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A Democratic congressman from Long Island implied that Americans should grab weapons and oppose President Trump by force, if the commander-in-chief doesnt follow the Constitution.

Rep. Tom Suozzi made the remark to constituents at a town hall last week, saying that folks opposed to Trump might resort to the Second Amendment.

Its really a matter of putting public pressure on the president, Suozzi said in a newly released video of the March 12 talk in Huntington. This is where the Second Amendment comes in, quite frankly, because you know, what if the president was to ignore the courts? What would you do? What would we do?

A listener then blurts out, Whats the Second Amendment?

The left-leaning Democrat says, The Second Amendment is the right to bear arms.

The spectators laughed some nervously. Republicans were not amused.

This video is incredibly disturbing. Its surreal to watch a sitting member of Congress suggest that his constituents should take up arms against the president of the United States, said National Republican Campaign Committee spokesman Chris Martin.

Suozzi political adviser Kim Devlin denied the pol was advocating for an armed insurrection.

But the Suozzi campaign at the same time seemed to double down on the comments, as they forwarded a line penned by Thomas Jefferson that called for armed resistance.

What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms, the quote said.

Suozzis comment seems to conflict with his recent push for gun control following the Parkland, Florida, school shooting.

Suozzi even participated in the March 14 student walkout for gun control outside the US Capitol and called on the young people of his district to back tightened gun laws.

I think we should engage the high school students of #NY03, and all of Long Island, to promote gun violence prevention legislation, he said in a Feb. 21 tweet.

Trump himself has in the past used language similar to Suozzis. During the 2016 campaign, he told a crowd at a rally in North Carolina that if Hillary Clinton were elected and able to nominate a Supreme Court justice, there would be nothing that gun supporters could do. He then added: Although the Second Amendment people maybe there is, I dont know.

The remark was widely seen as a veiled call for violence, though Trump denied that was his meaning.

Suozzi, a first-term congressman elected in 2016, is seeking re-election this fall. He formerly served as Nassau County executive.

He is expected to easily win the Democratic primary and face GOP challenger Dan Debono, a former US Navy SEAL, in the general election.

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Congressman suggests Second Amendment as means of opposing ...

From the Archive: In the wake of the latest gun massacre in the United States, we republish an article byRobert Parry debunking some of the right-wing myths about the Second Amendment that have prevented common sense gun laws.

By Robert Parry (first publishedDecember 21, 2012)

Right-wing resistance tomeaningful gun control is driven, in part, by a false notion that Americas Founders adopted the Second Amendment because they wanted an armed population that could battle the U.S. government. The opposite is the truth, but many Americans seem to have embraced this absurd, anti-historical narrative.

The reality was that the Framers wrote the Constitution and added the Second Amendment with the goal of creating a strong central government with a citizens-based military force capable of putting down insurrections, not to enable or encourage uprisings. The key Framers, after all, were mostly men of means with a huge stake in an orderly society, the likes of George Washington and James Madison.

The men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 werent precursors to Frances Robespierre or Russias Leon Trotsky, believers in perpetual revolutions. In fact, their work on the Constitution wasinfluencedby the experience of Shays Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786, a populist uprising that the weak federal government, under the Articles of Confederation, lacked an army to defeat.

Daniel Shays, the leader of the revolt, was a former Continental Army captain who joined with other veterans and farmers to take up arms against the government for failing to address their economic grievances.

The rebellion alarmed retired Gen. George Washington who received reports on the developments from old Revolutionary War associates in Massachusetts, such as Gen. Henry Knox and Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. Washington was particularly concerned that the disorder might serve the interests of the British, who had only recently accepted the existence of the United States.

On Oct. 22, 1786, in a letter seeking more information from a friend in Connecticut, Washington wrote: I am mortified beyond expression that in the moment of our acknowledged independence we should by our conduct verify the predictions of our transatlantic foe, and render ourselves ridiculous and contemptible in the eyes of all Europe.

In another letter on Nov. 7, 1786, Washington questioned Gen. Lincoln about the spreading unrest. What is the cause of all these commotions? When and how will they end? Lincoln responded: Many of them appear to be absolutely so [mad] if an attempt to annihilate our present constitution and dissolve the present government can be considered as evidence of insanity.

However, the U.S. government lacked the means torestore order, so wealthy Bostonians financed their own force under Gen. Lincoln to crush the uprising in February 1787. Afterwards, Washington expressed satisfaction at the outcome but remained concernedthe rebellion might be a sign that European predictions about American chaos were coming true.

If three years ago [at the end of the American Revolution] any person had told me that at this day, I should see such a formidable rebellion against the laws & constitutions of our own making as now appears I should have thought him a bedlamite a fit subject for a mad house, Washington wrote to Knox on Feb. 3, 1787, adding that if the government shrinks, or is unable to enforce its laws anarchy & confusion must prevail.

Washingtons alarm about Shays Rebellion was a key factor in his decision to take part in and preside over the Constitutional Convention, which was supposed to offer revisions to the Articles of Confederation but instead threw out the old structure entirely and replaced it with the U.S. Constitution, which shifted national sovereignty from the 13 states to We the People and dramatically enhanced the power of the central government.

A central point of the Constitution was to create a peaceful means for the United States to implement policies favored by the people but within a structure of checks and balances to preventradical changes deemedtoo disruptive to the established society. For instance, the two-year terms of the House of Representatives were meant to reflect the popular will but the six-year terms of the Senate were designed to temper the passions of the moment.

Within this framework of a democratic Republic, the Framerscriminalized taking up arms against the government. Article IV, Section 4committed the federal government to protect each state fromnot only invasion but domestic Violence, and treason is one of the few crimes defined in the Constitution as levying war against the United States as well asgiving Aid and Comfort to the enemy (Article III, Section 3).

But it was the Constitutions drastic expansion of federal power thatprompted strong opposition from some Revolutionary War figures, such as Virginias Patrick Henry who denounced the Constitutionand rallied a movement known as the Anti-Federalists. Prospects for the Constitutions ratification were in such doubt that its principal architect James Madison joined in a sales campaign known as the Federalist Papers in which he tried to play down how radical his changes actually were.

To win over other skeptics, Madison agreed to support a Bill of Rights, which would be proposed as the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Madisons political maneuvering succeeded as the Constitution narrowly won approval in key states, such as Virginia, New York and Massachusetts. The First Congress then approved the Bill of Rights which wereratified in 1791. [For details, see Robert Parrys Americas Stolen Narrative.]

Behind the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment dealt with concerns about security and the need for trained militias to ensure what the Constitution called domestic Tranquility. There was also hesitancy among many Framers about the costs and risks from a large standing army, thus making militias composed of citizens an attractive alternative.

So, the Second Amendment read: 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. Contrary to some current right-wing fantasies about the Framers wanting to encourage popular uprisings over grievances, the language of the amendment is clearly aimed at maintaining order within the country.

That point was driven home by the actions of the Second Congress amid another uprising which erupted in 1791 in western Pennsylvania. This anti-tax revolt, known as the Whiskey Rebellion, prompted Congress in 1792 to expand on the idea of a well-regulated militia by passing the Militia Acts which required all military-age white males to obtain their own muskets and equipment for service in militias.

In 1794, President Washington, who was determined to demonstrate the young governments resolve,led a combined force of state militias against the Whiskey rebels. Their revolt soon collapsed and order was restored, demonstrating how the Second Amendment helped serve the government in maintaining security, as the Amendment says.

Beyond this clear historical record that the Framers intent was to create security for the new Republic, not promote armed rebellions there is also the simple logic that the Framers represented the young nations aristocracy. Many, like Washington, owned vast tracts of land. They recognized that a strong central government and domestic tranquility were in their economic interests.

So, it would be counterintuitive as well as anti-historical to believe that Madison and Washington wanted to arm the population so the discontented could resist the constitutionally elected government. In reality, the Framers wanted to arm the people at least the white males so uprisings, whether economic clashes like Shays Rebellion, anti-tax protests like the Whiskey Rebellion, attacks by Native Americans or slave revolts, could be repulsed.

However, the Right has invested heavily during the last several decades in fabricating a different national narrative, one that ignores both logic and the historical record. In this right-wing fantasy, the Framers wanted everyone to have a gun so they could violently resist their own government. To that end, a few incendiary quotes are cherry-picked or taken out of context.

Thishistory has then been amplified through the Rights powerful propaganda apparatus Fox News, talk radio, the Internet and ideological publications to persuade millions of Americans that their possession of semi-automatic assault rifles and other powerful firearms is what the Framers intended, that todays gun-owners are fulfilling some centuries-old American duty.

The mythology about the Framers and the Second Amendment is, of course, only part of the fake history that the Right has created to persuade ill-informed Tea Partiers that they should dress up in Revolutionary War costumes and channel the spirits of men like Washington and Madison.

But this gun fable is particularly insidious because it obstructs efforts by todays government to enact commonsense gun-control laws and thus the false narrative makes possible the kinds of slaughters that erupt periodically across the United States, most recently in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 schoolchildren and six teachers were murdered in minutes by an unstable young man with a civilian version of the M-16 combat rifle.

While its absurd to think that the Founderscould have even contemplated such an act in their 18th Century world of single-fire muskets that required time-consuming reloading right-wing gun advocates have evadedthat obvious reality by postulating that Washington, Madison and other Framers would have wanted a highly armed populationto commit what the Constitutiondefined as treason against the United States.

Todays American Right is drunk on some very bad history, whichis as dangerous as it is false.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, Americas Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (fromAmazon and barnesandnoble.com).

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The Rights Second Amendment Lies Consortiumnews

In November 2007, the novelist David Foster Wallace wrote a short essay for a special edition of The Atlantic on The American Idea. Writing about 9/11 and all that came after, Wallace proposed what some might consider a monstrous thought experiment:

Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, sacrifices on the altar of freedom? In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of lifesacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Wallaces point was that, in the wake of 9/11, a host of policies had been put in placethe Patriot Act, warrantless surveillance, private contractors performing military dutieswithout a substantive public debate about the trade-offs they represented and whether they were worth it. Wallace wanted to know what it said about us as a people that we were unable or unwilling even to consider whether some things might be more important than safety.

Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrificeeither of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious? he asked. And if we would not have such a conversation, What kind of future does that augur?

More than a decade later, we are still incapable of serious discussion of the trade-offs between safety and freedom. For the most part, were not even able to admit that such trade-offs exist.

Are you ready for another monstrous thought experiment? What if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to mass shootings is part of the price of the American idea? In some ways, mass shootings are a more apt example of what Wallace was talking about than terrorism. After all, we can arguably do something about a worldwide ideological and religious movement that uses violence as a political weaponand we have. Whether the aggregate cost in American blood and treasure has been worth it is another question, but it suffices to say that we can do much less about a random madman intent on killing innocents than we can about ISIS and al-Qaeda.

Set aside, for now, the facile arguments for gun control half-measures that wouldnt have stopped the Parkland shootingor Las Vegas, Virginia Tech, Newtown, or the others. Consider instead what the Left thinks it would really take to stop these kinds of shootings: a repeal of the Second Amendment, followed by mass confiscation of firearms and subsequent heavy regulation of private gun ownership, along the lines of policies in many European countries.

Im not trying to be provocative. Thats really what it would take. Are we willing to consider it? Should we? What does it say about us that we cant even acknowledge the trade-offs involved in keeping U.S. school children safe? The best we could manage last week were the worn-out, ritualized responses: outraged calls for anemic gun control measures from the Left and a naive insistence from the Right that tackling mental health issues will somehow solve the problem.

The New York Times Bret Stephens, for one, is at least willing to be honest about the thing. Back in October, he wrote a column calling for repealing the Second Amendment. Theres of course much to criticize in Stephens argument, beginning with his cherry-picked statistics that fail to explain how, despite a recent surge, the murder rate, and violent crime in general, has been plummeting since the 1990s even as gun ownership has steadily increased.

Im not going to pick apart Stephens piece (my colleague David Harsanyi did a fine job of that shortly after it ran). The point is that Stephens plainly states what most liberals are unwilling to admit: if we really want to stop gun violence in America, were going to have to make fundamental changes to our constitutional order so that the government can wrest guns out of the hands of Americans.

To suggest anything less is intellectually dishonest because anything less simply wont work. Its no surprise, then, that Joe Scarborough took to The Washington Post on Friday to argue for stronger background checks, a ban on bump stocks, and assurances that military-style weaponswhatever that meanswill stop finding their way into the hands of terrorists, domestic abusers and the mentally ill. He puts these forward as substantive policies that will not only make a difference but wont require rewriting the Bill of Rights, neither of which are true.

Or consider the refrain that immediately popped up on social media after the shooting: that guns should be regulated like automobiles. Sure, there are myriad ways we could do that, from requiring things like insurance and a license, to heavy restrictions on what sort of guns manufacturers are allowed to sell to the public.

But of course owning and driving a car is not a constitutionally protected right, its a privilege that comes with certain duties and costs. If were going to regulate firearms like cars, were going to have to decide that owning a gun will no longer be a constitutional right but a heavily regulated privilege. If we do that, were going to have to be honest about what that means: changing the very nature of the constitutional system Americas Founders designed.

Here it must be said that the Second Amendment was not meant to safeguard the right to hunt deer or shoot clay pigeons, or even protect your home and family from an intruder. The right to bear arms stems from the right of revolution, which is asserted in the Declaration of Independence and forms the basis of Americas social compact. Our republic was forged in revolution, and the American people have always retained the right to overthrow their government if it becomes tyrannical. That doesnt mean that private militias should have tanks and missile launchers, but it does mean that revolutionthe right of first principlesundergirds our entire political system.

That might sound academic or outlandish next to the real-life horror of a school shooting, but the fact remains that we cant simply wave off the Second Amendment any more than we can wave off the First, or the Fourth, or any of them. They are constitutive elements of the American idea, without which the entire constitutional system would eventually collapse.

In this, America is unlike the European nations that gun control advocates like to compare it with. Germany can restrict the right to bear arms as easily as it canand doesrestrict free speech. Not so in America. If we want to change that, it will involve a substantial diminishment of our constitutional rights as we have known them up until now. After last weeks school shooting, some Americans are okay with that, especially those families who are grieving. But I suspect most Americans are not willing to make that trade-off, and might never beunless they suffer the same of kind personal loss.

Returning to Wallaces thought experiment, we might rephrase it like this: is the Second Amendment worth dying for? Thats another way of asking what the American idea is worth. Its not an easy question, and I dont pose it lightly, as Im sure Wallace didnt.

But its one we need to ask, even in the face of heartbreaking and devastating loss. Is ours a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices of our personal safety in order to preserve our democratic way of life? If we will not sacrifice some measure our personal safety, are we willing to sacrifice something like the Second Amendment? If so, what else are we willing to sacrifice?

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Is The Second Amendment Worth Dying For?

Weve seen some clarifying moments in the media since the Florida school shooting. If nothing else, the secret desires of the gun-grabbing crowd have been exposed as they feel more emboldened by a tide of national outrage. Rather than the usual calls for sensible gun laws or more background checks, some have simply come right out and called for the repeal of the Second Amendment. (Which is what a lot of them wanted all along, but were too timid to say it in polite company.) There are petitions popping up online all over the left, including places like MoveOn and Change.org.

Luckily for them, theyre getting some celebrity endorsements for the idea. I noticed one on Twitter last night from none other than singer and actress Alyssa Milano. She was blasting out a virtual poster explaining that the Second Amendment was a dumb idea because of all the other things which were popular in the same year that it was adopted.

This is apparently the sort of thinking which infects the minds of those who want to end gun rights. Take a look at that list. Certainly there were some ideas baked into the cake of 18th-century society which are abhorrent when viewed in the modern day. Slavery and gender inequality could be considered popular ideas for many living in that era. But lead paint? I dont know if that was popular so much as simply being the accepted industry standard before anyone had any idea how bad lead is for human beings.

Cholera, smallpox and typhus? Does anyone honestly think those were popular in the colonies? Oh boy, honey. I hear theres another outbreak of smallpox. I sure hope we get some of that here!

Dying during childbirth? I hate to disillusion Ms. Milano, but that was as much of a tragedy then as it is now. The same goes for unsanitary surgical procedures. Medical science simply hadnt advanced enough at that point. Nobody was praying for infections and amputations after surgery. And dont even get me started on chamber pots. If youd shown any of the colonists an actual modern toilet they would have sold like hotcakes.

Were traveling on foot or on horseback popular at that time? Does the former star of Charmed think that the rest of the world was driving cars at that point, but the idiotic settlers in the new world were opposed to them? People walked to get around or, if they were fortunate enough, might have been able to afford a horse.

Milano is supposedly taking some time off from acting so she can travel around the country and lead the way in various activist morangings, raning from #MeToo to repealing the Second Amendment. Shes going to be spending some time in Houston this month doing precisely that. But if this is the leadership that activists settle on, theyve got a long, uncomfortable slog ahead of them.

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Alyssa Milano explains why the Second Amendment is horrible

A Guide to the Second Amendment

The Second Amendment, or Amendment II, of the United States Constitution is the amendment and the section of the Bill of Rights that says that people have the right to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment was adopted into the United States Constitution on December 15, 1791, along with the other amendments in the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights were introduced into the United States Constitution by James Madison.

The Text of the Second Amendment

There are two important versions of the text found in the Second Amendment, but the only differences are due to punctuation and capitalization. The text of the Second Amendment which is found in the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights is the following:

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.

What Does the Second Amendment Mean?

The Second Amendment is only a sentence long. However, there are some very important phrases that need to be carefully looked at. Here are some explanations for key phrases in the Second Amendment.

Militia: During early American history, all males who were between the ages of sixteen to sixty were required to be a part of the local militia in their towns and communities. Almost everyone during this time used and owned guns. The few men who did not use or own a gun were required by law to pay a small fee instead of participating in the military services of their communities. These militias defended the communities against Indian raids and revolved, acted as a police force when it was needed, and was also available to be called upon to defense either the State or of the United States of America if it was needed.

Bear arms: When the Second Amendment was written, arms meant weapons. The word arms did not necessarily only mean guns, but it definitely included guns. The Second Amendment did not specifically explain what categories or types of arms nor did it list what weapons were considered arms. When you bear arms, this means you physically carry weapon. You may have arms in your home as well as on your person.

Shall not be infringed: The Second Amendment does not grant any right to bear arms. Furthermore, the rest of the Bill of Rights does not describe any right to do so. These rights are thought of as natural rights or God-given rights. In the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment is just a reminder to the government that they should not try to stop people from having this right.

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