Three weeks ago, I discussed how school shootings have become a monstrous epidemic. I also discussed the overshadowed slaughter of American infants that number in the thousands per day.
Last week, I discussed federal gun control restriction laws that are, in fact, breaking the law – not making the law.
Currently, the Trump administration, along with his unconstitutional Department of Education, are coming up with a plan unauthorized by the Constitution that will provide funding to states for improved background checks of gun buyers and fire arms training for teachers in government schools. In order to further his pandering of the gun lobby, Newsmax.com reported the president “has refused to increase age restriction for so-called assault weapons. Instead, a new federal commission school safety will examine the age issue, as well as a long list of other topics, as part of a longer term look at school safety and violence.”
So just where does the president, or Congress for that matter, get the authority to provide funding to state education infrastructures? The answer? Nowhere. The Constitution grants no such authority and there is a specific reason for this.
Ask yourself the question, when has the federal government ever stopped or prevented a school shooting? How can DC bureaucrats effectively keep nearly 100,000 schools safe?
Because they are best equipped, our Founders intended the state and local government agencies to handle these types of circumstances. Your State and sheriffs’ department are the only agencies to this day that are constitutionally authorized to deal with prevention of tragedies inside of the respective states.
How do I know this? Because I have read the Constitution, and nowhere in Article 2 (which defines the powers of the president) is there any executive authority to administrate a Department of Education, or to appropriate funding to any agencies of the government or schools. Furthermore, Article 2 does not grant the president any authority to provide firearms training for teachers. He is to be the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces alone.
To put a finer point on it, you will find nowhere in Article 1, Section 8, authority delegated to Congress to tax and spend for education or school firearms training.
The solution is to keep federal government entanglement out of state school systems and state law enforcement. Allowing the states to handle these critical areas will bring swifter, cost effective, and safer solutions because they are more equipped to deal with their own backyard.
George Washington in his Farewell Address, cautioned Americans that, “If, in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
If the President, Congress, the States, or the American population believes the federal government should assume the aforementioned powers that reside in the States, then they should be working to amend the Constitution, NOT usurp the Constitution.
*** Jake MacAulay *** is a Life and Liberty News Contributor and serves as the Chief Operating Officer of the Institute on the Constitution (IOTC), an educational outreach that presents the founders’ “American View” of law and government. The former co-host of the syndicated talk show, The Sons of Liberty, he is an ordained minister and has spoken to audiences nation-wide, and has established the American Club, a constitutional study group in public and private schools.
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