Who believes the claim that the intent of the 2nd Amendment was to arm militias

Except it is not. It is asking what is the point in making a law supposedly enforceable, if it will not actually be enforced?

Except for the fact that they are not. Mere possession of a firearm is all the evidence needed to successfully prosecuted a prohibited individual for a crime. Even if it is not in their possession, their fingerprints are enough. In some cases even inquiring about where to acquire a firearm is evidence enough to warrant a charge of possession. Yet despite this, prohibited individuals are almost never prosecuted for such. Such charges are routinely dropped before the matter ever goes to a trial, despite the ease of actually prosecuting them. It is not even a matter of the punishment not worth being sought for the time invested, as the charge of felon in possession of a firearm carries a ten year prison sentence.

 

Does the above now mean you back the police here in the USA?

 

Law enforcement in the united states is supported when such is deserved and justified by the circumstances, and criticized when such is deserved and justified by the circumstances.

The matter above, however, pertains to the matter of prosecuting attorneys, rather than those who are actually performing the arrests. There is a stark difference between the two groups in how they go about actually performing their duties. The lack of prosecution for firearm-related offenses for prohibited individuals is almost enough to suggest a complete disregard on the part of the prosecutor, for the risk law enforcement must undertake to make the arrest in the first place.

 

How much are they under Trump. You do know he is the president now....don't you? Plus I see no evidence of your numbers

 

Seeing as Donald Trump has been president of the united states for a mere two hundred and forty eight days, it is far too early, as well as improper, to be comparing successful prosecutions for firearm-related offenses under his administration, to those of George Bush and Barack Obama, who each spent approximately two thousand nine hundred and twenty two days in office.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/g...ama-down-more-than-45-percent/article/2516175

Despite his calls for greater gun control, including a new assault weapons ban that extends to handguns, President Obama's administration has turned away from enforcing gun laws, cutting weapons prosecutions some 40 percent since a high of about 11,000 under former President Bush.


"If you are not going to enforce the laws on the books, then don't start talking about a whole new wave of new laws," said a gun rights advocate.


In the wake of the horrific mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Democratic lawmakers have begun preparing a new collection of anti-gun laws, including renewing the assault weapons ban, banning the purchase of high-capacity clips that spring bullets into guns, and tightening rules on who can buy weapons.


Lawmakers are banking that the public will push for new gun controls. But as with other mass shootings, polls find the public split, and blaming the shooter, not the gun. Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Monday found that public is evenly divided over whether the Newtown shootings reflect broader problems in American society, 47 percent, or are just the acts of troubled individuals, 44 percent.


Figures collected by Syracuse University's TRAC project, the authority on prosecutions from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, shows that the administration has reduced the focus on gun crimes and instead steered prosecutors and investigators to drug crimes.


Gun prosecutions peaked at 10,937 under Bush in 2004. A current TRAC report shows that the Obama administration is prosecuting about 6,000 weapons cases.


According to an October 2011 TRAC report, "There also has been a shifting emphasis towards drug-related investigations. Since ATF-referred prosecutions peaked in FY 2005, the number of weapons prosecutions actually has fallen by 32 percent, a much higher rate than for ATF prosecutions overall. Making up the difference has been the growing number of drug cases, up by 26 percent during the same period."


In 2011, the Obama gun prosecutions hit a low for the decade, but there has been a slight uptick in prosecutions this year, said another TRAC report.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/23/despite-rhetoric-gun-prosecutions-plummet-under-ob/

While President Obama decries gun violence and presses for more laws to restrict ownership, his Justice Department has prosecuted 25 percent fewer cases referred by the main law enforcement agency charged with reducing firearms violence across the country, a computer analysis of U.S. prosecution data shows.

Federal prosecutors brought a total of 5,082 gun violation cases in 2013 recommended by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, compared with 6,791 during the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency in 2008, according to data obtained from the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys.

The 2013 totals represent a 42 percent decline from the record number of 8,752 prosecutions of ATF cases brought by the Justice Department in 2004 under Mr. Bush, according to the data.

Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, regarded as one of the premier researchers on federal prosecution performances and trends, analyzed the data at the request of The Washington Times.

U.S. attorneys have been slowing gun prosecutions even further, with 2,598 brought in the first seven months of this fiscal year. The pace of activity puts the Justice Department on track to prosecute the fewest ATF cases since 2000, well before the drug gang wars in Mexico sharply increased violence on both sides of the border.

“We have this irony. The Obama administration, which is asking for more in the way of gun regulations — in terms of increased background checks for private sales and at gun shows — is actually prosecuting less of the gun laws already on the books,” said Robert Cottrol, a gun control historian at George Washington University. “For a lot of people, there’s more ideological cache harassing Bubba at the gun show than getting a handle on gun crime.”

The data contrast with Mr. Obama’s proclamations after the deadly shooting sprees at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school and an Aurora, Colo., movie theater that he would take every step possible to stem firearms violence.

“We should get tougher on people who buy guns with the express purpose of turning around and selling them to criminals. And we should severely punish anybody who helps them do this,” the president declared in the immediate aftermath of the Newtown tragedy.

Though the ATF has been the primary agency to combat illegal gun trafficking, the data directly from the 94 federal judicial district offices across the country show that the number of prosecutions of cases from ATF has gone down since Mr. Obama made his promise in January 2013. ATF-related prosecutions fell from 5,935 in 2012 to 5,082 in 2013, and are on track to finish around 4,500 this year, the data show.

The number of cases developed by the ATF also is plummeting. The agency became the focus of widespread criticism in 2011 when it admitted that agents knowingly allowed hundreds of semi-automatic weapons to slip across the border and into the hands of drug gangs in Mexico in a bungled investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious.

Cases recommended for prosecution by the ATF have declined from a high of 17,877 in 2004 under Mr. Bush to 12,066 last year, according to the data compiled by Syracuse University and reviewed by The Times.

 

Would you say either party does a particularly good job of enforcing federal firearms laws? Why?

 

not really. Lopez proved that. Guess you will be over here a bit more

 

As will you it seems

 

I haven't been suspended as you have. nor have I been banned here. but lets ask the obvious question: how does the second amendment somehow stop operating based on the type of firearm someone wants to own

that is why stuff like magazine limits or how many guns you can own are intellectually dishonest

the second amendment is not what we can do but what the government cannot do. the government does not suddenly gain the power to ban you owning a fifth firearm because you already own four. if it cannot ban you from buying one gun this month, it cannot now ban you from buying the fifth or sixth or 25th this week. and magazine limits are idiotic and unconstitutional for the same reason

 

Which federal law is that? Certainly isn't immigration law, not yet anyway.

 

How come when I respond to what the gun control crowd wants to argue about, even answering questions they claim others are avoiding—how come they don’t want to talk about it anymore?

Come on guys. Tell me what it is. I can handle it. Is there something stuck in my teeth? Did I forget my deodorant? Why is it that they don’t want to talk?

 

They've no interest in getting their can handed to them. Again.

 

You keep bombarding them with facts and logic. To a gun control advocate, that's like garlic and crosses to a vampire.

 

They know they can only respond with fallacious appeals to emotion, ignorance and/or dishonesty.

 

If instead of arms, it said the right to have sex shall never be infringed upon, then they might, just might actually be able to read the 2nd amendment properly.

 

3 of the current SCOTUS justices believe this.

So you cannot say it is an unknown position.

I agree with the late Scalia on the issue, however not all SCOTUS justices agreed with him on Heller, which discussed the issue in depth in conjunction with a case on semi auto pistols.

 

Good response.

This is exactly where the issue currently stands.

Opinion is split, both on the SCOTUS and also across the USA.

 

Ask anyone expressing the desire to place a restriction on the right to arms if they would accept the same or similar restriction om the right to vote, free speech or (especially) abortion.
If they respond at all, it will be laden with nonsense and double-standards.

 

The Truth always vanquishes Lies and half Truths and those that use them flee when their chicanery is exposed.

There is no defense against Truth.

 

Let's try this thought experiment:

"Safe sex being important, the right of the people to use condoms shall not be infringed."

Would that protect the use of condoms for non-sexual purposes such as storing water? We already know that rights are not unlimited and that preambles played a role in limiting the scope of rights in 18th Century law. So probably not.

In the case of the Second Amendment, the military term "bear arms" is used in the second clause. So an even stronger case can be made that the amendment does not protect the use of guns for non-militia purposes. The Second Amendment simply does not say what pro-gun activists want it to say.

 

There's not a case at all that the Second Amendment gives the government the power to regulate the right of the People to keep and bear arms.

 

....AAAAAnd here we have the antigun, anti-constitution, anti-founder's intent argument laid bare.

Sorry, Galileo, but your position has been thoroughly, legally, historically proven to be nonsense. Even the most rudimentary reading of the Founders' views on the subject prove you wrong. Period. End of Story.

“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
George Mason

“A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves …”
Richard Henry Lee

“The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.”
Zachariah Johnson

“And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; …”
Samuel Adams

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”
Richard Henry Lee

“The great object is that every man be armed....Everyone who is able may have a gun.”
Patrick Henry

“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”
Patrick Henry

“The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that … it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; … ”
Thomas Jefferson

“The best we can help for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”
Alexander Hamilton

“The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution.”
Thomas Jefferson

The statements above, settle the issue and topic of gun ownership of the people, as far as I am concerned.

 

Except that such is not the case. The second amendment specifically states "keep and bear arms" rather than just "bear arms" exclusively. The "keep" cannot be read out of existence, especially in light of the Heller ruling which emphasized it.

 

The difference is, we believe our rights are unalienable and from God. That poster must believe our rights are dispensed by Government.

 

Good enough for me!