David Hogg: Second Amendment Is Collective Right

[Charlie T Waite]

If you want a hot take on guns and gun rights that probably has no resemblance to reality, you should follow David Hogg’s Twitter feed sometime. Of course, it’s also a place with a lot of stupid that’ll probably cause you to give yourself a concussion with the constant overwhelming need to smack your forehead.

The failed state-college applicant turned Harvard man–if that phrase doesn’t tell you all you need to know about Harvard, I don’t know what will–has said some pretty dumb things, including recently claiming he thinks he’s the target of Russian bots.

But on Wednesday, he went down a rabbit hole of stupid with just one single tweet. Pretty impressive, until you see the tweet.

Now, Hogg isn’t a thought originator. He’s a parrot, repeating what others have told him and making himself sound important so the media will keep fawning all over him.

This ain’t original either.

A lot of people claim that the Second Amendment was never meant to be an individual right. Yet people like Hogg can never answer one simple question in response. If it’s wasn’t intended to be an individual right, then why did the writers use the phrase “the right of the people” in the first place?

In the First Amendment, it makes reference to “the right of the people” to assemble peacefully and to petition the government.

The Fourth Amendment highlight “the right of the people” to be secure in their homes and their property from unreasonable search and seizure.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendment both also reference “the people’s” rights.

How is it, in 50 percent of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, the writers refer to “the people” but it was only in the Second Amendment that they really meant the people collectively and not an individual right?

In truth, any deflection from this fact is nothing more than an attempt to muddy the waters, to make it seem less clear that our right to keep and bear arms wasn’t so the state could have guns or formally recognized militias could, but for you and me to have them.

This bizarre claim that the Second Amendment isn’t an individual right keeps cropping up, and a number of people share it. It’s almost a litmus test for where someone stands on gun control.

Regardless, though, it’s a tired argument that’s been trotted out over and over again.

I find it amusing that people who think Roe v. Wade is definitive and should be the final say on a topic like abortion are so ready to completely dismiss Heller which specifically found that the Second Amendment was an individual right and not a collective one.

The question was answered, and it’s highly unlikely to be overturned on the merits of anything. If it is, it’ll be an activist court pushing a leftist agenda. It won’t be because of anything else, as I’ve clearly shown.

But people like David Hogg will persist, no doubt, to try and insist it’s a collective right, as if that term has any actual meaning in the first place, and consider themselves smart because they believe that.

However, if David Hogg is the caliber of person who can get into Harvard and manage to stay, then we as a nation need to seriously rethink how much gravitas we give Ivy League graduates