I have an idea of a compromise. We ban all guns, but if you turn them in within a week you won’t be prosecuted. Give a little, take a little.
I might add that to mine, thanks for the idea. Just so people like Haymarket can’t misconstrue my opinions; I might write a manifesto to include my will just for this, detailing my opinion on everything.
We are in a militia.
I’m an able bodied male – and according to dictionary dot com, Merriam-Websters and Wikipedia, that’s the definition!
Well - aside from squabbling over dictionary definitions, there’s federal code that dictates what legally encompasses the militia in the US, and it basically includes able bodied men between 18 and 45, IIRC. Anyone have the code handy?
§ 311. Militia: composition and classes
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
The so called unorganized militia is a wetdream fantasy of the deluded mind of the person hopelessly out of step with the world they live in. We have not had a militia like that in a very long time. Of course, you believe whatever helps you get through the night without having to pull the covers over your head overcome by paranoia.
If you were responding to JXJohns’s post, were you perhaps unaware that he was citing federal statutes? “Unorganized militia” is the federal government’s phrase.
I didn’t give you a moment’s thought, your gratitude is misplaced.
They almost certainly are futile, in the sense that legal mechanisms simply cannot work. We will have to change ourselves and each other, change our people to the point where someone who thinks that their personal possession of a firearm is a Big Hairy Ass Deal will be regarded with bemused tolerance as we back away slowly and look for an exit. The long way, the hard way, the agonizingly slow way…the only way.
If you find me tiresome, you can stop reading. I’ll get over it. Sure, it will be hard at first, but I think I can find the strength to go on…
Thats whats known in these climes as a “Norwegian grin”.
Damn the Federal Government and their wetdream deluded minds!
Those are Federal statutes. They define exactly, according the Feds, what a militia is or is not. Not a wet dream by any means. Which other parts of the US Code do you summarily dismiss as a wet dream?
haymarket, you do know there are lots of people out there who own guns for sporting or historic reasons and not because they’re paranoid, right?
It’s been well and truly established that a shooting like the one at Ft. Hood could have happened any time since the late 1830s, and it’s further been established that firearm design hasn’t changed much since the end of WWII, except for comparatively minor things like materials.
There are plenty of laws which are on the books which are not extended or enforced beyond their existence on the printed page. This is one of them. In the real world of the USA, there is no unorganized militia.
In law, desuetude (from the Latin word desuetudo: outdated, no longer custom) is a doctrine that causes statutes, similar legislation or legal principles to lapse and become unenforceable by a long habit of non-enforcement or lapse of time. It is what happens to laws that are not repealed when they become obsolete. It is the legal doctrine that long and continued non-use of a law renders it invalid, at least in the sense that courts will no longer tolerate punishing its transgressors.
Unless you’re drafted, in which case you instantly become a citizen-soldier fully qualified to be summoned to federal military service. I’ve started a whole other thread about this.
The whole point of the unorganized militia is that it is what it is as defined by US code. No uniforms, ranks, meetings or anything else. As such, it most certainly exists and here’s the capper, if you are a man between 17 and 45, you are a full fledged member too.
JXJohns
thank you for the link. I read it. According to what it says
So if you are using this language to justify the militia as what is referred to in the Second Amendment, then the right to bear arms would only apply to males, between 17 and 45 who are able-bodied (which I guess means able to pass a military physical) and female citizens in the National Guard. By your own standard, you are severely limiting the right to bear arms if you cling to this fiction.
And even then it changes nothing about the language saying it should be “well regulated”.
But again, you can write a law which repeals gravity but a written law means little when reality and custom and practice dictate otherwise. That is what is meant by the legal term DESEUTUDE.
I’m not. I am just detailing yet another area where you are wrong, but because you have an opinion, that is all that matters to you.
No it doesn’t say it should be regulated. It states that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state. No more detail than that.
All I did was post a link for Senor Beef. You had to stick your nose into it an make a claim that the unorganized militia does not exist, when in fact, it clearly does. I never linked membership with gun ownership.
Any written language in law cannot change something which is not in existence into something which is in existence just because there are now words on the page. Not one single thing has been done to implement this language or turn it into reality. It is simply a legal fiction that is outdated by actual real custom and practice and the realities of American life.
There is no unorganized militia no matter how many laws say otherwise. A law can repeal gravity - on paper - but have no effect in real life. So it is with the fiction of an organized militia. In point of fact, one could argue that the very term is an oxymoron in and of itself.
We’ve had this argument in detail dozens of times before, but the quick answer is that it is not the right of the militia to keep and bear arms, it is the right of the people. The militia clause is an explanatory clause rather than the operative clause (hopefully I got those terms right).
And “well-regulated” in the parlance of the time meant “well-functioning” (a clockmaker would regulate a clock to ensure it kept proper time, for example) more than “thoroughly governed by regulation”.
You’re new here, so you don’t realize this has all been hashed out in quite a bit more detail than this thread contains. You can’t search using the board search feature, so I will link you to some old gun control threads which examine the issue. You can also search this site with google by entering “[search term] site:boards.straightdope.com” … for example “second amendment site:boards.straightdope.com”
That list isn’t comprehensive, and I know I’m missing some quality threads because I didn’t quite hit the right search terms, but if you’re interested in learning about the issue that will give you a lot to think about.
Just as an FYI, guests can use the search feature, but only once every 5 minutes.
Thanks for the Google tip, by the way.
I guess if you keep repeating something over and over again, you naturally tend to start believing it. Until the US Code is changed, it clearly states who and what both the organized and unorganized militias are, and all of your hand wringing doesn’t change anything.