It’s Federal law, the Militia act of 1903, so I dont know how you can’t say it isnt law.
wiki :Dick championed the Militia Act of 1903, which became known as the Dick Act. This law repealed the Militia Acts of 1792 and designated the militia [per Title 10, Section 311] as two groups: the Unorganized Militia, which included all able-bodied men between ages 17 and 45, and the Organized Militia, which included state militia (National Guard) units receiving federal support.
And that’s the* exact same** Militia that the Bill of Right Congress defined, so *they *considered it “well regulated”. It is regulated by Congress. True, they have not seen fit to add a bunch of regulations, but that’s their call.
well it no longer says “white” , but otherwise the same.
Indians too. But remember that the primary impetus for calling the Constitutional Convention in the first place was the difficulty We The People had in suppressing Shays’ Rebellion (white landowners with guns and little respect for law they didn’t like; sound familiar?) under the weak Articles of Confederation system. Article I, supported by the 2nd Amendment, provided a means to deal with insurrections that the Confederation did not.
The writers fucking *told *you their intent. It’s right there in the same fucking sentence. The contortions required to ignore or dismiss it are breathtaking, but still ridiculous.
Not *become *well-regulated, *be *well-regulated. As in, already in the Guard and under military discipline.
That’s the maximum it means, too. It just doesn’t cover anything else.
The people are represented via their state and federal governments, are they not? That’s right at the top of the Constitution, in large bold letters, too. The people, via the government We the People did ordain and establish, own weapons as part of the well-regulated military capability We established. We did under the Articles too, just at state level.
And yet, ‘the writers’ early drafts of the Amendment as well as their other writings contradict your assertion. Something that’s been pointed out to you repeatedly in these types of threads and something you continue to ignore. But then, your own antics and contortions to ignore this have been pretty breathtaking, if amusing.
It’s a moot point in any case, as the supreme court has finally come off the fence and stated that it’s a personal right. I think this is a logical extension of actually bothering to look at the intent and writings of the authors, but at this point it’s neither here nor there…it’s settled.
Now it’s a matter of what can be done about it, assuming something should be done. And the way to do that is through the process that exists to modify or change the Constitution by the introduction of new Amendments…one of which could essentially vacate the 2nd and remove the right. All your ridiculous antics trying to ‘prove’ that it only applies to a militia, as well as the antics to say who is or isn’t in the militia are meaningless hot air and hand waving at this point and basically get us no where. Instead of continuing to beat this dead horse you and the rest of the anti-gun folks need to move on to something more effective. If you want REAL change, then you are going to have to suck it up and use the process as it was intended…which means you need to convince a large majority of American voters that they really don’t need and don’t want a personal right to keep and bear arms.
I’m not sure what else to say except that basic grammar dictates that a dependent clause does not limit an independent clause. It clearly does not condition keeping and bearing arms on membership in the militia or allow the government to determine in advance if such a militia was well regulated or not.
Such a thing would be silly in a list of rights: the founders thought that a militia was necessary yet your interpretation would allow the government to destroy the militia by taking away arms and relegating the militia to a branch of the federal government. What sort of guarantee is that? Do you seriously contend that the founders would have been satisfied if before Lexington and Concord, the British disarmed the people and said that the militia was now part of the regular army and manned only by native born British?
Your construction of the amendment would allow the very thing it was enacted to prevent.
There’s nothing in that document about my right to eat red meat but I sure as hell have that right. Not every freaking thing that’s allowed is enumerated; it would be a long, long document otherwise.
Of fucking course a subordinate clause modifies the main clause. That’s what it’s for. Go ask a better English teacher than the one you had.
Guess what? The feds can indeed nationalize the Guard at any time. Amazing, huh?
The Constitution was not in effect at the time of British rule. What the rebels did was, in fact, an insurrection against the lawfully constituted government, the suppression of which required a military force, which is what happened. You’re not helping yourself with that one.
Only because it hasn’t been taken away, obviously. There is nothing in the constitution preventing congress, state, or local governments from making the consumption of red meat illegal.
The second amendment does protect the right of the citizenry to keep and bear Arms - predicated on the assumption that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. The amendment is written 'Because A, B."
It doesn’t say “If A, B” or “If you’re a member of A, then B”. Sadly. So despite the fact that A is pretty clearly false (free states don’t actually need well-regulated militias to be secure), that doesn’t invalidate B.
But it does mean that if modern people cared a flying fig about what the founding fathers thought they should be fine with amending the thing away, since by its own assertion the right isn’t predicated on anything real.
Of course modern people don’t give a flying fig about what the founding fathers wanted, or what anyone wants, really - they just want the ability to cuddle with their guns like teddy bears, and/or to be able to handily murder people. And, sadly, the founding fathers didn’t predict that in a modern world protecting people’s right to murder tools would play merry hell on the country they hoped to protect.
Oh, and on an entirely unrelated note, the idea that every man, woman, and infant in this country is part of a militia is deranged. Just saying.
These debates get bogged down in the notion of arguing about whether all guns should be banned.
Personally I think the argument is to what degree can they be regulated.
The NRA and many gun owners think pretty much not at all. Is there a gun regulation bill (that restricts rather than promotes gun ownership) the NRA has supported in the past 25 years or more?
Myself and others think there should be meaningful regulations on gun ownership yet we are told you can’t do that because the 2nd grants them almost unlimited rights to a gun (and what limits that do exist are still too much and are under regular attack to be revoked or eased up on).
But the 2nd tells us the government should regulate the militia and you tell us the militia = all of us so therefore the government does have the right to regulate guns as it sees fit.
The 2nd says nothing about guns. It talks about “arms”. Arms = any weapon and is by no means restricted to guns and I seriously doubt the FFs really only meant guns when they said “arms”. Yet you certainly do not have a right to any weapon you want. Many are denied to Joe Citizen. So if we all have a fundamental right to arms how is it the government denies us these things?
In the end it is all arbitrary. Clearly the government can draw lines on what you can and can not have as a weapon. They have been doing it all along so I see no reason why that line can not be moved to more restrictive laws on what guns and ammo a citizen can own.
I suspect this is why Scalia added a right to self defense into this despite spending half of his life bitching about having a right to privacy added when it was not in the original.
But we are ok there too. The conservatives have showed us how to limit something like Roe by nickle and diming it to death so we still all have the right on paper but it is so thoroughly whittled away at as to be not much of a protection anymore.
Actually, there was a proposal for instant ID check, something any gun seller could do, even a private party. The NRA supported this. I they also said Yes to Bump Stocks. *"The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations. "
* https://home.nra.org/joint-statement
Yes, the NRA is against most Gun laws. There are several political orgs that want to ban most guns. Why is one worse than the other?
Of course you say “meaningful regulations” without specifying.
And in areas that did have tight gun control, like DC and Chicago, those laws didnt work. Excuses were made of course, always excuses.
CA has fairly tight gun control, but it hasn’t helped in any “meaningful” way.
The problem is that someone proposes “reasonable regulations” which sounds like a decent thing in the abstract, but it turns out that what they are proposing are gun bans.
Just like when Obama talked about “reasonable regulations” and then said that he thought the D.C. handgun ban was reasonable and that the Australian gun bans were reasonable.
Private individuals are not allowed access to the National Instant Criminal Background
Check System, out of privacy concerns, and concerns that people would abuse it to actually enable trafficking.
While I am not a firearms enthusiast and my experiences are colored by who my circle of friends and family are; It appears that many FFLs want to charge what amounts to a significant portion of the of sales for this service, or they refuse to do so because it costs them time to do so.
Every form of regulation is some sort of ‘gun ban’ - it either restricts who can have a weapon, or what you can do with it (including who you can sell it to).
To every person a regulation only sounds reasonable until it effects them. I’m not a crook, so it’s okay to ban crooks from having them. I’m not crazy, so it’s okay to ban crazy people from having them. I don’t (intentionally) sell them to criminals, so it’s okay to make it illegal to sell them to criminals.
All of these bans (except the selling ones) are directly in violation of the plain language of the second amendment. But they’re okay anyway, because the wording of the constitution can be totally ignored if we want to, perhaps painting the ignoring of it as a ‘greater good’.
I consider it a ‘greater good’ if some rando doesn’t have guns with which to shoot people. Why can’t I ignore the constitution too?
AS per usual with the NRA there are a lot of caveats when they propose a gun regulation.
And…
State gun restrictions are worthless. Always have been. Only federal regulations would have any chance of doing something.
For instance fireworks are illegal in Illinois. There are fireworks stores at the border of Illinois and Indiana/Wisconsin. On the last 4th of July I could have shown you with certitude the Illinois fireworks ban is mostly worthless. Guns are the same in this regard.
They fear confiscation, and the Left keeps offering up examples that were confiscation, while leaders talk about confiscation.
What do you expect them to do.
Most of these NRA members view firearms as a tool that can be dangerous, similar to a car. They hunt, they enjoy target shooting and because the left is really bad about learning about the subject before getting on their soapbox the proposals are quite clearly based on ignorance or based on ‘scary looking’ firearms.
While the leadership of the NRA is suspect, the penis envying power tripping bravado stereotype is just as vapid as the (much more destructive) welfare mom trope.
If you grew up around people who didn’t view firearms as magical death machines that statement is pretty damn ignorant. ‘Assault weapon’ is a political term that only describes aesthetics, and it is just as obvious as a BS term as what Trump uses in his pet causes.
Both sides are driven by fear and there is very little rational talk about the subject.
If the left wants to get bi-partisan support on gun control it would probably be best to choose leaders that actually want effective legislation vs those who use #maga style rhetoric that does nothing but display ignorance on the topic to the other side.
But ya, they assume you are going to ban and confiscate firearms because that is what the left’s rhetoric is shouting at them. It is pretty unrealistic to assume that they will ignore that.
What the rebels did was, in fact, an insurrection against the lawfully constituted government, the suppression of which required a military force, which is what happened. You’re not helping yourself with that one.