I pointed out that there are restrictions on religious practices in this country that are, in fact, prohibited, despite the amendment that is recognized as effectively erecting a wall of separation between church and state. Right now, there are laws which tell Christian Scientists they must give their children medical care even when it runs against their religious beliefs. Rastafarians cannot legally use marijuana as part of their religious rituals. Pentecostals in the south cannot handle snakes.
How can those laws be considered constitutional when they disregard the first amendment much more grievously than gun locks or waiting periods disregard the second?
Previous experience tells me that once labels like “slimy dog” are brought into the conversation, in all likelihood reasonable discourse is at an end. I for one thought that we were actually learning from each other here, but if you’re going to slap childish labels on people just to avoid adult conversation, or claim that(as one in this thread already has) you know what certain posters really want, then the well has been poisoned, imho. Could we leave the labels in the drawer for just a bit more?
I know it’s been done to death, but where are the words of limitation that the second clause: RKBA fails it the first clause ceases to exist?
IOW, you seem to read the amendment as if it said: “A well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms when enrolled in the militia shall not be infringed.”
There is no such limiting language. The second clause is wholly independent, and while the first clause is explanatory, it can fall away and leave the second clause intact.
Well, I wasn’t applying that to anyone in this thread, but to my impression of the anti-gun movement and their tactics as I’ve seen them pretty much throughout my life. But, you are right…no point in using hot button labels, and I apologize for doing so.
That said, the actual question of the OP was simply what does ‘well regulated’ mean, yet here we are, once again going down the same tired pathways of trying to parse the Amendment and attempting to use language and syntax to ‘prove’ what the thing says or doesn’t say, when to my mind a rational person who actually has access to the writings of the authors of the thing can simply go and look at what they wrote (as well as early drafts of the thing) and actually see what it was supposed to mean.
For my part it’s extremely frustrating, since it’s pretty clear that the FF’s intended what they intended. A more honest way, again to my mind, of attacking the Second isn’t this ridiculous parsing but instead to ask…so what if the FF’s thought this was a good idea or not? That was then, this is now. We don’t have slavery anymore…nor Prohibition (not that this was something the FF’s had, but just an example of an outdated Amendment). In today’s world, do we need a protected right for personal arms for the citizenry, or should we do away with it? THAT is a more honest position, to my mind. We have the mechanisms for change written into our very system…USE the things, if that’s the will of the people. And if not…well, then it’s NOT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE. Seems simple to me, but based on the endless debates over this I guess it’s not.
My point is that whether the Founding Fathers anticipated any technological advancement is neither here nor there. They anticipated that there would be change in general and included procedures for ammending The Constitution to adapt to those changes. If you believe weapons, whether we are talking about a pen knife or a Barrett .50, do not belong in civilian hands, ammend or repeal the 2nd ammendment. It’s that simple.
Would you say that the 2nd Amendment covers firearms only, or does it include weapons such as swords or daggers? Has anyone ever challenged laws forbidding these types of weapons on Constitutional grounds?
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Can you give some examples of these “back channel” tactics? I literally do not know what you’re talking about.
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In general exactly what I said…attempting to parse the Amendment in such a way as to change the original intent and core meaning (i.e. making it mean something different, or in this case the exact opposite of the framers intent), and using the courts to back up that interpretation. Until fairly recently these tactics were working quite well, to the frustration of pro-gun and Constitutional Constructionist types. Those are back channel ways to try and achieve a goal…that being to circumvent the Amendment without actually having to go to the bother of attempting to either modify or get rid of the thing. If you can change the meaning, and change the interpretation, then you achieve the same thing without all that messy will of the people stuff.
Pretty plainly they do. And obviously a different one than the original framers as well. The thing is, we DO have those writings and the thoughts of the folks who drafted the the Amendment and the thinking behind the why and what they were trying to achieve.
As I said, that was then, this is now…our Constitution is a living, breathing document that was meant to change as our society changed. Because the FF’s thought something doesn’t mean it’s cast in stone for all times as a good thing…I mean, these were rich white dudes who believed in slavery and in a very, very limited franchise and who was or wasn’t a citizen. Obviously, that has changed substantially since their time, and these guys wouldn’t recognize our system today from where they were then. Ok…we have mechanisms for that (they made a lot of mistakes, but that was one that we key to our systems continuation IMHO). So, if it’s the will of the people that the Second is no longer in step with the times, then ditch the thing the way we did the 18th…or modify it to say what it should wrt today’s society. But don’t play these silly interpretation and parsing games when we know what was originally meant. Just toss out what was meant and go with what’s relevant NOW.
For my part, I’m good either way…as long as it’s clearly the intent and will of the people of this country. If enough of my fellow citizens think we don’t need personal arms as a protected right then I’ll go along with that majority. I just bridle at the attempt to circumvent not only the system but that majority will.
Except, of course, that the number of nukes in private hands is zero. There has never been, unless you know of an example, a nuke held in private hands. There has never been a nuke owned by anybody except the governments of a relatively tiny handful of nations and they aren’t selling them or giving them away to private citizens. The possibility of private ownership of nuclear weapons does not exist in any meaningful way. We might as well debate whether private ownership of Death Stars or trained chromatic dragons is covered by the 2nd ammendment.
Chemical weapons, fuel air munitions, and lots of other indiscriminately destructive stuff are things that might believably be purchased or constructed by a private citizen and there would be a legitimate debate over whether the 2nd ammendment included such things.
Try reading the quote from the Federalist #29 I posted upthread, or the entire document, or any document from either the Federalist or Antifederalist Papers that debated the entire subject of standing armies and militia. When I said that they invariably meant “the body of the yeomanry”, as in THE militia, not A militia, I wasn’t exaggerating. The authors do tend to conflate the armed mass of the populace and their service in government organized military units as synonymous, but that’s because at the time they were.
Presser tried to challenge it, and the SCOTUS didn’t disagree with him so much as ignored the issue. The court focused with surgical narrowness on the technical legality of his conviction under one section of an Illinois statute while expressly saying in their decision that whether the rest of the statute was constitutional or not was irrelevant to his case. Mainly the court was anxious to stamp out any suggestion of incorporating the Bill of Rights under the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: PRESSER V. ILLINOIS
As for “it’s been that way for over a century”, we’ve been going down the slippery slope of increased government power for so long it’s only been recently that we’ve looked back and realized just how compromised the original Constitution has become. The movement to liberalize (in the original sense of the word) gun possession is just one facet of this.
From the states’ constitutional provisions for keeping and bearing arms at the time, and the various drafts of the Second Amendment, apparently there was some disagreement. Some of the states DID want the RTK&BA to explicitly be personal and others wanted it only in the context of military service while mustered. The final version of the 2nd appears to be a weaselly compromise in the wording, attempting to be all things to all parties, who were mainly concerned with making sure the federal government was forbidden to disarm the “militia” by either definition.
Nope. Nor what exactly constitutes ‘arms’. Nor is there anything, afaik or can remember off the top of my head that says the government can’t regulate whatever ‘arms’ are…just that they can’t deny them categorically. Cecil did an article on this if you are interested in searching for it that coincides pretty closely with my own views. Basically, I have no problem with sane regulation or things like licensing. You can’t drive a car without a license, so I don’t see any insurmountable issue with needing one to own firearms. It’s when broadly based bans are proposed that my back gets up, especially when it’s clear that this wouldn’t be the will of the majority, but instead the desire of the minority to tell the rest of society what’s good for them.
Then it seems to me that both sides are guilty of what you were complaining about, parsing the Amendment to mean something other than what it’s supposed to.
You lost me. How does this show both sides are parsing things? Afaik I never mentioned hand guns, nor do I see how the pro-gun side is parsing things wrt them. Could you expand?
The gun lobby interprets that Second Amendment to mean not only a right to bear arms, but specifically a right to own a handgun. You may remember that recently, they got the Supreme Court to agree with this interpretation, though not to the extent that they would like. But isn’t this a “back channel tactic”, as you put it, just in the other direction?