There’s nothing strange about it. They really hate the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and they’ll say or believe anything and everything that gets them to that end result they desire, facts be damned. If this thread hasn’t clarified anything else for you, I hope it’s at least clarified that much.
Well, heck, don’t keep us in suspense! Is it their devotion to the Comintern, or in service to their Dark Lord?
I think I’ve read it more times, and read more about it than you ever will, so please keep your false histrionics to yourself. 
The original intent certainly is right there for all too see…for anyone who has bothered to look into it beyond simply reading it from a 21st century perspective with an obvious anti-gun bias. One merely has to look at the drafts of the thing, or read just about any of Madison’s writings, or read the writings of the other people involved at that time to know what they were getting at, and what their intent was.
Well, I asked you this before, because either you do get it, in which case it’s curious how you keep asking the same things, or you don’t get it, which renders the above kind of ironic. I certainly do understand YOUR point of view on this, and I get why it’s important to continue this charade with the militia bit (though I concede that for some it’s not a charade, just ignorance)…it allows you and others of like mind to you to blithely do away with the amendment without going through all the effort of actually using the process. You get to interpret it away, by fiat. Or you would, if you could, but currently that’s not how things are seen. I’m sure that, eventually, you’ll be able to stack the USSC deck with enough people either ignorant of history or who simply don’t care and a case so that you can change that to better suit how you want this to play out.
Or, you know, you could try and simply change public opinion enough to just use the process to change, modify or even vacate the amendment the way that was intended. Since I doubt the USSC will change enough or a case will appear soon enough, that seems like a better use of your time, but you keep on with this attempt to reinterpret it to suit you. It’s worked so well so far after all.
At least we get clarified that guns makes one think one can read minds.
I’ll just say that “in conjunction with” is not equivalent to “while currently serving in” and neither is “for militia purposes”. I’m reading those as “The gun needs to be capable of being used in the context of serving in a militia, although it might have other purposes, too. The person needs to be eligible for militia service even if the person is not serving in a militia at every moment he is in possession of the gun.”
The main difference that is clearly where they part ways with the current jurisprudence is that the gun rights did pre-date the idea of use in the militia. I don’t want to speak for them, but perhaps they hold the view that the constitution does grant rights rather than simply recognizing rights that exist independent of the constitution.
Let’s keep in mind that Obama is on record as recognizing an individual right to own guns in the 2nd Amendment, so it’s not Scalia is offering some view held only be the far right when he agrees with that notion.
OK, perhaps I have been giving Justice Stevens an unwarranted benefit of the doubt. Looking at his recent NYT Opinion piece:
The first sentence is not only obviously incorrect, it is contradicted by the cite he gives in the very next sentence, presumably to support his claim. In Miller, that 1939 case he references, the majority opinion rests on the idea that a particular weapon can be banned if it has no relation to service in the militia. If “[the 2nd Amendment] was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation” then no such rational is needed. Ban the thing, because we can! Is the guy senile, or just so invested in his political position that he doesn’t even realize what his own cite says? A cite whose details he should be intimately aware of.
:dubious: IANAL, but I’m not sure that “not limiting the government’s authority” means the same thing to lawyers as “allowing the exercise of the government’s authority completely unrestricted scope”. ISTM that courts don’t tend to look kindly on “just because we can!” arguments for legislative restrictions.
In any case, Stevens makes it perfectly clear in the next paragraph that he recognizes the Second Amendment as having “limited coverage”, not “absolutely no coverage”. But I think he’s right in noting that whatever coverage the Second Amendment did have in a national-security sense is functionally obsolete nowadays, and the best course would be just to repeal it.
I think in that next paragraph his reference to “limited coverage” means “limited to covering of the actual militia, not the people”.
BTW, I’m with him on abolishing the 2nd amendment. I agree that it’s an anachronism. The whole militia bit doesn’t make much sense in the 21st century. But we haven’t gotten rid of it. And I’m not at all comfortable with the idea of letting a court just get rid of it for us.
A serious debate? Great!
Where is this serious debate, I seem to have gotten lost into the petty-name-calling sub-page…
Yes, obviously.
We do have a SCOTUS ruling that completely redefines it, removing the explicit limitation on its extent and inventing a different rationale from whole cloth. That’s pretty much just getting rid of it.
I guess it depends to a large extent on whether you think the constitution (and specifically the Bill of Rights) grants right or recognizes rights that already exist. I’m not sure how one squares the former position with the 9th amendment, but then cognitive dissonance isn’t particularly rare.
Did you read that article?
By the NRA’s count, governors since 2013 have enacted 382 “pro-gun” bills — many widely expanding access to firearms.
The article is about how more pro-gun laws have passed with NRA backing than gun control laws have been passed, which the NRA hasn’t supported.
In that now a militia, not being “necessary,” meaning it is not a civic thing anymore, or legally workable, means that the amendment is dead, and stopped having meaning in peoples lives in the 21st century.
Why do gun rights derive from 300 year old considerations?
Of course it grants rights. What rights exist without a social construct ensuring those rights? Anyone that talks about natural or god granted rights is talking philosophically at best, as the one who grants you a right is the one who protects it.
If guns are a natural right, then it would be impossible to take guns from you. Nature or god or the universe would prevent it.
As rights are in fact granted by social constructs, it is those social constructs that are enforcing them. Now, because they are made of people, they are flawed, and your rights may be violated, but then you have the ability to address those grievances within the same construct. If you are depending on your right being protected by it being a natural right that already exists, who are you going to address your grievances to when nature fails to protect those rights for you?
The constitution does not discover rights that already exist, it grants rights to those it covers. These rights are protected by other people, who have an interest in keeping their own rights, so have an interest in protecting yours as well.
I am not sure why would think that the social construct known as the 9th amendment is any more of a god given or natural right than anything else that mankind has codified. It requires no cognitive dissonance to understand that it was meant to be a “that which is not prohibited is permitted” type of thing, to differentiate it from other legal systems that are the opposite (“that which is not permitted is prohibited”).
I am curious as to what you are thinking the meaning of it is. Some people take it to mean “that which is not prohibited in the constitution may not be infringed”, but that’s a cognitively dissonant position, as that means that congress effectively cannot make any laws, and any laws they have made are unconstitutional. I’ve heard that among sovcits, but never in any mainstream discussion.
What exactly is the cognitive dissonance in believing that the constitution codifies rights that the government is to grant and protect, while not taking the 9th amendment to mean that rights naturally granted and are simply discovered, rather than granted.
An option with a small, but real bonus! Arcane, abstract and legalistic arguments over the 2nd can still continue unabated. Spectacular displays of mental gymnastics may yet thrive! Only theology offers as fertile a ground.
If only these questions could be debated by means of interpretive dance! I would definitely pay to see that.
Scalia himself denounced “jiggery-pokery” and “argle-bargle” when he didn’t like the result.
And, per that cite, he also once said in a decision “Ask the nearest hippie”. And here you are.
Yes, and? But the NRA seems to be Ok with laws banning bump stocks.
There is some level of disagreement on that.
My apologies for not responding. We had a death in the family and it has occupied my time (had to travel, no access to a computer except my phone).
Because those considerations haven’t been legally deemed “dead”. I’m in agreement 100% that the 2nd amendment is an anachronism, but I also understand how we change it-- that process is right there in the constitution. You and I thinking it’s no longer relevant is not a legal argument.
I agree, but we can’t ignore the fact that our founding document speaks directly of such natural rights, nor can we ignore the 9th amendment which is quite clear about rights not being granted by the constitution. That’s history, not philosophy.
I’m fully on board with the idea that rights are a social construct. But I can’t reasonably just dismiss those who disagree. It’s in our national DNA, like it or not.
I’m very sorry to hear about your loss. No apologies needed.