I get the “bear means carry firearms”. I don’t see how you infer the purpose the FF had for the bearing.
It wouldn’t take much evidence to convince me that the FF intended them to be on people’s persons in case the militia had to be called up in a hurry. (You know, given what the second amendment says and all.)
How I infer the purpose? It’s right here (from Heller):
Do you also take the position that the bearing of arms was only contemplated in context of militia service? How do you reconcile that with Heller which says that the prefatory clause doesn’t limit the operating clause? Heller stands for the right to self defense with firearms outside of the context of militia service.
I’ll just say right now that 1) I haven’t and won’t read the entirety of Heller, and 2) this tells me jack-all about what the FF were thinking.
I take the position that I have no data about whether the FFs intended the borne firearms to be used outside of military service. And disregarding the prefactory clause doesn’t give me this information, either. It’s fraudulent argument to claim that by disregarding something that vaguely implies one purpose is proof that a separate pet purpose was the true intended purpose.
Hell, even if you don’t make a point of deliberately ignoring the prefactory clause, you still don’t know that guns weren’t intended to also be used for vigilante purposes. To infer such would be speculation.
Which is all you have supporting your rather factual-sounding statement too, apparently. Unsupported speculation.
It’s supported by the text of the controlling supreme court opinion. I’ve read it though so I have a leg up on you there.
It sounds factual because it is factual - it’s in the words of the opinion which as a matter of law is controlling.
:dubious:
Revisionist history via judicial activism, then. Got it.
I’ll just stick with the belief that we don’t actually know the founding fathers’ intent - until somebody comes up with a better cite than a latter-day judge’s unfounded statement. (I’ll note that it’s totally possible that better cites exist - the founding fathers were known for writing things down.)
Not sure where you’re going with this. To clarify - Do you think Young was wrongly decided?
I was surprised to see such a radical claim about the intent behind the second amendment - one which would, one would think, greatly color its interpretation. I was curious what the source of this claim was, what information backed it.
Now that I know it was bullshit, I care a lot less about it.
And regarding Young, I would say that every damn time they claimed that the second amendment allows gun carrying for self defense, they’re (apparently) arguing from fraudulent information - they’ve fallen for the bullshit sold by the pro-gun geeks. In actual fact the second amendment just says you can carry guns around period.
Which of course means that it’s not legal to completely disallow both open and concealed carry. Whether that means that open carry had to be legalized or merely that concealed carry restrictions had to be loosened I can’t say; either approach would in theory work. For all I know. IANAL.
Ok, then I take it you don’t disagree with the result in Young. The court in Young does not have the option to loosen concealed carry restrictions since that was not what was being litigated.
It’s a lot of words bemoaning the derivation of intent without actually reading the reasoning in Heller. To conclude that it’s bullshit without reading it is odd.
Oh, there’s reasoning in there concluding based on objective information that the founding fathers intended for the guns protected by the second amendment to be used in vigilante activity? Reasoning based on facts, cites, and founding father quotes and such? Fascinating!
Not fascinating enough for me to read dry legalese, or to believe it’s true without more than an assertion, but fascinating nonetheless.
It is worth noting that it’s all beside the point anyway, since the second amendment exists and screw everything else. But getting real information about why precisely we were stuck with this albatross would still be fascinating.
"Yeah, if that woman hadn’t been dressed like that she wouldn’t have been raped. " :rolleyes:
Blaming the victim- how dare a law abiding gun owner get robbed!
What goal posts? Murder is murder, violent crime is violent crime. We dont have any real accurate figures for all nearly 200 nations for “gun violence” whatever the hell that is, but we do for violent crime and murder.
American is right smack dab average.
I’d like to congratulate you on utterly ignoring everything I wrote. It’s an extremely valuable experience exchanging words with you.
"I don’t blame the law abiding citizen for being robbed or conned, but if he hadn’t had a gun in the first place then no criminal would have gotten a gun from him. That is an indisputable fact." That is blaming the victim, even if you state at the beginning you weren’t.
I will paraphrase “I don’t blame the law abiding citizen for being robbed or conned, but if he hadn’t had money in the first place then no criminal would have gotten money from him. That is an indisputable fact.” or “I don’t blame the woman for being raped, but if she …”:rolleyes:
I cited international figures showing that the USA is dead average in murders and violent crime. You choose to ignore those stats.
I choose to ignore stats irrelevant to what I said, and I’m not impressed by your seeming failure at reading comprehension. And on that note I’ll let you talk to yourself for the rest of the evening; I have places to be.
You excel at asking questions framed in such a way that you get the answer you like. However, whether or not the first part of my answer was responsive to that legal specific (I thought it was), the fact remains that the second part of my answer was definitely responsive to the crucially important larger gun control issue that continues to be a major point of contention in American politics – a point of contention that, as I noted before, concerns an issue so egregious that it has tragic implications well beyond US borders.
Yes, indeed one hopes that justice will always be done, but the specific policy that derives from that maxim depends a good deal on what one means by “justice”. A court might rule, for instance, that based on fundamental and overriding principles of justice common to all civilized societies, the court will not legitimize actions in support of racism or genocide regardless of what laws have been enacted. In her speech on the subject of such unwritten constitutional principles, McLachlin speaks also of the fundamental illegitimacy of less egregious indirect killings, such as deaths from medical neglect – or, one could say by extension, from excessive gun violence, thus touching on the two issues I mentioned above.
If the founders had meant firearms to be constitutionally guaranteed for use in individual confrontations, you’d think they would have said so. Instead they said the opposite. There is no ambiguity in the explicit inclusion of the words “well regulated militia” and “security of a free state”. Yet there is no mention at all of the alleged right to use weaponry for individual protection. No, what you allege is far from clear; it merely exploits a convenient ambiguity in the meaning of the word “confrontation”.
So for hundreds of years, and particularly over the last century, the amendment was understood to confer a collective right to militias or, at best from the POV of “gun rights” advocates, to allegedly be ambiguous. Until hundreds of years later when one Antonin Scalia, apparently endowed not only with mind-reading ability so that he could discern what the founders really meant, but with the even more supernatural ability to know what they would have said if they were alive in the entirely different world of today! And wonder of wonders, it turns out that what they wrote down and enshrined in the Constitution wasn’t really what they meant at all, and what they really meant they never wrote down!
Have you read Heller? Scalia isn’t making it up. He cites original statements from the founders in support. In any event, it doesn’t matter because even if you are right, and you are not, the need for a militia prohibits the type of gun control you seek.
If the federal government can say no handguns or no rifles, and can prohibit the carry of those guns outside of the home, then it has the de facto power to outlaw the militia. That is (one of) the purpose of providing that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” so that the government cannot say, “Sure, you are free to have all the militias you want; you just can’t have arms.”
Remember the founders had experience with tyrannical governments suppressing the militia so they were ready for backdoor methods as well. Further, as Scalia points out, other things flow from that. So, me and fifty of my neighbors are well trained in arms and can form as a militia to protect the community.
As a consequence of that, if a single invader threatens one militia member in his home, he can use his arm and his training and experience to defend himself. By doing so, he defends the other forty-nine of us, as had he been unarmed, the attacker would have succeeded and moved on to the rest of us. This power of individual and collective self defense has been recognized since the beginning of the English common law and was not at law controversial to the founders.
So, even if today we have a professional police force and a standing army that can repel the large invaders, the militia purpose for individual self defense remains. I fail to see how this is judicial activism when it was well understood for centuries.
They did. All (white) men were in the militia. Thus if all men were in the militia , all men could keep and bear arms.
You said it much more succinctly than I did. The argument always seems to assume that the “militia” is some sort of military group that has special status above mere people. As properly understood, the militia IS the people.
Any cite given will either come from a gun control perspective or be pooh-poohed by the gun-fearers here.
I take it you weren’t in Cologne on New Years’ Eve in 2015.
Do you hold that belief for everyone? How about bodyguards?
I’m surprised that the suicide statistic was brought up, because it is usually lumped in with all gun deaths and ignored. I wonder how many gun homicides are committed by a shooter who isn’t a lawful gun owner. Because legal gun owners are, by and large, meticulous about following the law. And the mass shootings that are politicized for more gun control would not have been stopped by gun control laws.
I support homicidal maniac control.
It strikes me as a conundrum - you ask for evidence in the historical record while simultaneously clinging to a shield of self imposed ignorance. The challenge is intractable.
Thank you, it is a skill, though it doesn’t seem to have worked in this instance. I don’t think you’ve addressed how Young is wrongly decided in light of Heller. Essentially you’re relitigating Heller. But the argument you advance is dead. The militia only idea is without legal merit. Academics can surely argue the point but as a matter of law it’s dead. And in that case, Young simply continues what Heller identified acknowledging the existence of the right to carry.
For someone who supports outcome based judging therm sure. I don’t. A judge should follow the law, not what they think the law should be. If the law compels carry be allowed and somehow that translates into some undesirable outcome, then so be it. If the result is sufficiently bad then the law can be changed, but until then no dice.
Here I’m talking about Heller. Heller makes clear the 2nd protects a right to carry firearms in case of confrontation. That’s from the language of the opinion in Heller. It is with that understanding that Young wwas decided.
This too is an incorrect reading of the historical record. The court has never held the collective right theory as you suggest. In fact, when talking about the right to arms, the court has consistently held that the right is preexisting, not dependent on the constitution at all. Kind of odd that a preexisting right would then limit itself to militias, unless they were also somehow preexisting. But that doesn’t make sense, and your interpretation doesn’t either. Not before Heller, and certainly.not after where it was soundly repudiated.
The Young ruling is only surprising as the 9th’s randompy.selected appellate pool picked 2 judges who respected the rule of law. I’m sure the en banc court will try to change that. But not for one moment should the result in Young be in doubt or questioned for any judge who acknowledges and accepts Heller as controlling precedent.