Look, if you are going to carry on about "my" supposed interpretation, at least respond to what I posted back in Message 57 where I quote so many from the founding generation and provide a link to a really informative study of the history of the concept of a citizen army which was the basis for the Second Amendment. "Regulated by the state in what sense?" is a question you might keep in mind if you bother to read that information.
You can't just blather on with assertions that do not deal with the facts I provided there.
"Regulated by the state in what sense?" is a question you might keep in mind if you bother to read that information.
You can't just blather on with assertions that do not deal with the facts I provided there.
Whoa, Faith. Let's not pretend that my post was not in response to errors in your own post.
I'm not pretending anything. You haven't made it clear what errors really exist in my post and if you read the material I keep referring to it might turn out I've represented the Second Amendment accurately.
I provided the answer to what regulated means.
Well, but that is what is in question.
A well regulated militia means a militia trained by the state,with officers who represent the state in charge of it. Regulation could of course include keeping guns away from criminals, minors, and people with mental problems, but the issue of whether the state can place limitations on guns for uses not associated with the militia is a completely separate question that is, for the most part, not answered by question of whether the person is fit to serve in the state militia. The 2nd amendment, as currently interpreted would not allow the state to classify someone as '4F' and then to deny that person a right to firearms.
My comments addressed incorrect statements in a post that you made. If you actually understand those statements to be incorrect, the need not have posted them. To wit:
Faith writes: Yes, the PEOPLE, not an army run by the state, the PEOPLE.
This is incorrect regardless of anything you had posted previously. The militia in the 2nd amendment refers to an adhoc army citizens to be called up and organized by the state to face an emergency identified by the state, with officer's selected by the state giving the orders. If in fact, you were aware that the militia was run by the state, what prompted you to say otherwise?
This is not the majority interpretation of the Amendment that I glean from the material I posted in Message 57. It's one version that some held of it but others took issue with such formulations as giving the state too much power. It can't be RUN by the state or it violates the spirit of the amendment. There CAN be state regulation of some sort, OK, but it can't interfere with the basic right to keep and bear arms. But my objection was that you put way too much emphasis on the state aspect as so many people do these days. Maybe I'm overreacting to this general trend and misreading you but that hasn't been made clear yet.
The closest thing to a militia these days are the National Guard units operated by each state.
While there may be arguments in support of having a National Guard along WITH the people's right to keep and bear arms, the National Guard is not the "militia" as most understood that term when the Constitution was being written. And that is because it is run by the state and anything run by the state could be enlisted against the people.
I keep saying PLEASE go read that stuff I posted in Message 57. Especially the article linked at the end, which is rather lengthy, but does spell out the arguments on both sides and it gives context to the quotes I singled out above too. The consistent emphasis is on the need for the PEOPLE to have the right to arms both for self protection and to serve the nation when necessary, and the constant refrain concerns the danger of tyranny from government or a standing army itself if these rights are restricted (beyond the usual common sense considerations that clearly make some unfit to carry arms, which they also take into account).
Thanks to recent decisions by the Supreme Court, there is no longer any reason for individuals to defend their rights to guns by pointing to the need for a militia. Attempting to defend gun rights by alluding to a right to defend against the federal government.
I'm not sure I get your point here.
For quite some time it seems most people have been misunderstanding the whole idea of a militia as it was hammered out historically and then put into the Second Amendment, and that common misunderstanding has been expressed on this thread, quite aggressively expressed I might add. We keep reading it as some kind of organized state-run entity but that is NOT how they understood it originally. There are different views among the Constitution shapers as to how this militia is to be run, yes, and all that can be discussed, but the basic concept was always that this is a right that must be given to the people individually and the National Guard does NOT meet the meaning of "militia" that they had in mind as far as I grasp their intent.
Faith writes: and the "militia" refers to this armed citizenry, not to an organized army, which, again, would contradict the whole spirit of the amendment.
I find this statement of yours is quite amusing. You agree, as do I, that the currently interpretation of the 2nd amendment is wrong. It is inconsistent to interpret the 'militia' to mean organized by the state and yet have the state with little to no ability to control the use of guns that are not conducive to being in a militia. Yet that is exactly the way the Supreme Court does interpret the 2nd amendment. The words relating to militia are given essential no weight whatsoever.
I'd appreciate any correction you care to make in this matter. I make no apologies for providing historical blather that pointed out the need for correction.
I must admit that by this time I don't think I know what you are trying to say.
I do hope you will take some time to look through what I posted back in Message 57 though.
ABE: For reference to the thinking of the Constitutional framers, here's an early draft of the amendment proposed by Madison (from that article by Vandercoy I link at the bottom of Message 57):
A well regulated Militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed ...
That doesn't sound like the National Guard to me. Other phrasings of this view add "whole" as in "composed of the WHOLE body of the people."
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
It was intended as a joke but I figured nobody would know that. I said it anyway. I don't expect anybody to get anything I say here, so naturally you'd assume I wasn't conscious of the irony.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
RAZD, Percy, Dr. A, Theodoric etc. You guys keep answering me as if I were making up what the founders meant. I provided a lot of evidence back in Message 57 about what they meant,
including a long well documented article about the English history that the Second Amendment built on, and about the thinking of the Constitutional framers as they wrote the amendment.
We can misread the documents today because we put current meanings into phrasings that they didn't intend. They were building on a history of which we are today largely ignorant.
Contrary to opinions being expressed here, the National Guard does NOT reflect their thinking.
The "militia" DID comprise "the WHOLE body of the people."
It's unfortunate they didn't leave that specific wording in the final draft but it has to be because they assumed it and not because it didn't reflect their thinking. If you don't read the whole history you are just going to go on making up stuff about what they had in mind.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
My argument is that the original intent of the second amendment, or any other amendment is not the same as the original intent of the person authoring the first draft. It's pretty clear that Dr. Adequate's point was saying quite the same thing. Dr. Adequate was saying that rejected language may reflect the intent of the author of the rejected language, but that such language is also evidence that such intent was rejected before the amendment was passed.
In this case he was talking about the leaving out of the phrase Madison had put into his draft describing the militia as "the body of the people," but that did not reflect only Madison's thinking but was the majority historical understanding of the concept of the "militia" which you could find out if you read the whole history that led up to the Second Amendment that I linked in Message 57.
Edited by Faith, : Add URL
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
The PEOPLE were to be the militia and the militia was to be available to defend the country. That's why the phrase about conscientious objectors was included. It was more of a duty than a right in the thinking of many.
What you'll find if you'll read the material I keep talking about that I posted in Message 57 is that the whole body of the people was considered to be the militia itself. There were some variant ideas but this is the one that everybody comes back to. That is a long article I linked but it is well worth reading.
I'll post again here what I posted there:
History of the Second Amendment David E Vandercoy 1994
English history made two things clear to the American revolutionaries: force of arms was the only effective check on government, and standing armies threatened liberty. Recognition of these premises meant that the force of arms necessary to check government had to be placed in the hands of citizens. The English theorists Blackstone and Harrington advocated these tenants. [sic] Because the public purpose of the right to keep arms was to check government, the right necessarily belonged to the individual and, as a matter of theory, was thought to be absolute in that it could not be abrogated by the prevailing rulers.
These views were adopted by the framers, both Federalists and Antifederalists. Neither group trusted government. Both believed the greatest danger to the new republic was tyrannical government and that the ultimate check on tyranny was an armed population. It is beyond dispute that the second amendment right was to serve the same public purpose as advocated by the English theorists. 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. The whole of the population would comprise the militia. As the constitutional debates prove, the framers recognized that the common public purpose of preserving freedom would be served by protecting each individual's right to arms, thus empowering the people to resist tyranny and preserve the republic. The intent was not to create a right for other governments, the individual states; it was to preserve the people's right to a free state, just as it says.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : trying to get the URL to work.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
Theodoric, I am not presenting him as an authority, I don't know a thing about him as a person.
I am presenting his paper as an extremely well documented study of the HISTORY of the thinking that led up to the Second Amendment. He covers the historical background of the relevant concerns in England through king after king, and he covers the various arguments of the Constitutional framers and others concerning the issues that eventuated in the Second Amendment.
It's a very persuasive accumulation of EVIDENCE that should give context to the amendment that we are not normally aware of.
HE GIVES A TON OF REFERENCES for crying out loud. He quotes Kings and Parliamentarians and legal writers and state governors and others on the subject. How would anybody know anything is accurate? By considering the EVIDENCE.
This a fallacious argument.
Oh brother, you have no appreciation for what real scholarship is all about. Just read some of it, skip through it at least.
The paper shows his interpretations of the evidence.
THERE IS NO WAY TO AVOID INTERPRETATION, Theodoric, everything you read involves interpretations. The question is whether the evidence supports them or not and my claim is it does in this paper. But you have to READ the thing to know, you can't just make blanket judgments without doing that much.
It is an interpretation. There are many legal scholars and historians that come to different conclusions.
But very likely not from the same historical evidence.
READ THE THING AND DECIDE FROM THERE.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
I keep hearing different sets of statistics from the two sides of this dispute so that I no longer trust any statistics. The gun control people always claim that the statistics show crimes being reduced where guns are prohibited, and the keep-and-bear-arms side always claims that the statistics show a rise in crime when they are prohibited -- which to my mind is the more likely effect. But some statistics are getting falsified. How are we to know which are true?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
Also, the argument is not that a "low number of guns" prevents homicides. The argument is that gun prevalence and gun homicides are positively correlated. More guns, more homicides.
You've used this statistic throughout this thread and obviously you believe it. There are statistics on both sides, I've seen statistics that show that homicides along with all other crimes are fewer when there are more citizen owned guns. The statistics seem to be politically malleable. Why should I trust yours?
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
...according to this article in a UK publication called the Mail Online from 2009, reporting on the growth of GUN crime since guns were prohibited in 1997, that law you are all so proud of that you think has reduced gun crime.
I gather it's a conservative paper but these are Government statistics and I see no reason to doubt them, or if I have to doubt them I'm going to doubt the statistics on the other side more.
Here's the story:
Gun crime has almost doubled since Labour came to power as a culture of extreme gang violence has taken hold.
The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year - a rise of 89 per cent.
In some parts of the country, the number of offences has increased more than five-fold.
In eighteen police areas, gun crime at least doubled.
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.
Last week, police in London revealed they had begun carrying out armed patrols on some streets.
The move means officers armed with sub-machine guns are engaged in routine policing for the first time.
Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling, said last night: 'In areas dominated by gang culture, we're now seeing guns used to settle scores between rivals as well as turf wars between rival drug dealers.
'We need to redouble our efforts to deal with the challenge.'
He added: 'These figures are all the more alarming given that it is only a week since the Metropolitan Police said it was increasing regular armed patrols in some areas of the capital'.
Here's a video about people in the UK protesting against their freedoms being eroded, specifically protesting the taking away of their guns and the resultant rise in crime and the criminalization of the law-abiding citizen. That's where the Left is taking us all.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
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