I wonder if the 2nd Amendment protected the settlers from disease, a far greater threat than Indians, or outlaws. Can you shoot cholera?
Who is refusing to accept what your constitution states? The only debate about the constitution goes to the interpretation about how far that right should go and whether that part of your constitution is actually helping your nation. To be honest, I dont even like that debate, its not my country its not for me. I am more down the path of acknoledging the logical consequences of your actions and keeping your conversation in"reality" as you put it, and calling out conspiracy theories from both sides.
Think so? I generally use this one but my girlfriend took it to get her hair done. Rough neighborhood.
Gun control advocates. If we are going to have an honest debate the right needs to be honestly acknowledged. The gun control advocates need to stop being dishonest about the Founders' clear intent regarding the right, and accept that a Constitutional Amendment is the only way - the ONLY way - to get what they want. With all due respect, I think that you fail to understand what is at the core of this debate, and the motivations behind it; understandable, as you are not American.
It's not at all clear that the court made the "right" decision regarding intent in D.C. v. Heller. There were 4 dissenting votes. "Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting. The question presented by this case is not whether the Second Amendment protects a “collective right” or an “individual right.” Surely it protects a right that can be enforced by individuals. But a conclusion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right does not tell us anything about the scope of that right. Guns are used to hunt, for self-defense, to commit crimes, for sporting activities, and to perform military duties. The Second Amendment plainly does not protect the right to use a gun to rob a bank; it is equally clear that it does encompass the right to use weapons for certain military purposes. Whether it also protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense is the question presented by this case. The text of the Amendment, its history, and our decision in United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174 (1939) , provide a clear answer to that question. The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution. In 1934, Congress enacted the National Firearms Act, the first major federal firearms law.1 Upholding a conviction under that Act, this Court held that, “n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” Miller, 307 U. S., at 178. The view of the Amendment we took in Miller—that it protects the right to keep and bear arms for certain military purposes, but that it does not curtail the Legislature’s power to regulate the nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons—is both the most natural reading of the Amendment’s text and the interpretation most faithful to the history of its adoption. Since our decision in Miller, hundreds of judges have relied on the view of the Amendment we endorsed there;2 we ourselves affirmed it in 1980. See Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55 , n. 8 (1980).3 No new evidence has surfaced since 1980 supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to curtail the power of Congress to regulate civilian use or misuse of weapons. Indeed, a review of the drafting history of the Amendment demonstrates that its Framers rejected proposals that would have broadened its coverage to include such uses. The opinion the Court announces today fails to identify any new evidence supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate civilian uses of weapons. Unable to point to any such evidence, the Court stakes its holding on a strained and unpersuasive reading of the Amendment’s text; significantly different provisions in the 1689 English Bill of Rights, and in various 19th-century State Constitutions; postenactment commentary that was available to the Court when it decided Miller; and, ultimately, a feeble attempt to distinguish Miller that places more emphasis on the Court’s decisional process than on the reasoning in the opinion itself. Even if the textual and historical arguments on both sides of the issue were evenly balanced, respect for the well-settled views of all of our predecessors on this Court, and for the rule of law itself, see Mitchell v. W. T. Grant Co., 416 U. S. 600, 4 As Justice Cardozo observed years ago, the “labor of judges would be increased almost to the breaking point if every past decision could be reopened in every case, and one could not lay one’s own course of bricks on the secure foundation of the courses laid by others who had gone before him.” The Nature of the Judicial Process 149 (1921). In this dissent I shall first explain why our decision in Miller was faithful to the text of the Second Amendment and the purposes revealed in its drafting history. I shall then comment on the postratification history of the Amendment, which makes abundantly clear that the Amendment should not be interpreted as limiting the authority of Congress to regulate the use or possession of firearms for purely civilian purposes. I The text of the Second Amendment is brief. It provides: “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.” Three portions of that text merit special focus: the introductory language defining the Amendment’s purpose, the class of persons encompassed within its reach, and the unitary nature of the right that it protects. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” The preamble to the Second Amendment makes three important points. It identifies the preservation of the militia as the Amendment’s purpose; it explains that the militia is necessary to the security of a free State; and it recognizes that the militia must be “well regulated.” In all three respects it is comparable to provisions in several State Declarations of Rights that were adopted roughly contemporaneously with the Declaration of Independence.5 Those state provisions highlight the importance members of the founding generation attached to the maintenance of state militias; they also underscore the profound fear shared by many in that era of the dangers posed by standing armies.6 While the need for state militias has not been a matter of significant public interest for almost two centuries, that fact should not obscure the contemporary concerns that animated the Framers." more at: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZD.html
Stevens dissent was one of the worst reasoned in modern history http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/gr....4.denning.pdf In Justice Stevens’s formulation, apparently, the Second Amendment protects an individual right. It just doesn’t protect an individual right to own guns if Congress, or the D.C. City Council, feels otherwise. Whether this conception should be characterized as “tastes great” or “less filling” is a question that will be left to the reader. It does raise questions about why,exactly, Justice Stevens felt it important to declare at the outset that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, given that, ordinarily, the purpose of such rights under the Constitution is precisely to “limit the tools available to elected officials” who wish to regulate the conduct that those rights protect. ..... Nonetheless, we are left with a clear declaration that an individual right exists, but with little discussion of what that existence means. In astronomy,unseen planets are often identified by their gravitational effects. In Justice Stevens’s dissent, it is the opposite: we can see the right clearly, it just doesn’t seem to be affecting anything.
More on Stevens poorly written statist nonsense http://www.cardozolawreview.com/cont...DY_2010_61.pdf Had the dissent become law, the Court would have informed the American people, seventy percent of whom believed they had an individual right to arms,3 that their rights-consciousness was sadly mistaken. If done on the basis of sound research and reasoning, this would involve no more than the Court performing its duty. An examination of the dissent suggests, however, that the Court would have been taking this position based upon surprisingly thin reasoning and evidence. As we will see below, the dissent has great difficulty even enunciating its understanding of the Second Amendment. Its treatment of case law, and of pre-1789 history, is replete with glaring errors that suggest hasty and careless research. Its discussion of legislative history omits the most crucial events which, when considered, seriously undercut its conclusions. Its treatment of the early constitutional commentators contains serious errors, where one commentator’s discussion of Congress’ power over the militia is substituted for his discussion of the Second Amendment, and major commentators are overlooked in favor of the opinion of a little-known writer of form books.
http://www.wnyc.org/story/second-amendment-outdated-justice-ginsburg-says/ Second Amendment 'Outdated' In the wake of the Colorado recall election and a fierce, nationwide debate over gun rights and gun control, Justice Ginsburg also comments on the past, present and future of the Second Amendment. She cites her dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller, and says her "view of the Second Amendment is one based on history." She continues, "The Second Amendment has a preamble about the need for a militia...Historically, the new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias. And the states required men to have certain weapons and they specified in the law what weapons these people had to keep in their home so that when they were called to do service as militiamen, they would have them. That was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment." But, Justice Ginsburg explains, "When we no longer need people to keep muskets in their home, then the Second Amendment has no function, its function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own. So I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia. So...the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete." As for the Heller case, decided by the Court in 2008, Justice Ginsburg says, "If the Court had properly interpreted the Second Amendment, the Court would have said that amendment was very important when the nation was new; it gave a qualified right to keep and bear arms, but it was for one purpose only—and that was the purpose of having militiamen who were able to fight to preserve the nation." Preamble: 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
How Justice Stevens May Have Saved Our Gun Laws By Dennis A. Henigan As the nation contemplates Justice Stevens’ impending retirement and its implications, all Americans concerned about the daily tragedy of American gun violence should pause to recognize their debt of gratitude to him for his penetrating dissent in District of Columbia v. Heller. In Heller, Justice Stevens wrote for the dissenters from the Court’s landmark 5-4 ruling recognizing, for the first time in our history, a Second Amendment right to possess guns for self-defense in the home. In so doing, Stevens brilliantly exposed the faux originalism and faux textualism of Justice Scalia’s majority opinion, demonstrating that these oft-claimed “neutral principles” of constitutional interpretation were, in Heller, a thin disguise for a deeply ideological reading of the Second Amendment. For example, Stevens’ dissent laid bare the artificiality of Justice Scalia’s approach to the text, in which the meaning of the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is determined before any consideration is given to the impact of the first thirteen words of the Amendment about “a well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State.” This allows Scalia to assert the relevance of various 18th and 19th century examples of the phrases “keep arms” and “bear arms” denoting private conduct with guns unrelated to participation in a “well regulated Militia.” But, of course, the issue is not whether “keep arms” or “bear arms” could have a non-militia meaning in some conceivable context, but rather the meaning of the phrase “keep and bear Arms” in the specific context of a provision referencing the importance of a “well regulated Militia” to the “security of a free State.” Justice Stevens carefully documents that “bear Arms” had a predominately military meaning at the time of the Founding, and “keep Arms” was a common phrase in state statutes specifying the duties of militiamen during the period. Thus, Justice Stevens shows that, taken in proper context, the Second Amendment right secured “to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.” Instead, the Scalia majority manages to conclude that the Second Amendment “surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home” in a text in which this interest is entirely hidden and in which the “security of a free State,” not the security of “hearth and home” is the only expressed purpose of the guarantee. “The right the Court announces was not ‘enshrined’ in the Second Amendment by the Framers,” writes Justice Stevens. Rather, “it is the product of today’s law-changing decision.” In addition to exposing the flaws in Scalia’s version of original meaning, Justice Stevens’ dissent spins out the dangerous implications of reading the Second Amendment to permit excessive second-guessing by courts of the considered judgments of elected officials on the regulation of guns to protect public safety. Justice Stevens warns that the Heller decision “will surely give rise to a far more active judicial role in making vitally important national policy decisions than was envisioned at any time in the 18th, 19th, or 20th centuries,” expressing his fear that the District of Columbia’s gun law struck down by the Court “may well be just the first of an unknown number of dominoes to be knocked off the table.” It seems reasonable to assume that this powerful warning from the dissenters was a primary reason for the extraordinary language in Justice Scalia’s opinion offering reassurances about the limited effect of the Court’s decision. This section of the majority opinion — the now famous Part III — effectively pulls the dominoes away from the edge of the table. The right to keep and bear arms, according to Scalia, “was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Indeed, he adds, “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt” on a wide range of gun restrictions, including such categories as “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of firearms,” “prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons,” and prohibitions on “dangerous and unusual weapons,” a listing of “presumptively lawful regulatory measures” that “does not purport to be exhaustive.” more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-a-henigan/how-justice-stevens-may-h_b_537412.html
a gun banner citing a far left anti gun justice who hates white Christian conservative male gun owners and the paid shill for the Brady conspiracy against our constitutional rights Henigan has no credibility and RBG is well known for putting the Constitution in a subordinate position to her leftwing feminist agenda.
I don't pay any attention to the opinions of those who insult our military leaders who are working 20 hours a day at killing our enemy during time of war. What they think about anything regarding our rights is meaningless and self serving.
so in your view Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a military leader or Dennis Hennigan is your schtick is obvious-you pretend to be a gun owner but you are upset that gun owners take issue with the craven schemes of the Democrat party to abridge our gun rights. So you attack gun rights in an effort to avenge your beloved liberal masters
isn't it now he wants to get rid of the second amendment because he is mad second amendment advocates vote against the liberal democrats he hope would run this country
70% of Americans believe that the second amendment guarantees an individual right. its extremists who argue otherwise. You don't believe the second amendment guarantees an individual right. that is why you cite far leftwingers like the hopeful soon Former Justice RBG or paid shill for the Brady Bunch-both of whom don't want the second amendment to serve as an obstacle to the banning of guns
you don't like the politics of most gun owners and since you are upset with the election, you start whining about gun ownership
its the only possible explanation for someone who claims to be a veteran and a gun owner but is so insulting towards gun owners and so upset with gun ownership
