It is interesting, I think , that the second amendment is the only Amendment in the Bill of Rights that gives a reason. Can you imagine the first amendment reading,
“So that the people may maintain beliefs of their own accord, whether they be in alighment or not with that of the governing authorities; Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Damn straight. You single me out with a false accusation in the OP, you deal with the consequences.
Bullshit. I don’t like the way you LIED about my position. (“Malice” includes reckless disregard for or indifference to the truth, you know.) The phrase you falsely attributed to me–that “I interpret [the Constitution] on the basis of what it actually means”–in no way whatsoever resembles the quotes you claim it came from: (1) that the Constitution means what the courts say it means, and (2) that I can also offer my humble opinion on what the Second Amendment should mean.
For the most pedantic poster ever to grace the SDMB with your presence, you’re remarkably unwilling to deal with the consequences of your own unambiguously false claim about my position. No surpise to me, I’m afraid, given the linguistic contortions you so regularly perform in the defense of the indefensible.
Complete nonsense. Multiple people have been discussing the implications of the “militia” clause, and Tejota in particular clearly spelled out how he believes the introduction places a substantive limitation on the reach of the right guaranteed in the second clause. I didn’t do so myself because I said pretty much the exact same thing myself in the thread that you’re bitching about, so frankly, why bother?
What’s that? You remain unconvinced of the merits of our position? Ah well, that hardly means that nobody has addressed your OP. It just means you disagree with our position. Once again, no surprise.
I don’t see how you can fail to see a resemblance. “I think it means what the courts say it means. Of course, that’s one of the things that kills me about these threads. I drop by to dispell the vast misconceptions about the legal meaning of the Second Amendment, and everbody thinks I’m just offering my own opinion.” From that, I got:
you were presenting what the courts says it means
what the courts says it means is what it actually means
you were not simply presenting your opinion
#3 I shortened to “I don’t interpret the Constitution based on what I think it means”, and #1 and #2 I shortened to “I interpret on the basis of what it actually means”. Can you explain how this "–in no way whatsoever resembles the quotes you claim it came from”?
In the first, I don’t recall anything on my part that would be “linguistic contortions”. That thread was mostly a pile-on of a bunch of people making ridiculous accusations. I still think that that thread reflects much more poorly on the other participants than on me. Perhaps I should take comfort in the fact that you had to go back two and a half years to find something “incriminating”. Odd, though, that when I bring up threads much younger than that one, people jump on me.
As for the second, I don’t see what “indefensible” thing you think I am defending. In fact, considering your rancor for OPs with lies in them, aren’t you going to criticize Esprix for lying about what I said (and he actually did lie about what I said, not just present a paraphase). And that’s not even mentioning all the absurdity from Esprix and other posters that followed.
He (is it “he”?) did in fact present the “what”, but I didn’t see much of a “how”. I am sorry that I let your temper tantrum distract me from responding to his post. I will soon correct that.
I disagree. “Well regulated” functions as an adjective that modifies “militia”. That no more declares the militia to be necessarily well regulated than me saying “I like green apples” declares apples to be necessarily green (or even that I only like green apples).
On the other hand, we have gone the last two centuries without a coup, something many other countries have failed to do.
Odd how many liberals seem to think that the army would easily put down any resistance by Americans to a coup, but those Iraqis are too much for them to handle. Not that I’m saying that you subscribe to both points of view.
I don’t see how a purpose can be a law. A law is written in imperative form, while a purpose is declarative. Example:
“We are declaring certain species to be endangered to keep people from harming them” –declarative, not a law
“No one is to harm an endangered species” –imperative, is a law
I just don’t see where it says that. Can you elaborate?
Strictly speaking, that’s not a corollary but an inverse.
So what do you think of the arguments against “assault weapons” on the basis that they are not civilian weapons? Do you agree that there’s something hypocritical about banning some weapons based on the claim that they have no military use, and banning others on the basis that they have no civilian use?
Okay Ryan, let me put it this way: I believe there are important, fundamental differences between what claimed I said and what I actually said. I would never have said what you claimed, and I was and am offended that you attributed those words to me. It was extraordinarily poor form for you to gratuitously single me out and roll your eyes at me in your OP for something that I never said, and it was compunded because you put the false statement in quotation marks as if I had actually written it.
Perhaps next time, you could be bothered to look up what I actually said before you either quote or paraphrase it? Or better yet, don’t single out a fellow poster for eye-rolling disdain in the OP of a Great Debates thread at all.
“Temper tantrum” my ass. It’s called indignation, and it was caused by your untruthful, unwarranted, and and entirely extraneous comment about me in the OP.
Or perhaps you should examine the fact that two and half years later you haven’t changed at all and people are still trying to point that fact out to you.
You write as though that would be a task of Herculean proportion. Hardly the case. Take “freedom of speech”, for example.
Each of us, as sovereign individuals, possess an intellect constructed on our own experiences. Through these life-experiences, we construct our individual thoughts. We each possess the ability to express our individual thoughts through our own ability of speech. The ability to speak is just one of our inalienable rights. It was provided to us by no one or no government entity. We require no outside authority to enable us to freely speak. It is inalienable.
The only thing governments can do with regard to inalienable rights is to protect, support or assist it’s citizen’s in the free exercize of their inalienable rights, or either supress it’s citizen’s inalienable rights through brute-force.
The one thing that governments can’t do is give us an inalienable right.
Not to be rude or anything, but that’s just ridiculous. There are any number of things that we can do, yet damn few of them have any sort of legal protection at all. I could, for instance, pee on Dick Cheney’s legs. I have no inalienable right to do so, and I assure you that the Secret Service would suppress my attempt to do so through brute force.
But, as I have previously pointed out, this would be an illogical interpretation.
How could the first clause place a “substantive limitation” on the right guaranteed in the second clause, when the second clause unequivocally states that no limitation shall be placed on said right?
Because you don’t get to pick and choose the parts of the constitution that you like and not the ones you don’t. A reading that gives effect to all the language of the amendment is generally preferable to a reading that ignores the introduction altogether. The people who wrote and passed the amendment presumably would not have included that introductory language if they did not believe it was important.
What, are you guys running daily vanity searches? I mention minty green, and he immediately shows up, I mention Esprix, and he pops up.
Minty green:
Can you explain what they are?
It was not gratuitious; you have distinguished yourself, IMO, as one of the most unreasonable debaters when in it comes to gun control, and it therefore makes sense to present you as an example of such people brushing off the question of what the Second Amendment means. Which you did, regardless of the exact words in which you did so.
I think that the context made it quite clear that those were not your exact words. Do you really dispute that?
The problem, though, is that I have found that both being to specific or being too general can cause problems on this board. Too general, and people are critical of your lack of examples. To specific, and people treat the example as the issue under discussion, rather than an example of the larger topic. If I say “in this thread, minty said [exact quote]”, I know this board well enough to know there’s a good chance that this will result in people simply debating the other thread.
I really don’t understand the logic behind that position. We don’t get to pick and choose what parts of the constitution, therefore the first clause places a substantive limitation?
False dichotomy. One can fail to give effect to part of an amendment without ignoring it.
And I would really like answers to two questions: are going to extend your chastisement of lying in OPs to Esprix’s (not that he was the only one lying about my positions in that thread)? And what is the “indefensible” which I was defending?
… are going to extend your chastisement of lying in OPs to Esprix’s (not that he was the only one lying about my positions in that thread)?
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Oh, please. That’s a good idea - resurrect a two-year-old thread after your position was thoroughly debated, and you had ample time to rebut (and did). Yeah, we’re impressed. :rolleyes:
Esprix: you lied about what I said and composed an entire OP around a strawman, criticized me for failing to blindly accept what definitions you come up with, and presented the fact that I don’t agree with you about what constitutes discrimination as evidence that I’m a jackass (oh, putting the word “technically” in was a nice touch. Made it sound like I was arguing that it wasn’t discrimination just to quibble, rather than because I ACTUALLY DIDN’T THINK IT WAS DISCRIMINATION). And that was just on the first page. It’s like you’ve made up an entire character who goes around disagreeing with homosexuals not because actually disagrees with what they’re saying, but because he likes annoying them, and then gave this fictional character my name. Then you started a pit thread about him. Seems to me that it’s not me that needs to change.
If you actually listened to what I say objectively instead of assuming that I disagree with you for disingenuous reasons, you’d realize I am quite supportive of homosexuality. Most of disagreements have been over nomenclature: we both agree that the general homosexual population shouldn’t be blamed for male-on-male pedaphilia, but we disagree on whether the term “homosexual” is applicable. Neither of us would deny a couple admittance to a dance based on whether they are of the same sex, but we disagree as to whether the word “discrimination” is applicable. Your ability to going completely ballistic over words is astounding. Outside of the SDMB, my views would be considered quite liberal, Out in the real world, you would be considered the radical, and I the moderate. You might want to think about that. In the Pit thread, you said “Oh, that’s choice. Five hundred people complain that they can’t understand you and you’re being a jerk, but they’re the ones with the problem. “ I don’t think that argumentum ad populum is a very valid support position, but since you think it is, you might want to think about the fact that literally millions of people think that you’re a spoiled brat trying to get society to endorse your decisions, and to make special allowances for your refusal to accept societal norms. No, I’m not saying that’s what I think, I’m saying that’s what millions of people think. But I’m sure you think they’re the ones with the problem. And probably you see nothing contradictory about that, and complaining that I think that in the Pit thread, you’re the one with the problem, not me.
You have shown yourself unable to have a respectful conversation even with one of the more liberal members of society. Even if you think it’s a shame that the world is so conservative that it would consider me liberal, you might be better served accepting it and dealing with it rather than insisting that the world conform to your ideals. For instance, when I said that I didn’t consider the dance case to be discrimination, you could have tried to understand my attitude so that you could deal with it in others (and I assure you, I am hardly the only one who feels this way). You could have asked sincere questions, instead of ones that assumed what you were trying prove ( asking “who is this rule intended to hurt, heterosexuals or homosexuals?” when you’re trying to show discrimination is like asking “Just who were these bombs intended to kill- Americans civilians or Iraqis civilians?” when you’re trying to show that the war is immoral). Instead you completely misrepresented my position and instigated a Pit pile-on. Not exactly improving gay-straight relations, there.
I’m not the one that brought the thread up. And I wouldn’t use the word “debate” to describe ya’ll’s posts.
I don’t do vanity searches. But how many Second Amendment threads in this forum do you think I have failed to participate in for the last 2.5 years? Any?
I already did. You responded with your usual torture of the English language to to claim that there were no real differences. That, of course, is complete bullshit, and I have no intention whatsoever of playing along with your pathetic linguistic rationalizations.
“Exact words” is not the issue. You used the quotation marks to put those words or something very much like them in my mouth, without any reasonable basis for doing so.
Then don’t fucking call me out in your OP. Simple, huh?
No, one cannot. Either it means something, or it does not; if it means nothing, you are ignoring it, and if you are ignoring it, you are picking and choosing only the parts of the law that you like.
And I brought up those two old threads simply as easily-located examples of your well-known propensity to torture the language in pursuit of your personal agenda, whatever it may be on any given subject. A mere point of education for those participants who may be unfamiliar with your modus operandi.
I just wanted to get your thoughts only on the Second Amendment.
Just tell me if you think it is a plausible, no a reasonable interpretation of the Second Amendment, one which says there are two phrases and one is not necessarily a limitation on the other?
For example isn’t a reasonable interpretation of this amendment one which construes the right of the people to keep and bear arms as a separate right?
Now legally speaking I agree with you according to statutory and constitutional rules of construction and interpretation that the best interpretation is one which takes the meaning of the whole phrase or wording in question and does not do isolation interpretations of words and phrases.
Finally, and I have debated this with Razorsharp before, there is some evidence in Federalist number 29 written by Alexander Hamilton that does support the position that the right of the people to bear arms is associated with and necessary to permit the existence of a well regulated militia as opposed to creating an individual right unrelated to serving in the militia to bear arms.
Certainly, I agree that it is reasonable to read the amendment as conferring a right to bear arms without limitation by the introductory clause. I just do not believe that it is the best reading, in light of the ordinary principles of legal interpretation and the expressly stated purpose of the amendment.
