Witness Testimony FOR HB 436 and SB 325

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I believe that I can speak on the behalf of thousands of daily listeners to our program.  Therefore I ask this simple question of you men and women who are representatives of the people;

Do you have the courage to stand for the liberty that gave you a representative position?  Does your position not come with the responsibility to defend our State and Federal Constitution and the people therein from all threats both foreign and Domestic?

Our nation is at a crossroad.  Today, you stand as the firewall between a federal government who believes that our State has no say in our own affairs.  That they know what is best for us including the right to disarm the people in direct violation of, not one but two, Constitutions that you yourself have sworn an oath to uphold.

Our founders well understood the dangers of a central government that garners complete control and then uses the courts to support a given conclusion.  A mere 50 years from our nations declaration of freedom from tyranny, Thomas Jefferson warned, “It is too evident, that the three ruling branches of [the Federal government] are in combination to strip their colleagues, the State authorities, of the powers reserved by them, and to exercise themselves all functions foreign and domestic.”  (Jefferson to WB Giles – 1825)

It is the obligatory responsibility of the states to interpose themselves and prevent enforcement of unconstitutional laws.  The Constitutions of both our State and National government are, after all, only pieces of paper.  They cannot enforce themselves.  Only men and women strong in their conviction of liberty can accomplish that defense.  Our states are the only REAL check on federal power.

Edmund Burke is famously quoted, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  And yet we have, as students of history, a long trail of empirical proofs of the path down which our national government strides.  The federal position on firearms and their proliferation is diametrically opposed to liberty for the simple reason that liberty is protected by the 2nd Amendment, rightfully placed with conscious thought, by men who well understood the dangers of an unarmed populace.  The laws and agencies that promulgate and regulate them are themselves in opposition to that unalienable right.  A right that is unalienable can no more be ‘regulated’ than can matter and anti-matter occupy the same space.  Life and Death are diametric opposites.  Liberty and Tyranny cannot simultaneously exist.  Freedom and regulation cannot co-exist.

No amount of rationalization or twisted logical justification can amend our framework document.  Not if we are truly intellectually honest.  Attempting to ‘end run’ the strictures of our Constitutions is the work of men who know the truth of that, yet scheme to defeat that which itself has delivered them into a position of representation and power.  And yet they seek to void that which is the seed of our freedoms.

Alexander Hamilton reproached, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void.  No legislative act contrary to the constitution can be valid.  To deny this, would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than the principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men, acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”

These bills, which this body debates today, are a declaration wherein we cry out our liberty, our States sovereignty and independence, and most importantly; that we support and defend that which has delivered us from tyranny – to liberty.

So shall we rely upon one of the three powers of the same government who seeks to void that most basic and unalienable of our enumerated natural rights?  I think not.  Joseph Desha, governor of Kentucky, in 1825, elucidated that argument quite clearly, “It is the right, as it may hereafter become the duty of the State governments, to protect themselves from encroachments, and their citizens from oppression, by refusing obedience to unconstitutional mandates.  For when the general government encroaches upon the rights of the State, [I ask] Is it a safe principle to admit that a portion of the power shall have the right to determine finally whether an encroachment has been made or not?  In fact, most of the encroachments made by the general government flow from the Supreme Court itself, the very tribunal which claims to the final arbiter of all such disputes.  What chance for justice have the States when the usurpers of their rights are made their judges?”

Today, We the People, seek a declaration of our most basic and fundamental right.  The right to defend ourselves, our families, our State, and if necessary, our nation.  That this august assembly declares this legislation is appropriately exercised and enacted pursuant to the police power of our State to protect the life, liberty, property and freedom of its citizens because these powers are reserved to the state of Missouri and its people under the 10^th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

You can fill one out for yourself here:  http://www.libertytools.org/LibertyTools/witness/witness2.php?template=15