Who said unlimited? Free speech isn’t absolutely unlimited; but the government can’t issue blanket orders that you need permission to publish a book, or that newspaper articles have to submitted to a censor for clearance, or that certain people can be placed under injunction forbidding them to make public speeches. Granted we’ve come close to something like that at different times, such as the Alien and Sedition law, the laws against antiwar speech in WW1, or the '50s Red Scare in which it was virtually made a crime to be a member of the Communist Party. But most people today recognize those times as authoritarianism run amok. Gun rights proponents simply argue that military service isn’t the SOLE justification for possessing arms, and that there are good reasons for supposing that this was recognized at the time the Constitution was written.
So the author makes it sound like the Second Amendment was unique in that respect, which is wasn’t.
OK, in a nutshell, after the SC struck down several New Deal laws as not being within the enumerated powers of the federal government, Roosevelt threatened to pack the court- whereupon the court suddenly began upholding New Deal legislation by such travesties as the Interstate Commerce Clause. I’m hardly the first one to point out the striking change from strict federalism to an expansive interpretation of federal authority.
The author you cited was claiming that historically there was no protection against disarmament outside of a military context. So to the extent that he’s trying to make a case that the Second Amendment wouldn’t protect against a federal law banning all private arms, he’s making that claim.
“Fooled by”? You’re showing the typical collectivist envy against conservatives: “THEIR indoctrination is working better than ours!! WAAAAAHH!!!” You don’t suppose millions of people with free will and the intelligence to be citizens might not have come to the conclusions they did based on experience and reflection?
I dunno; different debate.
So you’re in favor of having a right to armed insurrection, are you?
I’m in favor the people not being helpless against a junta and its hired thugs, yes. Especially if the knowledge that such a resistance is possible dissuades the ambitions of any would-be president-for-life.
- You’re in favor of killing when you can’t win by argument in a democratic process? Is that it, or what?*
No.
Tell us specifically what your concept of society and government is that makes an “individual right” not only acceptable but necessary. A right to do what, exactly?
A right to defend myself against assault. A right to be judged by what I do, not by what I could potentially do. The right to live in a society where it’s not held that people need to have helplessness imposed on them. The right not to be held collectively responsible for other’s misdeeds. The right to remind the authorities if necessary that government exists to serve people, not the other way around.
I assure you I am not a “Freeman on the Land”, “Sovereign Citizen”, or any other type of half-baked would-be rebel. I just hate being bullied and I insist on retaining the right to defend against being bullied.
You wouldn’t know honesty and clarity of thought if it was sprinkled with chili powder and shoved up your rectum. You have no credibility whatsoever. And I’ve never threatened to kill anyone for disagreeing with me; I’ve threatened to resist anyone who would do that first.