Dick Act, 1903. Not that you gotta like it. Also do please note that it all became moot anyway when the Regular Army was founded. 1791, for the record.
If it’s real, where do I go to find it? Hint: Only the gun crowd has ever even heard of it. If it ever did become a real thing, it wouldn’t be “unorganized” anymore, now would it?
If something doesn’t actually exist in the real world, legal fictions notwithstanding, then yes, it *is *imaginary.
It’s the business of anyone you might intend to shoot or threaten with it. And you are YOU to tell us you never will? You did buy the thing, after all.
I’m a voting citizen of the United States, that’s who. And if enough of my fellow citizens petition our elected representatives to change the law - another right guaranteed by the Constitution - who are YOU to tell me otherwise.
Sorry your elementary school years were so bad, but I’ll bet none of your classmates was killed by a stray bullet. TWO of my wife’s students were, while another one was convicted of murder.
It’s more like a bunch of teenagers who back in the '70s got the right to buy liquor at age 18, and then drove drunk and killed a bunch of people, and then Congress forced the states to raise the drinking age back to 21, and lower the the blood alcohol level for “impaired” to .08, so now you have to stop at two drinks instead of drinking a 6-pack at a party and then driving home. Sorry to spoil your fun.
Yeah, that’s how laws work. That’s why none of us can make money off insider trading. Those assholes on Wall Street abused it.
Sure. Banning semi automatic weapons wouldn’t have stopped Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Whitman, Sirhan Sirhan, or Timothy McVeigh. On the other hand, The Black September terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics resulted in 11 hostages and five terrorists being killed. Stepehen Paddock locked himself in a hotel room in Las Vegas, fired 1,100 rounds of ammo, killed 58 people and wounded 422 more all by himself.
So, your solution is to do nothing until we figure out what drives some people to kill other people?
You are mistaken on two points. The first two commas are unmistakably there. The third comma (between “Arms” and “shall”) looks like a single dot (period), as though the scribe has just dipped his pen and rested it there momentarily before resuming writing. I can imagine commas ending up in inappropriate places in the pen-dipping days.
But you are correct that there is no way to parse the sentence with any number of commas that makes it grammatical. Oddly, 2A appears to be the only part of the Constitution that resists clear interpretation; 7A is slightly awkward, but it does resolve with much less difficulty.
On the second point, wherefore dost thou accuse me of link-rot? I posted no links in this thread – can you direct me to my error?
The unalienable right to guns argument goes back to the unalienable right to muskets, crossbows, swords, spears, clubs and rocks. Each in its own time was a weapon of assault and defense. However, there is a huge technological difference when it comes to guns as compared to the weapons that precede it. Especially with the advent of multi-round magazines and rapid fire weapons. Experts testified in federal courts that these kind of weapons are not intended for home/self-defense. Yet, people are buying them in record numbers. Why? Because they have the unalienable right to them? Then why not an unalienable right to much more technologically advanced and lethal weapons? Why not full on machine guns? Why not mortars, grenade and rocket launchers?
Seems to me, society decided to draw a line with respect to civilian access to certain weapons. Thus effectively putting limits on unalienable rights to guns. Limits that did not need to exist at inception of 2A, however, limits that were defined over time as weapon technology advanced.
More to the point of this discussion however, is the fact that since limits do exist on the unalienable rights to some guns. Perhaps those rights are not so unalienable after all? Pro-gun rights activists may not like it, but their rights for guns is NOT unalienable and is subject to limits set by society. Society that is less and less indulgent of the idea that Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness can only be assured by guns in the hands of an armed citizenry.
So maybe lets drop the pretense that your guns are an essential part of this democracy and your personal freedoms. What they are, are the vestiges of a false sense of security blanket that this nation has outgrown.
So, yeah: It no longer matters what the 2nd Amendment says as it has outlived it’s purpose. It’s well past time it was over-turned.
It does not have to be “over-turned” per se, it just needs proper interpretation. Its subject matter is entirely plural: all the other amendments use the word “Persons” when it is necessary to make it clear that the rights of individuals are being referenced. 2A does not. It does not even say “the right of people”, it says “the right of the people”, which is a collective noun. If it was intended to say that everyone gets to/should have their own personal arsenal, it would have been more clearly written.
I agree that it is the third “comma” that is most defective. I have no problem with the second comma, but EITHER the first comma OR the third comma OR both renders the sentence ungrammatical, and arguably turns the whole Amendment into a null-and-void covfefe. (And I’d like to see cites from **DrDeth **[“Grammar wasn’t the same or as hidebound in 1787”] that such hideously placed commas were common in the 18th century.)
As for the link: I think you misinterpreted my remark. :o I was thanking you for the link you posted in 2015 which worked fine when I clicked it four years ago. But when I clicked it again today the .gov asked me for useless clicks. I tried archive.org — I don’t know if that made much difference — and still needed extra clicks to get to the image. (Maybe it was my “cockpit error.”)
Mea culpa.
Trying your 2015 link again, I see I can get to the high-res image with just 3 or 4 well-chosen clicks. Perhaps I was just a bad clicker earlier today. :o
It had three goals: to support individual ownership of guns (which is based on the natural right to defend oneself), to allow states to form or maintain their own militias (to be used for many tasks, including policing and slave patrols), to allow the government to use the same militias to supplement the standing army (which several wanted to keep small) against various threats (hence, Art. 1 Sec. 8 and the Militia Acts, with the latter calling for mandatory military service for males). At least that’s I remember from what framers were debating on as it was being drafted.
Even during the Revolutionary War, some military leaders were complaining about a lack of training and equipment among some militias. After the War of 1812, more felt the need for a larger standing army and standardized training of reserves, as they were seeing the same among European counterparts. The same probably applied to the formation of police forces that were separate from military units.
With that, police forces and the National Guard were formed, and the military grew and relied more on reserves as it became more complex (with the growing use of the Navy, the formation of an Air Force, etc.) and mechanized.
In the end, 2A in terms of the second and third reasons became less relevant as the gov’t relied on reserves and conscription rather than on militias but is still helpful because it can be used to justify mandatory military service.
That leaves the first point, which if based on the natural right of self-defense exists even without the 2A.
The 2ndA has no militia rights or powers flowing from it. The 2ndA has never been inspected or held to inform on any aspect of militia powers. There is no claimable militia right or power for the people, (see Presser v Illinois*) the states and certainly none for the feds to be found or claimed under the 2ndA. As SCOTUS has a said, the 2ndA has but one action, to restrict the powers of the federal government (US v Cruikshank**).
The only words of the Constitution the Court examines to direct its reasoning and understanding of the organized militia is Art I, §8, cl’s 15 & 16 and laws enacted under those clause’s authority (e.g., The Militia Act of 1792, and state militia regulations).
In Houston v Moore, the Court states unequivocally:
[ul]
[li]“The laws which I have referred to amount to a full execution of the powers conferred upon Congress by the Constitution. They provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasion. They also provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States; leaving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training them according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”[/li][/ul]
The “full execution” of militia powers is only to be found in the body of the Constitution; the 2nd Amendment has nothing to offer and is ignored. There are no latent, undefined powers to be found in the 2nd Amendment that would allow it to be interpreted to authorize or protect militia activity of any kind by anyone.
Which as you say, leaves #1.
Presser v Illinois:
“The right voluntarily to associate together as a military company or organization, or to drill or parade with arms, without, and independent of, an act of congress or law of the state authorizing the same, is not an attribute of national citizenship. Military organization and military drill and parade under arms are subjects especially under the control of the government of every country. They cannot be claimed as a right independent of law. Under our political system they are subject to the regulation and control of the state and federal governments, acting in due regard to their respective prerogatives and powers. The constitution and laws of the United States will be searched in vain for any support to the view that these rights are privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States independent of some specific legislation on the subject.”
** US v Cruikshank:
"The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, . . . "
(And I’d like to see cites from **DrDeth **[“Grammar wasn’t the same or as hidebound in 1787”] that such hideously placed commas were common in the 18th century.)