Texas Senator Ted Cruz's question to California Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein on the Second Amendment in a March 14 hearing forced MSNBC hosts into conniptions!
At the heart of the congressional debate are the questions: Does the Second Amendment prohibit the federal government from passing laws related to firearms, leaving the role exclusively to the states? Or does the Second Amendment grant Congress the authority to pass laws banning guns whenever it believes it appropriate?
The Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights provides that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The term, “the right of the people,” when the framers included it in the Bill of Rights, they used it as a term of art. That same phrase, “the right of the people,” is found in the First Amendment: “the right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances.” It's also found in the Fourth Amendment, “the right of the people to free from unreasonable searches and seizures.” And the question I would pose to the senior Senator from California [Feinstein] is, would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or the Fourth Amendment? Namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books, and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the First Amendment?
The Harvard Law School-educated Cruz's question sent MSNBC's Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough into an on-air meltdown, where Scarborough essentially argued that it doesn't matter what the Second Amendment says.
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