GUN RIGHTS, a unique look at the constitution.
Read this and thought I would share it. The Supremes are to decide this spring.A unique insight into the thinking of one of the 9.
In Liberty's Two Arms
by David Kopel
This article appeared in Legal Times on January 14, 2008.
PRINT PAGE E-MAIL PAGE TEXT SIZE All Second Amendment clauses protect gun rights
To understand the Second Amendment, it helps to consult Justice Stephen Breyer's book Active Liberty.
This is not because the book reveals specifically how Breyer would vote in District of Columbia v. Heller, the upcoming Supreme Court case on the D.C. ban against owning handguns and using any firearm for self-defense in the home.
But Breyer's book, through its philosophical discussions of the meaning of liberty, does show a way to reconcile the subordinate clause of the Second Amendment (the importance of the militia to a free state) and the main clause (gun ownership as an individual right). And this reconciliation of the two clauses strongly suggests that the D.C. gun bans are unconstitutional.
One could say that the families without guns are free-riders on the benefits from families with guns.
LEGAL LIBERTY
Active Liberty reminds us of the original meaning of "liberty" in the Greek city-states: the right of citizens to participate in their government. At the best periods in ancient Greece, as in New England town meetings, important public decisions were made democratically at assemblies of the people.
Active liberty, by itself, provides democracy, but it does nothing to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. Thus, Enlightenment philosophers articulated a principle of negative liberty: That a person has certain rights that even a majority cannot infringe.
Breyer explains that active liberty and negative liberty are both part of the Constitution. For example, in evaluating campaign finance restrictions, Breyer would balance the negative liberty aspect of the First Amendment (that government should not control political speech) with the active liberty aspect (the right of the people to a good system of elections).
As Breyer explains, active and negative liberty can conflict. In campaign finance regulation, negative liberty ("don't control political speech") conflicts with active liberty ("protect democratic elections"). For the Second Amendment, however, the active and negative liberty provisions reinforce each other.
FOR THEMSELVES
The negative liberty aspect is in the Second Amendment's main clause: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The clause derives from a long line of human rights philosophy about the right of individuals to defend themselves and their families. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his model constitution for Virginia: "No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms in his own lands or tenements."
In forbidding the possession or use of any functional firearm in the home, the D.C. law violates the Second Amendment's main clause. Lawfully registered rifles and shotguns must be kept disassembled or locked up. There is no exception for self-defense.
Although the D.C. government's Supreme Court brief claims that local courts might find an implicit self-defense exception, the government took the opposite position in 1977. Then, in successfully defending the self-defense ban, the District argued, and the city's highest court agreed, that the statute deliberately banned self-defense in the home. The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in McIntosh v. Washington that, even though owners of business premises were still allowed a limited degree of self-defense, the complete ban in the home was not an equal protection violation. The court found that there was a rational basis for the self-defense ban because of the great risk that people who had functional firearms in their home would kill in a domestic rage. (Extensive social science evidence disproves that court's dire view of people who pass a background check to own licensed, registered guns.)
AND FOR OTHERS
The introductory clause of the Second Amendment ("A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state") comes not from the tradition of negative liberty, but from classical and Renaissance principles of republicanism, an active liberty tradition.
As David Hardy described in his 1986 law-review article "The Second Amendment and the Historiography of the Bill of Rights," James Madison, in drafting the Second Amendment, blended the republican and human rights principles into a single amendment.
The active liberty clause is concerned with preserving citizens' ability to contribute to the defense of their communities. For example, a threat might arise from a foreign attacker where the national army might not be able to respond in time. Likewise, the armed citizens of the founding era were often called upon by local officials to help search for escaped criminals or to protect frontier villages. More broadly, the republican philosophers worried that citizens who did not participate in the protection of their communities would become passive and dependent, and thereby lose virtues necessary to the survival of a free society.
Today, the government does not require citizens to serve in organized militias. Gun prohibition advocates claim that the Second Amendment therefore has no practical meaning.
David Kopel is an associate policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
More by David B. KopelThomas Cooley, the greatest American legal scholar of the latter 19th century, anticipated this argument and explained why government neglect of the militia (the first clause) did not negate the second clause: If Second Amendment rights were limited to those enrolled in a militia, "the purpose of this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the action or neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms, and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose."
TO SUPPRESS PREDATORS
Even if the Second Amendment nullificationists were correct that the introductory clause overrides the main clause, they err in their hyperliteral reading of this initial clause.
When we see the word "press" in the First Amendment, we understand that it protects more than just the freedom to use literal printing presses. It obviously includes sharing ideas using tools that have the same purpose as the press, such as fountain pens, typewriters, and Web sites. If a newspaper abandoned printing presses entirely and published its articles exclusively online, "freedom of the press" would still protect the writing.
Likewise, the active liberty principle of the Second Amendment's opening clause teaches us about more than just formal militias. It looks to the role of citizens in helping to carry out the government functions of a free state - particularly the essential governmental function of suppressing predatory violence.
Research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that legally armed homeowners (of whom there are none in the District) use firearms to drive burglars away from their homes hundreds of thousands of times a year.
Only about 13 percent of American burglaries are perpetrated against occupied homes (known as "hot burglary"), thanks to the burglars' fear that residents might be armed. By contrast, the rate of hot burglaries is 45 percent to 50 percent in countries such as England and the Netherlands, where defensive gun ownership is forbidden or heavily discouraged.
Thwarting or deterring a home invasion obviously is beneficial for the individual family, but it also benefits the people as a whole. Drastically reducing the number of hot burglaries reduces the number of emergency calls to which police must respond, giving them more resources for other programs.
A militiaman in 1791 did much more than protect himself alone, and the Founders understood that collective benefit. By defending communities, militias protected people not in the militia, such as the elderly, women, and children.
Likewise, modern Americans who exercise Second Amendment rights confer benefits on the whole community. About half of all American homes contain a firearm. Burglars, however, do not know which half, so they must try to avoid all occupied homes.
One could say that the families without guns are free-riders on the benefits from families with guns. Or one could say that the Second Amendment's opening clause envisioned that the security benefits of keeping arms would inure to the whole community.
THROUGHOUT HISTORY
This view has strong historical roots. The leading constitutional commentators of the early Republic, St. George Tucker and William Rawle, described the Second Amendment as guaranteeing a right to own guns for individual defense and for community security.
Likewise, the Reconstruction Congress, when passing the Freedmen's Bureau Act and, later, the 14th Amendment, explicitly affirmed the right of former slaves to own guns in their own homes for protection against the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. This was important for the freedmen personally and also for preventing the Klan from destroying the right of freedmen to participate in the political process.
Later, during the 1950s and 1960s, many civil rights activists in the South (including Eleanor Roosevelt, on a speaking tour in Tennessee) had guns to protect themselves while they campaigned against segregation laws and in favor of voting rights.
It is possible to imagine how the active liberty and negative liberty clauses of the Second Amendment might conflict. A law that required prospective gun owners to undergo training or take a test might advance the active liberty clause, while arguably infringing the negative liberty clause.
Yet in the D.C. case, the active liberty and negative liberty provisions are in perfect harmony. The D.C. bans on functional firearms are contrary to the purposes of both clauses of the Second Amendment. The D.C. statutes eliminate both the personal and community benefits from firearm ownership in the home. Under both the active and negative concepts of liberty discussed in Breyer's book, these D.C. statutes should be struck down.ring.
In Liberty's Two Arms
by David Kopel
This article appeared in Legal Times on January 14, 2008.
PRINT PAGE E-MAIL PAGE TEXT SIZE All Second Amendment clauses protect gun rights
To understand the Second Amendment, it helps to consult Justice Stephen Breyer's book Active Liberty.
This is not because the book reveals specifically how Breyer would vote in District of Columbia v. Heller, the upcoming Supreme Court case on the D.C. ban against owning handguns and using any firearm for self-defense in the home.
But Breyer's book, through its philosophical discussions of the meaning of liberty, does show a way to reconcile the subordinate clause of the Second Amendment (the importance of the militia to a free state) and the main clause (gun ownership as an individual right). And this reconciliation of the two clauses strongly suggests that the D.C. gun bans are unconstitutional.
One could say that the families without guns are free-riders on the benefits from families with guns.
LEGAL LIBERTY
Active Liberty reminds us of the original meaning of "liberty" in the Greek city-states: the right of citizens to participate in their government. At the best periods in ancient Greece, as in New England town meetings, important public decisions were made democratically at assemblies of the people.
Active liberty, by itself, provides democracy, but it does nothing to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. Thus, Enlightenment philosophers articulated a principle of negative liberty: That a person has certain rights that even a majority cannot infringe.
Breyer explains that active liberty and negative liberty are both part of the Constitution. For example, in evaluating campaign finance restrictions, Breyer would balance the negative liberty aspect of the First Amendment (that government should not control political speech) with the active liberty aspect (the right of the people to a good system of elections).
As Breyer explains, active and negative liberty can conflict. In campaign finance regulation, negative liberty ("don't control political speech") conflicts with active liberty ("protect democratic elections"). For the Second Amendment, however, the active and negative liberty provisions reinforce each other.
FOR THEMSELVES
The negative liberty aspect is in the Second Amendment's main clause: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The clause derives from a long line of human rights philosophy about the right of individuals to defend themselves and their families. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his model constitution for Virginia: "No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms in his own lands or tenements."
In forbidding the possession or use of any functional firearm in the home, the D.C. law violates the Second Amendment's main clause. Lawfully registered rifles and shotguns must be kept disassembled or locked up. There is no exception for self-defense.
Although the D.C. government's Supreme Court brief claims that local courts might find an implicit self-defense exception, the government took the opposite position in 1977. Then, in successfully defending the self-defense ban, the District argued, and the city's highest court agreed, that the statute deliberately banned self-defense in the home. The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in McIntosh v. Washington that, even though owners of business premises were still allowed a limited degree of self-defense, the complete ban in the home was not an equal protection violation. The court found that there was a rational basis for the self-defense ban because of the great risk that people who had functional firearms in their home would kill in a domestic rage. (Extensive social science evidence disproves that court's dire view of people who pass a background check to own licensed, registered guns.)
AND FOR OTHERS
The introductory clause of the Second Amendment ("A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state") comes not from the tradition of negative liberty, but from classical and Renaissance principles of republicanism, an active liberty tradition.
As David Hardy described in his 1986 law-review article "The Second Amendment and the Historiography of the Bill of Rights," James Madison, in drafting the Second Amendment, blended the republican and human rights principles into a single amendment.
The active liberty clause is concerned with preserving citizens' ability to contribute to the defense of their communities. For example, a threat might arise from a foreign attacker where the national army might not be able to respond in time. Likewise, the armed citizens of the founding era were often called upon by local officials to help search for escaped criminals or to protect frontier villages. More broadly, the republican philosophers worried that citizens who did not participate in the protection of their communities would become passive and dependent, and thereby lose virtues necessary to the survival of a free society.
Today, the government does not require citizens to serve in organized militias. Gun prohibition advocates claim that the Second Amendment therefore has no practical meaning.
David Kopel is an associate policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
More by David B. KopelThomas Cooley, the greatest American legal scholar of the latter 19th century, anticipated this argument and explained why government neglect of the militia (the first clause) did not negate the second clause: If Second Amendment rights were limited to those enrolled in a militia, "the purpose of this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the action or neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms, and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose."
TO SUPPRESS PREDATORS
Even if the Second Amendment nullificationists were correct that the introductory clause overrides the main clause, they err in their hyperliteral reading of this initial clause.
When we see the word "press" in the First Amendment, we understand that it protects more than just the freedom to use literal printing presses. It obviously includes sharing ideas using tools that have the same purpose as the press, such as fountain pens, typewriters, and Web sites. If a newspaper abandoned printing presses entirely and published its articles exclusively online, "freedom of the press" would still protect the writing.
Likewise, the active liberty principle of the Second Amendment's opening clause teaches us about more than just formal militias. It looks to the role of citizens in helping to carry out the government functions of a free state - particularly the essential governmental function of suppressing predatory violence.
Research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that legally armed homeowners (of whom there are none in the District) use firearms to drive burglars away from their homes hundreds of thousands of times a year.
Only about 13 percent of American burglaries are perpetrated against occupied homes (known as "hot burglary"), thanks to the burglars' fear that residents might be armed. By contrast, the rate of hot burglaries is 45 percent to 50 percent in countries such as England and the Netherlands, where defensive gun ownership is forbidden or heavily discouraged.
Thwarting or deterring a home invasion obviously is beneficial for the individual family, but it also benefits the people as a whole. Drastically reducing the number of hot burglaries reduces the number of emergency calls to which police must respond, giving them more resources for other programs.
A militiaman in 1791 did much more than protect himself alone, and the Founders understood that collective benefit. By defending communities, militias protected people not in the militia, such as the elderly, women, and children.
Likewise, modern Americans who exercise Second Amendment rights confer benefits on the whole community. About half of all American homes contain a firearm. Burglars, however, do not know which half, so they must try to avoid all occupied homes.
One could say that the families without guns are free-riders on the benefits from families with guns. Or one could say that the Second Amendment's opening clause envisioned that the security benefits of keeping arms would inure to the whole community.
THROUGHOUT HISTORY
This view has strong historical roots. The leading constitutional commentators of the early Republic, St. George Tucker and William Rawle, described the Second Amendment as guaranteeing a right to own guns for individual defense and for community security.
Likewise, the Reconstruction Congress, when passing the Freedmen's Bureau Act and, later, the 14th Amendment, explicitly affirmed the right of former slaves to own guns in their own homes for protection against the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. This was important for the freedmen personally and also for preventing the Klan from destroying the right of freedmen to participate in the political process.
Later, during the 1950s and 1960s, many civil rights activists in the South (including Eleanor Roosevelt, on a speaking tour in Tennessee) had guns to protect themselves while they campaigned against segregation laws and in favor of voting rights.
It is possible to imagine how the active liberty and negative liberty clauses of the Second Amendment might conflict. A law that required prospective gun owners to undergo training or take a test might advance the active liberty clause, while arguably infringing the negative liberty clause.
Yet in the D.C. case, the active liberty and negative liberty provisions are in perfect harmony. The D.C. bans on functional firearms are contrary to the purposes of both clauses of the Second Amendment. The D.C. statutes eliminate both the personal and community benefits from firearm ownership in the home. Under both the active and negative concepts of liberty discussed in Breyer's book, these D.C. statutes should be struck down.ring.
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I have a feeling we are going to loose everything in this court decision. The Bush administration has filed a breif against the lower courts ruling (the one that overturned the Ban).
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/311.html
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
I am part of the militia, now let me buy arms(so that I may keep and or bear them if need be) without infringement.0 -
That's alot of words. 0 -
Lots of words but that is how the debate will go between them. We read the amendment and it seems clear to us. The antis read it different because of the militia clause. The above thoughts are the real core of the argument.The rarified world of constitutional law is not so clear.What would you do if they made private gun ownership
a felony, how far would you go to keep your guns?0 -
The Feds are just scared poopless that the dam will burst and all machine guns will become eligible for private ownership. They should be scared. It might not be as difficult to interprete as many make it. Another interpretation:
The Unabridged Second Amendment
by J. Neil Schulman
If you wanted to know all about the Big Bang, you'd ring up Carl Sagan, right? And if you wanted to know about desert warfare, the man to call would be Norman Schwarzkopf, no question about it. But who would you call if you wanted the top expert on American usage, to tell you the meaning of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution?
That was the question I asked A.C. Brocki, editorial coordinator of the Los Angeles Unified School District and formerly senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishers -- who himself had been recommended to me as the foremost expert on English usage in the Los Angeles school system. Mr. Brocki told me to get in touch with Roy Copperud, a retired professor of journalism at the University of Southern California and the author of American Usage and Style: The Consensus.
A little research lent support to Brocki's opinion of Professor Copperud's expertise.
Roy Copperud was a newspaper writer on major dailies for over three decades before embarking on a distinguished 17-year career teaching journalism at USC. Since 1952, Copperud has been writing a column dealing with the professional aspects of journalism for Editor and Publisher, a weekly magazine focusing on the journalism field.
He's on the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and Merriam Webster's Usage Dictionary frequently cites him as an expert. Copperud's fifth book on usage, American Usage and Style: The Consensus, has been in continuous print from Van Nostrand Reinhold since 1981, and is the winner of the Association of American Publisher's Humanities Award.
That sounds like an expert to me.
After a brief telephone call to Professor Copperud in which I introduced myself but did not give him any indication of why I was interested, I sent the following letter:
"I am writing you to ask you for your professional opinion as an expert in English usage, to analyze the text of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and extract the intent from the text.
"The text of the Second Amendment is, 'A well-regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'
"The debate over this amendment has been whether the first part of the sentence, 'A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State', is a restrictive clause or a subordinate clause, with respect to the independent clause containing the subject of the sentence, 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'
"I would request that your analysis of this sentence not take into consideration issues of political impact or public policy, but be restricted entirely to a linguistic analysis of its meaning and intent. Further, since your professional analysis will likely become part of litigation regarding the consequences of the Second Amendment, I ask that whatever analysis you make be a professional opinion that you would be willing to stand behind with your reputation, and even be willing to testify under oath to support, if necessary."
My letter framed several questions about the text of the Second Amendment, then concluded:
"I realize that I am asking you to take on a major responsibility and task with this letter. I am doing so because, as a citizen, I believe it is vitally important to extract the actual meaning of the Second Amendment. While I ask that your analysis not be affected by the political importance of its results, I ask that you do this because of that importance."
After several more letters and phone calls, in which we discussed terms for his doing such an analysis, but in which we never discussed either of our opinions regarding the Second Amendment, gun control, or any other political subject, Professor Copperud sent me the follow analysis (into which I have inserted my questions for the sake of clarity):
[Copperud:] "The words 'A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,' contrary to the interpretation cited in your letter of July 26, 1991, constitutes a present participle, rather than a clause. It is used as an adjective, modifying 'militia,' which is followed by the main clause of the sentence (subject 'the right', verb 'shall'). The 'to keep and bear arms' is asserted as an essential for maintaining a militia.
"In reply to your numbered questions:
[Schulman:] "(1) Can the sentence be interpreted to grant the right to keep and bear arms solely to 'a well-regulated militia'?"
[Copperud:] "(1) The sentence does not restrict the right to keep and bear arms, nor does it state or imply possession of the right elsewhere or by others than the people; it simply makes a positive statement with respect to a right of the people."
[Schulman:] "(2) Is 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms' granted by the words of the Second Amendment, or does the Second Amendment assume a preexisting right of the people to keep and bear arms, and merely state that such right 'shall not be infringed'?"
[Copperud:] "(2) The right is not granted by the amendment; its existence is assumed. The thrust of the sentence is that the right shall be preserved inviolate for the sake of ensuring a militia."
[Schulman:] "(3) Is the right of the people to keep and bear arms conditioned upon whether or not a well regulated militia is, in fact, necessary to the security of a free State, and if that condition is not existing, is the statement 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed' null and void?"
[Copperud:] "(3) No such condition is expressed or implied. The right to keep and bear arms is not said by the amendment to depend on the existence of a militia. No condition is stated or implied as to the relation of the right to keep and bear arms and to the necessity of a well-regulated militia as a requisite to the security of a free state. The right to keep and bear arms is deemed unconditional by the entire sentence."
[Schulman:] "(4) Does the clause 'A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,' grant a right to the government to place conditions on the 'right of the people to keep and bear arms,' or is such right deemed unconditional by the meaning of the entire sentence?"
[Copperud:] "(4) The right is assumed to exist and to be unconditional, as previously stated. It is invoked here specifically for the sake of the militia."
[Schulman:] "(5) Which of the following does the phrase 'well-regulated militia' mean: 'well-equipped', 'well-organized,' 'well-drilled,' 'well-educated,' or 'subject to regulations of a superior authority'?"
[Copperud:] "(5) The phrase means 'subject to regulations of a superior authority;' this accords with the desire of the writers for civilian control over the military."
[Schulman:] "(6) (If at all possible, I would ask you to take account of the changed meanings of words, or usage, since that sentence was written 200 years ago, but not take into account historical interpretations of the intents of the authors, unless those issues can be clearly separated."
[Copperud:] "To the best of my knowledge, there has been no change in the meaning of words or in usage that would affect the meaning of the amendment. If it were written today, it might be put: "Since a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.'
[Schulman:] "As a 'scientific control' on this analysis, I would also appreciate it if you could compare your analysis of the text of the Second Amendment to the following sentence,
"A well-schooled electorate, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed.'
"My questions for the usage analysis of this sentence would be:
"(1) Is the grammatical structure and usage of this sentence and the way the words modify each other, identical to the Second Amendment's sentence?; and
"(2) Could this sentence be interpreted to restrict 'the right of the people to keep and read Books' _only_ to 'a well-educated electorate' -- for example, registered voters with a high-school diploma?"
[Copperud:] "(1) Your 'scientific control' sentence precisely parallels the amendment in grammatical structure.
"(2) There is nothing in your sentence that either indicates or implies the possibility of a restricted interpretation."
Professor Copperud had only one additional comment, which he placed in his cover letter: "With well-known human curiosity, I made some speculative efforts to decide how the material might be used, but was unable to reach any conclusion."
So now we have been told by one of the top experts on American usage what many knew all along: the Constitution of the United States unconditionally protects the people's right to keep and bear arms, forbidding all governments formed under the Constitution from abridging that right.
As I write this, the attempted coup against constitutional government in the Soviet Union has failed, apparently because the will of the people in that part of the world to be free from capricious tyranny is stronger than the old guard's desire to maintain a monopoly on dictatorial power.
And here in the United States, elected lawmakers, judges, and appointed officials who are pledged to defend the Constitution of the United States ignore, marginalize, or prevaricate about the Second Amendment routinely. American citizens are put in American prisons for carrying arms, owning arms of forbidden sorts, or failing to satisfy bureaucratic requirements regarding the owning and carrying of firearms -- all of which is an abridgement of the unconditional right of the people to keep and bear arms, guaranteed by the Constitution.
And even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), staunch defender of the rest of the Bill of Rights, stands by and does nothing.
It seems it is up to those who believe in the right to keep and bear arms to preserve that right. No one else will. No one else can. Will we our elected representatives not to take away our rights, and continue regarding them as representing us if they do? Will we continue obeying judges who decide that the Second Amendment doesn't mean what it says it means but means whatever they say it means in their Orwellian doublespeak?
Or will we simply keep and bear the arms of our choice, as the Constitution of the United States promises us we can, and pledge that we will defend that promise with our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor?0 -
Always amusing for me to watch the very well educated thrash themselves and the English Language into a frenzy over the Second Amendment.
Bluntly;
If you cannot look at history..ours and the REST of the Worlds'..and understand that allowing the Elite the sole means of aggression is a recipe for the murder of millions of civilians...you are too stupid to be allowed to carry a gun, anyway.
Allowing the Elite to CONTROL weapons is merely a step on the path to those killing fields.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Highball
Always amusing for me to watch the very well educated thrash themselves and the English Language into a frenzy over the Second Amendment.
I don't find it amusing, I find it enlightening.
The Constitution is as much a gift from the well educated men that wrote it as from the men who marched into battle.
In many cases, men filled both roles.0 -
Fine..be enlightened.
Also know that those same type of well educated men have taken away your Right to keep and Bear Arms..replaced it with priviliges...and made you like it.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Highball
Also know that those same type of well educated men have taken away your Right to keep and Bear Arms..replaced it with priviliges...and made you like it.
Who says I like it?0 -
quote:Originally posted by Highball
Also know that those same type of well educated men have taken away your Right to keep and Bear Arms.
Uneducated goons have played their role as well0 -
I have no intention of discussing the merits of endless hundred dollar words spent debating the Second Amendment.
At some point in time, one has to decide the meaning for himself.
Either it enumerates a God-Given Right;
Or it gives the government the power to control us.
No more.no less.0 -
Seven of the first Ten Amendments are specific individual rights recognized by the Constitution as belonging to the people.
Two of the first Ten Amendments recognize that any power not specifically given to the Federal Government belongs to the people or the States.
Only in the Second Amendment was it seen necessary for the Federal Government to guarantee the right of the Federal Government to arm the Federal Government.
So, nine of the Ten Amendments making up the Bill of Rights are individual rights guaranteed to the people and one is a guarantee of a right of the government.
Anything wrong with the logic of this argument?0
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