Legally, yes (but only if you’re male). OTOH, the “militia” was never intended to be used against the state (I realize there are contrary arguments), and what other military value or purpose does it have in an age of highly organized and expensive and deadly effective state military forces? And certainly it has nothing to do with personal protection or home defense; you don’t use a “militia” for that.
No, you use the individual militia member. The member does not need to be in the service of the militia at the time he is exercising his rights.
We also have rights enumerated in state constitutions as well. And many of them are pretty explicit that keeping & bearing arms is an individual right with or without a militia.
But that only applies in those states, doesn’t it? It has no implications for federal law. And state constitutions are generally more easily amended than the federal.
I’m a separate legal entity from any corporation I found. The corporation’s creditors have access to the assets of the corporation, but not to my assets. My creditors can place a lien on my car.
I can; you may be asking why shouldn’t I be able to do so.
The answer is that for for-profit corporations, speech has very different properties from when you and I exercise our right to speech. If I take out ads favoring or opposing a political candidate or cause, there may eventually be some benefit accruing to me, but mostly that’s money I have given up, in the hopes that it will further a better society.
When a corporation does the same, it’s an investment, and often pays off quite handsomely. Speech leads to favorable legislation, which leads to bigger profits, which pays for more speech, which…you get the idea.
As long as corporations, in and of themselves, have no limits on their rights to speak, we will have a fundamentally uneven competition between the voices of corporations and the voices of individuals.
How to protect newspapers and other news media if such an amendment were to become law (to belatedly respond to Bryan Ekers’ question) is a question that I have no immediate answer for. But forty years ago, both the New York Times and Washington Post, as well as many other American newspapers, were privately-owned (albeit through private corporations in the case of the NYT and WaPo) and family-run; at that time, too, televised speech was regulated under the Fairness Doctrine. Yet the news got out, without a particularly big boost from the existence of the corporate form of ownership. It’s also apparent that news media and news delivery systems are going to change rapidly in the next few decades; one can hope that however we get our news 25 years down the road, corporate ownership of those delivery systems becomes an option rather than an economic necessity.
So in other other words, any civilian who has not been trained (in the same fashion as a modern soldier) in the proper use of modern arms, is not “Well regulated.” Therefore they aren’t part of a militia and are not protected under the Second Amendment. Correct?
Just out of curiosity, who are these few public officials for whom the Second Amendment does not apply?
Well, privately-owned media didn’t morph into corporate-owned because of some insidious conspiracy; the model of ownership selected for the most efficient given the environment. And if 25 years from now, the corporate model falls by the wayside, it’ll be the market and not the constitution (I hope) that prompts the evolution.
Are you under the impression corporations are evil, or if not evil then unsavoury, or if not unsavoury then disreputable, or if not disreputable then… inherently negative in some way?
Corporations must have Bill-of-Rights protections, or such protections are meaningless. Removing such protections would be an incredibly clumsy and harmful attempt to drive a wedge between capitalism and democracy, which have a proven record of working very well together. It would, in effect, violate the individual’s right to freedom of assembly i.e. a group of individuals are no longer able to pool their resources to accomplish something that benefits all of them (or they can, but the government can swoop in and disperse them at will).
I suppose if one really wanted to eliminate private gun ownership in America, removing constitutional protection would do it. Smith and Wesson inc. could have its inventory seized at will, as could any incorporated manufacturer, distributor or retailer. It’s still legal for individuals to produce and sell their home-made guns, for what that’s worth. Similarly, it’d still be legal for individuals to hand out leaflets expressing their views, or setting up their own websites, for what that’s worth.
One could make a case for that. But that would be a whole other thread.
Declaring that “corporations don’t have the right to free speech” violates ANOTHER part of the consitution, the right to freedom of assembly.
You say that I have the right to stand on the corner and pass out leaflets, but I don’t have the right to get together with like-minded individuals and print those leaflets? I have the right to get on the radio, but I don’t have the right to get together with like-minded individuals, select a spokesman, and send him on the radio?
What about groups like Greanpeace, or the Sierra Club, or the NRA, or Planned Parenthood, or NOW, or the NAACP? Are they banned from purchasing advertisments, or printing leaflets? If the NAACP prints a leaflet and pays people to hand out the leaflet on a streetcorner, will those people be arrested? What happened to the right to free speech?
Yeah, corporations are eeeeevil. Except, how do you ban “corporate speech” without also eviscerating individual free speech. Corporations are “legal fictions” but every action carried out by a “corporation” is actually carried out by an actual human being. Corporations don’t issue press releases, some guy who works for that corporation sits down and writes that press release. Under your plan to criminalize corporate speech, what happens to that marketing guy? Does he go to jail? How can you separate “corporate speech” from individual speech?
Pathetic.
Cite from United States Bill of Rights - Wikipedia
“Initially drafted by James Madison in 1789, the Bill of Rights was written at a time when ideological conflict between Federalists and anti-Federalists, dating from the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, threatened the Constitution’s ratification. The Bill was influenced by George Mason’s 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, works of the Age of Enlightenment pertaining to natural rights, and earlier English political documents such as the Magna Carta (1215). The Bill was largely a response to the Constitution’s influential opponents, including prominent Founding Fathers, who argued that it failed to protect the basic principles of human liberty.”
Also, it is instructive that most of the Magna Charta was repealed.
When?
1216, 1225, 1297
It’s more plausible to argue that one can’t, or at least that those arguing that one can are being simplistic.
Over time. After John’s death the clause that bound his power by establishing a council that could overrule him was dropped. As time went on others were removed. Today only a few remain in force. Wikipedia has some details:
- Tamerlane
So, you’re saying that when Microsoft spends money to support candidates who are pro-big-business, it’s unfair, but when Bill Gates spends money to support candidates who are pro-big-business, it’s fair?
I can just picture the potential legislation that follows removing first-amendment protection from corporations: it becomes illegal for any corporation to run political ads for a non-incumbent candidate. They could call it the “Accuracy in Elections Act” or something equally Orwellian. The effect of the law is to prevent any challenger from advertising in major newspapers or magazines, on television or on radio. The incumbents become even more permanent (the return rate is already pretty high, but it could be higher) and though the papers and the networks argue against such a blatantly unfair law, they no longer have any constitutional basis to challenge it.
If a challenger can only advertise through privately-held media, doesn’t that make the challenger, if he wins, even more beholden to his billionaire patrons, who have not only sponsored his campagn, but publicized it? It’s unclear to me what problem the proposal intends to solve, nor how it will solve it, nor how it will prevent the potential abuses such a constitutional change enables.
No, what the Second Ammendment says is “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”. That can be read as implying that each citizen may carry whatever weaponry he considers reasonable. It could also be read as implying that members of the National Guard are allowed to carry their Guard-issued weapons while on exercises. And it could also be interpreted to mean that everyone in the country is allowed to have their own personal neutron bomb. The Second Ammendment is sufficiently vague that you can’t make any reading of it without relying on interpretations and penumbrae.
But Bill Gates is a private citizen, right? There are probably some taxes he’d like to see decreased, for his own personal benefit. And he certainly has enough personal wealth that he could afford to put up billboards and mail out flyers, if he wanted to. Should he be prohibited from doing so? How is that any different from a corporation with a lot of money doing essentially the same thing?
Don’t even try. In Comrade Firefly’s world, government is the greatest good, freedoms are dangerous and corporations are eeeevil. Just smile and nod.
Bill Gates is a bad example of the upper classes. Still working in the trenches. When I’ve met him at conferences he was always carrying his own bags without an entourage.
My exemplar for the rich should be the Astor progeny that squandered vast wealth trying to overshadow each other.
Since I don’t think anyone’s actually cited it yet: Art. V of the Constitution provides that duly-ratified amendments “shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution,” with the only limitations being that the importation of slaves couldn’t be restricted before 1808, and no state may ever be deprived of its “equal Suffrage in the Senate.” The Bill of Rights is not shielded from further amendment, although for many reasons (many good but some not) none of the first ten amendments have ever been altered/repealed the way Amendment XVIII (Prohibition) was.