Summations Only

Okay so far.

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The check on all government, not simply the federal government, was the armed population, the militia. Government would not be accorded the power to create a select militia since such a body would become the government's instrument.

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That's one historian's opinion. An opinion which conflicts with the text of the constitution.For example:Article 1, Section 8, Subsection (16)

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To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress

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Pretty clear and explicit. The power to organized a Militia, appoint officer's, and train the militia is reserved to the states. The states exert this power through State Guards, State Military Reserves, State Militias or State Defense Forces. There is no provision in the constitution for you to organize your own militia.

Even those replies which refer to me in the first person and Dr. Adequate in the third person? Nope.

Reminder to self. Think twice before you call somebody a wing-nut again. Once you've rated a right winger a 10, it may be impossible to grade true paranoia.

You simply cannot resist calling someone a liar, can you?

Speak for yourself. I have studied the history behind the first and second amendments. This is not unfamiliar ground to me.In any event, the article you cited is a law review article. I note that Vandercoy provides no explanation whatsoever of the rewording by the Senate of the 2nd amendment into its current form.

The states can set up state militia units that are not the National Guard, apparently some states have done so. The constitution does reserve the power to create, train, and regulate militias to the States.

I can agree with that statement, but the scope of the individual right has not been uniformly supported by the jurisprudence over the past 200 years. The current near severance of the individual right to bear arms from the purpose of maintaining a militia simply did not exist in the 20th century. It certainly was less than clear that there were limitations on state attempts to control guns.DC v Heller and forward are substantially different from prior decisions such as US v. Miller and Lewis v. United States. In fact, prior to DC v Heller essentially all federal legislation limiting guns was held to be constitutional. I am not familiar with any cases dealing with incorporation of the second amendment to apply to the states.ABE:By cases dealing with incorporation, I mean cases prior to McDonald v. Chicago (2010). My point is that current jurisprudence is pretty new.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

The constitution makes the president the Commander-in-Chief of the state militia. The governor can call on the guard for order keeping purposes and to help during natural disasters, but the governor cannot use the guard to defy the president.

The glib response would be that the process of getting rid of the 3/5 compromise required a civil war. I also note that the process of amending the constitution to provide equal rights to women was a 50+ year effort that ultimately failed.In this case, the prospect of getting 38 states to sign onto a constitution amendment that markedly reduces the number of guns in the population would seem to have a vanishingly small chance for success.But yes it is possible to amend the constitution.

Not quite correct, CS. The power to train, organize, etc. a constitutional 'Militia' is reserved to the states in Article I of the constitution.Yes, there can be other groups of citizens with guns, and they can call themselves a militia, or the minutemen, or the Klan if they want. But those are not the groups referered to as 'the Militia' in the constitution.The 2nd amendment does not create a Militia. The provisions for that are in the body of the constitution.

That wouldn't be enough. The 2nd amendment expresses a limitation on Congressional power. So until the 2nd amendment is out of the way, there is no need to look to the Commerce Clause or the General Welfare Clause.But absent the 2nd amendment, I think limitations on the fire rate and capacity are no brainers. Congressional action would be judged on a very liberal 'rational basis' which essential never results in a statute being overturned.

Thanks for that peek into your thought processes work. As I read it I could almost hear the cogs grinding. But at least I'm warned not to expect to use evidence to convince you of anything.One thing to consider when looking at statistics that are vaguely labelled as 'gun crime' or 'firearm offenses' is that when guns are outlawed, gun possession alone becomes a 'gun crime'. The fact that the UK police are busting people with guns and taking the guns and the thugs off of the streets doesn't disturb me all that much, so I'd want to see some kind of breakdown into what this 89 percent increase means.

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The statistic will fuel fears that the police are struggling to contain gang-related violence, in which the carrying of a firearm has become increasingly common place.

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I note that the statement does not say that police are unable to combat increased gang-related crime, just that the statistic itself will generate fear. Doesn't that wording seem even the least bit questionable to you?Yesterday I was listening to an interview with a former police commissioner of Baltimore who was explaining how he was able to reduce gun violence (meaning actually use of firearms as opposed to fire arm offenses) by focusing on arresting thugs for gun offenses as opposed to focusing on drug busts. (I didn't catch his name, but a quick search tells me that the former commish was Frederick H. Bealfield.) Bealfield described how in a year before his crackdown the department made over 100,000 adult arrests in a city of about 600,000 people. Yet by changing the focus to gun arrests, he was able to knock down gun crime involving real gun play (murders, etc.) while making less than half of the number of arrests.So despite the fact that 'gun crime' statistics actually went up during that time in Baltimare, the actual incidence of people being threatened and hurt by guns went was way done.Bealfield also made the point that before his changes police were bragging about taking 4000 guns off of the street on an annual basis when there were 30,000 new guns being sold in the city.

removedEdited by NoNukes, : No need to dogpile.

This may not be true for very much longer. There are lots of efforts going on here to produce guns using 3D printer technology.The 3D-printed gun: When is high-tech too hot to handle? - ExtremeTech

I think in your zeal, you have not done justice to the history of the first amendment. At the time of its passing the first amendment was a rather weak and ineffectual bit of protection.It's true that free speech is not correctly protected today, but the first amendment is much stronger and is treated with much more respect now than it was at its time of adoption. For example, many provisions of the Sedition Act of 1798 would be found unquestionably be found unconstitutional today. Further, the first amendment had zero weight against state action at the time of its adoption. Slave states routinely censored anti-slavery books and pamphlets in the 18th and 19th century.If anything, I think people from the late 18th century would be quite appalled at much of what is considered protected speech these days. They might indeed be taken aback by the shredding of the fourth amendment, but most likely they would think that our approach to the first amendment was incredibly naive.