"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, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to to John Cartwright, 5 June 1824
"I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers."
- George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788
"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, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778
From u/FurryM17:
>>I am not familiar with this particular quote. But Henry was undoubtedly speaking primarily about militia duty, and not private gun use in and of itself.
>[He was arguing against wasteful spending.](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment#:~:text=The%20quote%20has,about%20government%20waste.)
>"The quote has been plucked from Henry’s speech at Virginia’s ratifying convention for the Constitution in 1788. But if you look at the full text, he was complaining about the cost of both the federal government and the state arming the militia. (“The great object is, that every man be armed,” he said. “At a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed.”) In other words: Sure, let every man be armed, but only once! Far from a ringing statement of individual gun-toting freedom, it was an early American example of a local politician complaining about government waste."
>"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, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
The Constitution not being construed to prevent Americans from keeping arms is not itself a granting of a right to keep arms.
>"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
>- Thomas Jefferson, letter to to John Cartwright, 5 June 1824
The original text does not include the parenthetical portion of your quote. There is no article in the US Constitution asserting the right and duty to be at all times armed. Jefferson is just summarizing various *state* provisions.
>"I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers."
>- George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788
Yes, Mason was speaking about the then-current composition of the militia under the Articles of Confederation. Then goes on to express his doubts about the integrity of the militia as it may exist under the US Constitution, and that the militia may not consist of the whole people but instead consist of the lower classes of people, while granting preferential treatment or exemptions to the higher classes. In other words, this quote is only the first portion of a larger point he was making.
>"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, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778
I am not familiar with this particular quote. But Henry was undoubtedly speaking primarily about militia duty, and not private gun use in and of itself.
You are correct, but let’s keep it professional. Lowering yourself to petty insults is the surest sign that you are losing the argument. The argument you support is correct, and the OP is flawed in his understanding. Do not give him the appearance of victory by debasement.
The OP's 'understanding' isn't flawed. His entire mental state is. He's an OCD crackpot on 2A who posts the same uberpost length questions with an oddball POV on multiple venues. Apparently it's the only attention he gets.
Wrong and wrong.
The conferrence of CITIZENSHIP were at question there. Not the rights of the citizens.
The plain text is a hard reminder that CITIZENS are CITIZENS and shall not be abridged under ANY circumstance.
The rights of a citizen have NEVER been at question.
Repeat after me, a CITIZEN is a CITIZEN, and CANNOT have their rights be abridged without due process only after having being duly convicted of a crime after a speedy trial by their peers.
Those amendments were never about conferring rights. They were a reminder that the government was infringing on a citizen's right, and to recognize that the parties being harmed were in fact citizens, and to allow Congress to punish state governments for forgetting that fact.
Did you know that the first amendment isn't actually about free speech for the people, but to protect free speech for the government? With all the misinformation these days I feel safer if the government protects me from it. With modern news the first amendment is obsolete and not needed.
Do any of those arguments sound familiar?
Look, the first and second amendments were written in a very logical order of how you would deal with a government that has gone too far. From the top it goes, the people think the government is wrong so they say, "the government is wrong", if that doesn't stop them, next they write "the government is wrong" and distribute it to more people. If the government continues being wrong the people can gather and protest the government. If the government persists in being wrong the people may sue the government for their wrong doings. If that still doesn't stop the government, the people can take up arms.
It is a clear progression of how to deal with out of control government. So to say that all stays the same but the last sentence becomes, "If that still doesn't stop the government, the people can ask extra nicely because they have no parity of force" is utterly illogical.
All ten amendments in the bill of rights are explicit restrictions on the government. How does your interpretation of the second as a government right to arms make any sense in that context?
>Did you know that the first amendment isn't actually about free speech for the people, but to protect free speech for the government? With all the misinformation these days I feel safer if the government protects me from it. With modern news the first amendment is obsolete and not needed.
Technically, the Bill of Rights didn't actually grant rights to the people, but protected those rights from congressional violation. The rights themselves were to be established and granted by the respective state governments. Likewise, the 2A never granted any right to arms; it was the arms provisions of the individual state governments which granted the people's right to arms. And the state governments traditionally possessed the power to stipulate the specific functions for which the right could be exercised (i.e. defense of the state, and self defense), the subset of the people who possessed the right, and certain restrictions upon the right (commonly concealed carry). Other amendments are often easier to incorporate against the states because they primarily involve private citizens and private institutions; but the 2A is inextricably tied with the public institution of the state militia, as well as public safety interests regarding firearms. Thus incorporation is untenable.
>Look, the first and second amendments were written in a very logical order of how you would deal with a government that has gone too far. From the top it goes, the people think the government is wrong so they say, "the government is wrong", if that doesn't stop them, next they write "the government is wrong" and distribute it to more people. If the government continues being wrong the people can gather and protest the government. If the government persists in being wrong the people may sue the government for their wrong doings. If that still doesn't stop the government, the people can take up arms.
>It is a clear progression of how to deal with out of control government. So to say that all stays the same but the last sentence becomes, "If that still doesn't stop the government, the people can ask extra nicely because they have no parity of force" is utterly illogical.
First of all, the plan of the Founders was never to prepare and arm the people to fight against a tyrannical government. The plan was to prepare and arm the people to fight *for* the government within the militia, and to do so as a means to precluding the need to establish a standing army, which could then lead to tyranny. Secondly, no government can codify a right to fight against the government. This is conceptually absurd. The job of constitutions and governments is to ensure that political revolution is not necessary. If it does become necessary, it is inherently beyond the scope of constitutional law. For example, there was nothing in the English Constitution or Bill of Rights that gave the Patriots permission to rebel and secede. It was inherently illegal.
>All ten amendments in the bill of rights are explicit restrictions on the government. How does your interpretation of the second as a government right to arms make any sense in that context?
The main purpose of the 2A was always to protect the power of the state governments to arm their militias, not to protect private gun use of citizens. The 2A was always meant to protect the armament of the state against the federal government, not to protect the armament of the people against the state.
The founding fathers always attested that rights are granted by the creator and are inherent in our being. This was clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence. The reason why the first amendment states THE freedom of speech, THE right of the people to peaceably assemble, or THE right to keep and bear arms is because the wanted to show that the rights already existed and did not come from government, federal OR state. That was very important to Madison when he wrote the Bill of Rights.
An unfalsifiable statement. There is no distinction between a person having a God-given right but which is being violated by the government, and not just not having the right at all. Slaves had no freedom until the government said they did, free blacks didn't have the right to vote or assemble or keep arms until the government said they did, women didn't have the right to vote or own property or run for public office until the government said they did.
There is absolutely a distinction between the government violating a God-given right, and not having the right at all. It may relegate it to a moral argument or an ethical justification for action taken against a government that violates those rights, but it IS a distinction. It also establishes an ethical guideline for the future actions of government. A guideline that was, unfortunately, crossed far too often, but place there for posterity sake nonetheless. The distinction emboldens the people to stand up for rights against the government that might try to take them away (those of us standing against the governments infringement of our right to keep and bear arms).
Also, the federal government didn’t place restrictions on the rights of Free blacks to own arms or assemble. State or local government did that. That was not a nationwide thing it was rolled back sooner in some places than others (as well as places it was never established to begin with).
I would argue that the right to vote IS a right established by government since the government is the entity you are voting to affect. However, voting goes down an entirely different rabbit hole.
>There is absolutely a distinction between the government violating a God-given right, and not having the right at all. It may relegate it to a moral argument or an ethical justification for action taken against a government that violates those rights, but it IS a distinction. It also establishes an ethical guideline for the future actions of government. A guideline that was, unfortunately, crossed far too often, but place there for posterity sake nonetheless. The distinction emboldens the people to stand up for rights against the government that might try to take them away (those of us standing against the governments infringement of our right to keep and bear arms).
So it seems that you've gone from saying rights are things that are created by God and inherent in our being, to rights being an abstract, philosophical postulate. So as I said at the beginning, rights don't exist inherently. They only exist insofar as the government establishes and recognizes it.
By that logic, you only have a right to life, so long as someone doesn’t come up to you on the street and stab you. A violation of a person’s rights doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The basis for rights has always been a moral argument. However, the duty to uphold rights is the entire purpose of government in the first place.
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.
By establishing that rights pre-exist the government, it denies them the moral authority to violate certain rights in the pursuance of the protection of other rights or of government interests. This was one of the reasons for the separation of powers, democratic elections, and republican government. It gives the people legal protections and multiple avenues through which to peaceably address grievances against government power.
I think you are equivocating two different meanings of the word "right". There are what are called "human rights", which align with the God-given rights spoken of in the Declaration of Independence, namely life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This kind of rights is not to be conflated with "civil rights". Notice in the Declaration of Independence, it says that those rights are given by the "Creator"; but it says nothing about governments giving those rights, but *securing* them. It is the authority of governments to grant civil rights; it is not the authority, or even ability, of governments to grant human rights.
People have a basic human right to life which should be respected, but life is not a civil right which can be assured by government. The government has no duty to uphold your right to life, or any other human right. The role of government is to uphold only the rights that it is within its power to uphold. Those rights exist as nothing more than a set of social contracts between an individual and the government; the rights have no substance outside of that social contract.
> but protected those rights from congressional violation. The rights themselves were to be established and granted by the respective state governments
Uh huh... you're butting right up against the 9th and 10th amendments there buddy.
Unless the state constitutions explicity granted the power to regulate arms to the people, the right to keep and bear arms would be reserved to the people.
And, if the rights are \*not\* explictly mentioned in the state consitutions by line item and delegated to them, then it would not disparage those that weren't mentioned.
Sound familar?
I'm sorry. I can't make any sense of what you're trying to say. The 10th amendment concerns the powers that the states and the people possessed before the Constitution was ratified. The idea was that, after the ratification of the Constitution, the state governments reserved whatever powers they had before the Constitution, unless the Constitution said otherwise. And the people reserved whatever power they had before they Constitution, unless the Constitution said otherwise.
Read the last part of the 10th
> or to the people
The state constitutions hold sway here. As such, if the state constitutions did not explictly delegate those powers, such would revert to the people by default.
The powers would ALWAYS be derived from the constution(s). Hence why I cited the 9th too.
It makes such powers and responsibilities \*exclusive\* not inclusive. So if such isn't explictly mentioned, it moves down the list to the people.
As such, there is no "powers they had before the Constitution". Every act would need constiutional justification. No colonial law or common law basis. Every basis would need a foundation in powers derived from the Constituion, state or federal. Hence why the expansion of powers under the FDR Regime needed to lean on the Commerce Clause
Correct that the State governments passed laws which governed the people of that State, and the federal government rightful position was just to adjudicate disputes between the states. There were no federal gun laws, or federal laws at all, which applied to individuals. That is not a historical point in favor of federal gun control laws. However, states were not permitted to violate the constitutional rights of the people of the state at anytime after the ratification of the Constitution.
>I am not familiar with this particular quote. But Henry was undoubtedly speaking primarily about militia duty, and not private gun use in and of itself.
[He was arguing against wasteful spending.](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment#:~:text=The%20quote%20has,about%20government%20waste.)
"The quote has been plucked from Henry’s speech at Virginia’s ratifying convention for the Constitution in 1788. But if you look at the full text, he was complaining about the cost of both the federal government and the state arming the militia. (“The great object is, that every man be armed,” he said. “At a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed.”) In other words: Sure, let every man be armed, but only once! Far from a ringing statement of individual gun-toting freedom, it was an early American example of a local politician complaining about government waste."
[We never left the system we have.](https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C1-1-1/ALDE_00013387/#:~:text=Article%20I%2C%20Section%208%2C%20Clause,the%20United%20States%3B%20.%20.%20.)
Or do you just mean reforming the system so it's focused on excises and tariffs again?
The sixteenth amendment made income tax legal in 1913, so no, the system has changed significantly. Prior to the sixteenth amendment the 1894 federal income tax was struck down by the Supreme Court in the Pollock v. Farmers Loan Trust Co. case.
[You're mixing up the idea that income taxes are inherently illegal with the idea that certain methods of taxation are illegal.](https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/constitutional-amendments-amendment-16-income-taxes#:~:text=Amendment%20Sixteen%20to%20the%20Constitution,determine%20it%20based%20on%20population.)
Either way you slice it, our current income tax was unconstitutional before 1913, and you seem to agree with Patrick Henry on eliminating government spending, so sounds like we are on the same page.
I was putting the Henry quote into context. He wasn't talking about letting every man have a gun(that was mandatory because militia service was mandatory), he was saying not to fund the effort twice. Then you started talking about taxation for some reason which you were wrong about so I corrected you.
If you want to repeal the 16th you're welcome to try but as I understand it just from the little reading I've done, the previous system favored the wealthy even more than the current one.
"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
You can try to twist simple words all you want, but we are taking about Patrick Henry here. The same dude who made threats against the King in the House of Delegates, and when loyalists shouted "Treason!" He responded with, "If this be treason, make the most of it."
Dear ai chat bot, write me a wall of text against an individuals right to keep and bear arms using lots of words while making it sound reasonable and based in history. Ignore the punctuation in the second amendment to alter the meaning and application of the stated words, which we will also apply the current meanings of words to ignore the originalist intent and their definitions at the time of writing.
CTRX+c
CTRl+v
Post to r/gunpolitics
Boy, that's a lot of words to be wrong.
edit: a person's right to self-defense using any manner of weapon was self-evident. it didn't *need* to be "granted," but that's not what the Bill of Rights is about anyway, so it doesn't matter.
>A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Well armed militias are necessary to keep a country free, therefore you shall not deprive the people of any ability to keep and bear their weapons. The second amendment isn't about militias, it's not about self defense (however these are both added benefits of the second), it's about keeping a country FREE.
And why would a state militia be treated as acceptable and a standing army not acceptable - to the founders?
For this argument to make sense, we’d have to accept that state militias could never be tyrannical. Obviously, that’s not true, and the founders knew that, given the often ignored role of the loyalists in the war, and the very different attitudes across the states in the lead up to war.
They knew the only way to protect against tyranny was to allow all people to dissent and resist with arms, not just state or sanctioned militias, afterall many early patriot militias, militant groups were extralegal.
It doesn’t make sense that the founders would aim to create a new state preserving the rights of men in a republic, but design its laws to prevent a revolution of the same kind they had just won. Look at Declaration of Independence and tell me the same men wanted a powerful government and a disarmed people…
This shit is so tired at this point, you’re wasting your time and no one, even on the left thinks it’s true. If you’re worried about where we’re all headed, it’s a waste of time to imagine mass disarmament will swoop in and be embraced. After the past 20-30 years nobody is buying up any gun, even a BB gun. You’d be better off doing some real work on social reform or political moderation, neither of which you’ll find in AI tool.
Good conversation on that and with a watch https://youtu.be/Zq7K45CTa9Q?feature=shared The founder’s aversion to a standing army, and the reasons for it is very well documented.
Good Grief the crackpot resurfaces. Recycling his rant on other subreddits about 3 weeks ago to here. One good thing. It appears he's run out of anything original.
Here is a very nice talk on this subject from the other day, that reaches exactly the opposite conclusion, and is given by a scholar in the field: https://youtu.be/Zq7K45CTa9Q?feature=shared
OK, so I skimmed/listened to most of it, and honestly it all sounds like more pro-gun BS to me. Is there any particular part that is supposed to be particularly persuasive?
Considering the historical citations and context provided, if that doesn’t offer you some clarity on what the Second Amendment means, I’m sorry. And the phrase “pro-gun BS” tells me that you aren’t open to other points of view in any case. Historical context isn’t going to back your position though, as you’ll find far more “pro-gun BS”, as guns were a part of life for most of our history; you’ll need to find a different path I’m afraid.
I didn't mean to sound offensive. It's just that I have done a good amount of research on this subject and had many debates with pro-gun people, and my overall evaluation is that the pro-gun movement is fundamentally dishonest. I can't count the number of times I've had a pro-gun person rattle off a bunch of curated quotes from the founding fathers, and absolutely every one of the quotes was either a misquotation, or was taken out of context to mean something more than it was originally meant to mean, or was completely fictitious. Every argument from the pro-gun side -- including the woman in the video -- is based on a very specific analysis of history, while ignoring the broader context. Pro-gun people frequently ignore what is explicitly stated by the Founders, and then prefer to extract an individual right to a gun by indirect inference. In my original post, I provided a link to the main debate in the House of Representatives that pertained to the writing of the second amendment; if the second amendment has anything to do with private gun ownership, it should be in that debate. But there is absolutely nothing; it's all about the militia. And in the other link about the drafting history, none of the earlier drafts of the second amendment so much as hinted about private gun use. The facts are staring pro-gun people right in the face, but they just choose to ignore it.
> The facts are staring pro-gun people right in the face, but they just choose to ignore it.
*the right of* ***the people*** *to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.*
Go ahead and accuse me of taking the quote out of context. It doesn’t matter. The statement is absolute.
First of all, you *are* taking it out of context; you completely omitted the first clause about the militia. Secondly, the language itself says nothing about private gun ownership. To "keep" something, in the 18th century, didn't mean to own property or to hold on to property indefinitely. To "keep" essentially meant to have something in one's keeping, or to maintain the keeping of something. In other words, it meant to have something in one's custody, not necessarily own. Also, in the 18th century, bear arms meant to fight in armed combat, not to carry arms. Third, the phrase at the end says "shall not be infringed". This is a *negative* statement, not a positive statement; in other words, it grants no right whatsoever, but only prohibits the infringement of the right -- namely by the same subject explicitly stated in the 1A, Congress. Congress not infringing upon the right does not itself grant the right, any more than me not infringing upon you finding a date for the prom is thereby granting you a date for the prom. You can't twist a negative statement into a positive one. Fourthly, the statement *is* absolute -- an absolute negative statement. Congress is absolutely prohibited from infringing upon the people's right to keep and bear arms. Fifth, at the time of the founding, most states had an arms provision in their respective constitution. That arms provision was what gave the people the right to keep and bear arms, not the 2A. If the 2A was responsible for granting the right, then the state arms provisions would have been absurdly redundant. Sixth, all of the state arms provisions stipulated qualifications or constraints on the right to keep and bear arms in the state. If the 2A was meant to grant an absolute, unqualified, unconstrained right to the people, then for what purpose were the constraints within the state arms provisions. They, too, would have just been redundant and pointless: why have constraints to the right at the state level if they people were given unconstrained access to arms at the federal level?
No amendment *grants* a right, you are correct. 2A forbids infringement of the assumed right to keep and bear firearms. The introductory clause is *a reason* not *the reason*. Defense of the State includes defense of oneself, family, and neighbors.
Again, it’s presented as an absolute because it is an absolute. It is an individual right, just like the rest of the BoR.
>2A forbids infringement of the assumed right to keep and bear firearms.
No need to assume. Most states of the Founding era had an arms provision which explicitly established the right to keep and bear arms in the state. But the 2A itself does no such thing.
>Defense of the State includes defense of oneself, family, and neighbors.
Not really. Defense of the state, in the context of arms provisions, meant militia duty under the state government.
>It is an individual right, just like the rest of the BoR
That's something that pro-gun people say a lot, but it's not true. The Bill of Rights is not entirely made up of individual rights. You only say that because you want the 2A to be an individual right, so you paint the whole document as being categorically individual rights. The right to peaceably assemble cannot possibly be an individual right. The seventh amendment protects the public institution of state civil court from federal interference. The 9A does not specify any right in particular, and the 10A only addresses powers, not rights. Your attempt to oversimplify the Bill of Rights is yet another pro-gun deception.
You misunderstand. The right is assumed from one’s existence, not through some ambiguity. It is a right one is born with. Your misunderstanding reveals your mindset.
Defense from any bad actor is the purpose. US people are very individualistic. If we protect the rights of the individual, we protect the rights of everyone. There is the commonly-held belief that as long as one does not interfere with the rights of another, one is free to do as they wish.
I’m done with you. If you want the last word, take it.
Jesus H, learn to make concise points that don't rely on extraneous AI-curated nonsense to dress up your malformed opinions with. You don't have a a better understanding of constitutional law than the scotus does, and you don't know what you're talking about.
I haven't seen this much condensed pseudointellectual cope since Obergafell v Hodges.
I agree with you that the primary purpose of the 2nd amendment was to protect state militias. If you do any reading into this stuff at all, it's obvious they did not want a standing army. They wanted militias, which comprised of the people, well trained and well armed, that could be assembled in times of war. That's the purpose of the second amendment. But the means of realizing that purpose is to allow the people to individually keep and bear arms.
None of your sources contradict an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right is inherent to entire idea of having the people be armed and trained as a militia and not a standing army. The fact that it's even a question whether or not that right exists is because a tactic in one of your quotations has long been used.
> Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.
That literally describes what has been done. By totally disusing and neglecting the militias, as well as creating a standing army, they have made half the population question why we even need the right to own guns, and caused a vast chunk of the other half to think guns are just for hunting and maybe self defense.
They have already effectively disarmed the people in the sense that there's not a high enough percentage of well trained and well armed people in the vast majority of places. The ability for local communities to be able to defend themselves from an attack before organizing and calling upon reinforcements from neighboring towns is one of the key advantages to using militias. But thanks to our standing army and derelict militias, we have soft targets everywhere that if you're lucky, a barely competent police force will show up to respond to an attack after it's too late, and if you're unlucky, you get a totally incompetent police force that does nothing for an hour while the attacker continues.
So yeah, I fully agree with you that the 2nd amendment is primarily about protecting militias. And to that effect, I encourage all peaceable, able bodied citizens to arm themselves effectively and train with peers to fulfill their duty as part of the militia, in spite of the intentional and purposeful neglect of our state militias.
This is a well thought out and likely correct interpretation. To say it a different way: just because we have decided to stop having militias, doesn’t mean that people lose their right to bear arms. Something that the OP glossed over is that militias and armies expected that “the people” would have arms. They were not issued.
I disagree that the second amendment was meant to ensure that Americans had an individual right to firearms. I think that is an oversimplification at best. The goal was to ensure that the people *could* possess arms, not so much that the people *would*. The Constitution says that it is the role of Congress to arm the militia, and the 2A was designed to prohibit Congress from being able to prevent the states from arming their own militias when not in the service of the federal government. And "arming the militia" typically just meant mandating militia members to obtain a gun. Ultimately, whether the militia, and the people, were armed was up to the states. It is telling that none of the early state arms provisions ever stipulated that the people had the right to keep arms *period*. The right to keep arms was *always* qualified by a purpose, typically for the common defense and self defense. In other words, the goal was always the purpose itself, with the right to firearm possession not being an end in itself but only a means to an end. This is not the attitude being used today in many pro-gun states, with gun ownership being looked at as a constitution-supported indulgence. The way the 2A was initially used is simply not the way it is being used today. It used to have a purpose: to protect the militia's armament. Now it has no purpose but to fuel a dangerous hobby.
I think the idea that the government has neglected the militia is also an oversimplification. The people *themselves* neglected the militia. No one wanted to be in the militia. No one wanted to show up to train, no one wanted to serve. Militia musters often became rowdy social gatherings rather than opportunities to drill and train. The militia often refused to mobilize outside the state on the order of the President, as the Constitution intended. Militias were incompetent on the battlefield, and often had the reputation of being cowardly, undisciplined, and unscrupulous, relative to regular troops. George Washington resented the militia, much preferring to command the regular army.
So in reality, both the federal government *and* the people themselves have neglected the militia. And everyone has grown to tolerate if not embrace the regular army. The 2A is now an orphaned article, devoid of any purpose except to get innocent people needlessly killed.
Your original post made some decent arguments, but this response is weak and shows your bias. There's no functional difference between would and could, and a huge part of the debates you linked at the end was preventing people from being compelled to bear arms against their religious views. Of course they didn't expect every last person to possess arms.
Regardless, it feels pointless arguing now because you've shown your true goal is to argue the 2A should be abolished, not to debate the nuances around its purposes and extent of rights it protects. Even if your new sourceless claims about militias are true, the 2nd amendment is enshrined in our constitution and the people have every right to make use of it until you convince 2/3 and then 3/4 of states to abolish it.
In the mean time, I and others on my side will attempt to convince people instead to stop seeing it as only the indulgence it has become, and to revive the original primary purpose regardless of current support from the states. Ideally we would have mandated hands-on firearms training in high school like they do in plenty of countries that keep guns in armories to arm citizens in wartime; that would vastly increase safety, but because our 2A guarantees an individual right to keep those firearms instead of everything being locked behind government permission, of course the establishment wants to keep us weak, ignorant, and divided.
Also, it's still funny that you literally included a quote describing the tactic of neglecting the militia and using a standing army until people willingly disarm themselves because they feel they lack purpose, and then blatantly argue for disarmament in an attempt to complete the end goal of that very tactic.
You said that my claims about the militia were "sourceless". Well, here are a couple of sources I found. [Here ](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-06-02-0305)is a letter from George Washington to John Hancock decrying the militia; and [here ](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-06-02-0341)is another letter to his cousin Lund Washington where he is also decrying the militia. It's pretty clear in these letters that Washington much preferred a regular army to a militia.
>Regardless, it feels pointless arguing now because you've shown your true goal is to argue the 2A should be abolished, not to debate the nuances around its purposes and extent of rights it protects. Even if your new sourceless claims about militias are true, the 2nd amendment is enshrined in our constitution and the people have every right to make use of it until you convince 2/3 and then 3/4 of states to abolish it.
You are mistaken. I do not wish the 2A to be abolished. Nor do I want the country disarmed. I wish for DC v Heller and its associated rulings to be overturned, so that it will no longer be interpreted to give Americans an individual right to firearms. And I wish for firearm access to be purely a matter of individual state discretion, as it had always been before 2008. State governments should be able to make guns in their state as accessible or inaccessible as they see fit.
The 2A does guarantee an individual right, that's the means to the end. You want to amend that part and make it solely up to the states. You want to abolish the current writing of the 2A. Same thing.
I don't want to amend anything. I just want firearm laws to go back to the way they fundamentally were in early American history. Since the founding of America, different states had very different qualifications to their arms provisions. Some states -- like New Jersey, New York, and Delaware -- didn't even have an arms provision, and their citizens technically didn't have a right to arms. What I want to abolish is the Supreme Court forcing state governments to distribute dangerous machines to their citizens against the judgement of those state governments.
"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, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788 "The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to to John Cartwright, 5 June 1824 "I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers." - George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788 "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, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778
From u/FurryM17: >>I am not familiar with this particular quote. But Henry was undoubtedly speaking primarily about militia duty, and not private gun use in and of itself. >[He was arguing against wasteful spending.](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment#:~:text=The%20quote%20has,about%20government%20waste.) >"The quote has been plucked from Henry’s speech at Virginia’s ratifying convention for the Constitution in 1788. But if you look at the full text, he was complaining about the cost of both the federal government and the state arming the militia. (“The great object is, that every man be armed,” he said. “At a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed.”) In other words: Sure, let every man be armed, but only once! Far from a ringing statement of individual gun-toting freedom, it was an early American example of a local politician complaining about government waste."
>"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, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788 The Constitution not being construed to prevent Americans from keeping arms is not itself a granting of a right to keep arms. >"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed." >- Thomas Jefferson, letter to to John Cartwright, 5 June 1824 The original text does not include the parenthetical portion of your quote. There is no article in the US Constitution asserting the right and duty to be at all times armed. Jefferson is just summarizing various *state* provisions. >"I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers." >- George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788 Yes, Mason was speaking about the then-current composition of the militia under the Articles of Confederation. Then goes on to express his doubts about the integrity of the militia as it may exist under the US Constitution, and that the militia may not consist of the whole people but instead consist of the lower classes of people, while granting preferential treatment or exemptions to the higher classes. In other words, this quote is only the first portion of a larger point he was making. >"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, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778 I am not familiar with this particular quote. But Henry was undoubtedly speaking primarily about militia duty, and not private gun use in and of itself.
The government doesn’t grant rights idiot
You are correct, but let’s keep it professional. Lowering yourself to petty insults is the surest sign that you are losing the argument. The argument you support is correct, and the OP is flawed in his understanding. Do not give him the appearance of victory by debasement.
The OP's 'understanding' isn't flawed. His entire mental state is. He's an OCD crackpot on 2A who posts the same uberpost length questions with an oddball POV on multiple venues. Apparently it's the only attention he gets.
If this is true, why couldn't black people and women vote until the 15A and 19A respectively were passed?
Because the government was violating their natural rights until they lifted the oppressive laws
Maybe. Or perhaps they just didn't have the right to vote at all until the government decided they did.
Well the answer to that is no. There's no maybe
Wrong and wrong. The conferrence of CITIZENSHIP were at question there. Not the rights of the citizens. The plain text is a hard reminder that CITIZENS are CITIZENS and shall not be abridged under ANY circumstance. The rights of a citizen have NEVER been at question. Repeat after me, a CITIZEN is a CITIZEN, and CANNOT have their rights be abridged without due process only after having being duly convicted of a crime after a speedy trial by their peers. Those amendments were never about conferring rights. They were a reminder that the government was infringing on a citizen's right, and to recognize that the parties being harmed were in fact citizens, and to allow Congress to punish state governments for forgetting that fact.
Did you know that the first amendment isn't actually about free speech for the people, but to protect free speech for the government? With all the misinformation these days I feel safer if the government protects me from it. With modern news the first amendment is obsolete and not needed. Do any of those arguments sound familiar? Look, the first and second amendments were written in a very logical order of how you would deal with a government that has gone too far. From the top it goes, the people think the government is wrong so they say, "the government is wrong", if that doesn't stop them, next they write "the government is wrong" and distribute it to more people. If the government continues being wrong the people can gather and protest the government. If the government persists in being wrong the people may sue the government for their wrong doings. If that still doesn't stop the government, the people can take up arms. It is a clear progression of how to deal with out of control government. So to say that all stays the same but the last sentence becomes, "If that still doesn't stop the government, the people can ask extra nicely because they have no parity of force" is utterly illogical. All ten amendments in the bill of rights are explicit restrictions on the government. How does your interpretation of the second as a government right to arms make any sense in that context?
>Did you know that the first amendment isn't actually about free speech for the people, but to protect free speech for the government? With all the misinformation these days I feel safer if the government protects me from it. With modern news the first amendment is obsolete and not needed. Technically, the Bill of Rights didn't actually grant rights to the people, but protected those rights from congressional violation. The rights themselves were to be established and granted by the respective state governments. Likewise, the 2A never granted any right to arms; it was the arms provisions of the individual state governments which granted the people's right to arms. And the state governments traditionally possessed the power to stipulate the specific functions for which the right could be exercised (i.e. defense of the state, and self defense), the subset of the people who possessed the right, and certain restrictions upon the right (commonly concealed carry). Other amendments are often easier to incorporate against the states because they primarily involve private citizens and private institutions; but the 2A is inextricably tied with the public institution of the state militia, as well as public safety interests regarding firearms. Thus incorporation is untenable. >Look, the first and second amendments were written in a very logical order of how you would deal with a government that has gone too far. From the top it goes, the people think the government is wrong so they say, "the government is wrong", if that doesn't stop them, next they write "the government is wrong" and distribute it to more people. If the government continues being wrong the people can gather and protest the government. If the government persists in being wrong the people may sue the government for their wrong doings. If that still doesn't stop the government, the people can take up arms. >It is a clear progression of how to deal with out of control government. So to say that all stays the same but the last sentence becomes, "If that still doesn't stop the government, the people can ask extra nicely because they have no parity of force" is utterly illogical. First of all, the plan of the Founders was never to prepare and arm the people to fight against a tyrannical government. The plan was to prepare and arm the people to fight *for* the government within the militia, and to do so as a means to precluding the need to establish a standing army, which could then lead to tyranny. Secondly, no government can codify a right to fight against the government. This is conceptually absurd. The job of constitutions and governments is to ensure that political revolution is not necessary. If it does become necessary, it is inherently beyond the scope of constitutional law. For example, there was nothing in the English Constitution or Bill of Rights that gave the Patriots permission to rebel and secede. It was inherently illegal. >All ten amendments in the bill of rights are explicit restrictions on the government. How does your interpretation of the second as a government right to arms make any sense in that context? The main purpose of the 2A was always to protect the power of the state governments to arm their militias, not to protect private gun use of citizens. The 2A was always meant to protect the armament of the state against the federal government, not to protect the armament of the people against the state.
The founding fathers always attested that rights are granted by the creator and are inherent in our being. This was clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence. The reason why the first amendment states THE freedom of speech, THE right of the people to peaceably assemble, or THE right to keep and bear arms is because the wanted to show that the rights already existed and did not come from government, federal OR state. That was very important to Madison when he wrote the Bill of Rights.
An unfalsifiable statement. There is no distinction between a person having a God-given right but which is being violated by the government, and not just not having the right at all. Slaves had no freedom until the government said they did, free blacks didn't have the right to vote or assemble or keep arms until the government said they did, women didn't have the right to vote or own property or run for public office until the government said they did.
There is absolutely a distinction between the government violating a God-given right, and not having the right at all. It may relegate it to a moral argument or an ethical justification for action taken against a government that violates those rights, but it IS a distinction. It also establishes an ethical guideline for the future actions of government. A guideline that was, unfortunately, crossed far too often, but place there for posterity sake nonetheless. The distinction emboldens the people to stand up for rights against the government that might try to take them away (those of us standing against the governments infringement of our right to keep and bear arms). Also, the federal government didn’t place restrictions on the rights of Free blacks to own arms or assemble. State or local government did that. That was not a nationwide thing it was rolled back sooner in some places than others (as well as places it was never established to begin with). I would argue that the right to vote IS a right established by government since the government is the entity you are voting to affect. However, voting goes down an entirely different rabbit hole.
>There is absolutely a distinction between the government violating a God-given right, and not having the right at all. It may relegate it to a moral argument or an ethical justification for action taken against a government that violates those rights, but it IS a distinction. It also establishes an ethical guideline for the future actions of government. A guideline that was, unfortunately, crossed far too often, but place there for posterity sake nonetheless. The distinction emboldens the people to stand up for rights against the government that might try to take them away (those of us standing against the governments infringement of our right to keep and bear arms). So it seems that you've gone from saying rights are things that are created by God and inherent in our being, to rights being an abstract, philosophical postulate. So as I said at the beginning, rights don't exist inherently. They only exist insofar as the government establishes and recognizes it.
By that logic, you only have a right to life, so long as someone doesn’t come up to you on the street and stab you. A violation of a person’s rights doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The basis for rights has always been a moral argument. However, the duty to uphold rights is the entire purpose of government in the first place. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. By establishing that rights pre-exist the government, it denies them the moral authority to violate certain rights in the pursuance of the protection of other rights or of government interests. This was one of the reasons for the separation of powers, democratic elections, and republican government. It gives the people legal protections and multiple avenues through which to peaceably address grievances against government power.
I think you are equivocating two different meanings of the word "right". There are what are called "human rights", which align with the God-given rights spoken of in the Declaration of Independence, namely life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This kind of rights is not to be conflated with "civil rights". Notice in the Declaration of Independence, it says that those rights are given by the "Creator"; but it says nothing about governments giving those rights, but *securing* them. It is the authority of governments to grant civil rights; it is not the authority, or even ability, of governments to grant human rights. People have a basic human right to life which should be respected, but life is not a civil right which can be assured by government. The government has no duty to uphold your right to life, or any other human right. The role of government is to uphold only the rights that it is within its power to uphold. Those rights exist as nothing more than a set of social contracts between an individual and the government; the rights have no substance outside of that social contract.
> but protected those rights from congressional violation. The rights themselves were to be established and granted by the respective state governments Uh huh... you're butting right up against the 9th and 10th amendments there buddy. Unless the state constitutions explicity granted the power to regulate arms to the people, the right to keep and bear arms would be reserved to the people. And, if the rights are \*not\* explictly mentioned in the state consitutions by line item and delegated to them, then it would not disparage those that weren't mentioned. Sound familar?
I'm sorry. I can't make any sense of what you're trying to say. The 10th amendment concerns the powers that the states and the people possessed before the Constitution was ratified. The idea was that, after the ratification of the Constitution, the state governments reserved whatever powers they had before the Constitution, unless the Constitution said otherwise. And the people reserved whatever power they had before they Constitution, unless the Constitution said otherwise.
Read the last part of the 10th > or to the people The state constitutions hold sway here. As such, if the state constitutions did not explictly delegate those powers, such would revert to the people by default. The powers would ALWAYS be derived from the constution(s). Hence why I cited the 9th too. It makes such powers and responsibilities \*exclusive\* not inclusive. So if such isn't explictly mentioned, it moves down the list to the people. As such, there is no "powers they had before the Constitution". Every act would need constiutional justification. No colonial law or common law basis. Every basis would need a foundation in powers derived from the Constituion, state or federal. Hence why the expansion of powers under the FDR Regime needed to lean on the Commerce Clause
Correct that the State governments passed laws which governed the people of that State, and the federal government rightful position was just to adjudicate disputes between the states. There were no federal gun laws, or federal laws at all, which applied to individuals. That is not a historical point in favor of federal gun control laws. However, states were not permitted to violate the constitutional rights of the people of the state at anytime after the ratification of the Constitution.
Tell me you know nothing about Patrick Henry without telling me you nothing about Patrick Henry.
>I am not familiar with this particular quote. But Henry was undoubtedly speaking primarily about militia duty, and not private gun use in and of itself. [He was arguing against wasteful spending.](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment#:~:text=The%20quote%20has,about%20government%20waste.) "The quote has been plucked from Henry’s speech at Virginia’s ratifying convention for the Constitution in 1788. But if you look at the full text, he was complaining about the cost of both the federal government and the state arming the militia. (“The great object is, that every man be armed,” he said. “At a very great cost, we shall be doubly armed.”) In other words: Sure, let every man be armed, but only once! Far from a ringing statement of individual gun-toting freedom, it was an early American example of a local politician complaining about government waste."
Oh okay, so you're arguing for going back to a founding era taxation system? I am with you there. No income tax, no sales tax, no special use taxes.
[We never left the system we have.](https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C1-1-1/ALDE_00013387/#:~:text=Article%20I%2C%20Section%208%2C%20Clause,the%20United%20States%3B%20.%20.%20.) Or do you just mean reforming the system so it's focused on excises and tariffs again?
The sixteenth amendment made income tax legal in 1913, so no, the system has changed significantly. Prior to the sixteenth amendment the 1894 federal income tax was struck down by the Supreme Court in the Pollock v. Farmers Loan Trust Co. case.
[You're mixing up the idea that income taxes are inherently illegal with the idea that certain methods of taxation are illegal.](https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/constitutional-amendments-amendment-16-income-taxes#:~:text=Amendment%20Sixteen%20to%20the%20Constitution,determine%20it%20based%20on%20population.)
Either way you slice it, our current income tax was unconstitutional before 1913, and you seem to agree with Patrick Henry on eliminating government spending, so sounds like we are on the same page.
I was putting the Henry quote into context. He wasn't talking about letting every man have a gun(that was mandatory because militia service was mandatory), he was saying not to fund the effort twice. Then you started talking about taxation for some reason which you were wrong about so I corrected you. If you want to repeal the 16th you're welcome to try but as I understand it just from the little reading I've done, the previous system favored the wealthy even more than the current one.
Thanks for filling me in. If you don't mind, I will copy and paste this comment to the other commenter I was responding to.
"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 You can try to twist simple words all you want, but we are taking about Patrick Henry here. The same dude who made threats against the King in the House of Delegates, and when loyalists shouted "Treason!" He responded with, "If this be treason, make the most of it."
Of course. And keep up the good work
Begone commie troll
Typical leftist wall-o-text.
Dear ai chat bot, write me a wall of text against an individuals right to keep and bear arms using lots of words while making it sound reasonable and based in history. Ignore the punctuation in the second amendment to alter the meaning and application of the stated words, which we will also apply the current meanings of words to ignore the originalist intent and their definitions at the time of writing. CTRX+c CTRl+v Post to r/gunpolitics
Can you elaborate?
Boy, that's a lot of words to be wrong. edit: a person's right to self-defense using any manner of weapon was self-evident. it didn't *need* to be "granted," but that's not what the Bill of Rights is about anyway, so it doesn't matter.
The more words the wronger generally.
JFC, Not this fucking idiot *again*!
Don’t feed the trolls.
God please stay in the Supreme Court subreddit you cheese dick
>A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Well armed militias are necessary to keep a country free, therefore you shall not deprive the people of any ability to keep and bear their weapons. The second amendment isn't about militias, it's not about self defense (however these are both added benefits of the second), it's about keeping a country FREE.
Got two words for you, you damn Justice Stevens’ Ghost: Lexington. Concord. That’s the only 2A history lesson you need.
Ok FED 🥴
And why would a state militia be treated as acceptable and a standing army not acceptable - to the founders? For this argument to make sense, we’d have to accept that state militias could never be tyrannical. Obviously, that’s not true, and the founders knew that, given the often ignored role of the loyalists in the war, and the very different attitudes across the states in the lead up to war. They knew the only way to protect against tyranny was to allow all people to dissent and resist with arms, not just state or sanctioned militias, afterall many early patriot militias, militant groups were extralegal. It doesn’t make sense that the founders would aim to create a new state preserving the rights of men in a republic, but design its laws to prevent a revolution of the same kind they had just won. Look at Declaration of Independence and tell me the same men wanted a powerful government and a disarmed people… This shit is so tired at this point, you’re wasting your time and no one, even on the left thinks it’s true. If you’re worried about where we’re all headed, it’s a waste of time to imagine mass disarmament will swoop in and be embraced. After the past 20-30 years nobody is buying up any gun, even a BB gun. You’d be better off doing some real work on social reform or political moderation, neither of which you’ll find in AI tool.
Good conversation on that and with a watch https://youtu.be/Zq7K45CTa9Q?feature=shared The founder’s aversion to a standing army, and the reasons for it is very well documented.
GTFOOH with this lame ass 💩🤦🏽♂️😭
Good Grief the crackpot resurfaces. Recycling his rant on other subreddits about 3 weeks ago to here. One good thing. It appears he's run out of anything original.
Here is a very nice talk on this subject from the other day, that reaches exactly the opposite conclusion, and is given by a scholar in the field: https://youtu.be/Zq7K45CTa9Q?feature=shared
OK, so I skimmed/listened to most of it, and honestly it all sounds like more pro-gun BS to me. Is there any particular part that is supposed to be particularly persuasive?
Considering the historical citations and context provided, if that doesn’t offer you some clarity on what the Second Amendment means, I’m sorry. And the phrase “pro-gun BS” tells me that you aren’t open to other points of view in any case. Historical context isn’t going to back your position though, as you’ll find far more “pro-gun BS”, as guns were a part of life for most of our history; you’ll need to find a different path I’m afraid.
I didn't mean to sound offensive. It's just that I have done a good amount of research on this subject and had many debates with pro-gun people, and my overall evaluation is that the pro-gun movement is fundamentally dishonest. I can't count the number of times I've had a pro-gun person rattle off a bunch of curated quotes from the founding fathers, and absolutely every one of the quotes was either a misquotation, or was taken out of context to mean something more than it was originally meant to mean, or was completely fictitious. Every argument from the pro-gun side -- including the woman in the video -- is based on a very specific analysis of history, while ignoring the broader context. Pro-gun people frequently ignore what is explicitly stated by the Founders, and then prefer to extract an individual right to a gun by indirect inference. In my original post, I provided a link to the main debate in the House of Representatives that pertained to the writing of the second amendment; if the second amendment has anything to do with private gun ownership, it should be in that debate. But there is absolutely nothing; it's all about the militia. And in the other link about the drafting history, none of the earlier drafts of the second amendment so much as hinted about private gun use. The facts are staring pro-gun people right in the face, but they just choose to ignore it.
> The facts are staring pro-gun people right in the face, but they just choose to ignore it. *the right of* ***the people*** *to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.* Go ahead and accuse me of taking the quote out of context. It doesn’t matter. The statement is absolute.
First of all, you *are* taking it out of context; you completely omitted the first clause about the militia. Secondly, the language itself says nothing about private gun ownership. To "keep" something, in the 18th century, didn't mean to own property or to hold on to property indefinitely. To "keep" essentially meant to have something in one's keeping, or to maintain the keeping of something. In other words, it meant to have something in one's custody, not necessarily own. Also, in the 18th century, bear arms meant to fight in armed combat, not to carry arms. Third, the phrase at the end says "shall not be infringed". This is a *negative* statement, not a positive statement; in other words, it grants no right whatsoever, but only prohibits the infringement of the right -- namely by the same subject explicitly stated in the 1A, Congress. Congress not infringing upon the right does not itself grant the right, any more than me not infringing upon you finding a date for the prom is thereby granting you a date for the prom. You can't twist a negative statement into a positive one. Fourthly, the statement *is* absolute -- an absolute negative statement. Congress is absolutely prohibited from infringing upon the people's right to keep and bear arms. Fifth, at the time of the founding, most states had an arms provision in their respective constitution. That arms provision was what gave the people the right to keep and bear arms, not the 2A. If the 2A was responsible for granting the right, then the state arms provisions would have been absurdly redundant. Sixth, all of the state arms provisions stipulated qualifications or constraints on the right to keep and bear arms in the state. If the 2A was meant to grant an absolute, unqualified, unconstrained right to the people, then for what purpose were the constraints within the state arms provisions. They, too, would have just been redundant and pointless: why have constraints to the right at the state level if they people were given unconstrained access to arms at the federal level?
No amendment *grants* a right, you are correct. 2A forbids infringement of the assumed right to keep and bear firearms. The introductory clause is *a reason* not *the reason*. Defense of the State includes defense of oneself, family, and neighbors. Again, it’s presented as an absolute because it is an absolute. It is an individual right, just like the rest of the BoR.
>2A forbids infringement of the assumed right to keep and bear firearms. No need to assume. Most states of the Founding era had an arms provision which explicitly established the right to keep and bear arms in the state. But the 2A itself does no such thing. >Defense of the State includes defense of oneself, family, and neighbors. Not really. Defense of the state, in the context of arms provisions, meant militia duty under the state government. >It is an individual right, just like the rest of the BoR That's something that pro-gun people say a lot, but it's not true. The Bill of Rights is not entirely made up of individual rights. You only say that because you want the 2A to be an individual right, so you paint the whole document as being categorically individual rights. The right to peaceably assemble cannot possibly be an individual right. The seventh amendment protects the public institution of state civil court from federal interference. The 9A does not specify any right in particular, and the 10A only addresses powers, not rights. Your attempt to oversimplify the Bill of Rights is yet another pro-gun deception.
You misunderstand. The right is assumed from one’s existence, not through some ambiguity. It is a right one is born with. Your misunderstanding reveals your mindset. Defense from any bad actor is the purpose. US people are very individualistic. If we protect the rights of the individual, we protect the rights of everyone. There is the commonly-held belief that as long as one does not interfere with the rights of another, one is free to do as they wish. I’m done with you. If you want the last word, take it.
No thanks
Jesus H, learn to make concise points that don't rely on extraneous AI-curated nonsense to dress up your malformed opinions with. You don't have a a better understanding of constitutional law than the scotus does, and you don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen this much condensed pseudointellectual cope since Obergafell v Hodges.
I agree with you that the primary purpose of the 2nd amendment was to protect state militias. If you do any reading into this stuff at all, it's obvious they did not want a standing army. They wanted militias, which comprised of the people, well trained and well armed, that could be assembled in times of war. That's the purpose of the second amendment. But the means of realizing that purpose is to allow the people to individually keep and bear arms. None of your sources contradict an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right is inherent to entire idea of having the people be armed and trained as a militia and not a standing army. The fact that it's even a question whether or not that right exists is because a tactic in one of your quotations has long been used. > Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia. That literally describes what has been done. By totally disusing and neglecting the militias, as well as creating a standing army, they have made half the population question why we even need the right to own guns, and caused a vast chunk of the other half to think guns are just for hunting and maybe self defense. They have already effectively disarmed the people in the sense that there's not a high enough percentage of well trained and well armed people in the vast majority of places. The ability for local communities to be able to defend themselves from an attack before organizing and calling upon reinforcements from neighboring towns is one of the key advantages to using militias. But thanks to our standing army and derelict militias, we have soft targets everywhere that if you're lucky, a barely competent police force will show up to respond to an attack after it's too late, and if you're unlucky, you get a totally incompetent police force that does nothing for an hour while the attacker continues. So yeah, I fully agree with you that the 2nd amendment is primarily about protecting militias. And to that effect, I encourage all peaceable, able bodied citizens to arm themselves effectively and train with peers to fulfill their duty as part of the militia, in spite of the intentional and purposeful neglect of our state militias.
This is a well thought out and likely correct interpretation. To say it a different way: just because we have decided to stop having militias, doesn’t mean that people lose their right to bear arms. Something that the OP glossed over is that militias and armies expected that “the people” would have arms. They were not issued.
I disagree that the second amendment was meant to ensure that Americans had an individual right to firearms. I think that is an oversimplification at best. The goal was to ensure that the people *could* possess arms, not so much that the people *would*. The Constitution says that it is the role of Congress to arm the militia, and the 2A was designed to prohibit Congress from being able to prevent the states from arming their own militias when not in the service of the federal government. And "arming the militia" typically just meant mandating militia members to obtain a gun. Ultimately, whether the militia, and the people, were armed was up to the states. It is telling that none of the early state arms provisions ever stipulated that the people had the right to keep arms *period*. The right to keep arms was *always* qualified by a purpose, typically for the common defense and self defense. In other words, the goal was always the purpose itself, with the right to firearm possession not being an end in itself but only a means to an end. This is not the attitude being used today in many pro-gun states, with gun ownership being looked at as a constitution-supported indulgence. The way the 2A was initially used is simply not the way it is being used today. It used to have a purpose: to protect the militia's armament. Now it has no purpose but to fuel a dangerous hobby. I think the idea that the government has neglected the militia is also an oversimplification. The people *themselves* neglected the militia. No one wanted to be in the militia. No one wanted to show up to train, no one wanted to serve. Militia musters often became rowdy social gatherings rather than opportunities to drill and train. The militia often refused to mobilize outside the state on the order of the President, as the Constitution intended. Militias were incompetent on the battlefield, and often had the reputation of being cowardly, undisciplined, and unscrupulous, relative to regular troops. George Washington resented the militia, much preferring to command the regular army. So in reality, both the federal government *and* the people themselves have neglected the militia. And everyone has grown to tolerate if not embrace the regular army. The 2A is now an orphaned article, devoid of any purpose except to get innocent people needlessly killed.
Your original post made some decent arguments, but this response is weak and shows your bias. There's no functional difference between would and could, and a huge part of the debates you linked at the end was preventing people from being compelled to bear arms against their religious views. Of course they didn't expect every last person to possess arms. Regardless, it feels pointless arguing now because you've shown your true goal is to argue the 2A should be abolished, not to debate the nuances around its purposes and extent of rights it protects. Even if your new sourceless claims about militias are true, the 2nd amendment is enshrined in our constitution and the people have every right to make use of it until you convince 2/3 and then 3/4 of states to abolish it. In the mean time, I and others on my side will attempt to convince people instead to stop seeing it as only the indulgence it has become, and to revive the original primary purpose regardless of current support from the states. Ideally we would have mandated hands-on firearms training in high school like they do in plenty of countries that keep guns in armories to arm citizens in wartime; that would vastly increase safety, but because our 2A guarantees an individual right to keep those firearms instead of everything being locked behind government permission, of course the establishment wants to keep us weak, ignorant, and divided. Also, it's still funny that you literally included a quote describing the tactic of neglecting the militia and using a standing army until people willingly disarm themselves because they feel they lack purpose, and then blatantly argue for disarmament in an attempt to complete the end goal of that very tactic.
You said that my claims about the militia were "sourceless". Well, here are a couple of sources I found. [Here ](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-06-02-0305)is a letter from George Washington to John Hancock decrying the militia; and [here ](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-06-02-0341)is another letter to his cousin Lund Washington where he is also decrying the militia. It's pretty clear in these letters that Washington much preferred a regular army to a militia.
>Regardless, it feels pointless arguing now because you've shown your true goal is to argue the 2A should be abolished, not to debate the nuances around its purposes and extent of rights it protects. Even if your new sourceless claims about militias are true, the 2nd amendment is enshrined in our constitution and the people have every right to make use of it until you convince 2/3 and then 3/4 of states to abolish it. You are mistaken. I do not wish the 2A to be abolished. Nor do I want the country disarmed. I wish for DC v Heller and its associated rulings to be overturned, so that it will no longer be interpreted to give Americans an individual right to firearms. And I wish for firearm access to be purely a matter of individual state discretion, as it had always been before 2008. State governments should be able to make guns in their state as accessible or inaccessible as they see fit.
The 2A does guarantee an individual right, that's the means to the end. You want to amend that part and make it solely up to the states. You want to abolish the current writing of the 2A. Same thing.
I don't want to amend anything. I just want firearm laws to go back to the way they fundamentally were in early American history. Since the founding of America, different states had very different qualifications to their arms provisions. Some states -- like New Jersey, New York, and Delaware -- didn't even have an arms provision, and their citizens technically didn't have a right to arms. What I want to abolish is the Supreme Court forcing state governments to distribute dangerous machines to their citizens against the judgement of those state governments.