2nd Amendment according to my Political Science book.

A

Andy

New member
2nd Amendment. Bearing Arms

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Each state has the right to maintain a militia, a volunteer armed force for its own protection; however, both the National Government and the States can and do regulate the possession and use of firearms by private persons.

Straight from my textbook. Opinions anyone?

Andy
 
I suggest reading "The Federalist Papers" and "The Anti-Federalist Papers", plus some newspapers of the 1780s/90s era. Why? Because, in part, word usages and meanings have changed since then.

For instance, "well regulated" didn't mean "covered by rules and regulations". It meant "well trained" or (sorta) "it works like it oughta". A clock which kept close time was "well regulated", for instance. A well-regulated militia was one which could march and shoot and would obey its officers' orders--it would function properly.

The Anti-Federalists--who were proponents of the Bill of Rights--stated publicly that felons and persons of ill repute should not have weapons. Outside of that, their views were much as ours in this forum...

So far as it goes, then, your textbook is correct. Obviously, that paragraph does not speak to the protections afforded gun owners by the Second Amendment. The authors did not consider restraints on this governmental control...

As you get into discussions with anti-gunners, ask them how their views of legal interpretations of the Second Amendment square with original intent of the Bill of Rights? After all, the Bill of Rights Amendments were ALL meant as restraints on the power of the central government. You can't have nine of them anti-power, and one of them pro-power, can you?

Well, my opinion, FWIW...Art
 
In 1968 when the Federal gov't annexed the National Guard and made it an adjunct to the US Military....the 2nd amendment was trashed from the other direction....

Just consider....from that regard it now sez (paraphrasing) that the constitution guarantees the military the right to keep and bear arms and has effectively removed the civilian from the equation. Pretty slick huh?

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"
 
The National Guard was never a Militia, it is a part of the Federal Military that is placed under the control of the individual States untill needed by the Federal government. A true definition of Militia can be found in any dictionary and generally refers to ordinary citizens. New York State has in its state charter provisions for raising a Militia should the National Guard units be federalized.
The Second Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to insure the other nine amendments are not just words on paper.
 
K80...

A great many of your fellow citizens wouldn't agree, and they don't think we need the Bill of Rights anymore, especially to be protected from our benevolent gov't. ;)

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"
 
"Those who push the gun lobby's absolute view of the Second Amendment, get over it! The earth is not flat and the Second Amendment is not absolute. You're wrong."
Rep. Charles Schumer, attacking the Police Officers Who are Testifying at a Congressional Hearing to Repeal the Gun and Magazine Ban."
American Rifleman for February, 1999, pg 5

Is it time yet?
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Unite!
 
Schumer --- "white man speak with forked tongue". Always amazing how these types hold the rest of the bill of rights as carved in stone but not the second amendment and even quote the federalist papers in support of their own agendas and tout them as the framer`s intents ----- except, of course, when the second amendment is concerned.
 
I agree with K80. The 2nd Amendment is the most important amendment. Without it, there really are no other amendments. once you take away our right to bear arms, taking the rest of the amendments away is easy.

In a poli sci class I took a couple years ago, my prof. told us that a couple years ago, a congressman attempted to repass the Bill of rights, rewritten in modern legalese and they bill was defeated. We need to find a congress that knows what America is about.
 
The national and state governments DO regulate possession and use of firearms but they do it against the US Constitution which states that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Is there any other explanation?

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Better days to be,

Ed
 
Ed,

I apologize as I wrote the above a 4 in the morning with a point in mind and for the life of me I can not remember where I was going with it.

It was something along the lines taken to its extreem then nukes should be avaible also.

No more late night post for my :)
Jason
 
Well, I am going to stir this up!

Yes, the Bill of Rights is absolute, no ifs ands or buts. Period.

That does not preclude the consequences of individual abuse. Example: If I exercise my 1st Amendment rights of free speech and incite people to commit crimes, I can be held accountable for the results. It is not necessary to restrict the right of free speech.
Anti-gun people always use that lame hypothetical arguement about nuclear weapons. They never mention how hard it is to make them, how difficult it is to obtain the precusors, how obsenely expensive they are and that there aren't ready made nukes available for sale.
Plutonium and U235 is made under strict controlled conditions, severely regulated in gov't labs. It is not available for anyone to buy. If I get some, it is stolen...thus I either stole it or trafficked in stolen property. Same with ready made nukes. If I detonate my nuke, then I am guilty of murder.
My point is that there are just laws that deal with these situations.
It is never necessary to fiddle with the Bill of Rights. Once you make an exception in any of these rights, you make it easier to restrict them further.
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Addendum: I have a doctorate in biochemistry...if I chose I could cause horrible carnage. Shall I be made a criminal or be under constant guard, because of what I know and what I could do?

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes"

[This message has been edited by DC (edited 01-22-99).]
 
Excellent point DC the Bill of Rights are inalienable rights. They are the rules of the game so to speak.

If the liberals interpreted the second amendment the way they do the other amendments, gun ownership would be mandatory.
 
In my American Gov class I was pleased to see when the proffessor asked how mant gun owners were in the room and 75% of the class raised their hand. The few anti-gunners that were present tried to make sense with thier point of view, however three of us stood up and stood up for the Second Amendment, with most of the class in agrremment. I was labled "the one in every class" a compliment as I took it .
Later
Daren
 
DC,

How about this: The news media gets info on a troop movement going into a war zone. This info has the course and time table of the deployment and due to wartime considerations it can not be held up or the time table changed. They want to broad cast this info before the convoy sailes. Should the government be able to stop the info from being broadcast? You are dealing with freedom of speech and of the press here.

You are right that restrictions are a very slippery and very dangerous road. On the other hand someone also pointed out that the Constitution was not a death pact.

Jason

[This message has been edited by Jason Kitta (edited 01-22-99).]
 
Congress defined the meaning of a militia by an act of Congress in 1790. In the language of the time it included all free trustworthy males between the ages of 16 and 60. Some would say that this would allow the government to prohibit males over the age of 60 from owning weapons. However, in other legislation from the period a trend appears in the use of clauses: The first clause gives the rationale for the active second clause. To update the meaning of militia, it would be everyone above the age of 16 who does not have a felony. "The right of the people" is considered to mean individual rights in every other instance in the Constitution. It is only in the Second Amendment that people begin to waffle. This is an identifying mark. It reveals the person who is frightened by the free individual...the person who is an enemy of liberty and an ally of statists of every stripe.

But folks, the Bill of Rights is NOT a grant from a beneficent government...it is an enumeration of rights that exist in and of themselves. It is a reminder to the government. In actuality, my right to own weapons comes from my rights to life and liberty. Weapons are tools to defend my life and my liberty. The right of self defense is a fundamental human right. The Second Amendment is not about hunting, "sporting purposes", or even defense from criminals. It is about maintaining the people's ability to resist tyranny. And that is what frightens the statists for they know in their hearts that they are striving to be tyrants.

Nuclear weapons? Well, aside from the cost as DC mentioned and the utter idiotic absurdity of the people who use this argument... How am I going to use it to defend myself? Or my family? A rule of thumb I use is this: Would you trust the guys at the shooting club with it? The nut across the street? If you wouldn't you had damn sure better not trust a government with it. If you look at the body count from governments versus murders by private individuals, maybe we should disarm the governments. 60 million dead in seven government sponsored genocides preceded by gun control laws in this century. 60 million dead from the statists in Soviet Russia, 30 million dead in China, 2 million dead in Cambodia. We haven't even counted the war dead yet or the "collateral dead."

No matter what the weapon, some individual controls it. Are you happy with the individual who controls US's nuclear arsenal tonight?

A word of warning about a chink in our defenses: Felonies. Compare how many actions are felonies today that were not in 1900. And yet we made it through the preceding 124 years without the world ending.

This should be restricted to violent felonies and then fine tuned. I don't know if you all have noticed but the laws of self defense have been progressively narrowed in interpretation if not in the letter of the law. This should be broadened. On the other other hand what constitutes assault should be restricted.

To give an example, a friend of mine named Dennis Sapp was accosted on his property by two armed teenagers. Armed with a Ruger Redhawk .44 Mag and a .357. They tried to get out of their truck with revolvers in hand. They didn't make it. Dennis outnumbered them. They received skull fractures, tympanic membrane ruptures, assorted lacerations, contusions, abrasions and fractures. Dennis was charged with kidnapping (because he continued whipping their butts after they decided they really, really wanted to leave) and aggravated assault (because he continued stomping them after they could no longer murder him.) The prosecutor dropped the kidnapping charge and Dennis was convicted on the assault charge. The teenagers were not charged. So, Dennis can never own a firearm, right? This is justice?
 
The way things are going, within the next 25 years, most every human behavior will constitute a felony other than doing precisely what the federal government tells you to do, when they tell you to do it. The gun ownership issue will no longer be debated because the vast majority of Americans will either be convicted felons or compliant sheep who would never consider something as politically incorrect as owning a firearm.
 
At the range, we've some old farts (reverently used. lucky b--stards who were of age when Pax Americana was at its apex) who learned not to care anymore.

To quote one: "F--K 'em, I'm going to do what I want. What are they going to do me anyway? Lock me up for the rest of my life? I'm going to die soon enough anyway."

In some ways, I do envy them. Some of us will be around desperately trying to rekindle those times when we could talk freely without fear of being mislabeled, drive the gas guzzler of our choice, and shoot guns loaded with evil features (bayonet mounts, flash suppressors, real pistol grips, high capacity magazines).
 
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