They Want to Take Your Guns

Why do we have the 2nd? To protect the right to keep and bear arms from infringement by the state.
What keeps the state from enacting the laws necessary to prevent gun violence, necessarily infringing on the right to keep and bear arms? The 2nd.
Seems pretty self-evident to me. Feel free to counter.

This argument died implicitly in 1939 and explicitly in 1998.
The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

 

You mean Obama didn't take all the guns away and put people in reeducation camps?

 

Not for lack of trying.

 

You must have missed the grandstanding by The Obama every time fresh blood hit the ground, getting all teary-eyed over his continued failures to ban 'assault weapons'.

 

In this particular argument the conservatives are correct.


That would be ab OPINION pretending to be fact.

The 2nd is very clear. It marries "the right to bear arms" regarding the Constitution/ Outside of that "well regulated militia...it has no bearing.

That's not to say that you don't have the right to own a gun...only that it's not in the Constitution other than in regard to the militia

 

which is strange. A right is a right. It applies to everyone whether you are the most evil person in the community or the most benevolent. A right is different from a privilege, which is why its called the bill of rights not the bill of privileges. If you have to act in an upstanding way to get your right then it is a privilege you earn not a right you have by birth.

If the "rights" in the second can be turned into conditional privileges than everything in the bill of rights can be turned into that.

 

That's insane. That pretends that anything that is ever considered a right in any circumstance...is a right in EVERY circumstance.

That's simply absurd

 

if it is not then it is conditional. Rights that you get upon fulfilling certain conditions are privileges. If I can take away your 2nd amendment right I should be able to take away your first third and any other ammendment.

 

No. It is conditional because the conditions are spelled out in the Amendment

 

I would not counter the latter part, since that is paraphrasing what I posted earlier. But the intent of the 2nd isn't all that apparent from its wording. It does not mention people being armed against the state. That is how it is interpreted today, however.

Yet it is worded differently, which makes me wonder about this interpretation.

 

A convicted felon loses their legal ability to possess a firearm through what is known as due process, meaning the punishment for certain acts come through the courts, after the accused has been provided a trial, and found guilty in a court of law. It is significantly different from various other restrictions that are proposed as solutions in search of a problem.

 

You know this is untrue.
You know the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
You may not like it, but you know it.

 

The interpretation has been around for 80 years - why wonder about it now?

 

Correct. For your right to keep and bear arms to be protected from infringement, you must be part of "the people".

 

I guess because people aren't using muskets anymore. Modern guns have made this amendment kind of antiquated and stupid where public safety is concerned.

 

80 yeas ago, firearms where little different than today.
I ask again: The interpretation has been around for 80 years - why wonder about it now?

Unsupportable nonsense.

 

Wrong, you must be part of a "well regulated militia". That CONDITION is spelled out clearly in the 2nd

 

If it's "unconnected" , why is that phrase in there?

 

Let's just cut to the bottom line. Cliff's Notes: "Shall NOT be infringed".

 

You know this statement is false. No such condition exists.

 

You've asked this dozens of times.
Each time, I have given you the same answer, an answer you cannot substantively or meaningfully criticize.
This time will be no different.

2. Prefatory Clause.

The prefatory clause reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State … .”

a. “Well-Regulated Militia.” In United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, 179 (1939) , we explained that “the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.” That definition comports with founding-era sources. See, e.g., Webster (“The militia of a country are the able bodied men organized into companies, regiments and brigades … and required by law to attend military exercises on certain days only, but at other times left to pursue their usual occupations”); The Federalist No. 46, pp. 329, 334 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (J. Madison) (“near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands”); Letter to Destutt de Tracy (Jan. 26, 1811), in The Portable Thomas Jefferson 520, 524 (M. Peterson ed. 1975) (“[T]he militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms”).

Petitioners take a seemingly narrower view of the militia, stating that “[m]ilitias are the state- and congressionally-regulated military forces described in the Militia Clauses (art. I, §8, cls. 15–16).” Brief for Petitioners 12. Although we agree with petitioners’ interpretive assumption that “militia” means the same thing in Article I and the Second Amendment , we believe that petitioners identify the wrong thing, namely, the organized militia. Unlike armies and navies, which Congress is given the power to create (“to raise … Armies”; “to provide … a Navy,” Art. I, §8, cls. 12–13), the militia is assumed by Article I already to be in existence. Congress is given the power to “provide for calling forth the militia,” §8, cl. 15; and the power not to create, but to “organiz[e]” it—and not to organize “a” militia, which is what one would expect if the militia were to be a federal creation, but to organize “the” militia, connoting a body already in existence, ibid., cl. 16. This is fully consistent with the ordinary definition of the militia as all able-bodied men. From that pool, Congress has plenary power to organize the units that will make up an effective fighting force. That is what Congress did in the first militia Act, which specified that “each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective states, resident therein, who is or shall be of the age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia.” Act of May 8, 1792, 1 Stat. 271. To be sure, Congress need not conscript every able-bodied man into the militia, because nothing in Article I suggests that in exercising its power to organize, discipline, and arm the militia, Congress must focus upon the entire body. Although the militia consists of all able-bodied men, the federally organized militia may consist of a subset of them.

Finally, the adjective “well-regulated” implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training. See Johnson 1619 (“Regulate”: “To adjust by rule or method”); Rawle 121–122; cf. Va. Declaration of Rights §13 (1776), in 7 Thorpe 3812, 3814 (referring to “a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms”).

b. “Security of a Free State.” The phrase “security of a free state” meant “security of a free polity,” not security of each of the several States as the dissent below argued, see 478 F. 3d, at 405, and n. 10. Joseph Story wrote in his treatise on the Constitution that “the word ‘state’ is used in various senses [and in] its most enlarged sense, it means the people composing a particular nation or community.” 1 Story §208; see also 3 id., §1890 (in reference to the Second Amendment ’s prefatory clause: “The militia is the natural defence of a free country”). It is true that the term “State” elsewhere in the Constitution refers to individual States, but the phrase “security of a free state” and close variations seem to have been terms of art in 18th-century political discourse, meaning a “ ‘free country’ ” or free polity. See Volokh, “Necessary to the Security of a Free State,” 83 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1, 5 (2007); see, e.g., 4 Blackstone 151 (1769); Brutus Essay III (Nov. 15, 1787), in The Essential Antifederalist 251, 253 (W. Allen & G. Lloyd eds., 2d ed. 2002). Moreover, the other instances of “state” in the Constitution are typically accompanied by modifiers making clear that the reference is to the several States—“each state,” “several states,” “any state,” “that state,” “particular states,” “one state,” “no state.” And the presence of the term “foreign state” in Article I and Article III shows that the word “state” did not have a single meaning in the Constitution.

There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.” See 3 Story §1890. First, of course, it is useful in repelling invasions and suppressing insurrections. Second, it renders large standing armies unnecessary—an argument that Alexander Hamilton made in favor of federal control over the militia. The Federalist No. 29, pp. 226, 227 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton). Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.

3. Relationship between Prefatory Clause and Operative Clause

We reach the question, then: Does the preface fit with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms? It fits perfectly, once one knows the history that the founding generation knew and that we have described above. That history showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to suppress political opponents. This is what had occurred in England that prompted codification of the right to have arms in the English Bill of Rights.

The debate with respect to the right to keep and bear arms, as with other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, was not over whether it was desirable (all agreed that it was) but over whether it needed to be codified in the Constitution. During the 1788 ratification debates, the fear that the federal government would disarm the people in order to impose rule through a standing army or select militia was pervasive in Antifederalist rhetoric. See, e.g., Letters from The Federal Farmer III (Oct. 10, 1787), in 2 The Complete Anti-Federalist 234, 242 (H. Storing ed. 1981). John Smilie, for example, worried not only that Congress’s “command of the militia” could be used to create a “select militia,” or to have “no militia at all,” but also, as a separate concern, that “[w]hen a select militia is formed; the people in general may be disarmed.” 2 Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution 508–509 (M. Jensen ed. 1976) (hereinafter Documentary Hist.). Federalists responded that because Congress was given no power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, such a force could never oppress the people. See, e.g., A Pennsylvanian III (Feb. 20, 178, in The Origin of the Second Amendment 275, 276 (D. Young ed., 2d ed. 2001) (hereinafter Young); White, To the Citizens of Virginia, Feb. 22, 1788, in id., at 280, 281; A Citizen of America, (Oct. 10, 1787) in id., at 38, 40; Remarks on the Amendments to the federal Constitution, Nov. 7, 1788, in id., at 556. It was understood across the political spectrum that the right helped to secure the ideal of a citizen militia, which might be necessary to oppose an oppressive military force if the constitutional order broke down.

It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amendment ’s prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting. But the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens’ militia by taking away their arms was the reason that right—unlike some other English rights—was codified in a written Constitution. Justice Breyer’s assertion that individual self-defense is merely a “subsidiary interest” of the right to keep and bear arms, see post, at 36, is profoundly mistaken. He bases that assertion solely upon the prologue—but that can only show that self-defense had little to do with the right’s codification; it was the central component of the right itself.

Besides ignoring the historical reality that the Second Amendment was not intended to lay down a “novel principl[e]” but rather codified a right “inherited from our English ancestors,” Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U. S. 275, 281 (1897) , petitioners’ interpretation does not even achieve the narrower purpose that prompted codification of the right. If, as they believe, the Second Amendment right is no more than the right to keep and use weapons as a member of an organized militia, see Brief for Petititioners 8—if, that is, the organized militia is the sole institutional beneficiary of the Second Amendment ’s guarantee—it does not assure the existence of a “citizens’ militia” as a safeguard against tyranny. For Congress retains plenary authority to organize the militia, which must include the authority to say who will belong to the organized force.17 That is why the first Militia Act’s requirement that only whites enroll caused States to amend their militia laws to exclude free blacks. See Siegel, The Federal Government’s Power to Enact Color-Conscious Laws, 92 Nw. U. L. Rev. 477, 521–525 (199. Thus, if petitioners are correct, the Second Amendment protects citizens’ right to use a gun in an organization from which Congress has plenary authority to exclude them. It guarantees a select militia of the sort the Stuart kings found useful, but not the people’s militia that was the concern of the founding generation.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html

 

You have no clue. Gun ownership was guaranteed by the 2nd to prevent a tyrannical government from confiscating guns. "We the people" control the government, not the other way around. Of course, we'd need some tanks, missiles, anti-aircraft, armor piercing stuff to pull it off today. But that was not the case then. By this line of reasoning, if I want a bazooka, I'm within my rights to own one from a strict constructionist point of view.

 

She does.
However, she rejects the realities of Miller, Heller and McDonald, and substitutes her own.

 

Which is complete nonsense.

If a human being cannot be trusted among his fellow man with a weapon, he's got no place among those men.

Either leave them in prison, or kill them. This species doesn't have time for some genetic cess pool to be causing problems.