Actually, there is quite a bit of debate on just what “well-regulated” means as well. If you check this site, you will see that it clearly means that there was to be no governmental oversight of the people’s right to bear arms at all. Since the militia was defined in those days as “the whole body of men capable of bearing arms,” then there it is obvious that the Amendment means just what it says: The People have the right to own firearms, and the Government has no say in it whatsoever. This is a position I heartily agree with. 
Nope…I’m not whooshing you. English isn’t my native language. I really didn’t know it was ‘bear’ arms. To me, thats just too funny…people in the US have the right to hairy black arms they can keep for themselves. Thanks btw…I always thought when people said ‘the right to bear arms’ they were either kidding or had made a mistake.
-XT
And of course, by using the other meaning of the word “bear,” you get my favorite T-shirt: a picture of a large grizzly holding an AK47, with the caption Support Your Right To Arm Bears.
I don’t wish to be pedantic, but are you aware of the conditions under which the United States came to exist? An armed citizenry rebelled against an organized governmental power. Each village had been putting together thier own militia, with no governing authority, for years, and the formation of the Continental Army came AFTER the shooting had already started. Washington was put in charge of a militia that already had organized itself.
They did “consider the consequences,” and making sure “effective revolt” was possible is EXACTLY what the framers had in mind: it is what they had just done and they all believed the threat of it happening again is what would keep a government in line.
Argue they were wrong or that times have changed if you like, but arguing that it isn’t what they meant is an absurdity contradicted by mountains of textual evidence. Heck, use some common sense and a timeline.
Define “well-regulated.” The militias that fought at Concord and Bunker Hill had officers, they drilled together, they kept supplies, they kept records of members, etc. Hence they were not a mere mob, which was what some conventional wisdom of the day would have assumed an armed citizenry to be: ergo they were “organized.”
You will recall the lawful government of the colonies had no problem with the colonists having small arms hunting gear, but the cannon and large stocks of powder stored at Concord were plainly military; that was deemed too much and they tried to sieze them. The Revolutionary War was ignited because the men of Lexington and its environs fought to defend what they believed were their rights as average citizens to possess military equipment outside governmental control.
Given that the framers constantly said they were creating a government different than the one they overthrew, it seems unlikely they were overturning a right men had already died to have.
furt, if your last post is true, then shouldn’t it follow that my family and friends must give up our guns? We don’t drill regularly, we don’t keep supplies, we don’t keep records of our members (because there is no membership and therefore no records), and we don’t belong to any organizations that do any of the above.
Since we don’t drill or keep records, I’d say we’re not very well-regulated.
You are misrepresenting what that survey said. It indicates that 75% of Americans interpret the 2nd Amendment as creating an individual right to bear arms. I bet most of those people are unaware that it includes the “phrase well regulated militia.” Basically, this was a test of Americans ignorance about the 2nd Amendment. It unclear that the question asked was worded in such a way as to make the distinction between the individual and collective rights clear, and there’s no reason to think that the conclusions reached in the press release written by the pro-gun group you linked are accurate. It could be that the 75% who think that the 2nd Amendment creates an individual right to arms also believe that the 2nd Amendment ought to be changed. I don’t know if a majority of Americans believe that individuals ought to have a right to possess arms, and this survey doesn’t help answer that question.
So it can’t possibly be that they do in fact hold the opinion that the 2nd Amendment applies to individual rights. That 75% must not know what it really says, because if they did they would never agree that it protects individual rights. It’s their ignorance of the wording of the Amendment that makes them think that. It must be that they’re stupid, because no rational person could ever think that…
…err…
Right. :rolleyes:
By God, I’m proud to be counted with the 75% of people that are considered stupid by the effete gun-control snobs that comprise the learned, educated 25% of the population.
As much as your right wingers wish to sneer at ivory tower intellectual liberals, the majority of average joes you poll on the street have not studied this subject in depth. Therefore they are ignorant about the subject. Not stupid, just ignorant.
What’s wrong with giving more credence to informed opinions rather than uninformed opinions?
Nothing at all. Are you saying that people like UncleBeer and myself are uninformed? We’re very informed, and yet we believe that the 2nd Amendment presents us with the individual right to own firearms.
What makes you more informed than the people that answered the way they did in that survey? And why do you write the results off to ignorance? Could it be because it doesn’t offer you the results you wished for? Yep, I think that’s it.
When it comes to interpreting the law, the courts have the final say. The Supreme Court has shyed away from this subject, but the vast majority of the circuit courts have taken the view that the collectivist interpretation is the correct one. This appears to be the legal consensus on the subject.
My opinion is that the Federal Constitution is silent on the subject of whether individuals have a right to bear arms (state constitutions are a different matter, some of them do have explicit assurances of a right to bear arms). This doesn’t mean I’m in favor of gun control, if I were a legislator I’d probably vote against most gun control measures. I just think that our elected representatives have the power to enact gun control laws if they think it’s wise to do so.
I couldn’t care less what the Second Amendment says. It could say “monkeys have a right to keep and bear arms” - I don’t care.
I believe I have an inalienable right to keep and bear arms. End of story. The existence of this right is not contingent on a constitutional amendment. Our constitution could vaporize, the country could erupt into anarchy, and I would still have a right to keep and bear arms.
The problem with so many gun owners and NRA-types is that they pay way too much attention to the wording & history of the Second Amendment, court decisions, John Lott statistics, etc. If you’re one of these people, can I give you some advice? Stop it. The more you bring up that stuff, the more you imply your RKBA cannot possibly exist without them.
Your RKBA does not require the existence of the constitution. (If you believe it does, you must also believe we didn’t have a right to keep and bear arms before 1791.) Suffice to say, your RKBA does not require the existence of the Second Amendment. So stop bringing it up! Your RKBA is also not contingent on court decisions. A federal court says you don’t have a right to keep and bear arms? Screw 'em. And crime statistics don’t matter either. Since when is the practice of an inalienable right contingent on statistics?
When all is said and done, you are left holding your beliefs, which never need to be justified. If you believe you have a right to keep and bear arms, then… you have a right to keep and bear arms.
Well, given that in 1787 there were plenty of people who A) owned guns and B) weren’t a part of a militia and there was no move to stop them, I suspect the founders might say the point of the thing is that you could join a militia and overthrow any tyrranical government that arose.
But if you want to make the case that gun owners must be a part of an organized private militia, go ahead. Those groups make most people a bit uneasy, that would at least make more logical sense than trying to argue that in contradiction of everything else they said elsewhere, in contradiction to the war they just fought and smack-dab in middle of listing the ten most important rights of private citizens they suddenly decide to announce that the government has the right to regulate firearm possession.
chula, that’s pretty pathetic reasoning: they don’t agree with you, therefore they must be reading the law wrong. Why not just argue the amendment is outdated? It’s more honest, and you might have a chance of convincing some people.
[QUOTE=xtisme]
Now, you could argue that today such things are no longer the case and that a new amendment needs to be written that is more modern. However, this falls into a problem…namely that the majority of Americans STILL support the right of individuals to keep and bare arms. Being as we live in a democracy, how do you propose to get around this?
By reframing the debate as follows: The Second Amendment should be repealed, not because the right to bear arms is illegitimate or even unimportant, but because it is not important enough to rank with free speech and the right to trial by jury, etc., as something deserving of constitutional protection, of being set above and beyond the ordinary political-legislative process. There is no political value to gun ownership because the “insurrectionary theory” of the Second Amendment – the idea that the “militia” is intended to be, not an arm of the state, but a countervailing popular force against the state – even if it is perfectly in line with the intent of the Second Amendments’ drafters, has absolutely no defensible value in modern society. Therefore, the questions of whether people should be allowed to own firearms, and under what conditions and what licensing regimes, and what kind of firearms, is really nothing more than a public-safety issue and as such should be left for Congress and the state legislatures to deal with. Taking this position does not equate to endorsing any particular program of gun control. Just how much of an armed citizenry we need is something we can work out through trial and error – and through learning from the experiences of other countries, which is something we Americans do far too little of.
To put this in perspective: Even though I am pro-choice right down the line, I feel exactly the same way about abortion rights. They do not deserve constitutional protection. Roe v. Wade was a very poorly reasoned opinion, and if I were a Supreme Court justice I probably would vote to reverse it for that reason alone. Let the political process sort out all the problems and issues related to abortion.
furt and Airman, apparently you stopped reading my post after the sentence that mentioned Americans’ ignorance. Let me explain again. We can’t tell what the survey asked because all that was linked was a press release from a pro-gun group. From what can be gathered from that press release, it seems the question asked was something along the lines of “Do you believe that the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right of individuals to keep and bear arms?” Anyone might answer yes to this question, without realizing that it was attempting to draw a distinction between the right of individuals and the right of a well regulated militia. It does not ask what conditions they believe should be put on this right. It does not ask whether they think this right ought to be modified. This survey does not measure Americans’ support for the right of individuals to bear arms, as xtisme claimed. It measures Americans’ knowledge and understanding of Constitutional law.
Could have fooled me with most of the far leftwing positions on here being heralded.
Or maybe they did know. Absent evidence, your assumption that they don’t is groundless.
But far more fundamentally, what you are missing is that that “distinction” you make is one that others do not. I daresay nearly every member of the NRA can recite the whole thing.
Did you read Cecil’s article linked in post #2?
This is an honest and intellectualy defensible case; politically I don’t think it’ll fly. The proposed public-safety benefits are both questionable and intangible. “Questionable” because the case that less guns would equal less violence is entirely hypothetical; precedents aremixed at best. “Intangible” because people more or less accept things as they are now; there is no percieved problem. Propose this in the middle of an upsurge in crime and you might have a chance.
As to whether the “insurrectionary theory” is obsolete: maybe, maybe not. Perhaps our form of government is so stable and mature that there is no need for the “bear in the woods” threat of armed rebellion to curb the excesses of government … but maybe not. My own feeling – and I think the framer’s – is that all governments have “mission creep” and will slowly grow bigger and more intrusive over time unless restrained; even if the threat of armed rebellion isn’t needed now, it might be someday; and then it’s too late to start rearming.
I don’t own a gun and probably never will. I’m just the sort of oaf to shoot my foot off with it. But I am frankly glad that there are guys out in Idaho with their eyes on DC and their fingers on their Armalites. I’m not a member of the ACLU and frequently disagree with them, yet I’m glad they exist. Extremists make effective watchdogs.
But that is not necessarily a bad thing, even if the Framers thought it was and even if modern Libertarians and libertarians think it is. In any case, the ballot box is the only form of “restraint” on government that we need.
The scary thing is that I think you actually believe that. If the Government doesn’t trust me with my guns, why should I trust them with theirs? I have absolutely zero faith in the Government to do anything “in my interest.”