Right, the gun crowd thinks that line was just randomly in there, no relation to the rest of the text. Funny how the other amendments in the Bill of Rights don’t have extraneous observations inserted in them, like:
But look: your side and my side can argue this point until the cows come home. Where the rubber hits the road is what at least five Supreme Court Justices say the Second Amendment means. And the Court did not rule that it protected an individual right to firearms until 2008. And what do you know, it wasn’t quite so obvious to the entire court: this decision squeaked by, 5-4, with the majority being the usual suspects of Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Roberts, and Kennedy. Two members of the minority (Breyer and Ginsberg) are still on the Court; two others (Souter and Stevens) have been replaced by Obama appointees Sotomayor and Kagan. I would not expect either of them to join the five conservatives, would you?
That means your version of the Second Amendment is not on bedrock–more like hanging by a thread. Scalia and Kennedy will both be 80 when the next president is sworn in. You’d better hope a Republican wins the White House next year, or we are definitely back to “well regulated militia” territory, baby!
The militia, at the time of the writing of the Bill of Rights, were a non-governmental privately organized group of people willing to defend their home, town, and country against outside invaders or tyranny. It’s worth noting, for example, that if the militia was a governmental military force, there would be no reason for the 2nd Amendment to exist. Why would the government ever not want to arm its own military?
Over time, the definition of the word has changed, such that it no longer references a citizen organization. But that doesn’t impact the Bill of Rights at all. After all, if the government was to choose to accept a redefined version of the word, that would effectively mean that the government was removing the 2nd Amendment without going through the proper mechanism of amending the Constitution.
Officially, the Bill of Rights really only does allow militia members to bear arms. But it was expected that this meant all able-bodied men who were willing to fight for the safety of their fellow citizens - since that’s who the militia was. Based on later amendments, we should assume that all able-bodied women would be included. But, since the government has no right to decide who is or isn’t a member of the militia, it must be assumed that if someone is buying a weapon, they are doing so as under their own cognizance as a militia-man.
From the standpoint of the Supreme Court, the specifics are probably more hassle than they’re worth, so it’s easier to just declare a right to individuals to purchase arms rather than to militia-members, but technically it’s not true.
On the other hand, one would hope that the Supreme Court would not approve a capricious law, for example, outlawing marijuana.
One would hope that if the government has legalized alcohol and cigarettes, both of which are more addictive and dangerous than marijuana, that the Surpreme Court would strike down a capricious law that banned marijuana. Likewise, if there’s no positive, causitive correlation between the proliferation of guns and homicides, then any law which sought to take guns away from the populace would be a capricious act by the government.
For the government to decide what does or does not constitute a well regulated militia would open the ability for the government to restrict access to weapons to any particular militia based on the government’s discretion, which would allow them to bypass the 2nd Amendment without going through the amendment approval process. Consequently, they must accept any positive statement that a militia exists and that it is well-regulated as a truth.
But again: you could have the best argument in the world (though you certainly don’t), and if the Supreme Court wants to rule a different way, they will come up with a rationale for it. I mean, I’m pro-choice but I know better than to think the right to abortion is actually in the Constitution. What the Court does is decide what it thinks is right for a modern society, and then come up with an ex post facto legal rationale. Which is a horrifying thought to many, maybe most, people–but I’m fine with it.
I would usually agree, but given that you were trying to pull a link between the effectiveness of firearms as a weapon of war in WWI and the legality of personal firearms in the United States, I’m less inclined to find amusement between tortured logic and hilarity. Usually, there’s a correlation, but sometimes it gets old.
As said before, I’m a Doper. My goal is to fight ignorance, not to provide Supreme Court journalism. The point would remain that there’s no relationship between the availability of guns and homicides so all lobbying, advertising, and internet debate which seeks to remove the rights for people to own guns is actively nefarious. Just as it would be to work to deprive people of buttons or philips screwdrivers. Not necessarily greatly nefarious, but still robbing people of something that they wanted, purchased, and have every reason to think was of no interest to anyone else and none of their business.
I’d add that we don’t actually *have *to prove a damn thing. As long as we just *want *to regulate or ban guns, and we get the political muscle to do it, we will do it. Even if our main reasoning, deep down, is that guns make us uncomfortable, we don’t like rednecks, and we do like causing rednecks to be full of impotent rage as we take away their favorite toys.
Well, some people don’t like homosexuals, some people don’t like blacks, some people don’t like women, and those people could all (and historically have) had the political muscle to get their legislation passed, devoid of any foundation in reality, logic, or common decency.
If it warms the cockles of your heart, well I guess have fun over there.
No, that’s you interjecting your own interpretation into the mix. The best you can say is that there is no proof that gun ownership is correlated with homicides. You can say nothing about why people want to remove them. You show that your claims are false when you assume the people who disagree with you are nefarious, meaning they are actively trying to cause harm.
I want gun control not to remove guns, but to have a registry so that crazy people can’t get them. I want it to reduce the number of illegal guns out there. I want these bi-monthly spree shootings to stop. Homicide reduction would be nice, but it’s not the be-all-end-all.
It’s never been about stealing your guns, and it’s disingenuous to make that claim. And doubly disingenuous when you pretend to be the type of person who is just stating facts.
And, BTW, I own a couple guns. No bullets since I don’t really use them, but I own them. They were my grandfather’s, and I had no problem with him having a gun, either. He also was someone that would have been legally registered.
You can make up as many new wordings for Amendments as you wish, but that doesn’t change the wording, or meaning, of the 2nd. All of the first ten Amendments are “individual” rights. Unalienable rights of individuals.
You can dream of Democrats banning firearms if that gives you the warm fuzzy feeling you need. However, gun owners and 2nd Amendment supporters are known for actually showing up at the polls, and voting.
Cite? From the polling I’ve seen, most Democrats support the right to own guns. Most Democrats support more regulations than Republicans, but that’s very different than gun bans.
I would of course urge any actual Democratic candidate for office (at least in a purple state, or nationally) to deny, deny, deny any such agenda. Until it’s too late.
