History 102: Which people form part of a well-regulated militia?

None that I know of. But the poster I responded to seems to believe there is. Or they wouldn't be posting it in THIS thread.

 

what was the purpose of this thread in the gun control section given the militia has no relevance to any negative restriction on the federal government?

 

Already said it: some people believed that if EVERYONE was a part of the militia, then everybody would need to own a firearm. Just one talking point that I (and you) have dispelled.

 

yet I have yet to meet a gun rights advocate who only supports gun ownership based on potential militia service

 

I am accusing the lower courts of deliberately and maliciously violating the Second Amendment. Thus Heller was cracking down on the lower courts.

I am accusing the lower courts of deliberately and maliciously violating Heller. Thus Bruen was cracking down on the lower courts.

I am accusing the lower courts of deliberately and maliciously violating Bruen. Thus another ruling will need to crack down on them again in future years.

Here was the concern that Patrick Henry expressed:

"of what service would militia be to you, when, most probably, you will not have a single musket in the state? for, as arms are to be provided by Congress, they may or may not furnish them.

Let me here call your attention to that part which gives the Congress power "to 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—reserving to the states, respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress." By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither—this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory."

That was not a concern that the militia would be absorbed into the Army. That was a concern that the militia would be neglected and disarmed.

Their expressed intent is indeed important. But so is the historical fact that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right.

The Founding Fathers did not create the right to keep and bear arms. They only provided protection for a right that has been around for thousands of years.

The wording doesn't need modernity. It is fine like it is.

I agree.

Heller's separation of "the right to keep and bear arms" from "the militia" is because Scalia did not want to see submachine guns and hand grenades widely available to the general public.

Had the Heller ruling strictly upheld the Second Amendment in its entirety, the courts would have had to strike down restrictions on military weapons.

This means that the Heller ruling does not enforce the full scope of the Second Amendment. It only enforces the Second Amendment partially.

Sure it can. Note Patrick Henry's words that I quoted above. His concern that the government would prevent the militia from being organized and trained is addressed by the Second Amendment's requirement that there always be a well-regulated militia.

The term "well-regulated" meant that the militia had trained sufficiently that they could fight as a single coherent unit instead of fighting as a bunch of random individuals. A well-regulated militia is one where all the militiamen fight in a smoothly-coordinated manner.

Patrick Henry's concern that the government might prevent the militia from being armed is addressed by the Second Amendment's protection of the people's right to keep and bear arms.

But I do. Here is evidence of the individual right of free people to keep and bear arms as it existed 1400 years ago:

"Ceorl, also spelled Churl, the free peasant who formed the basis of society in Anglo-Saxon England. His free status was marked by his right to bear arms, his attendance at local courts, and his payment of dues directly to the king. His wergild, the sum that his family could accept in place of vengeance if he were killed, was valued at 200 shillings."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/ceorl

"Fyrd, tribal militia-like arrangement existing in Anglo-Saxon England from approximately AD 605. Local in character, it imposed military service upon every able-bodied free male. It was probably the duty of the ealderman, or sheriff, to call out and lead the fyrd. Fines imposed for neglecting the fyrd varied with the status of the individual, landholders receiving the heaviest fines and common labourers the lightest."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/fyrd

"The ceremony of manumission marked the transition by the giving of weapons. Freedom brought obligations as well as privileges; the freeman had the right to take his oath, he was ‘law-worthy’; he might also be called upon to give his oath as an oath helper to support his lord at law. He also had the right to defend himself and his own, as well as the duty to defend his lord when called upon to do so.
https://erenow.net/postclassical/a-brief-history-of-the-anglo-saxons/4.php

Note my above quote from Patrick Henry. The concern was that a hostile government would either prevent the militia from being armed, or prevent the militia from being trained, or both.

How do these collective rights work?

Let's say I'm an oppressed worker and I want to exercise my collective right to form a union. How do I go about asserting this right in the courts?

That sounds like a pretty good case that the Second Amendment is an individual right.

The individual right people already acknowledge that the right is in the context of the militia. That's not what the collective right people are arguing. What collective right people argue is that individuals do not have any standing to even make a Second Amendment claim.

What change is this? Where did it ever say "country"?

 

I come bearing news!

That lawsuit against the Maryland pistol grip ban, that the Supreme Court revived post-Bruen, that heard oral arguments in an appeals court in December 2022, that has been waiting for a ruling for more than a year now, is showing signs of life.

So far as I can tell, the three-judge panel never did issue a ruling. But the Fourth Circuit just voted to hear the appeal en-banc.

I'm not sure exactly what happened. Did the three-judge panel issue a ruling that I am somehow not aware of?

Did someone complain to the en-banc panel that the three-judge panel was refusing to rule on the case?

Did the en-banc panel just get sick of waiting and decide on their own to hear the case?

However it happened, en-banc oral arguments are scheduled for March 20.

https://www.firearmspolicy.org/bianchi

 

Your point is wrong. The Second Amendment has always protected a right to own weapons. The Heller court did not legislate or create anything.

I've already told you that I will only correct your untrue statements on that subject if you manage to establish that it even matters who is a member of a well-regulated militia.

So far as I can see you have not even attempted to establish any relevance.

This nonsense where you declare that no one can correct your untrue claims because your untrue claims are off topic, is nonsense.

 

How many times do I have to repeat this? There is NO relevance. At least not in respect to the discussion of gun ownership. The purpose of this thread is to debunk the assumption of those who think that there IS. If you are not one of them, good for you.

 

I'm not one of them. The Second Amendment protects an individual right of free people to own weapons regardless of who counts as a member of a well-regulated militia.

 

delete

 

Henry was against the constitution. So, with his influence in VA, the most prominent plantation owner, famous orator, in VA, why in hell did Virginia sign?

Explain that one.

They made a deal on the wording of the second amendment.

And there is only one deal they could have made,. that the wording of the second amendment preserved the militia.

And there it is, second amendment is all about the militia.

Henry wasn't thinking about congress not granting arms 'to the people' he was thinking about arms TO THE MILITIA, which, at the writing, 'the people' and 'the militia' were all the same.

he was a plantation owner, and one of the three functions of the VA militia was slave patrols.

And.....

your argument doesn't get passed the following:

The argument of the 2A being a militia context or an individual context wasn't a settled argument until Heller. If that weren't true, the lower courts would have shot down Wash DC v Heller and SCOTUS wouldn't have needed to grant cert.

There really is no way around that argument.

 

so tell us Golem-what does the gun banning movement get with your unsupported claim that the second amendment does not PROTECT Ownership but does prevent the government from interfering with private citizens keeping and bearing arms

it is so ludicrous to pretend that this dichotomy was actually intended by the founders. what we are dealing with is a fraudulent attempt to lessen the negative restriction on the federal government that our resident gun banning advocate cannot explain as to for what purpose

 

can you find a single SUPREME COURT case that actually supports this claim of yours? we know that some lower courts were infected with statism and racism and ignored the obvious intent of the second amendment

 

I have no idea what the gun banning movement gets. I can only provide the facts. How the facts are used is not up to me.

There was no dichotomy by the founders. They just wanted to protect the militias because they didn't trust a standing army.

So if THE PEOPLE had a right to defend their country in a well-regulated militia, how else could the states ensure this right if not by maintaining a state militia where they could prepare and be called by Congress to defend the country (as dictated by Article 1, Section 8, clauses 15 and 16)? THIS was discussed ad-nauseam during the deliberations. As for who owned the guns they used... not a peep.

 

There's only one supreme court case that supports yours and that's Heller.

Which was my point.

 

what supreme court supports your position? this ought to be hilarious

you also ignore McDonald Bruen Caetano and CRUIKSHANK and Miller as well

 

They signed because the Anti-Federalists had an agreement that they could propose amendments to the Constitution which the Federalists would then support.

They had a deal that their proposed amendments would be adopted.

There wasn't a deal about the specific wording of the amendments though. Virginia just made their proposals and sent them along to Congress.

Yes. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess grenades, bazookas, and full-auto weapons. Or at least light machine guns if not explosives.

The militia and the people still are the same. They always will be.

It's not an either/or issue. The Second Amendment is an individual right to possess military weapons.

It's not a settled argument even now. Heller is in error to exclude military weapons from the individual right to keep and bear arms.

One day a future Supreme Court will rule that people have the right to have military weapons. Then we will all have the right to have light machine guns at the very least. Maybe grenades and bazookas as well, depending on the interpretation.

The lower courts were deliberately and maliciously violating the Constitution.

I don't see how that argument is in the way of my argument.

 

Cruikshank (1876) did not grant the right to bear arms to individuals independent of service in a militia, neither did Miller.

All your other citations came after Heller, and that goes back to my point, that the individual right to bear arms or a right linked solely to militia service was a subject of considerable debate and was not definitively settled until the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008,

 

Sorry, VA would not have signed the ratification but for second amendment language preserving the militia.

And the argument regarding the individual right to bear arms or a right linked solely to militia service was a subject of considerable debate and was not definitively settled until the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008. If that were not true, then the lower courts would have shot down Wash DC v Heller and the SCOTUS wouldn't have seen the need to grant cert.

I don't see any compelling argument to counter the above.

 

No need to be sorry. I agree with that.

It’s not an either/or proposition. The right to keep and bear arms is both an individual right and linked to militia service.

Not solely though. People have always had the right to use their arms in private self defense and in target shooting competitions.

The supposed debate that you refer to was not a serious discussion. The left was just trying to violate people’s civil liberties for no reason, and they spouted some nonsense to try to justify doing that.

The lower courts were deliberately and maliciously violating the Constitution.

I’m not sure why it would need to be countered. But there is the fact that the left didn’t have a serious position. They just denied reality a lot.

That right was already granted, thousands of years ago.

 

you're wrong. you confused weapons useful for the militia versus individual rights. Study the concept of standing to understand that if Miller was not acknowledging an individual right, Miller would have lost on STANDING. and Miller was a set up case that was part of collusion by the government, the trial judge and the supreme court and they still couldn't do what FDR wanted.

Cruikshank doesn't say what you pretend it does even though you are sort of correct saying it doesn't GRANT A RIGHT

it recognizes one

 

bottom line, the second amendment precludes government bans on owning firearms

 

Until a the courts settle it, it's just philosophy.

the argument wasn't settled until Heller. If that weren't true, there would be no need for Heller.

That is the argument you cannot counter.

 

Neither Miller nor Cruikshank setted the argument.

It wasn't settled until Heller.

All your pontificating about 'inherent rights' is philosophy, and all philosophy does is shape law, however, it does not have the FORCE of law until there is one or more of the following items:

1. A law
2. A constitutional amendment.
3. Case law or
4. SCOTUS ruling.

Take your pick. I.e., there has to be ink, and in the right places.

 

do you think the founders intended the commerce clause to be be an end around the second and tenth amendments when it comes to congressional gun control power