THE most significant flaw in the militia-only interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is...

It does not clarify things in my opinion. I find our founders decided that Congress was the body chosen to define what "well-regulated" means concerning the militias.

Why?

Because they decided to give Congress the absolute power to decide how the militias are organized, what training regimen they would follow, how they would discipline themselves, and what arms they would be allowed to have. In short, the militias are very much subject to federal governmental control and regulation.

I merely ask for those who believe in the "militia only" interpretation--those who believe the 2nd Amendment's protection is limited to a "right" to have only approved militia arms while members of an approved militia and only while engaged in approved militia functions--a simple question:

How does your limited interpretation of this right work to protect the militias from the power Congress has to abuse and neglect them?

I do not know where you stand.

Do you believe the 2nd amendment protected RKBA is limited to militia service?

If so, then can you answer the question I have asked?

No one else seems to be able to do so.

My position is this...The "militia only" interpretation limits the RKBA to the point that it is incapable of fulfilling the purpose its supporters claim it was intended to serve, and this is the clearest proof of the illegitimacy of this interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

I have asked that someone come to its defense and explain how it works.

And it seems all the old prophets of this theory have fallen silent.

So here i sit, awaiting the rise of a new prophet who can show us the way to the promised land.

Are you the one, or must we await another?

(Please accept this for what it is. It is not a criticism of anything you have said. It is just a barb I throw at others who seek to deny my my RKBA based upon the fictional power of theory whose workings they they are incapable of explaining)

 

Maybe this will help...
http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm

and this...
http://www.madisonbrigade.com/library_bor.htm

 

anti gun arguments are made for the ignorant and those who don't care and will reflexively favor "safety" over having to think things through. Gun restrictionists cannot debate the matters with those who are well informed because the arguments for gun control argue for an issue that gun controllers really don't believe in and avoid stating the real goal (harassing honest gun owners). Look at say at a former poster here who hated gun ownership-he's over on another board 2000 posts in a couple weeks doing nothing but trolling on gun issues. when asked to support a court decision his answer is-well the court made that decision so its right

we get the same thing here from those who continue to argue against our rights

 

Concealed Carry says it all.
Take this message to the faithful.
Gun control advocates are the New Infidel.

 

I don’t disagree with what you are saying. My impression is that someone who quotes Leonidas as part of their screen name would not be a person who argues against my RKBA.

I’m just arguing that the “militia only” interpretation is a fraud. Here again is my belief….

The Amendments in the BoR are not the marks of hamsters running through spilled ink and across a blank page. They were written by men who believed there was a need for each Amendment to protect something from the potentially abusive power of the federal government, and the purpose of each Amendment was to enshrine that protection.

I believe the RKBA pre-existed the Constitution, that it was a right to keep and bear arms unconnected with militia service, and that the Amendment was drafted to recognize and protect this right. In fact, the very wording of the right shows it was known to pre-exist the Amendment. If the Amendment “created” a right, then it would more naturally read “the people shall have a right….” Instead, it uses the phrase “the right of the people”—which is a statement that the “right” pre-exists the drafting of the Amendment and the Amendment is recognizing and protecting it.

Now to return to the “militia only” interpretation. I believe that when any interpretation seeks to limit a right to the point it cannot meet the purpose the Amendment was created for, then that should be a good hint that the interpretation is false.

This is exactly what the “militia only” interpretation of the 2nd Amendment does. Why? Because its supporters don’t care about why the Amendment was written, or what purpose it was intended to serve, or what it was intended to protect against.

All they care about is making the Amendment fit their goal, which is the denial of our individual RKBA.

Think about it now. This is the only instance in history in which the express goal of an interpretation of a “right of the people” is to actually deny them that right outside the total control of government.

That’s why they can’t tell you how it works—how their view of the right would ever be capable of protecting the “well-regulated” militia from the power of Congress to abuse and neglect it. Oh they will tell you the founders were concerning with protecting the militia. This is the reason they claim the RKBA must be limited to only approved militia arms in militia service and provides no protection outside the governmentally dominated militia.

And by doing so they destroy the “right of the people” and place everything under the domination of Congress—thereby rendering the Amendment incapable of preventing the abuses they claim it was written to defend against.

I have asked them to tell me how it works. If you are right, tell me how it protects the militia from the power of Congress.

No one here has been able to do it on their own.

No one here has been able to consult the Goggle and find the answer.

They won’t even seriously address it and try to give an answer.

Because the answer does not exist.

Because the interpretation is a fraud.

 

"Because the interpretation is a fraud."

Exactly !!!!

 

If the 2nd only protects the states' ability to form militia, how then does a federal ban on 'assault weapons' not violate the constitution?

 

Without such an interpretation, the Bill of Rights is meaningless.

 

And you have evidence for this, right?

 

In my opinion, that is absolutely incorrect. It is not a right to participate in government.

Your only “right” regarding militia participation is the right to choose to volunteer or not. But this is not a right of participation because if you volunteer then the government is under no obligation to accept your offer of service.

Congress has the power in Article 1 section 8 to organize and set the training for the militias. This gives Congress the power to make the militia as large or as small as it wishes, and it gives Congress the power say who can and cannot be a militia member.

Congress can exclude me for any reason it wishes, and so Congress has the near-absolute power to decide whether I may participate in the militia or not.

I say near absolute because there is one exception to the Congressional power over militia participation—the reservation to the states of the power to appoint militia officers, which is also found in Article I section 8. So if I volunteer, and Congress says Bryan will not be accepted into the militia and cannot be a private, then the Commonwealth of Virginia can say “well then by God we will make him a militia brigadier general” (assuming Congress even creates that position as it organizes the Virginia Militia).

Either way, it is a government—and not me—who controls my participation.

It simply cannot be a right of participation.

 

Claims of a recognized right to participate or a right to have approved militia arms in approved militia service evade the ultimate issue—which is:

Why can’t you tell me how it works?

Come one now, you militia only believers. I understand what you think the Amendment is supposed to protect—You think it recognizes only a right to have arms while in approved militia service, or that it recognizes some other less defined right of “participation” in a militia.

Fine. If you are right, then surely you can tell me how the Amendment works to protect what you claim it was written for.

This is not an unreasonable request. We can do it with every other Amendment.

Freedom of speech—freedom of religion—freedom of the press—freedom from having soldiers quartered in your house—freedom from unreasonable search and seizure—the right to counsel—to trial by jury—to be free from cruel and unreasonable punishment, etc.

Every one of these rights is protected by an Amendment, and you can look at every Amendment and see exactly how it protects these rights.

Your interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is the only interpretation of any Amendment in the history of our nation that is incapable of showing how the Amendment protects what you say it was created to protect.

This is not a coincidence that your interpretation cannot be explained. It is simply a by-product of the desire to destroy rather than protect a right.

This desire to destroy the right of the people to keep and bear arms beyond the government approved and controlled militia has led your interpretation to emasculate the Amendment to the point that it is incapable of performing any function you set before it.

And this, to me, is the surest proof that the interpretation itself is a fraud.

Here is what I say to those true believers in the militia only interpretation:

The only reason the 2nd Amendment cannot protect an individual RKBA outside approved militia service is because you do not wish it to do so. Therefore, in an attempt to deny the one true purpose of the Amendment you create other alternative purposes for it.

But then when asked you cannot tell me how the amendment fulfills and protects these imaginary purposes.

Why?

Because they are, in fact, imaginary.

Too many people are afraid to take a stand on any position in this forum. It is far easier to snipe at what someone else says while avoiding having to explain what you believe and why you believe it—because that requires you to plant your feet and shield your position from the scorn others would heap upon it.

Well I have planted my feet on the neck of your interpretation. I call it fraudulent, and in the last month I have given some of my reasons for my position.

Can you, Galileo, or anyone else for that matter, show me where I am wrong?

I say those of you who support the militia only interpretation have not done so—and will not do so—because you cannot do so.

 

That is a lot of reading. I am a proponent of the Militia theory. My question is: Was our country at war, thinking about war, preparing for a war, just finished with a war? I did not read the whole article, but I will when I am awake.

 

Please start from the beginning.

 

I will, I heard a guy saying this on the radio the other day (Marshall and Strunk THAT citation professor)

The militias were not to be an Army for the USA against foreigners NOR a protection of the people against the Government. That is why there are so many inconsistencies in what seems a fairly straightforward thing

The militias were to protect against slave rebellions, a major fear of the slaveholding South even then.

Yeh, yeh, playing the race card and all that BUT how do you explain the way the law is written and interpreted otherwise?

Discuss.

.

 

It's a Bogus viewpoint. Pennsylvania came to the Constitutional Convention with suggestions for amendments based on their own state constitution: "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned."

Was Pennsylvania a slave state?

A recent state constitution update: 1994 Alaska: 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.

Is Alaska a slave state?
http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/statedat.htm

 

All of the states were slave states before the Constitution, that is, slavery was legal in all of them; and there were more than enough slaves in PA that the slaveholders and the populace was afraid of them. The idea that slavery could be illegal in some states and not others came about much later. Alaska's article pretty obviously is a modern homage to the American Constitution. Some states adopt the Bill of Rights straight out in their Constitution

 

that comes from a discredited law review article from a second rate University written by a fourth rate law professor who teaches at a third rate university-named Carl Bogus Jr. It was amplified by a minor league talk show troll named Thom Hartman. The USA's top constitutional law scholar-Yale Sterling professor of Law-Akhil Amar, destroyed that nonsense when he noted that some of the most ardent anti slave states and founders not only pushed for the second amendment, some of those states had their own second amendment provisions that sound just like the federal one.

discredited gun banner academics like raising that nonsense because they see gun owners as no better than racist slave owners and want to smear gun owners by guilt of association

 

that slave patrol argument, created by a guy named BOGUS is just that-Bogus. Its up there with the idiocy that "weapons of war should be banned, and the idiocy is compounded when they claim the AR 15 is a weapon of war

 

Ad authoritatem and ad hominem appeals. How else do you explain the structural inconsistencies in the Amendment that were cited?

 

because we live in a different time now. it made perfect sense when the founders couldn't foresee dishonest politicians trying to disarm citizens or thinking the federal government somehow had powers never given to it by the founders.

Your posts demonstrate very little understanding of constitutional theory or scholarship to those of us who understand the entire foundation the USSC is based on, the language makes perfect sense

 

So your superior understanding is that the Founding Fathers never thought anyone would seriously challenge the Constiution and so wrote one of its most important parts in a slapdash manner shot full inconsistencies?

I think that's another ad hominem too, and now attacking no less than the Founding Fathers. I guess that's easier than answering the original argument but let's try anyway. Again, how else do you explain the cited inconsistencies?

 

There are no inconsistencies in the Second Amendment, it was not written "in a slapdash manner", and it means exactly what it says. The arguments otherwise are those put forth by authoritarians struggling to explain away the one amendment that most prevents their agenda from being able to move forward in this country.

 

They always have had the option to campaign for support to amend it using the provisions encoded in the Constitution for it's modification. But....

 

The 2nd Amendment will fall. It's just a matter of time.

 

aren't you on record for wanting to ban private possession of firearms or severely limiting it? if not I apologize in advance but I believe that is your position. and if I am correct, you would have to pretend the second amendment actually states something that would allow banning firearms.