The argument isn’t that there’s an invisible asterisk at the end, it’s that fully half of the entire text describing the right pertains to protecting the state from the Wolf Menace.
Are you actually saying that, given your version of the 2nd Amendment, that the extinction of wolves shouldn’t suggest that the right to keep and bear arms is actually no longer necessary for the stated purpose of the right (the security of a free state)?
You may find the argument unpersuasive, but suggesting that no such argument is possible is kind of ridiculous.
I don’t see it. If I say that because you need to study, I am giving you this computer, then I have placed no conditions on the gift. No court in the world would say that the gift is reversible if you drop out of school or don’t study enough. I haven’t given you a computer that you have a vested right in. If I wanted such a gift to be conditional, I would need qualifiers such as you may only have the computer so long as you were in school, or more to the point, you may only have guns if in the militia service, or on wolf patrol.
However, as Terr correctly points out, the right to keep and bear arms pre-existed the second amendment. The structure of the text states that it is recognizing and not granting a right. If it was granting a right, it would say, “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the people are hereby granted the right to keep and bear arms.” The structure recognizes that the people already have that right.
Almost universal among people who want to own silencers; outside of that set, it’s probably only a small minority that even thinks about the issue. That said, if a serious legal initiative was mounted it would probably face a lot of very shrill and ignorant opposition from people who see silencers as “magic murder hiders,” implements solely of clandestine assassination. Of course that’s all Hollywood nonsense and has nothing to do with how silencers (or to be more accurate, suppressors) are used in the real world.
I think this argument doesn’t make sense. There is no reason to include the first part if the second part is supposed to be absolute. The fact that it is included means that assessing its truth is necessary. If considering the first part was not intended, I can’t figure out why it was included. Laws don’t need to justify their existence, and none of the rest of the Bill of Rights does so.
I do not think it is reasonable to discard the part about militias. If they took the time to mention it, it must have something to do with its implementation. This would hold even with Terr’s wording.
I mean, the constitution doesn’t say “Freedom of dissent being important to the function of a democracy, the right to freedom of speech and the press shall not be infringed.” If it did, then arguments that it only refers to political speech would be valid.
To recap, the right to bear arms is a natural right and part of the right to defend oneself. Therefore, it does not require government approval.
“Infringed” is not the same as “abridged.” That’s because all natural rights may be abridged by law for one reason or another. Thus, male citizens may be forced to procure firearms and receive training in militias, but they may also be forced to register the same firearms. They may also be forced to use only particular types of firearms for self-defense but more powerful types for militia training. If they are sent to prison, then it is obvious that the right to bear arms no longer applies to them.
Militias existed during the colonial period, and were used for various purposes, including the need to quell slave revolts.
Unfortunately, the continental army was too small to counter various threats (consider slave revolts, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Western Confederacy, and threats of invasion by European countries), which is why the government needed to form regulated militias. The justification for that was the natural right to bear arms. That’s why we have the Second.
Further definition of regulation can be seen in Art. 1 Sec. 8. Implementation of the Second can be seen in the Militia Acts, which made militia service mandatory for most males of a certain age group.
The same Militia Acts show that the type of firearms needed should not be taken literally (e.g., muskets only). Obviously, the type of firearms required would change given improvements in technology. The point is that the government essentially forced citizens to serve in military units that received orders from it.
Given that, what led to the irrelevance of the Second? The first is probably the formation of the National Guard together with a very expensive standing army that used more sophisticated armaments, vehicles, etc. The second is the removal of conscription.
Does this also work for “In order to help you with school, I will provide you with internet access.” If I agree to this, am I now responsible for providing internet access in perpetuity?
The way folks talk about the militia aspect of the 2nd would suggest that, legally, we can ignore the initial modifier and focus on the “affirmative” part of the agreement, that “I will provide you with internet access.” Granted, the modifier is not a complete sentence, but that does not render it meaningless.
What the 2nd really does is affirm that the government will not abridge the right. Which also recognizes that, without such an affirmation, the government has the ability to restrict the People’s access to weapons.
Generally speaking, absent government restrictions, we have the “right” to do anything we want.
This is incorrect. The United States Constitution constructs the federal government by enumerating its powers and responsibilities. Any power not enumerated is a power not held by the federal government, a fact recognized in the Tenth Amendment. I tell ya, Alexander Hamilton must be spinning in his grave.
Suppose, hypothetically, that another Amendment asserted the right of Americans to defecate in the middle of the library if they recite the alphabet backwards while doing so. Suppose that some municipality starts fining, unconstitutionally, the defecators. Would you feel the same outrage as you do with the Gun Amendment?
IOW, what I wonder is: Why, on debates about the 2nd Amendment, is its utility irrelevant? It’s treated as axiomatic as though it were one of the Ten Commandments inscribed by the Finger of Yahweh.
I know the Second Amendment wasn’t really one of Yahweh’s Commandments. One gets the impression some Americans think it was.
Thanks for the near-tautology. I’m still curious why the people who want to own silencers want to own silencers.
Because based on over fifty years of turmoil in 17th century England, and their own revolutionary experiences, the Founders strongly believed in the principle later espoused by Mao Zedong: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”.
Suppressors are great for being able to fire guns (especially indoors) without leaving you deaf for half an hour. The first episode of The Walking Dead for once showed what really happens when you fire a gun in an enclosed space.
So, you are actually saying that the 2nd amendment is completely irrelevant since the Constitution doesn’t explicitly enumerate the power to regulate firearms?
This was the exact argument by those opposed to the Bill of Rights: If we list things that the national government cannot do, then someone, someday might think that it can do anything else! In response, the 9th and 10th amendments were passed which eased these concerns.
From the opinion you hold, those amendments don’t seem to be enough.
That’s a fair question, but it’s one you did not ask. There are any number of reasons, but chief among them is to improve safety and reduce noise pollution. Guns are extremely loud, and serious and permanent hearing damage is a risk without hearing protection – but adequate hearing protection reduces a shooter’s awareness of his environment. There’s also the “ooh, cool” factor, although this is easy to overstate. With the exception of low-velocity, small-caliber ammunition (like subsonic .22LR), a “silencer” doesn’t do much better than to give you a tolerable “BANG!” instead of an eardrum-shattering report.
Yes. Hence my allusion to Hamilton and the Federalist Papers.
Quoth the Hamilmeister in Federalist #84:I go further, and affirm that bills of rights […] would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?
I’d like to violate the living hell out of the Second Amendment, too many people get killed needlessly by people who use it as a pretext for advancing their weaponry fetish, and by gun manufacturers who are only advancing their financial interests. The Second Amendment was a mistake.
In addition to what Stealth Potato stated, I think it’s helpful to realize how little suppressors actually reduce volume. Most suppressors will only reduce the noise level by about 30 dB. where even a small handgun firing will be about 160 dB. The result is a noise that is still very very loud, but less likely to cause hearing loss. It’s really for safety.
No you’re right. It’s much better to have armed bands of self-appointed vigilantes roaming around effectively asserting their “rights” as they define them.
Not all of us are as comfortable as you are with the wealthy elite having control of everything. If you define your rights as the right to be assraped by today’s versions of Frick and Carnegie, then we are well on our way to what you will consider Utopia.
