I’m surprised Cecil seems to have missed the obvious interpretation of the phrase ‘well regulated’ at the time the constitution was written - it meant not ‘having correct restrictions’ but ‘well practiced’. And Jefferson himself was rather clear that the whole point was to allow the citizenry to rise up and cast off their own government again and again if need be, and as such was the real lynchpin behind constitutional government just in case the president started ignoring the judiciary, and/or congress.
Link to what I assume is the column under consideration: What does “the right to bear arms” really mean? - The Straight Dope It’s considered helpful other readers to provide a link, to save search time and to keep us on the same page.
Gorbag, I’m a li’l puzzled, because if you read down to the second entry (that’s a column with a follow-up), you’ll see Cecil saying pretty much exactly what you described?
Runaway acrimonious gun-control debate followed by hasty relocation to GD in 5… 4… 
The only fresh (to me) addition to this exhausting argument I’ve ever read was Thom Hartmann’s piece explaining that the real reason the 2nd amendment says “state” instead of “country” (the framers knew the difference) was to preserve the southern states’ slave patrol militias.
Go read the article if you’re interested; if you reject the idea out of hand, well, so much for open-mindedness.
Something I’ve never understood: if we have an absolute right to keep and bear arms, why can’t we have field artillery? Or nuclear missiles? Seriously, why not?
Really, you people need to change your constitution. There are countries far older than the US that aren’t hidebound by an ancient scrap of paper. It’s not normal.
And how many of them have continuously maintained parliamentary democracy and the rule of law for 230-some years…?
Sounded to me like Cecil found the topic more serious than usual. Maybe he blows off steam varmint hunting… equipped like he’s auditioning to be in a Call of Duty game. Or stymie tyranny. If you can stop a MOAB by targeting it with a rocket launcher you sure as hell can stop the government squeezing one of the firearms in your arsenal. Or commit poodle genocide. And we have issues with homosexuals in this country. Continuously maintaining parliamentary democracy for 230-some-odd years like the Founders envisioned and reality demonstrated.
A fairly persuasive piece, but I’m concerned by the logical leap he makes at the end. Does he have any actual evidence that Madison changed the wording of the ‘keep and bear arms’ amendment specifically to placate the Virginians? Or just Hartmann’s supposition based on the other quotations?
Powers &8^]
re Madison changing country to state - does not seem a unreasonable supposition (if it is a supposition). It’s certain the word was changed, and it seems a fact, based on documentary evidence that the correspondents (for lack of better word) were in favor of such a change vis a vis country/state.
Actually all countries are hidebound to an ancient scrap of paper. Its called the U.S. Dollar. (For now anyways.)
The majority of the population on earth are hidebound to interpretations of their holy books, all even more ancient scraps of paper. By comparison, the Constitution is the equivalent of a CD.
In order to understand the second amendment (and the other amendments), you must remember these are amendments to the Constitution and not part of the original text, and you also must understand the role Shays Rebellion played.
It was Shays rebellion that drove things over the top. The federal government had no money to help protect the Massachusetts government from the uprising that was threatening the government of the state. In the end, a private militia was raised to defeat the Shaysists. Having private militias running around fighting each other isn’t exactly conducive to good government. Shays rebellion scared the state governments into action to create a stronger federal government.
It would certainly be an anathema to those who were involved in the Constitution that the second amendment gives various groups right to armed insurrection whenever they don’t like the results of the last election. The idea that the people rise up as one united mass to overthrow a government in some sort of quick, clean revolt would have been thought of as sheer ignorance. These people knew what an insurrection looked like. It involved neighbor against neighbor, property destruction, loss of life, and for a good chunk of the population, exile. Armed revolt would be the last thing on their mind.
To understand the amendments, look at the arguments being made against the Constitution. These are documented in newspaper articles, pamphlets, etc. Federalist Paper #29 tried to address some of the arguments over the federal power to regulate the state militias. Could Congress regulate them out of existence? If so, how would the states enforce their own laws? What good would a state government be if it couldn’t enforce its own laws.
What I find most interesting about the second amendment is that it has a prefix. None of the other amendments try to explain themselves. The closest is the Fourth Amendment which states The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…, instead of talking directly about the requirement for warrants. However, you can argue that this clause is necessary because without it, it would merely list a requirement for a warrant, but not necessarily spell out that it’s actually required.
Yet, the second amendment starts off with A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…. If this was really just affirming the right of people to have arms for any reason, why not leave it out and state directly The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Unlike the fourth amendment, the prefix doesn’t add anything to the mix.
The best people can do to argue that the amendment is about the personal right to bear arms is to make strange arguments about organized vs. unorganized militias or to point out the placement of punctuation. They do their best to belittle the preceding clause and try to diminish its importance. It just takes away from what they think is the clear meaning of the amendment.
However, if you think the clause is important, the whole meaning of the amendment becomes clear. This is an amendment for state sovereignty. It gives the states the right to arm their own militias and overcomes the objections that Federalist Paper #29 tried to belittle. It allows the states to put teeth into their local laws via a local militia that could enforce thing like revenue laws.
You appear to be too easily reading “state” as meaning one of the 13-or-more component states of the union. (In the 18[sup]th[/sup] century, the capitalization of the word as “State” cannot be relied upon has having any meaning at all.)
Article Five sets out the procedures for changing it. We have done so nineteen times. On average, about once every eleven years.
Changing it is not supposed to be easy. After all, if your party can change it on a whim, what happens if your opponents win an election?
Your country gets infested by chavs?
I would like to see a cite that Jefferson was really in favor of armed rebellion against this constitution. I thought the point of this was to set up a government that can be overturned by voting and with checks and balances to keep really bad stuff from happening.
I’ve recently read that Patrick Henry argued for the second amendment so that southern states could protect themselves from slave uprisings. And that there were slave rebellions that were put down by the southern states.
Henry was concerned that Virginia would have to wait until congress approved a militia and that could take too long. Virginia should be able to protect herself from rebellions. (by slaves)
Well, I found the article fairly interesting. But I really like that I had to look a couple of things up. I had a very hard time believing there was a lawyer out there named Carl Bogus… but there sure is. Go figure, a Bogus attorney. I also had never run across the word “nugatory”, though I got the meaning from the root and the context.
Yeah, that would certainly by my question. Based on the website and author, there is certainly an agenda to one degree or another and he does not cite any source material except the quotes and there was certainly much more to this discussion, if in fact, it was all one discussion. I don’t have it right in front of me, but I believe the debate at the Virginia ratification convention went on for several months.
To quote the article:
This doesn’t seem to fit the timeline as I understand it. After all, Virginia ratified the Constitution before the amendments were submitted by Madison. And Henry and Mason did not vote for ratification anyway. If I recall, the vote was very close - 10 or so vote difference. So, why change the language?
I reject your “open-mindedness” challenge but will respond to Hartmann’s BS.
Thom Hartmann doesn’t appear to understand, or maybe doesn’t care, that the term “the people”, as used five time in the BOR, does not apply to the government or to the people acting on behalf of the government. While a governor, as an individual citizen, would still be considered to be one of “the people” and entitled to the protections of the BOR, a governor acting as the leader of a State would not.
The BOR was established to define the rights of the people, not the rights of the government. The government has no such rights. The U.S. Constitution defines the government. The BOR does not apply to the government. The government has no right to free speech or peaceable assembly. The government has no right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. The government has no right to keep and bear arms. The government can pass laws giving it the capability to do those things but the government has no inalienable rights.
The Preamble states -
The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
The BOR was created to limit the governments ability to restrict the rights mentioned in the BOR.
Hartmann is also deliberately confusing the Revolutionary War with the Civil War. All of the original 13 colonies had slavery. While the issue of slavery was not properly settled during the Constitution ratification, there were no Southern slave states vs Northern non-slave state issues. (Even in the Civil War there were five slave states that remained with the Union.)
Hartmann states, “In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were also called the “slave patrols,” and they were regulated by the states.” Since Hartmann talks about the Georgia Militia as a “government” formed and regulated militia. It’s obvious that any state or the federal government can form and arm it’s own militia/army. If the colony of Georgia created the Georgia Militia, then the Georgia Milita is NOT the type of militia referred to in the 2nd.
I also question Hartmann’s babbling about a scripted question spoken by a fictional character in a Hollyweird movie, actor Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained. Who cares what a non-existent, fictional character says about anything? Did Lincoln actually slay vampires?
You can claim this, but you can’t make anybody else believe it.