USA Today on 2nd Amendment

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dZ

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http://usatoday.com/news/acovfri.htm

08/27/99- Updated 12:35 AM ET

Case could shape future of gun control

The Second Amendment establishes a right to possess firearms. The question is: Is it
an individual right or a military necessity?

By Richard Willing, USA TODAY

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. - Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,
1791

Tucked inside this famous paragraph, amid the multiple clauses, odd punctuation and
18th-century syntax, lies the right that Americans both cherish and fear: the right to have a gun.

But whose right is it anyway? Is there an individual right to own a gun, like the individual right
to freedom of speech or religion? Or does the Second Amendment mean only that Americans
can defend themselves collectively through state militias, like the modern-day National Guard?

The debate over what the Second Amendment actually means has filled a forest of law review
articles and scholarly papers over the past 10 years. Now it is about to spill out of the ivory
tower and into the real world of guns and gun control.
 
Wow. Finally, a balanced article. I may just keel over and die on my keyboard.

Anyone else notice that some people who subscribed to the "militia" interpretation are changing their minds, while NO ONE on the "individual right" side is changing their own?

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"Taking a long view of history, we may say that
anyone who lays down his arms deserves whatever he gets."
--Jeff Cooper
 
Good link…. Thanks…..
Maybe, just maybe, some of the scholars are really reading and understanding just what our forefathers were implying when they drafted the Bill of Rights. I believe that come early next year, we as law abiding and patriotic citizens will prevail (unless some slime-bag in Washington pulls some additional crap).
It is and always will be the same - The governing main clause is " the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed'. That's a flat command in the imperative form of the verb. It says right of the "people," not right of the "militia".



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To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state.
 
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

THE MILITIA IS NOT THE NATIONAL GUARD!!!!! The National Guard is for all intents, purposes and jurisdictions...the Federal military. If the Founders meant that only the Fed military could have arms, they would not have bothered to write the 2ndA.

Secondly...why don't these jerk-offs read Miller? It is not the "unanimous, far-flung" conclusion made out to be.
The majority opinion was pretty weak and vacillating....the conclusion was that (paraphrasing): the Court did not believe that short shotguns were part of the military arsenal, therefore the 2nd did not guarantee the right of ownership. The Court also admitted that they did not really know if said shotguns were part of the military arsenal. Thus,the opinion was based on faulty info. This also does give support, though, to the right of individual ownership because...bogus though the opinion is...it effectively said "If the military doesn't have it, you can't have it, but if they do then you can to".

Read the frigging document!!

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
 
DC, thank you for bringing up my first point. Yes, the militia is not the National Guard.

My biggest argument to people when they utter such nonsense is that fine, let's interpret the rest of the Constitution the same way. Replace the phrase "of the people" and replace it with the new intended interpretation, "of the government", or "of the government forces". See what happens? We no longer have the right to peacably assemble, to speak our minds or freely express ourselves, to practice the religion of our choice, or to keep and bear arms. We don't have the right to a fair and speedy trial, judged by a jury of our peers, nor are we protected against self-incrimination or unreasonable or unlawful search and seizure. The government is. Big difference. We can't mix and match the intended protections of the Bill of Rights. This is the biggest failure of the narrow-minded interpretation of the "selective" support that the ACLU has shown to the Second Amendment over the other Amendments. This isn't Garanimals politics, as much as the liberals and the ACLU would like you to believe so. If we reinterpret one portion of the Bill of Rights to protect the government, and leave the rest to protect the citizenry, the cohesiveness of those protections evaporates. We lose, the government wins.

When faced with this argument, most people I've discussed this issue with fail in their attempt to rationalize away or back up their opinion.
 
I wrote my law school thesis on a second amendment issue, and pored over many of those scholarly articles (that existed as of 1995), and I can tell you that the individual right conclusion is reached more often in sheer number of articles. Moreover, the authors that conclude individual right (not collective state militia BS) vastly outweigh the others in terms of their sholarly authority and credentials.
 
"the Court did not believe that short shotguns were part of the military arsenal"

Not true. I'll nitpick.

The asked "is there a military use for this weapons?" Since neither the defendant nor his lawyer showed up for the trial, no answer was given. In the absence of _any_ military-use argument, they could not show that said weapon was suitable for 2nd Amendment militia use. It's not that they _disbelieved_ anything, it's that there was nothing positive provided to _believe_.

The Court's beliefs were more zero than negative on the issue.
 
The 2nd Amendment is the Guarantor of the Bill of Rights.

Not permission for the government to play army.

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Without the 2nd Amendment,the Declaration of Independence is an old post card and the entire Constitution is just notes from a bridge club meeting.
 
I've almost finished Halbrook's 'That Every Man be Armed', and he makes such a strong case.

But some of the comments above also help clarify the issue - indeed ... what would have been the logic for the founders to even put this into the Bill of Rights if it just meant the government could bear arms???

They had just fought a revolution - they had a very good idea about the relative powers of governments and citizens. Governments always have had and always will have the power, and so in essence the 'right' to bear arms. That is self evident. So, again - what possible logic could they have been using to conclude they needed to put a statement into the Bill of Rights that the U.S. government could bear arms? This is nonsensical.

I have also heard the logical argument that if the 2nd Amendment is not an individual right, how in heaven's name did we end up with all of these gun stores and all of these firearms in the hands of individual citizens? Have our LEO's fallen down on the job for the last 225 years? Have our politicians simply been kind and patient with us? This is absurd! We have had firearms in the hands of civilians for centuries exactly because this is an individual right.

Isn't it interesting to actually be living during a time when another Big Lie is being promulgated? We are literally witnessing the same kind of mind bending that Hitler attempted with the Germans over 60 years ago. As I grew up, I honestly thought Americans would never fall for this kind of BS, exactly because we had the lessons of the Nazis. Now I understand so much better why history repeats. People don't care enough to consider the truth, even when it is lying right under their noses ...
 
http://www.2ndamendment.net/2amd4.html

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>The misconstruction of
United States v. Miller
By Howard J. Fezell, Esq.

United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 86 S.Ct. 816 (1939) lends considerable
support to the proposition that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right
to keep and bear arms. However, through selective quotation numerous appellate
courts have cited Miller as authority for their claim that the Second Amendment
guarantees only a collective right of States to maintain militias.

Miller involved the indictment of Jack Miller and a cohort for unlawfully
transporting a short-barrelled shotgun in violation of the National Firearms Act of
1934.

When the case was at the trial court level, Miller's attorney filed a motion to
dismiss the indictment (a demurrer) on the grounds that the portion of the National
Firearms Act under which Miller had been charged violated the Second Amendment.
The trial judge granted the motion and the charges against Miller were dismissed.
Jack Miller promptly departed for parts unknown.

The United States, however, filed an appeal directly to the Supreme Court.
When the case was argued only the government was represented -- and only its side
of the case was presented to the Justices.

The Supreme Court in Miller did not say that the decision of the lower court
was wrong. Instead, it reversed the trial court's decision and sent the case back to
the trial court for further proceedings on the question as to whether a short-barrelled
shotgun is the type of firearm that had utility for militia use. [/quote]

This quote taken from the text of Miller:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun
having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reason-
able relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well
regulated militia; and therefore cannot say that the Second
Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear
such a weapon.[/quote]

ctdonath....If you'll note, I stated was paraphrasing and did not quote. I noticed you didn't quote either.



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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
 
I forget the URL of the article I read, but someone asked one of the foremost American experts on the English language over the wording of the 2nd Amendment, and the fellow came to the conclusion that although the right to bear arms was important for the formation of a militia, it was also a right assumed to already be in existence to the people themselves.

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Exodus 22:2 -- Biblical precedent for home defense.
 
Jeff brought up the one thing that simple amazes me and that is how so many people are being brain washed right before my eyes. And they don't even know it. It is so much like what happened in Germany in the late 20's and 30's it is scary... And yet you talk to these people and they are positive that they are right. So right that they will not listen or even try to learn and understand. Seems their overriding fear of guns precludes any rational thought.

Maybe, just maybe, if the SC eventually rules for an individual reading with Emerson, some of these people will wake up and realize that they have been brainwashed... but I doubt it. They will then want to admend the constitution to take the 2nd out. This will be the big fight folks. It is the one we can not afford to loose.



------------------
Richard

The debate is not about guns,
but rather who has the ultimate power to rule,
the People or Government.
RKBA!
 
Has the notion of "collective right" been applied to any other amendment or portion of the Constitution?

[This message has been edited by Fred S (edited August 27, 1999).]
 
I don't think so Fred. I always find it amazing how every Amendment is thought of as an individual right.

Then when it comes to the 2nd,everybody gets selective amnesia and it's said to be collective.

I hope we are seeing history in the making with this case.It'll be fun to watch the Left freak out for once in the matter of civil rights.

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Without the 2nd Amendment,the Declaration of Independence is an old post card and the entire Constitution is just notes from a bridge club meeting.



[This message has been edited by Contender (edited August 27, 1999).]
 
Once more, with feeling.

The Constitution of the United States does NOT grant or guarantee any rights. The writers considered that those rights came from the Creator and rose out of the nature of man.

They pre-existed the Constitution and would exist if every copy were burned. It is clear that the right to bear arms is not an end unto itself. The end is that the people have the means of resisting tyranny.

The Constitution LISTS the rights that the people have already; it neither causes those right to exist nor guarantees those rights, any more than a telephone book causes the people listed in to exist.

If the Constitution granted rights, it could be amended to revoke them. What the Consititution does do is to direct the Government, which it establishes, not to interfere with those pre-existing rights.

Jim
 
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