Why is the 2A the only one that painstakingly provides rationale? Was individual weapon ownership that much of a contentious issue in 18 century America?
I think it’s more than justification for the right.
Fair enough. What about the opinion in Heller which held that the right of self-defense predates the Second Amendment and would still be viable even if there were no Second Amendment? IOW, the English Bill of Rights of 1688 stated that people have the right to keep and bear arms independent of any militia reason.
Even if we concede that the concept of a citizen militia is archaic, what about the basic right to self-defense, and along with that right having the power to possess the most common instrument of self defense in modern society, i.e. a handgun? This is very similar to the doctrine that freedom of the press means that one has to, by definition, have access to ink and paper.
Isn’t the right to defend oneself part of the basic concept of ordered liberty and grounded in the traditions of this country?
There is no connection between self defense and having a gun. Just because you have a right to self defense does not indicate a right to own a gun.
Here we go again…moving the goalposts, or setting up a strawman, however you want to classify it. Regulating handguns is not the same thing as removing the right to own one. Classic false NRA argumentation. Can’t really fault it, though, it’s convinced the rubes for numerous decades.
There are many parts of English Law that we didn’t keep when we created this nation. If they have good ideas, then we can learn from them. If they are not such good ideas, we can do better.
You note that this comes from English bill of rights, correct? Do they use it to justify having no restrictions on guns? If not, then why should we look to a 350 law from a country that doesn’t even honor that law anymore?
There are times and places where armaments do and don’t make sense, and that can be addressed with laws and regulations. Currently, because the second amendment give absolutists leverage to respond to any call to reduce gun violence with removing restrictions and putting more guns into society, we cannot have any sort of rational response, just hodge podge of fairly ineffective legislative rules that manage to get passed and eventually overturned by zealous advocates of 2A.
Getting rid of 2A doesn’t mean getting rid of guns. Getting rid of 2A means we can finally have an adult conversation about them.
I wouldn’t say so. The original people that were displaced by us weren’t given the right to defend themselves. The chattel slavery system that we created had people involved in it that had no right to defend themselves. Really, the traditional right to defend oneself in this country has only been for white men, to defend themselves mostly against non-white peoples that were resistant to being genocided or oppressed.