the British laws that we separated from. We were slowly recognizing that criminal courts must treat everyone equal, even slaves. There were only three remaining laws that treated slaved more harshly. One was the perjury punishment.
… [for Burglary] But wherever the benefit of clergy is allowed to a slave, the court, besides burning him in the hand (the usual punishment inflicted on free persons) may inflict such further corporal punishment as they may think fit;1* this also seems to have been the law in the case of free negroes and mulattoes.
[for Perjury] By the act of 1723, c. 4, it was enacted, that when any negroe or mulattoe shall be found, upon due proof made, or pregnant circumstances, to have given false testimony, every such offender shall, without further trial, have his ears successively nailed to the pillory for the space of an hour, and then cut off, and moreover receive thirty-nine lashes on his bare back, or such other punishment as the court shall think proper, not extending to life or limb. This act, with the exception of the words pregnant circumstances, was re-enacted in 1792. The punishment of perjury, in a white person, is only a fine and imprisonment. …
1*. 1794, c. 103.
… [for livestock Theft] The punishment for the second and third offence, of this kind, is the same in the case of a free person, as of a slave, namely, by the pillory and loss of ears, for the second offence; the third is declared felony, to which clergy is, however, allowed. The preceding were, until lately, the only positive distinctions which remained between the punishment of a slave, and a white person, in those cases, where the latter is liable to a determinate corporal punishment.2*
2*. But herein the law is now altered by the act of 1796, c. 2, which does not extend to slaves.
And now we live in a nation where government can lie to us, but we cannot lie to them. Lawyers can lie to us in court, but we cannot lie. Government can photograph us, but if we photograph a rampaging plain-clothes officer in an unmarked car we can be sentenced to 16 years in prison.
NOT EVERYONE CAN SET THEMSELVES FREE. First Corinthians 7:21 (KJV): “Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.”
Those who have a debt to the master that they have chosen cannot be free until the debt is paid or they are kicked out. By helping set others free, you may someday be invited (delivered from bondage) into “… a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you” Leviticus 20:24
More information is in my article on paying your tale of bricks. And in the quotes from the book Ancient Law and in the definition of Fictions of Law that are in my essay on Presumed Contracts.
YOU DID NOT “PAY INTO” Social Security system– anymore than you paid into the income tax system or the Obamacare tax system.
Congress can spend your FICA tax money any way they want to. It is not invested for your benefit. The U.S. Supreme Court in Helvering v. Davis (1937), ruled that Social Security was not a contributory insurance program, saying on page 635:
“The proceeds of both taxes [the employee and employer taxes] are to be paid into the Treasury like other internal revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way.”
Do not be fooled. This applied only to those who got a federal SS card. FICA is enforced only by the Gift and Estate Tax — NOT BY INCOME TAX. A right cannot be taxed (because the government secured the blessings of liberty). Nobody is subject to a law not promulgated to him. Indirect tax is levied without apportionment for the exercise of a revenue taxable activity. Direct Tax applies only to federal persons.
The United States Supreme Court in 1937 confirmed that Social Security is an exercise of the Constitutional taxing power to collect taxes. These are paid into the general fund of the United States Treasury. The Supreme Court also said that Congress could, in its future discretion, spend that money for whatever Congress then judged to be the general welfare of the country. Congress has no constitutional power to earmark or segregate certain kinds of tax proceeds for certain purposes, whether the purposes be farm-price supports, foreign aid or social security payments. When Mr. Nestor was deported after 43 years in the U.S. — The Supreme Court in Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603, found that there is no contractual right to Social Security benefits, there is no accrued interest or accrued property right in old-age benefits, and congress can vote any “adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands and which Congress … had in mind when it expressly reserved the right to alter, amend or repeal any provision of the Act “. There is no entitlement to benefits. Never has been.
There is no division of funds in the treasury — nor has there ever been so from the beginning of Social Security. There is no separate fund created by payments of the Social Security tax.
History
The Federal Reserve Bank is NOT ABOUT keeping a control of the monetary money supply. By the time FDR was elected, the debt had skyrocketed during peacetime between 1930 to 1934. The Federal Reserve was tightening the money supply as the debt expanded. Something needed to be done to guarantee the payment of the interest on that debt. Federal citizens were to about to become collateral for the national debt.
Socialism is NOT security. SS is just like Obamacare which the Supreme Court determined was “valid as a tax” but not for benefits. Once you get a SSN you are liable for “Social Security and other taxes”. Welcome to your Novus Ordo Seclorum.
See my video on the dangers of socialism. I prove that nobody is required to have a SSN.
AS IF IT WAS INSURANCE
While the system of Federal Social Security was “sold as if it were insurance”– it was not. There is a great deception, a strong delusion, that social security taxes are payments of insurance premiums to obtain specified benefits at a specified time. There is no such right.
“The President wanted everybody covered for every contingency in life—’cradle to the grave,’ he called it—under the social insurance system… But the Government of the United States is not an insurance company and so it could be done.” Forward by Frances Perkins Sec of Labor 1933-45 The Development of the Social Security Act by Edwin E. Witte, page 7. On page 936 through page 946 of the Ways and Means hearings an originator of Social Security [Edwin Witte] stated that Social Security was “sold as if it were insurance” and that was a mistake and should not have been published as such. So it wasn’t until 1953 an originator admitted that it is not insurance as published in 1936.
“AS IF IT WERE insurance” IS NOT insurance.
As discussed in topic 3 of my essay Things the Government forgot to Tell You, in both Supreme Court Davis cases: The Social Security Tax Act, gives the government no obligation to pay benefits as “an earned right”. This is because the government has “no contractual obligation” to make any return payment, and it has carried the provision from the very beginning that, “The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of this act is hereby reserved to the Congress.” Therefore “Congress could continue to collect the so-called social security payroll taxes even though Congress discontinued all social security benefit payments.”
This is exactly what you should expect as the national and world economies continue their descent into devastating decline, debt, and disaster. An essential purpose of the system introduced as social security was to add the labor of Americans to the collateral of the State so the people would become a surety of the already increasing debt that powers your central government. To believe that you have a right to get back specified benefits because you paid into Social Security is a delusion.
You were warned in Proverbs 17:18 not to become surety for debt.
You were warned by the Apostle Paul when he repeated King David’s warning that government benefits would be a snare to trap you, in Romans 11:9.
Once you get a Social Security Number to change your citizenship to a dual citizenship*, you cannot complain about the consequences. The Social Security Act Title VIII section 801 then requires you to pay Social Security AND OTHER TAXES.
This is also repeated word-for-word in Section 3101(a) of the Internal Revenue Code: “In addition to other taxes, there is hereby imposed on the income of every individual a tax equal to the following percentages of the wages…” Even though the Constitution still requires direct taxes to be apportioned among the several States.
* The Supreme Court in U.S. v Cruikshank case, 92 U.S. 542 at page 551:
“It is the natural consequence of a citizenship which owes allegiance to two sovereignties, and claims protection from both. The citizen cannot complain, because he has voluntarily submitted himself to such a form of government.”
The Second Amendment (right, maxims of law, free state, militia)
The Bill of Rights
List of Laws and Court Cases
The right to self defense
The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God
Founder’s thoughts on natural liberty
The right to duel to the death
Gun Control
Your duty to avoid deception
Militarization of police
There are too many debates about gun rights. Unfortunately for those who demand fewer rights, every Law Dictionary tells us that: Contra principia negantem non est disputandum. There can be no debate with one who denies fundamentals.
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National Constitution Center, Philadelphia
Early History
“When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised…to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.”
— George Mason, Virginia’s Ratifying Convention, 1788 (3 Elliot, Debates, at 380)
George Mason was one of three delegates to the U.S. Constitutional Convention who refused to sign it.
The Second Amendment:
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.
RIGHT
The subject of the one-sentence amendment is the word right. The Second Amendment acknowledges that it is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” — it does NOT say anything about a right of the militia. It does not grant any right.
The Security of a free state
The word State can have many meanings. It means the body politic in all it’s expressions:
Society (the whole body politic — “We The People” — the jura summa imperii) is the state that created government by electing delegates to write a Constitution and then voting to ratify it. After all, it is the Laws of Nature and the Laws of Nature’s God that entitle us to create it.
It also refers to the artificial entity they created by ratifying the Constitution.
It refers to the civil servants who swear oaths to obey the society (obey the jura summa imperii)
In other words, It is the government 1. of the people, 2. by the people, 3. for the people
Even the term “United States” has three meanings. See the Supreme Court case Hooven & Allison Co. vs Evatt, 324 U.S. 652.
Maxims of Law
• Protection draws subjection. Protectio trahit subjectionem. People must defend the creature they created. If you protect your civil servants, you are their master. The opposite is also true — If you are the protected then you are the subject.
• “The civil laws reduce an ungrateful freedman to his original slavery” Libertinum ingratum leges civiles in pristinam servitutem redigunt.
If you want to be responsible for the protection of your civil servants — Then we must have a militia to protect them. Therefore a militia is necessary to the security of a free state. Regardless of the meaning of the word state. (the society or the artificial entity or the civil servants).
AND you have a duty to control the artificial entity you inherited.
BUT the Second Amendment does not apply to people in States.
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THE BILL OF RIGHTS
The first eight amendments only apply to people in federal territories. The first eight Amendments do not apply to States and do not protect state people, according to the U.S. Supreme Court in Twinning v. New Jersey, 211 US 78, in 1908 — and in Hague v. CIO, 307 US 496, in 1939.). Federal Territories become States to free themselves from federal jurisdiction. Nor are people in States protected by the federal government — until they volunteer into federal jurisdiction.
Under our Constitution, Vice President Thomas Jefferson reassured the people of Kentucky in 1798 that they were free from all federal laws, except for the three crimes mentioned in the Constitution, “and no other crimes whatever”. He went on to say “(and all other their acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes other than those enumerated in the Constitution) are altogether void and of no force, and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and of right appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own Territory.”
The Second Amendment does NOT grant any right. Never did. Never can.
The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to add further restrictions on the federal government. The Bill of Rights itself says so. Many people think that rights come from government. They have been fooled. Rights do NOT come from government. Government can only take away rights. The Bill of Rights DOES NOT grant any rights. The Bill of Rights adds further restrictions on government. The bill itself (Link) stipulates its purpose:
in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added”.
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GUN CONTROL
Gun Control was never intended by the authors of the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson in his “Legal Commonplace Book”:
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one.”
More information is in my essay on the militia, linked above.
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LIST OF LAWS AND SUPREME COURT DECISIONS:
The Federalist 29Concerning The Militia by Alexander Hamilton
The Federalist 46 by James Madison.
U.S. Supreme Court in U S v. CRUIKSHANK, 92 U.S. 542 (1875), at page 553, quoted below
U.S. Supreme Court in U S v. CRUIKSHANK, 92 U.S. 542 (1875), at page 553:
“The second and tenth counts are equally defective. The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow-citizens of the rights it recognizes, to what is called, in The City of New York v. Miln, 11 Pet. 139, the ‘powers which relate to merely municipal legislation, or what was, perhaps, more properly called internal police,’ ‘not surrendered or restrained’ by the Constitution of the United States. “
U. s, Supreme Court, Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886) – This second post-Civil War era case ruling on the meaning of the Second Amendment rights. The court ruled the Second Amendment right was a right of individuals, not militias. An individual right to bear arms for the good of the United States. Personal military formations and parades does not limit a personal right to keep and bear arms
U.S. Supreme Court, Caetano v. Massachusetts, 136 S.Ct. 1027 (2016)
– The Court ruled that the Second Amendment extends to all forms of bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding, and that this Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States.
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The Supreme Court’s Lopez decision (linked above) cleared student Lopez of any crime. The School Gun Free Zone laws was a commerce clause law. School is not closely related to commerce. The right of the people to keep and bear arms does not apply to commerce. No one has a right to bear arms in regulated commerce.
To uphold the Government’s contentions here, we would have to pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States.”
The right to self defense against corporal assaults is one of the three rights of all mankind which cannot be surrendered to public convenience. The preservation of these rights, inviolate, secured the preservation of civilized society.
“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…. The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
– St. George Tucker, comments on his reprint of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1803
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THE LAWS OF NATURE AND THE LAWS OF NATURE’S GOD
The Declaration of Independence states that it is the laws of Nature’s God that entitles the United States to exist. Why do judges in every state question the legitimacy of their office?
We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.
Governments are instituted among men to secure those Creator-granted God-given unalienable rights.
[including the right to self defense against corporal attacks].
Back when the American colonies were under British rule a 1690 law treatise was published which became part of the received law of the land.
The unalienable right to self defense was previously acknowledged in 1690 when John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government section 233 explained that self-defense against government cannot be denied in English colonies.
Must the people then always lay themselves open to the cruelty and rage of tyranny? Must they see their cities pillaged, and laid in ashes, their wives and children exposed to the tyrant’s lust and fury, and themselves and families reduced by their king to ruin, and all the miseries of want and oppression, and yet sit still? Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force, which nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation from injury? I answer: Self-defence is a part of the law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself”
A four volume law textbook Blackstone’s Commentaries On The Law was the preeminent law textbook in the English Colonies. It is considered by the Supreme Court to be part of the “received law of the land”. It explains in the introduction that all natural and legislated laws come from divine law:
“It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times; no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original… Neither could any other law possibly exist; for a law always supposes some superior who is to make it; and in a state of nature we are all equal, without any other superior but him who is the author of our being.”
Merely thinking that a collective can make a choice for you is the opposite of “all men are created equal”
The law of nature requires us to supervise our civil servants, and if they fail to enforce the divine law of nature, we are restored to the nature that we were in prior to creating government, for we are all equal. See Locke’s Second Treatise paragraphs 135, 149, 171, 209. . Legibus sumptis desinentibus, lege naturae utendum est. When laws of the state fail, we must resort to the laws of nature.
FOUNDER’S THOUGHTS ON NATURAL LIBERTY
“All positive and civil laws, should conform as far as possible, to the Law of natural reason and equity.”
— Samuel Adams, pamphlet “The Rights of the Colonists”, 1772
“Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine.”
— James Wilson, Of the General Principles of Law and Obligation.
“When human laws contradict or discountenance the means which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws and so become null and void.”
— Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted.
“Now all acts of legislation apparently contrary to natural rights and justice … must be in the nature of things, considered as void. The laws of nature are the laws of God, whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth. A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to him from whose punishments they cannot protect us. All human constitutions which contradict His laws we are in conscience bound to disobey. Such have been the adjudication of our courts.”
— George Mason, as argued in Robin v. Hardaway, Virginia General Court, 1772.
“All natural rights,… may be abridged or modified…by the [natural] law…The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subjects to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII, “Religion”
“our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dr. James Currie, Jan. 18, 1786.
“This abridgement could take the form of (1) consideration for the common good, (2) respect for the equal rights of others, and (3) realization that when the basis of the right is absent, the exercise of the claimed right can properly be denied.”
— Thomas Jefferson, quoted by Chester James Antieau, “Natural Rights and The Founding Fathers-The Virginians,” 17 Wash. & Lee L.Rev. 43 (1960), page 52
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/vol17/iss1/4.
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THE RIGHT TO SELF DEFENSE (even against government).
The Declaration of Independence said it is our duty to throw off despotism:
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.
This principle was still valid when Abraham Lincoln made his First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861:
“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”
This principle was still valid when The U.S. Supreme Court ruled John Elk v. US, 177 US 529:
“... where the officer is killed in the course of the disorder which naturally accompanies an attempted arrest that is resisted, the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction, when the officer had the right to make the arrest, from what it does if the officer had no right. … the facts might show that no offense had been committed.”
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The right to duel to the death
Andrew Jackson survived three duels BEFORE we elected him as President. His campaign slogan was “the common man”. It is a constitutional right for a common man to settle his disputes without government. Our State and federal governments cannot interfere with the disputes of their masters. Don’t be fooled. Yes, the common voter, living in liberty, respects a man who risks death defending his honor. In a free nation, Andrew Jackson earned enough respect to be elected as a defender of everyone’s honor.
Governments were instituted among men to secure rights. The blessings of liberty secured to the posterity included the right to settle our own disputes without interference. From the Christian Pilgrims in 1621 Plymouth, until America was made safe for barbarism* in 1865, those who understood where real authority comes from would settle their own disputes. Examples include Vice President Aaron Burr who killed Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Mr. Gwinnett who signed the Declaration of Independence, Daniel Key, son of Francis Scott Key, and David Terry CHIEF Justice of the California Supreme Court who defended himself against US Senator Broderick. Civil Servants do not settle their masters’ disputes.
* The root word of barbarism is the word bar. The bar association did not exist in America until 1878, after terrorism was protected. The US Supreme Court in their 1793 case Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 US 419 at the top of page 449, while comparing different justice systems, said that in ancient Greek tribunals, law and liberty were “in strict and graceful union” before the justice system was corrupted. The high court explained: “The rude and degrading league between the bar and feudal barbarism was not yet formed.“
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Militarization of police
Defending yourself and your community is a private decision, and cannot be done with government funds or equipment, except in time of war. It is never a governmental function to execute someone without a trial. Under our Constitution, police had to provide their own weapon if they wanted to defend themselves. Government weapons could never be used for a private purpose, such as self-defense — until Grover Cleveland became chief of the NY State Police then, under martial law, converted the police into a military force and provided government guns.
President Lincoln’s martial law code, the Lieber Code — Mr. Lieber was Lincoln’s martial law attorney who wrote it — states that a declaration of martial law is never necessary. The mere fact that there are government arms in the streets is sufficient notice that we are under martial law. If government police officers are in the streets with government guns, then you are living under martial law. Again: a declaration of martial law is never necessary. Actions speak louder than words.
The Lieber Code was Lincoln’s Martial Law manual.
Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon to use the military against the people. “alea iacta est.” The die is cast.
King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta to give us civil control over law enforcement. Ever since then Sheriffs did not have the keys to the jail, only Magistrates could put you in jail — this is still true today for those who keep their rights.
If you want to keep your rights, It is your duty to ourselves and our posterity to figure out how you were deceived. And your duty to use the courts3 we created to apply the laws to the facts you discovered. A government granted privilege is not a right.
Here is your Quiz:
When the Constitution was written what was this right of self-defense?
When the Constitution was written what was a militia?
Is an “arm” in the Second Amendment the same as a “firearm”” in all of the legislated laws that ignore “the right of the people”? — Why do Congressmen who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution refuse to use the Constitutional term “arm” but instead always use the term firearm?
Can a right be regulated?
A right cannot be taxed. (The National Firearms Act of 1934 is a tax law). So what government privilege was actually taxed there?
Why would commerce clause laws apply to an item that is no longer in commerce?
Do Congressmen’s oaths-of-office to secure the blessings of liberty mean anything?
Does your State Constitution tell you who is in the Militia? Does it require training as many now insist?
Here are your hints
A right cannot be regulated. A right cannot be taxed. The National Firearms Act of June 20,1934 was an IRS tax on the sale, manufacture and transfer of certain dangerous firearms.
Congress cannot exceed the powers delegated to it by the Constitution. Amendment 10 says that the federal government’s authority must be delegated by the Constitution. So what impost, duty or excise does the National Firearms Act actually tax?
Is the NFA legit because Congress has the right to regulate and tax interstate commerce in Article 1, Section 8? Also read a very detailed explaination at OriginalIntent.org
The power to tax is the power to destroy. Congress cannot have the power to tax (destroy) a right that every Congressman has sworn an oath-of-office to protect.
The duty to bear arms is a Christian duty. You love your neighbors by defending the innocent. Christians obey the commandments of Christ. (Although many self-called “Christians” refuse to obey Christ). “Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take [it], and likewise [his] scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” Luke 22:36
Government cannot make a law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
Also note that Apostle Peter had a sword/knife fight with government law enforcement officers,wounding one, and was not arrested.
Did the same Peter that is quoted in Acts 5:29 “obey God rather than men” suddenly change his mind in First Peter 2:13-16?: “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: As free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.” — Notice that it is the “will of God…to silence the ignorance of foolish men”. — He is telling people not to attract attention with their new liberty from graven (manmade) laws. After all, law is not made for the righteous, First Timothy 1:9.
Every Congressman has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. This “right of the people” cannot be infringed. Congress cannot collectively commit mutiny. If they wanted to write a constitutional law and stay within their delegated authority, they would have used the Constitution’s words. In the Constitution this “right of the people” uses the term “arms”. It does not use the term “firearms”. Non accipi debent verba in demonstrationem falsam, quae competunt in limitationem veram. Words ought not to be accepted to import a false description when they are consistent with a true definition.
In 1919 President Woodrow Wilson had unsuccessfully tried to veto the Volstead Act, which set harsh punishments for violating the 18th Amendment and endowed the Internal Revenue Service with unprecedented regulatory and enforcement powers.
In 1933 after the Carlisle Act, the IRS and the ATF moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands. Does the NFA only levy tax on imports of firearms entering the federal territories?
More Maxims of Law
Every Law Dictionary will tell you that The legislature cannot impose laws on words to change definitions. Legislatorum est viva vox, rebus et non verbis, legem imponere. The voice of legislators is a living voice, to impose laws on things and not on words.
Ad recte docendum oportet primum inquirere nomina, quia rerum congnitio a nominibus rerum dependet. In order to rightly comprehend a thing, it is necessary first to inquire into the names, for a right knowledge of things depends on their names.
*** Footnotes ***
1. A right cannot be taxed. Or charged a fee.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 US 105 (1943) although NOT an arms case:
“A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the federal constitution.
“a person cannot be compelled to purchase, through a license fee or a license tax, the privilege freely granted by the constitution.”
“the ultimate question in determining the constitutionality of this license tax is whether the state has given something for which it can ask a return. That principle has wide applicability. State Tax Commission v. Aldrich, 316 U.S. 174 , 62 S.Ct. 1008, 139 A.L.R. 1436, and cases cited. But it is quite irrelevant here. This tax is not a charge for the enjoyment of a privilege or benefit bestowed by the state. The privilege in question exists apart from state authority. It is guaranteed the people by the federal constitution.”
2. A right cannot be licensed.
U.S. Supreme Court in Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham 394 U.S. 147 (1969), although NOT an arms case:
“Persons faced with an unconstitutional licensing law which purports to require a license as a prerequisite to exercise of right… may ignore the law and engage with impunity in exercise of such right.”
U.S. Supreme Court in Meister v. Moore, 96 U.S. 76, which was a inheritance case, at page 79:
“No doubt, a statute may take away a common law right; but there is always a presumption that the Legislature has no such intention, … unless they contain express words of nullity.”
Can you find express words of nullity in the NFA to take away a common law right that is explicitly enforced by every congressman’s oath of office?
3. Learn how to use the courts.
A lawyer’s duty is to ATTORN you over to the system. See my essay on lawyers.
I recommend an online law course. If you don’t know how to defend your rights, you will lose them. I recommend that you study all the basic law procedures explained in “How To Win In Court” self-help course.
*** Other Notes ***
Comparing other dangerous weapon cases, I found Riggins v. Seattle very interesting. The plaintiff had a knife which he had used earlier in the day to help roof his brother’s house. He was arrested for having a dangerous weapon within city limits. The State Constitution restricts government impairment of bearing arms: “The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, …” The case also mentions:
— “Where legislation tends to promote the health, safety, morals, or welfare of the public and bears a reasonable and substantial relationship to that purpose, every presumption will be indulged in favor of constitutionality.”
— “The presumption implicit in the local law is that four-inch knives, when carried on the streets, are being carried for criminal purposes, or for other reasons that are hazardous to the health, welfare and safety of the public. . . . . The court believed that the presumption was rational and based on common sense: As the City Council found in its investigative phase, and as any sentient person knows, knives are implicated in many street crimes, and continue to be a prime cause of serious injury and death. .”
— “The presumption is that, unless an exemption is applicable, one who carries a “dangerous knife” within the city of Seattle does so either for criminal purposes or for other reasons that are hazardous to the safety and welfare of the public.”
As for myself, I cannot see the logic in having the capability of defending self or state as “hazardous to the safety and welfare of the public” — After all:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin, November 11, 1755; Reply to the Governor.
Government exists to protect rights. A legitimate government function (called by various names like “police power”, “compelling state interest”, “overriding governmental interest”, “exigent circumstances”, “clear and present danger doctrine”) that can trump your right to liberty is to protect an innocent person from grave and immediate danger.
We know from several U.S. Supreme Court cases that First Amendment rights are “susceptible to restriction only to prevent grave and immediate danger to interests which the state may lawfully protect” (This phrase was used in many Supreme Court decisions to protect your rights. Carrol v. Princess Anne 393 U.S. 175, Thomas v. Collins 323 U.S. 516, West Virginia v. Barnette 319 U.S. 624, in re Brown 9 Cal.3d 612, West’s Constitutional law, key 84, 90, 91 — etc.)”
Is it the intent of every congressmen to keep me from defending them?
School Gun Free Zone law 18 USC 922q still exists today. It was changed by the Lopez decision to only guns in interstate commerce.
Congress has the power to legislate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Do not be fooled. The rules of statute construction prohibit misconstruing statutes in such as way to allow an interpretation contrary to the congress members oath of office. Such as interpreting a non-commerce activity as criminal.
It is a government granted privilege to have a firearm. No one has a right to keep or bear a firearm without the government granted privilege.
Government has a right to regulate interstate commerce. Government also has a duty to protect your rights.
The term “firearm” is a legislated word. The term “arm” is a common law term (in the Law of Nature, and Nature’s God). How can you come the opposite conclusion?
The U.S. Supreme Court in DC v. Heller was discussing firearms. Yes, you can possess firearms. And also use them at home. Firearms are required to be registered for use in commerce.
The Heller decision Held:
“1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.
(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.”
Notice in the above quote that the Supreme Court Heller decision said “right to possess a firearm” is protected by the Second Amendment, BUT “firearm” is not the term used in the Amendment. Why did Congress refuse to use the term in the Second Amendment, which they are sworn to uphold?
***
If you don’t know how to defend your rights — you will not have any.
I recommend this self-help course: How To Win In Court.
Why would a reasonably intelligent person be left-leaning?
By Steven D. Miller
This left v. right question has be asked and re-asked throughout the history of mankind. The answers are always similar.
Reasonably intelligent answers throughout history
2150 years ago Greek Historian Polybius wrote a 40 volume history encyclopedia, The Histories Of the Roman Republic 220-146 BC, Book 6, section 9:
“But when a new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders … when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the houses of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch. “
And 2000 years ago Plutarch said “It is truly said that the first destroyer of the liberties of a people is he who gave them bounties and largesse. ”
— Life of Coriolanus (c. 100 AD.)
Cicero in 45BC wrote about the same problem. Here is H. Rackham’s 1914 translation of Section 1.10.33 of Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum:
“[33] On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”
This was true when Samuel Adams speech at the Pennsylvania State House, August 1, 1776 told the greedy anti-freedom opportunists to “crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.”
When the proposed U.S. Constitution was debated in the State Senates.
To counter those rumors that the “general welfare” clause in the proposed Constitution would authorize any kind of welfare, James Madison, in Federalist Paper #41, explained its clear intent. He stated that it “is an absurdity” to claim that the General Welfare clause confounds or misleads, because this introductory clause is followed by enumeration of specific particulars that explain and qualify the meaning of phrase “general welfare”.
That’s right! Your Constitution was ratified under the assurance that it would never be interpreted to provide welfare to individuals.
This was still true when Congressman Davy Crockett made his famous “it is not yours to give” speech. It is not their money to give, not even for disaster relief in a federal territory.
Why do you want laws that force others to provide for you? You are demanding theft and extortion. It violates the Tenth Commandment to not covet your neighbor’s wealth.
Presidents also warned us
President Franklin Pierce in 1854 vetoed our nation’s first health care bill — a bill to help the mentally ill. His veto said:
“I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity…. [this] would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”
In Genesis 3:19 the unchanging God of the Bible requires you to earn your bread from the sweat of your face.
This principle was still true when Abraham Lincoln gave his second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865: “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces…”
He was talking about slavery. That’s right. Forced welfare contributions are just as immoral as slavery. Welfare and slavery are the same thing. It is using laws to force others to provide you with the fruits of another man’s labor. If you expect others to provide what you want, then you are as corrupt as a slave owner.
This was still true for Grover Cleveland’s veto of government pensions June 21, 1886:
“. . . Every relaxation of principle in the granting of pensions invites applications without merit and encourages those who for gain urge honest men to become dishonest. This is the demoralizing lesson taught the people that as against the public Treasury the most questionable expedients are allowable.
. . . I venture to suggest the significance of the startling increase in this kind of legislation and the consequences involved in its continuance.”
This was still true in 1897 when President Grover Cleveland vetoed an appropriation to provide disaster aid to victims of a Texas drought. His veto stated:
“I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds… I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution. The lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people should support the government, the government should not support the people.”
[my footnote: 1897 was 2 years after the Supreme Court ruled that income tax was unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan Co. — 157 US 429, and 158 U.S. 601],
This was still true for the Teddy Roosevelt speech to the New York City Chamber of Commerce November 11, 1902:
“it is a pleasure to address a body whose members possess to an eminent degree the traditional American self-reliance of spirit which makes them scorn to ask from the government, whether of State or of Nation, anything but a fair field and no favor; who confide not in being helped by others, but in their own skill, energy, and business capacity to achieve success. The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show not only the capacity for sturdy self-help but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.”
Reasonably intelligent answers from the Bible:
The apostle Paul repeated King David’s warning that government charity would be a snare to trap you. Romans 11:9
Galatians 5:15 paraphrase: if you devour your neighbor, you risk being devoured yourself.
Second Thessalonians 2:11 God himself gives them over to strong delusion that they might believe a lie.
Romans 1:28 God himself gives them a reprobate mind.
Christ himself, at the Last Supper, told us to not be like the kings of the gentiles (ie, pagan governments). We are not to be a top-down government of benefactors. Luke 22:25-26
=======================
“Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the left. What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated. Darwinian adaptation to environment applies not only to nature but also to society. … you don’t find leftists concentrated where their ideas have to stand the test of performance.”
— Thomas Sowell, Forbes Magazine, The survival of the left, Sep 8, 1997
Birthright citizenship is a lie. People often insist that birthright citizenship comes from the Fourteenth Amendment, just because it mentions born.
In the Supreme Court decision Elk v. Wilkins in 1884 (112 US 94):
“The persons declared to be citizens are `all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’ The evident meaning of these last words is, not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.”
Don’t be fooled by the Supreme Court’s use of the word persons. The plural of person is people, not persons. There is a maxim of law Homo vocabulum est; persona juris civilities. “Man is a term of nature; person, of the civil law”. So therefore, The Supreme Court’s criteria, quoted above, for 14th Amendment personhood: Complete, direct and immediate allegiance to someone else’s civil servants.
“We The People” created the government.
“We The People” (state citizens) created the Federal Government and are responsible for controlling and correcting the creature we created. State citizens ARE NOT automatically also federal citizens. Notice that the Supreme Court said “direct and immediate allegiance.” This is allegiance to someone else’s civil servants. It is another level of subordination away from “We The People” (state citizens) who created the Federal Government.
If you are subject to the federal government’s laws THEN YOU CANNOT BE ONE OF “We The People”. Even Vice President Thomas Jefferson reassured us that state inhabitants are subject to only three federal laws. In his 1798 Kentucky Resolution, state inhabitants are not subject to federal laws, except for the three crimes mentioned in the Constitution: piracy, treason, and counterfeiting, “and no other crimes whatever”.
He went on to state that federal power to create crimes within States cannot extend further — “(and all other their acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes other than those enumerated in the constitution) are altogether void and of no force, and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and of right appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own Territory.”
And the U.S. Supreme Court ruled twice that the first eight amendments of the U.S. Constitution do not apply to people in states. If you are not subject to federal laws, then you are not protected by federal laws, such as the first eight amendments in the bill of rights.
BORN
How can a newborn child owe “direct and immediate allegiance” to any political body? After all, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government said that parental rights are all based upon “divine revealed law” in the Bible, and that children when they are 21 years old would choose which government to place themselves under.*
The 1941 US Supreme Court decision Edwards v. California, 314 US 160 ,stated at page 183:
… birth within a state does not establish citizenship thereof.”
Susan B. Anthony wanted to vote. The federal court ruled that she was not a 14th Amendment citizen.
U.S. v. Susan B. Anthony, 24 Fed 829 (1873) “The rights of citizens of the state, as such, are not under consideration in the fourteenth amendment. They stand as they did before the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, and are fully guaranteed by other provisions.”
Feudal Law
Citizenship by birth on the soil (jus soli) has never been true in America. This type of citizenship excludes “the children of foreigners, happening to be born to them while passing through the country” (as was the minority opinion in the Supreme Court’s Wong Kim Ark decision). Jus soli was created by feudal law. (see Amos S. Hershey, Essentials of International Law, MacMillian Publishing, 1912, at 237).
All serfs born on the soil are property of the landlord. It is the duty of attorneys to Attorn.
But what about federal citizenship?
The 14th Amendment’s phrase “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” uses the definite article “the” jurisdiction. The 13th Amendment used the plural “their jurisdiction”, which refers to the several states.
And in Kitchens v. Steele 112 F.Supp 383 the court determined that “A citizen of the United States is a citizen of the federal government…” — as if one has to volunteer into citizenship by claiming to be one.
U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542: “The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a State, but his rights of citizenship under one of these governments will be different from those he has under the other.”
In 1887 the Supreme Court in Baldwin v. Franks 7 S.Ct. 656, 662; 120 U.S. 678, at 690 found that: “In the Constitution and laws of the United States, the word “citizen” is generally, if not always, used in a political sense, to designate one who has the rights and privileges of a citizen of a state or of the United States. It is so used in § 1 of Article XIV of the amendments of the Constitution,… [NOT] the same thing as resident, inhabitant, or person.”
The U.S. Supreme Court in US v. Cruikshank, 92 US 542 at page 551 said: “The citizen cannot complain, because he has voluntarily submitted himself to such a form of government.” YOUR NATURAL BIRTH WAS NOT VOLUNTARY.
How does birth voluntarily* submit yourself to government?
Answer: It does not.
for the sad story of how you waived your rights in exchange for benefits, read my book The Citizen Cannot Complain.
In United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 was denied re-entry to the U.S. even though he was born here.
In Ludwig Hausding’s case (1895) he was born in the United States, but resided in Europe since his infancy. Supreme Court says: not a citizen.
In Flemming v. Nestor, in 1980, the Supreme Court said Mr. Nestor could not receive Social Security that he paid into. He was not a citizen.
If you don’t know how to defend your rights, you will lose them. I recommend that you study all the basic law procedures explained in “How To Win In Court” self-help course.
– – – – – –
* John Locke’s Second Treatise of government, which was the foundation for most of the Declaration of Independence, in his Chapter 6 “Paternal rights”, says that a child is not subject to legislated laws until he is old enough to make binding contracts. He said in paragraph 57: “for nobody can be under a law, which is not promulgated to him” and later in paragraph 73 when children become 21 years old they can choose which government to place themselves under, and, according to paragraph 62, this cannot happen until they have the recognized right to take binding oaths of allegiance.
According to Samuel Adams, in his speech at the Pennsylvania State House, 1 August 1776 — some prefer the tranquility of servitude to the contest for liberty, and some do not. He told the anti-freedom people to “crouch down and lick the hands which feed you”.
Some people yearn to breathe free, but not everyone.
Some people want to live in a free country, some do not.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism — according to Thomas Jefferson, April 24, 1796, Letter to Phillip Mazzei
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin, November 11, 1755; Reply to the Governor. This is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the Statute of Liberty.
The U.S. Supreme Court said “the use of identification papers are routine matters under totalitarian regimes, yet abhorrent in the United States…” — Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500.
“Those who already walk submissively will say there is no cause for alarm. But submissiveness is not our heritage.” — according to the U.S. Supreme Court in Laird v. Tatum, 408 US 1, page 28.
A right cannot be taxed. Once you pay for a right, you have waived your right.
If someone purports to exercise a duty that he is not expressly authorized to perform, and in the process denies you a right provided by law, he violates the Klu Klux Klan Act of 1873.
If you cooperate with the boot on your face, a judge can legitimately say that you volunteered. The moment you obey an unlawful order — is the moment you recognize a counterfeit authority as legitimate. Estopple waives your right to complain.
Every Law Dictionary will tell you The civil laws reduce an ungrateful freeman to his condition of slavery. Libertinum ingratum leges civiles in pristinam servitutem redigunt.
A word of advice to Christians:
Cowards have their place in the Lake of Fire — according to Revelation 21:8.
God gave you a free-will. Do not reject God. Christ delivered us from Caesar. Stand firm in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free.
A word of advice to patriots:
According to the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence it is the Laws of Nature and the laws of Nature’s God that entitle the United States to exist.
Obedience to a counterfeit government is mutiny against lawful government. Do not deny the legitimacy of lawful government.
A right cannot be taxed. We have Creator endowed unalienable rights that governments are instituted among men to secure — not destroy. The power to tax is the power to destroy — this famous quote is from the U.S. Supreme Court case McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 327 (1819). Daniel Webster, in arguing the case, said: “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy,”
U.S. Supreme Court in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 US 105 overturned a state license tax as unconstitutional:
“It could hardly be denied that a tax laid specifically on the exercise of those freedoms would be unconstitutional. Yet the license tax imposed by this ordinance is, in substance, just that.
It is a license tax — a flat tax imposed on the exercise of a privilege granted by the Bill of Rights.
A state may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the Federal Constitution.”
U.S. Supreme Court in Butcher’s Union v. Crescent City 111 US 746:
“The property which every man has in his own labor, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. … to hinder his employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbor, is a plain violation of this most sacred property.”
That’s right. Your labor is your most sacred property. How did you waive the right to your most sacred property? I should think that an honorable man would want to know why he no longer has a right to his most sacred property.
Those who receive not a love for the truth shall receive strong delusion that they should believe a lie.
President Jefferson, concluding his first inaugural address, March 4, 1801:
“… a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government… “
Under the U.S. Constitution, in 1798, Vice President Thomas Jefferson reassured the people of Kentucky that they were free from all federal laws, except for the three crimes mentioned in the Constitution, “and no other crimes whatever”. He went on to say:
“(and all other their acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes other than those enumerated in the Constitution) are altogether void and of no force, and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and of right appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own Territory.”
That’s right. People in States are free. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
A dissenting opinion in the Supreme Court case Spreckels Sugar Refining v. McClain 192 U.S. 397:
“Keeping in mind the well settled rule that the citizen is exempt from taxation unless the same is imposed by clear and unequivocal language,..”
U.S. Supreme Court in McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 US 316:
“We find, then, on just theory, a total failure of this original right to tax the means employed by the government of the Union, for the execution of its powers. The right never existed, and the question whether it has been surrendered, cannot arise. … The power to tax involves the power to destroy.”
“The power to tax may be exercised oppressively upon persons, but the responsibility of the legislature is not to the courts, but to the people by whom its members are elected.”
And no, the 16th Amendment did not change this. The US Supreme Court in Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240 US 103 (1915)
…it was settled that the provisions of the Sixteenth Amendment conferred no new power of taxation.”
The Stanton case is confusing. As you puzzle your way through it, don’t forget that the defendant is a mining company profiting from a federal privilege.
Unknown to me, I found out too late that the IRS was taxing my wages in order to pay the perfectly legitimate indirect tax for an underground coal mine that I did not know about — and does not exist. If you are NOT a federal employee, your IRS files will prove that YOU ARE BEING TAXED FOR A FEDERAL PRIVILEGE that you do not know about. My story is throughout the pages of NotFooledByGovernment.com
The Revolutionary War ended when the peace treaty was signed.
The people who signed the peace treaty with the British might just know more than today’s lefty pundits. After all, they authorized the United States to exist.
The Second Amendment:
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.
Notice that it is the right of the people — NOT the right of the militia.
The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to add further restrictions on the government. The Bill of Rights itself says so. Many people think that rights come from government. They have been fooled. Rights do NOT come from government. Government can only take away rights. The Bill of Rights DOES NOT grant any rights. The Bill of Rights adds further restrictions on government. The bill itself (Link) stipulates its purpose:
in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added”.
Some people like to argue about the word “militia” in the Second Amendment. They argue that the right to bear arms is only for the organized militia, or that militias are government agencies with government weapons, or that the militia is only State National Guards. BUT JOHN ADAMS AND THOMAS JEFFERSON WERE THERE AND THEY NEVER HAD SUCH THOUGHTS.
DO NOT BE FOOLED
Don’t be fooled by the word “regulated” in the phrase “A well regulated militia”. It does not mean “disciplined” nor even subject to a chain of command. The word regulated means governed by rules, or “subject to governing principles”. From Latin Regula “a general rule”.
We are already regulated by “a general rule” that created government. The first sentence of Declaration of Independence states that the Law of Nature entitles government to exist. According to Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law (a law encyclopedia published in 1765 and used in the Colonies) This rule of conduct applies with equal obligation to individuals and to nations. And indeed the jura summi imperii is the force that government must obey. For all political power is vested in the people.
THE SECOND AMENDMENT MILITIA IS “WE THE PEOPLE”
Your State’s Constitution will tell you who is in the militia. Read it. And notice that it does not require training as some people suggest.
In the 1939 Supreme Court case U.S. v. Miller, 307 US 174, we learn what the Second Amendment was about. In order to suppress a military coup that overthrows the government, we must be able to show up on the battlefields with weapons equal to the military, in order to take back our government. If you are prohibited from buying weapons equal to the military, then perhaps you do not live in a free country — perhaps “We The People” have lost control of what we created.
JOHN ADAMS signed the peace treaty with the British
President John Adams in his October 11, 1798 letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of Massachusetts:
An address from the officers commanding two thousand eight hundred men, consisting of such substantial citizens as are able and willing at their own expense completely to arm and clothe themselves in handsome uniforms, does honor to that division of the militia which has done so much honor to its country.”
That’s right. Almost 7 years after the Bill of Rights, and 18 years after Massachusetts was a state (by the way, John Adams wrote the Massachusetts Constitution) the militia consisted of citizens willing to completely to arm themselves at their own expense. Don’t be fooled into believing that this has changed. The Constitution does not change. Those who swore to defend it must perpetuate it. Congress has no authority to commit mutiny.
John Adams might just know why we created a government. He signed the Declaration of Independence. He signed the Peace Treaty with Great Britain authorizing the U.S. to exist. He was U.S. Vice President, U.S. President, Ambassador to several countries, primary author of the Massachusetts Constitution, and former Governor of Massachusetts.
Thomas Jefferson also signed the peace treaty with the British
Thomas Jefferson in his “Legal Commonplace Book” quoting a passage is from Cesare Beccaria’s Essay on Crimes and Punishments, originally published in Italian in 1764:
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one.”
Jefferson owned a copy of Beccaria’s treatise in the original Italian. He later purchased an English translation, published in London in 1809, which was sold to the Library of Congress (Sowerby, Entry 2349, 3:21).
JAMES MADISON
Federalist Paper 46 makes it clear that the militia must be able to overthrow a military coup.
“Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.”
There are only three things that are abhorrent in the USA according to the U.S. Supreme Court: Identification Credentials, forced oaths, and forced confessions.
Do not be fooled into thinking that these things are required by the same government that proclaims them to be abhorrent.
By the way, a signature under penalty of perjury is a forced oath. A forced perjury oath.
Identification Credentials
US Supreme Court Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500 (1964):
“Free movement by the citizen is of course as dangerous to a tyrant as free expression of ideas or the right of assembly and it is therefore controlled in most countries in the interests of security. … That is why the ticketing of people and the use of identification papers are routine matters under totalitarian regimes, yet abhorrent in the United States…
Freedom of movement, at home and abroad, is important for job and business opportunities – for cultural, [378 U.S. 500, 520] political, and social activities – for all the commingling which gregarious man enjoys. Those with the right of free movement use it at times for mischievous purposes. But that is true of many liberties we enjoy. We nevertheless place our faith in them, and against restraint, knowing that the risk of abusing liberty so as to give rise to punishable conduct is part of the price we pay for this free society. ..
Freedom of movement is kin to the right of assembly and to the right of association. These rights may not be abridged, …”
… Absent war, I see no way to keep a citizen from traveling within or without the country, unless there is power to detain him. Ex parte Endo, 323 U.S. 283 . And no authority to detain exists except under extreme conditions, e. g., unless he has been convicted of a crime or unless there is probable cause for issuing a warrant of arrest by standards of the Fourth Amendment. This freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart. Like the right of assembly and the right of association, it often makes all other rights meaningful – knowing, studying, arguing, exploring, conversing, observing and even thinking. Once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer, …”
U.S. Supreme Court in Florida v. Bostick, 501 US 429, quoted part of an Arizona case Ekstrom v. Justice Court, 136 Ariz. 1: Here is the more complete quote:
The issue here, therefore, is whether the fourth amendment permits officers to stop and question persons whose conduct is innocent, unremarkable and free from suspicion. The question has frightening implications. The thought that an American can be compelled to “show his papers” before exercising his right to walk the streets, drive the highways or board the trains is repugnant to American institutions and ideals.”
By the way, the 1803 Supreme Court decision Marbury v. Madison, 5 US 137, determined that the elected officers in Washington DC could not be issued government credentials proving who they were.
That’s right! They could not be issued any stinking government badges. Maybe you can take your case up to the Supreme Court and get Marbury v. Madison overturned. But you want it overturned for a different reason than the lawyers expect — the Marbury case was also used to justify the groundless theory that judges can interpret the law.
Compelled testimony
Back in 1956 the Supreme Court determined in Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422 that punishments like loss of a job, or ineligibility for a passport are penalties for criminal acts, and now the same punishments are automatic until you are compelled to deny religious liberty.
“The forfeiture of property on compelled testimony is no more abhorrent than the forfeiture of rights of citizenship. Any forfeiture of rights as a result of compelled testimony is at war with the Fifth Amendment.
”The Court apparently distinguishes the Boyd case on the ground that the forfeiture of property was a penalty affixed to a criminal act. The loss of a job and the ineligibility for a passport are also penalties affixed to a criminal act.
In 1886 the U.S. Supreme Court in Boyd v. United States, 116 US 616, at page 632 explained that
any compulsory discovery by extorting the party’s oath… is contrary to the principles of a free government … it is abhorrent to the instincts of an American. It may suit the purposes of despotic power, but it cannot abide the pure atmosphere of political liberty and personal freedom.”
Oaths
In 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court’s Miranda v. Arizona decision, 384 U.S. 436 at page 459, acknowledged that Miranda’s famous right to remain silent comes from a long history of resistance to oaths.
In the student flag salute case Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 US 624, The Supreme Court said that:
“Such a statutory exaction is a form of test oath, and the test oath has always been abhorrent in the United States.”
The U.S Supreme Court in Girouard v. U.S., 328 U.S. 61 (1946):
The victory for freedom of thought recorded in our Bill of Rights recognizes that in the domain of conscience there is a moral power higher than the State. Throughout the ages men have suffered death rather than subordinate their allegiance to God to the authority of the State.” …
May you learn about the enemy within, and relearn liberty. And maybe you will find out why you tolerate the abhorrent.
US Supreme Court, Laird v. Tatum, 408 US 1, page 28:
This case involves a cancer in our body politic. It is a measure of the disease which afflicts us. … Those who already walk submissively will say there is no cause for alarm. But submissiveness is not our heritage. The First Amendment was designed to allow rebellion to remain as our heritage. The Constitution was designed to keep the government off the backs of the people. … The Bill of Rights was designed to keep agents of government and official eavesdroppers away from assemblies of people. The aim was to allow men to be free and independent and to assert their rights against government. … When an intelligence officer looks over every nonconformist’s shoulder… the America once extolled as the voice of liberty heard around the world no longer is cast in the image which Jefferson and Madison designed, but more in the Russian image …”
U.S. Supreme Court in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, at page 485:
“In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that, in the administration of the criminal law, the end justifies the means — to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face
[Footnote 3] In re Pacific Railway Commission, 32 F. 241, 250, “of all the rights of the citizen, few are of greater importance or more essential to his peace and happiness than the right of personal security, and that involves not merely protection of his person from assault, but exemption of his private affairs, books, and papers from the inspection and scrutiny of others. Without the enjoyment of this right, all others would lose half their value.”
JAMES MADISON, speech in the Virginia Convention, June 6, 1788:
“Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
Dissenting Opinion in Robertson v. Department of Public Works 180 Wash 133, 39 P2d 596 (1934)
Complete freedom of the highways is so old and well established a blessing that we have forgotten the days of the “Robber Barons” and toll roads, and yet, under an act like this, arbitrarily administered, the highways may be completely monopolized. If, through lack of interest, the people submit, then they may look to see the most sacred of their libertiestaken from them one by one by more or less rapid encroachment.”
YOU ALSO MAY BE INTERESTED IN:
My books on Identification Credentials, and Oaths. These provide in-depth history of our right to resist. And plenty of other authorities.
If you want a good online law course that explains procedures and rules on how to defend yourself in their courts, I recommend this self-help course: How To Win In Court.
* Well after the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, which lawyers insist is the “proof” of judicial authority, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Mr. Jarvis dated September 25, 1820 to refute this emerging dangerous doctrine: “To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. … their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible as the other functionaries are, to the selective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.”
