Proposed change to second amendment
Posted by xthinker88 9 years, 8 months ago to Government
I think the author just doesn't get it.
The founders pretty much botched the 2nd Amendment when they added the preamble. As a legal principle, a preamble to a law only ever comes into play for interpreting the law when the main clause of the law is not clearly written. You cannot get more clearly written in the English language than: The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Thus the preamble to that clause should never come into play. Just as the preamble to the Constitution is irrelevant to analyzing constitutional issues.
The Pennsylvania Constitution actually did it better:
The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned. (Pa. Const. art. I, § 21) (1790).
Of course PA's gun laws violate its own constitution but that is a different issue.
The founders pretty much botched the 2nd Amendment when they added the preamble. As a legal principle, a preamble to a law only ever comes into play for interpreting the law when the main clause of the law is not clearly written. You cannot get more clearly written in the English language than: The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Thus the preamble to that clause should never come into play. Just as the preamble to the Constitution is irrelevant to analyzing constitutional issues.
The Pennsylvania Constitution actually did it better:
The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned. (Pa. Const. art. I, § 21) (1790).
Of course PA's gun laws violate its own constitution but that is a different issue.
Why should government agencies such as the EPA or HHS or many others that have nothing to do with the physical protection of the US have automatic weapons but the citizens cannot????
I'm sick and tired of these people control freaks. I don't refer to them as gun control freaks because their actual intent is to control people, not guns.
His figure of 30K deaths -- almost 20K of those deaths are from suicide. I didn't bother looking up the number of people killed due to hunting and other accidents, so for the sake of convenience I'm going to consider the remaining 10K deaths to be homicides of some sort or another. Big. Frigging. Deal. In a nation with over 300 million people and almost as many guns, 10K people a year is way down towards the bottom of the list of how people die in this country. (Not that any murders are ok, but let's get our priorities in order here)
One of the problems with the US v Miller case is that the members of the Supreme Court at the time were grossly ignorant of the types of weapons used by the infantry in the army. One of those weapons was, in fact, the sawed-off shotgun. So, even limiting the scope of the second amendment "to the uses of arms that were related to military activities" should allow for both sawed-off shotguns *and* automatic rifles.
All of that aside, who cares what the Supreme Court has ruled. Regardless of what the original intent and purpose of that branch of government was, for over the past 100 years it has served mainly as a rubber stamp for the actions of the other two branches of government. Yes, they've rules some things unconstitutional, but that's been for the sake of decorum. The Citizens United case was the death knell for the last vestige of legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
Since the organization was mentioned in the article, I want to add that I'm not a supporter of the NRA. Their position for supporting gun rights in the interest of sporting and hunting is disingenuous. Maybe their stance is the politically expedient one, but I would rather support JPFO -- Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownwership. They understand the real purpose to the second amendment. See the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to understand why.
I hope this doesn't step on anyone's toes or violate the rules of engagement, but I'm going to recommend that y'all look into JPFO. For one, they understand the real purpose of the second amendment. But just as, if not more, important, is that no one messes with the Jews. You tell someone that you're a member of the NRA and they're gonna label you a gun nut. Tell them that you're a member of JPFO and now you're bringing up the Holocaust and all of the Nazi atrocities and anti-semitism. It throws the libtard off balance, gives them pause to *maybe* think.
Excellent point about the NRA's position.
I disagree with you on Citizens United (CU). I know this is not a popular position, but CU was based on well established law going back to before the Constitution. The reason corporations have rights is that they are owned by people. In the early 1800s a state essentially tried to make the take over a private university and argued the university (corporation) did not have rights This amounted to theft of the University by the state.
If you care you might want to check out my article on point http://hallingblog.com/corporations-have...
To limit a corporation's right to free speech is the same thing as limiting the right of free speech of the shareholders
I may be putting my foot in my mouth because I didn’t read the whole case that you cited in your article. It is really long and I don’t have the time, so I skimmed it then read the judgement. My take from the judgement is that this was an issue of contracts.
Respectfully, I stand by my stance on Citizens United. Limiting the free speech of a corporation is not the same thing as limiting the free speech of the shareholders. The shareholders, as natural people, already have the right of free speech, so giving their corporation the same right is tantamount to letting the shareholders double dip in the social and political arenas.
If corporations are legally considered persons, and these persons are under the control of other persons (the shareholders) then isn’t that the equivalent of slavery? Would it be acceptable for a real-life slave holder to have his slaves vote and then claim fair-play?
Corporations are not Natural Beings. They are legal fictions. As a result, their rights are not the same rights reserved to Natural Beings. Those rights are bestowed by Nature or God (depending on your belief system). The rights of corporations are bestowed by Man and can be as limited as Man chooses. To be correct, corporations have no rights. They only have privileges.
He wants to make sure only the king and his government has firearms. Period. Not serfs like we the people or those who fought against King George's troops. People like Misjustice Stevens need to be retired from the bench.
The problem is, people are twisting that phrase beyond recognition.
In my opinion, anyone who looks at the Second Amendment with any degree of honesty can come to no other conclusion.
He knows that the founding fathers were just a decade and a half away from having overthrown a tyranny.
He knows that the Bill of Rights were added to prevent the government from becoming a tyrannical state.
He knows that by chipping away at the 2nd Amendment, he and his kind move a step closer to again suppressing Americans under the dead weight of another tyranny.
He knows full well what he is doing.
I've thought about gun rights, and related to more recent disagreements about the right to take a picture or video of a cop.
It seems to me that there is no harm in taking a picture, but instead, possibly doing something with that picture later, such as embarrassment, or libelous acts, etc. But recording the video and never watching it, can do no harm. Yet (some) cops will prevent the video from ever being recorded, since they can't trust you to act responsibly with it (or some such tortured reason). And they use the same logic taking guns away from people for what some "might" do. But oops, that gets us back to the First Amendment, and freedom of the press (even though it's not a printing press, but it still counts).
Just like owning a gun, taking a video does nothing harmful by that alone. Or like they say in porn flicks, "it's not what you have, but how you use it." 1A protects porn flicks, too.
The second amendment clarifies that this right of gun ownership is pre-existing. It says that the government is not allowed to infringe on that right.
It stuns me as to how broadly the courts want to interpret the rights of The People in the First, yet not the Second.
Deep Throat, piss Christ, and publishing the names and addresses of gun permit holders, all come under protections against government "abridging the freedom of speech", yet they are willing to differentiate between a rifle with a magazine with seven rounds in it, versus the same with eight, causing the actor to be convicted of a felony.
a natural fact -- humans will defend themselves.
if that involves a threatening glance, a verbal warning,
a fist, a stick, a gun or a pushbutton, defense is an
innate truth. . just shoot straight. . that is gun control. -- j
This treatise is “All over the map” in trying to justify removing the right to keep and bear arms.
One of the “popular” arguments he attempts is using the wrong definition of “regulated.”
The word, at that time and in the amendments writing was synonyms to “equipped.” As in “Regulars” being fully outfitted soldiers.
Most significant though is the failure of most people to process the exact meaning of the amendments wording.
The Amendment states a particular reason to not infringe on the addressed right.
The wording acknowledges that right as already existing.
You could repeal the Amendment and that would only result in the need for a militia no longer being a reason not to infringe!
This is not a legal opinion; it is a semantic observation.
As Francisco said "Some day my friend, you will learn that words have exact meanings!"
Justice Stevens is quite mistaken, or trying to rewrite history and distort original intent. Ignorant or purposely deceptive, he is wrong and in need of education and correction.
Who is the militia?
"I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few politicians."
- George Mason (father of the Bill of Rights and The Virginia Declaration of Rights)
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
- Thomas Jefferson (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria)
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
- James Madison
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves ... and include all men capable of bearing arms."
- Richard Henry Lee
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun."
- Patrick Henry
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
- Samuel Adams
More: http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/gun-quota...
"To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them."
- George Mason
Respectfully,
O.A.
Federalist #46 is a good read for anybody wanting to understand the second amendment and should be required reading for anybody studying the constitution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia
But I wonder what arguments JPS would pose in disagreement with that Wikipedia entry...
Again, as usual, if you/we don't discuss the Definition of Militia to the point of agreement, discussing Regulation OF a 'well-regulated militia' and/or The Amendment Itself ... is moot.
:)
Just like arguing if something is "Fair" or not without defining "Fair." Or Moral, or,... or,...
That's why I usually interject the point into such 'discussions' that it's a good idea to settle the Definitions before plowing into the Discussion of the 'right or wrong' that might result. I think I'm becoming Socratic in my Old Age, or so I've been accused.... I gotta research that accusation some more... :)
But that's too much to expect in our society. I've heard people argue that the Constitution's preamble supports the welfare state because it uses the words "general welfare"
Excellent point about preambles and the law. I agree that the founders botch the 2nd Amendment. I read an interesting article about the history of the 2nd amendment and the final wording. According to the article they were trying to combine two concepts, one about self defense and the right to own guns and another, which I don't remember exactly, about militias.
What changed is that most people became lazy, and assumed police would always be trustworthy. So they let the government become better armed than the rest of us. If we ever get a chance to undo that, we'd better not let it happen again, even if it means there'd be a few curmudgeons around with atom bombs.
The end of the article talks about "possible remedies for what every American can recognize as an ongoing national tragedy." This is precisely the type of decision-making the Bill of Rights is supposed to prevent. They wrote the Bill of Rights for times of tragedy, when people feel scared and willing to give up rights to solve some immediate problem.
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