I’m arguing along those lines. I’m not pro-gun, just pro constitution. I don’t want to see tortured redefinitions be used to satisfy a trend. We can amend the document if it needs changing.
Most states today have explicit laws against unsanctioned militias, or as the law here in MN says “It shall not be lawful for any body of persons<exceptions>to associate themselves together as a military company with arms”. The Supreme Court decision Presser v. Illinois is taken to uphold such laws.
Then as several people have posted, have the stones to say up front that the Constitution should be amended, and accept it if support for doing so simply isn’t there.
Pretty much. By the end of the 19th century the state militias had long since abandoned attempts to muster the entire male populace and had established a “select” militia of Guard units, which were state armies in everything but name. The 1903 Militia Act more or less recognized this by making anyone who volunteers for Guard duty simultaneously a volunteer for the Army Reserve.
Yes, as a result of the Militia Act of 1903. The “well-regulated militia” indirectly established by the Second Amendment now is the National Guard. The Second also guarantees that it will be armed, which it is.
Or you could amend the de facto sitiuation.
Disband the Army and revert to a militia style army. Obviously without their “keeping the weapons at home” bit. Although they could keep an assault rifle at home, kind of like the Swiss do. If they are a member of the militia.
Back to A1S10C3 again: the states are forbidden to possess troops without “the consent of Congress”. The State Defense Forces were established by a federal law, 32 U.S.C. § 109, which essentially is that consent. The State Defense Forces at least in legal theory ARE state “troops”, and exist at the federal government’s sufferance.
Going back to the “Well-Regulated” clause, the question is whether a provision of the Constitution can be provisional- does a “right” cease to exist if it has no purpose? I will only say that the other provisions of the Bill of Rights have by tradition been broadly interpreted as statements of fundamental liberty, of what a society of free people ought to be able to do. I doubt many people would argue that freedom of the press, or a trial by jury, could become obsolescent if we somehow didn’t “need” them anymore.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I was under the impression that the Swiss have the option to purchase their weapon after they have fulfilled their military obligation.
Why? Lots of old, out-dated laws remain on the books and no one bothers going back and amending all of them.
The pro-gun folks could settle this by passing an amendment without that pesky militia bit in it and that would settle things too.
I believe that’s true.
But you’re not Swiss. You couldn’t handle that responsibility 
Can you back up your assertion that the Militia Act depends on the second amendment?
We’re not shrugging of amendments, we are updating them for a changing world. Unless you either think that laws prohibiting Christian Scientists from denying their children medical care is either unconstitutional or the framers anticipated a religion that endangered children. Or handled snakes. Or used marijuana in its rituals. Or performed human sacrifices.
The Second establishes militias. The Act makes the militias the Guard.
From Wiki:
But(from the same article):
Uh, no. In every document contemporary with the Second Amendment that mentions the subject of the militia, the word is always used in a way that makes it clear that the writers mean the people, the mass of the populace.
Try reading the Antifederalist papers sometime to see how almost everything the opponents of the federal government feared has in fact since come to pass. “Brutus” et al would weep if they could see the modern National Guard and hear someone call it the Militia with a straight face.
Because a provision of the Constitution isn’t a “law”, it’s a fundamental statement of what laws should or should not be allowed. It’s a covenant, the terms under which the people agreed to be subject to a government at all.
What do marijuana and human sacrifice have to do with anything under discussion here?
Threads on this topic generally include assertions that the 2nd ammendment is a problem because the FF’s could not have imagined modern weapons. Did they foresee instantaneous world wide electronic communications? No? Then why do we continue to jealously guard the rights to freedom of speech and the press and apply those ideas to modern communications?
Out of all the arguments that you might bring to the discussion, the Founding Fathers’ failure to imagine an M-16 is the lamest. I’ll echo everyone else who already said it: Your solution is to repeal the 2nd Ammendment.
Seems like a quibble but I’ll go with it.
Still, there is no need to update the second amendment. If we ever go back to militias as they had them then it stands. If we don’t have those types of militias then the amendment sits there and does nothing.
If the point is to guarantee a right for all to possess guns then pass a new amendment that says exactly that (just drop off the militia part in the 2nd and it is settled and crystal clear).
Indeed that is why I maintain that the militia part does have meaning in the 2nd and controls what follows. If the FFs wanted to grant everyone a right to own a gun…full stop…then they could have written exactly that. The FFs were not dumb and not sloppy in their writing of the constitution. I bet every line of the constitution was sweated over ad nauseum. What is in there is what they meant to be in there.
No one is saying that. They sure did’t imagine tanks, guided missiles or fighter-jets.
I specifically said that an assault rifle would be something a militiaman could have at home.
I’m a bit confused as to what your point is.
Don’t need too because the courts seem to understand (now) that the ‘pesky militia bit’ is separate from the ‘right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed’. True, based on threads like this, the anti-gun folks will continue the same (to my mind slimy dog…not pointing to you here btw) tired arguments and parsing, but today, right now, it’s not necessary for them to amend the Amendment…just part of it is out of date.
I wish that if the anti-gun crowd would ‘have the stones’ to paraphrase an earlier poster, they would do the right thing…if personal gun ownership is an outdated concept that shouldn’t be a protected right under the Constitution, then use the mechanisms in place to either amend or do away with the Amendment. That’s why we HAVE these mechanisms after all…so that outdated, outmoded or changing times and attitudes can be reflected in the Constitution. All the anti-gun folks need to do is to get a majority of American voters on their side and it can be replaced in exactly the same way the 18th was done away with. And if you CAN’T do that, well, then they shouldn’t try and do it through back channels the way they have tried in the past and continue to try even today. JMHO there, but to me it’s a slimy dog way to go about doing something.
They might be able to get a bare simple majority, but never the super-majority that changing it would require. And, that’s a Good Thing.