By C. Richard Archie, TFA Director
I was sitting in the House Civil Justice Committee hearing room on March 8, 2023, listening to the parade of Administrative Department heads, representatives and liaisons. I was struck by how government has taken possession of the “truth” by way of video.
Like the January 6th Committee cherry picking through thousands of hours of videotape to build a false narrative, these taxpayer funded representatives of Bill Lee’s administration were using their version of events to push out to the People their justifications to deny and remove Constitutional Rights. These taxpayer funded administration representatives worked to construct a scenario that did not occur, which they manufactured from whole cloth to set an agenda. Before my eyes, the administration’s minions, per Orwell’s 1984 tactics, were creating newspeak.
Recently released videos show a totally different set of facts occurring on January 6th. These previously suppressed videos show Capitol Police leading the “invaders” inside, dead police officers walking on video and even more evidence that what the “government” has said for the last two years was not the “whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Democrat and Republican leaders alike are openly decrying the release of raw footage for America to finally review and, worse, draw their own conclusions regarding the facts of January 6th. These “government first” operatives are in shock that Tucker Carlson would expose other parts of the videos because, as these government agents clearly indicate “we can’t have that, the government is the final arbiter of truth.” To quote an old movie axiom “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
Which brings me to the hearing on House Bill 1005 on March 8th. Paraded before the legislators and the camera are the Heads of the Administration’s various departments. TBI, Department of Safety (and their Legislative Director) and the Governor’s “spokesperson”, all singing from the same page of the government hymnal on those pages indexed under “opposition to a basic right of the People to keep and bear arms.”
Lead off batter was TBI Director David B. Rausch who assured us that he has done a deep dive into Bruen and Heller and in his opinion the take away that the People should accept from those two Supreme Court opinion is that guns in the hands of the People are “dangerous” as he was misquoting Thomas through Scalia in Heller when he read the part about government being able to control dangerous and unusual weapons. Director Rausch missed the part (or, if in fact he did the exhaustive reading of Bruen he portends, refuses to recognize) about the 2nd Amendment protecting the right of the people to carry weapons in common use. He says that the 2nd Amendment does not allow for modern made long guns to be kept anywhere other than inside one’s home, and only handguns are permissible under the “ruling of the court”. He further says if we must bitterly cling to that outdated notion that free men be allowed the benefit of the promise the original, then he guesses muskets would be “OK” if we just have to have our long guns.
Representative Geno Bulso very calmly attempted to get Director Rausch to admit to an inaccurate interpretation of Buren and Heller, as the Director was the one who raised them in his testimony. Time and again Rep. Bulso brought up facts that the Director just blatantly ignores and misrepresents. One of the worst examples is the assertion by Director Rausch that Scalia did not “go that far” in Heller when asked about Scalia’s profuse statement on modern arms being under the umbrella of 2nd Amendment protection.
But what Scalia in Heller is not subject to debate. He said:
“Some have made the argument, bordering on the frivolous, that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment. We do not interpret constitutional rights that way. Just as the First Amendment protects modern forms of communications, e.g., Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844, 849, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997), and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, e.g., Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 35–36, 121 S.Ct. 2038, 150 L.Ed.2d 94 (2001), the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”
District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 581-82 (2008)
More sinister than just a simple inability to read and comprehend the plain words of the Supreme Court’s opinions is the boldness of these administration operatives to suggest, and even say aloud, that the 2nd Amendment does not confer individual rights to the citizens, rather it gives power to the state to “regulate” who, what, when and how arms by be borne by non-criminals at the State’s desire.
One need not rely solely on Heller and Bruen to prove that lie. Our own Tennessee Supreme Court concluded in 1871 in Andrews v. State saying:
“The right to keep arms, necessarily involves the right to purchase them, to keep them in a state of efficiency for use, and to purchase and provide ammunition suitable for such arms, and to keep them in repair. And clearly for this purpose, a man would have the right to carry them to and from his home, and no one could claim that the Legislature had the right to punish him for it, without violating this clause of the Constitution.”
Scalia says in Heller:
““Finally, the adjective “well-regulated” implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training. See Johnson 1619 (“Regulate”: “To adjust by rule or method”); Rawle 121–122; cf. Va. Declaration of Rights § 13 (1776), in 7 Thorpe 3812, 3814 (referring to “a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms”).””
District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 597 (2008).
Thus, the constitutional inclusion of the term “regulated” was a specific referenced to a well trained, armed and equipped citizenry. These Administration spokespersons and some legislators misuse the phrase to suggest the existence of an inherent power of government to regulate and infringe a right that exists in the People prior to and independent of whatever government might presently hold office. Anyone who suggests otherwise or that proposes that a government created by the People somehow has the authority to infringe that God-given jewel bears close watching and justifiable distrust.
In conclusion, the evidence of the obfuscation on the part of our taxpayer funded employees, whether elected to positions of power or appointed to them by those who are elected, is on film – just as the truth about what really happened on January 6th is on film. What you might hear or see them say in public statements must be measured by what they say and do when they portend to “tell” our elected members of the Legislature what the Governor’s Administration thinks the law should be and what they think their power to limit our rights is.
Each of the “rights obstructionists” must, as an element of being a public official, promise to uphold and defend the Constitutions of the state and Union, and to take an Oath per Article X, Section 1, of our State Constitution. The fact that they have taken that oath shows one of two things. They do not understand the rules or they are making up their own. As administration officials, they are not allowed to interject their “feelings” into the matrix of our rights, only text and history are viable for use in scrutiny of our 2nd and 14th Amendment rights. Let your own eyes and minds be the filters, do not accept what the government “shows” you.
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