Close purchasing loopholes and require all gun sales, whether from a gun store, a gun show or person to person, to go through an FFL dealership or law enforcement office, for a background check. I live in a none registration state, and I still had to fill out an ATF form that almost felt like an anal exam! But no teachers with guns. A weapon in the classroom is a weapon readily available to a smart, psychopathic kid.
In my humble opinion, realistically, a conversation about the 2nd amendment is almost a moot issue. Even if one could completely abolished the 2nd amendment and make all guns illegal, the sheer numbers are just too great! How would you get them? The potential to spark civil unrest is just too high! As I said at the beginning, that gun ship has already sailed.
Blacks in the inner cities and rural projects. Whites in public housing and mobile home parks. Blacks and whites in nice, non-gated neighborhoods. Make sure you get a good broad sample, after all, there are million of us. Oh, and please refrain from generalized commits about gun owners like the previous post.
Ladies and gentlemen , I apologize for crashing your alumni conversation. I just thought a dumbed down perspective would help you reach a conclusion that we can all agree on. This has been interesting. Thank you all for giving me insight into the minds of people far more educated than I. So, if one deigns to believe that government, a monopoly provider of services, can lean toward inefficiency and waste and should therefore be limited or smaller in reach, such a person must also loathe transgender people????
Poor soul. Pity, as I was beginning to feel persuaded. You would think an educated rhetor exposing their argument to the entire world would ask themselves if they truly understood the meaning of a chosen phrase and could defend its use. Very well written Matthew. I am what the NRA calls a butter. I will explain. From what I have seen from us as a species some of us should have their 2A rights revoked.
I am talking about domestic abusers, or people with a history violence, or stalkers. Also hard core drug users. The chemist I go to was shot up by a heroin user who proceeded to steal pills. Also those who are affiliated with the KKK or their opposite numbers the anarchist. Of course they just get their weapons illegally anyway. We should crack down on all of the above. I say you want to own a legal weapon be a good boy or girl and keep your past clean.
Looking forward to your response. In our society today, you get the laws you want if you get the judges you want. You could come to any number of interpretations here on the 2nd depending on which path of supporting law you wish to delve into.
Gun nuts will resist any and all logic. They seem to think there can be no restrictions allowed whatsoever. That would be evolution in my mind and I am a gun owner. More guns, more gun death. Fewer guns, heavy penalties for violation of new laws, less gun death. Right now, the answer appears to be: Not Much.
Our country is failing miserably in the world. Dwayne Dixon of Redneck Revolt a faction of antifa is shown in a video during the events of Charlottesville directing groups on how to block off roads, and be prepared to use their bodies to do so… oh and he also has a loaded assuslt rifle slung around his neck. In order to maintain «a well regulated militia….. That means background checks, training, re-training, licensing and re-licensing, and taking that license away if you run afoul of said rules and controls.
The absence of gun regulations in your country are hilarious. It provides nothing with regard to private gun ownership or carry for personal protection.
We definately need state militias that are organised and competent with fire-arms. The government over reaches all the time… with things like the patriot act, allowing for citizen to be detained, tortured without due process if they are suspected of terrorism… and that decision is unilateral the correct checks and balances do not exist.
I dont believe so bc the rules and controls are made by the entity these militia are to stand against. Licensing is a way for government to collect more money.. The government cant regulate the group made to oppose them when they go bad… bc the militias only purpose is to stop government from limiting or removing constitutional rights. Someone with a felony for non-violent reasons should be allowed… id argue even violent bc a militia is a group of would be murders.
The government in last 20 years have been over reaching with seriously unconstitutional laws. And on some debates, left. Look at every major city that is run by the left. But, under equal rights, they too can march and express there beliefs. So long as no violence is taken.
But to say they can because a few in said marches or protests have committed violent acts is to give legal grounds to lock every American up in a military prison camp.
After all, at least one feminist, one illegal, one black, one white, one Asian, one Hispanic, and for that matter, one basic American and so on has commuted a violent crime. So to punish a whole group based off actions of one or a few is to damn all of us into submission by a government wishing to tack full control.
And the list goes on for the entire bill of rights. So long as you lay back and allow a tyrant government to control your every day lives, possessions and children if they decide to let you keep your kids. To be free dose not mean every street will be safe. But to give up the free way of life will make nowhere safe. Not even your home. Obviously, it could be clearer. The mere placement of commas can change the impact of any portion of the statement. Unless the unlikely event of a Constitutional Convention occurs and the adjustment or rewriting of that amendment is proposed, and if any further debate can bring it to a unanimous definition, it will likely be debated until which time we no longer have a constitution.
Militia is not synonymous with military. Militias do not have the funding the military has, obviously, and are formed when needed. Individual members bring their own arms. This was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment. The founding forefathers were aware that most governments eventually become corrupt, and that they use the military to keep the people in check. They wanted to give the people the ability to defend themselves from not only local threats, but also against a tyrannical government.
The founding forefathers did not trust government and for good reason. They did their very best to make our government as transparent as possible, with checks and balances, and in the case of a worst-case-scenario, they gave the people the right to defend themselves against a government turned tyranncial, so that they may reinstate a proper government. It is beyond me why so many liberals today believe that we should just trust the government to take care of us.
Take care of healthcare, guaranteed salaries, police us, etc. Have none of them read a single history book? Thanks to the 2nd Amendment, if a party gone rogue were to take control of the government and start taking measures to eliminate all opposition to their power hold, we the people, as a last resort, have the right to assemble and organize into a well-regulated militia and use our guns to fight for our freedom.
I think to understand the phrasing of the second amendment one must look back to the articles of confederation as well as understand the concerns on taxation.
The AOC have a similar militia phrase, a major difference was that the state was allowed to tax the people and thus had to provide arms for the militia from state funds.
When the constitution was drafted it changed this it was one of the main drivers for the constitution to allow for a federal army funded by federal taxation. The states then argued that they still needed militias to protect themselves.
However, since citizens were being taxed to fund the federal army, they could not be taxed by the state to fund a militia. Hence if militias were indeed necessary for states to maintain their freedom, arms would need to be provided voluntarily by its citizens. As such states could not infringe on the right of citizens to access arms needed to join a militia and protect their state.
They clearly knew weapons would advance. I think this is a great argument. If the founders had wanted to say every person shall be granted the right to own and bear arms they would have simply said so. Not difficult. The militia clause of the Constitution establishes the militia, their duties, and that the federal government would supply the weapons.
Google the purpose of the Bill of Rights, all are individuals rights meant to protect the people from government overreach. The Second Amendment mentions the militia because it is responding directly to the militia clause. The only thing the it changes is the individual right to keep and bear arms, guaranteeing the federal government can not disarm the people or the militia. Government state or federal control of the weapons would not be acceptable.
There are no commentaries from that time period with a contrary interpretation. Can someone explain why a citizen needs a weapon that loads more than 6 bullets? Certainly not for hunting. Home defense?
Are you being attacked by an elite team of a dozen ninjas? Do you realize how paranoid that seems? When it comes to infringing your right to keep and bear arms, I remind that we also limit freedom of speech and other rights in various ways.
Let me know your thoughts. The same reason police carry guns with more than six rounds. How often do the police have to take down a group of ninjas? If two or three people break into your house during a home invasion, how much comfort would you take in the fact the guns they have only hold six rounds each? Many states restrict how many rounds a gun can hold while hunting. Here in Nebraska, the limit is five rounds. Bad guys should not possess guns period.
Limiting the number of rounds my gun can carry helps no one. Keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, no matter how many rounds they hold, would help everyone. Stan, thank you for your comment. It helps illuminate where our thinking diverges. I think it is naive and oversimplified to say we should just keep guns out of criminal hands. Generally speaking, More guns in America means there are more guns that will eventually end up in the wrong hands.
You say limiting your capacity to 6 rounds helps no one. I disagree. I will forego the joy of popping off ten more Rambo rounds if it means a few more kids might make it to the playground tomorrow. Someone defending themselves needs as many rounds as necessary to stop the threat, police or civilian. A cop or a noncriminal is no more a threat with six or 16 rounds. Keeping guns out of criminal hands makes more sense than criminalizing gun ownership for the Instead of having the police come take my magazines away, how about they take the mags away from the bad guys.
You do realize, of course, that assault rifles have been banned from civilian purchase since , except for assault rifles already owned prior to the Hughes Amendment. And an AR, chambered in 7. An exact number would be appreciated. There are more guns in the US than ever before, yet the firearm homicide rate stands near a 50 year low.
So how do more guns equate to more murders? Also, take a look at the use of psychotropic drugs. One article I read recently tied nearly every recent mass shooting with perpetrators suddenly stop taking meds.
There are many, many complex reasons for violence altogether. The cowardly simple reaction is to remove the inanimate object, and neglect the person controlling it. Specific stats please. Realize there are tens of millions of hunting rifles, some with high capacity magazines, in the hands of law abiding citizens. What is the precise probability? Actually, the Founders did. Just not as explicitly in the direct text of the Constitution as you would like. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.
The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.
It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.
And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.
They saw it as primarily a war between the northern states whose militias who invaded the South, and the southern states whose militias attempted to defend their states from invasion.
Likewise, contrary to popular belief, the Revolutionary War was won not by individual citizens ambushing the British with their personal shotguns and hunting rifles, but by well-trained regiments armed with brown bess and Charleville muskets provided by France.
But this tradition and law did not arise with the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. Here, it began as the Virginia Militia in , primarily to defend against indian attacks. Unfortunately, that violated both the letter and spirit of the Amendment. Northern militia members did not start the Civil War by invading the South. The South fired the first shots in the Civil War when they attacked Fort Sumpter after Union soldiers refused to surrender.
The fort was not manned by northern militia members. Southern agricultural states wanted to keep slaves, the northern industrial states wanted slavery abolished. Nice try though. How was the militia regulated before the Constitution was ratified?
They were the founding fathers, they were the writers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the first five presidents between How did they enforce what they had put in place?
Did they take all private arms away and place them in state or federal armories? Government control of arms would have made this impossible. The Bill of Rights were written in response to calls from the Anti-Federalists that believed a bill of rights was necessary to safeguard individual liberty.
The fact that the Second Amendment is one of the Bill of Rights makes it an individual right. Remember, Virginians had been Virginians for years, but citizens of the United States only The militia was regulated prior to the Constitution by state laws going back to the early colonial days. The Governor was and still is the commander-in-chief. After the Constitution, not much changed other than the President could call up the combined militias when he deemed it necessary. The first time this happened was when Washington the only president to command troops in combat called up the militias during the Whiskey Rebellion—just the kind if civil insurrection the militia was designed to counteract.
Later, Lincoln actually did the same thing. From the southern point of view, it was widely considered outrageous that the central federal government would call for states to provide militia troops in order to invade their sister states, to force them to stay in a union they no longer wanted to. Many previously strong union men like Lee, Jackson, Longstreet and Mosby switched sides at that point.
As for the role of the militias in defending the security of a free state against the federal government, in the Constitution there is no mention of states being allowed to defend themselves against the federal government, or to prevent federal forces from entering any state, in any numbers, for any purpose. But that is in fact exactly what the southern states felt they were doing.
Governor Letcher put Robert E. Lee in command of the Virginia state militia and naval forces—which just as was being done up north, would later be combined with other state militias to serve with the tiny, core CS regular army forces. As for whether the Bill of Rights exist to defend only individual liberty, this is obviously not the case, as it also protects the rights of groups of people, including religions, corporations, unions, and of course the free states that agreed to form the union.
It guarantees the rights of newspapers to print, clubs to form, corporations to litigate, and in the case of the 2nd of states to live unmolested by other states. And finally, the fact is throughout US history—until Scalia and his fellow Republicans chose to rewrite over years of jurisprudence in DC vs. Heller—the 2nd Amendment had always been considered a state militia matter, and not guaranteeing the right of every individual to keep and bear virtually any firearm, no matter how deadly a situation that creates the guy in the Vegas hotel room single-handedly killed and wounded over people.
In fact, in in US vs. Miller, the Supreme Court banned sawed off shotguns specifically because they could see no use for them by state militia forces which was ironic given how useful American troops in WWI found them in sweeping Germans from trenches.
So, your saying the militia, since the early colonial days and after the Constitution was made the law of the land, was regulated in a way where everyone had their own weapons. Where armories contained artillery, gunpowder, lead shot, and rifles to be used by those that could not afford a shiny new flintlock or to resupply those lost in battle. There was no ban on personal weapons, right? States rights do not overrule federal law. The fact Southerners wanted to keep other humans as property does not change that.
Corporations and unions have rights because they are a people under the law and the courts have ruled that people should not be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively. Any group, including a militia. To secure these rights, and the protection of property, governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The US Constitution and the Constitution of the state of Nebraska both say: The right to keep and bear arms is an inalienable right that cannot be given by any government, state or federal. Then again, i did not understand why people could not understand Shakespeare either.
Well regulated means to be in good condition or to be well kept. A militia is a group of fighters with a common goal. They had just fought off Great Britain. In order to defend this new land, you will need an armed force that is capable of doing so. They only used this exact wording because of the chances of the states going to war with each other for any unforeseeable reason in the future.
The Civil War would address that later on. Apparently this site removes spaces between paragraphs and merges them, so comments may appear distorted and jumbled together.
That would have been helpful to know before typing everything. Considering Thomas Jefferson authorized a civilian to own a full warship after the war stating that it fell under the second amendment, Not only do you actually need more than 6 for hunting if you do plan of taking down anything dangerous without dying, but even if legislators could get a law through saying that arbitrary number is the limit, exactly what are they going to do when someone breaks that law?
Use guns that have more than 6 shots to take it away by force? Yes, that is exactly what they will do. How people do not see the irony here is amazing to me. I never would have though it was possible that one could be so hypocritical as to use their own guns to take away guns from others that they deemed those others were not allowed to have because it matched their own in power.
There is no clearer way for a politician to express treasonous intent than this. Army troops. Also, each state drafted their own militia law, to regulate how they wanted their militia to be run.
The militia did not spring up with the Constitution because the found fathers feared the government they were creating. It had existed for a thousand years in England before coming to Virginia in , primarily to defend against indians.
In fact, the most famous gunfight in our history, at the OK Corral, resulted when federal marshalls, the Earps, attempted to enforce the Tombstone firearms ordinance requiring anyone entering town limits to leave their firearms at the town jail against the Cowboys, an armed local gang.
One of their members, Curly Bill, had previously shot and killed the town sheriff while he was attempting to relieve him of his firearm while he was firing on townspeople while in an opium-induced rampage. Rather than paint the Earps as jackbooted federal thugs infringing on the 2nd Amendment rights of the Cowboys, Americans labeled them as heroes, attempting to bring law, order and public safety to the town.
Yes, citizens have a right to defend themselves, but that right can and always has been circumscribed by law, including what arms we can bear, in what locations, under what circumstances, and how lethal to the general population it has the potential to be. The founding fathers never said and never meant that any citizen had carte blanche to own an unlimited number of any type of firearm.
How old are you, Joe? I mean, since you were actually there and spoke with the Founding Fathers and they clarified the Second Amendment to you personally….. Sadly, you are one drop of a vast sea of ignorance out there.
In all fact, the Founding Fathers intent was that every citizen - the Militia - would be armed equally to the forces that govern them, as they were when they wrote the Declaration, and that they be well TRAINED - Regulated - in their use. A child can understand that. Every - EVERY - instance you mentiond where the government has, does, or wishes to control the availability, use, or type of ANY kind of bearable arms, is by the very definition of the term, an infringement.
Who I am, how old I am, has nothing to do with whether my points are right or not. But to address the few points you choose to make, our individual right to keep and bear arms is infringed all the time. Try bearing one in a public courthouse, or onto a plane. As for your argument that the founders intended every citizen to be equally armed to the forces that govern them, our government has nuclear weapons. Do you? Any tanks? A bazooka? The government is so far better armed than any citizen that even if we decided the government was tyrannical and we revolted, the army and National Guard would wipe us out, especially given how little range time the majority of gun owners actually put in.
As for the Constitution, nowhere does it say anything that We The People should fear our own government, nor should it, because unlike the tyrannies we left behind in old Europe, ours is of, by and for The People. Good points guys! Keep it going! What dangerous animals are you hunting that require so many bullets? Rifle for long range, sidearm for defense. Well regulated militia, being a part of the amendment, should feature more prominently in our gun culture.
Prospective Gun owners should have training and demonstrate proficiency and safety prior to purchase. This is not infringement, this is militia. Telling people their guns will be useless when their government kills millions of them with nuclear weapons is the dumbest way to try and convince gun owners their guns would be no threat in a fight against a tyrannical government.
What city do you think the government would nuke first? Would there be any fighting first or would the nukes start flying the first day? In his ruling, Benitez builds on the Supreme Court case D. That lack of specificity is a problem. Does a citizen militia include the protesters who occupied the Michigan State Capitol during the spring of , posing with assault weapons slung over their shoulders? Today, the militia in all 50 states is the National Guard.
In California, as Benitez notes in his opinion, the militia also includes the State Guard, a force trained and equipped by the government. There is nothing informal about it. They had seen what happened when people took the law into their own hands. Forgot your password? Gun control advocates love to hate District of Columbia v. Heller , the case in which the Supreme Court recognized that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms.
They may be protesting too much. Federal courts in the decade since have found many restrictions on the right to own and use weapons perfectly congruent with that decision. Heller merely says the government can't enforce laws that prevent most Americans from possessing commonly used weapons in their homes for self-defense.
Courts have found that Heller does not preclude laws that prohibit anyone younger than 21 from buying guns in retail stores; laws that bar people who committed a single nonviolent felony from ever owning a gun; laws that severely restrict the ability to carry a gun outside the home; laws that ban commonly owned magazines of a certain capacity; or laws that require handguns to incorporate untested, expensive, and unreliable "microstamping" technology.
The Supreme Court so far has avoided taking up any of those questions. Still, many activists and legal scholars, along with at least two of the Supreme Court justices who dissented in Heller , believe the Second Amendment, properly construed, never guaranteed an individual right at all, or at least not one related to personal self-defense in the home.
Their argument is based on that amendment's reference to "a well regulated militia," which they define as a military force organized and supervised by the government. Outside a well-regulated militia, they suggest, the Second Amendment has no practical effect a lawmaker need respect. Some gun control advocates also argue that the descriptor well regulated implies that the government has wide latitude to decide who may have which weapons under what circumstances.
But as the Supreme Court correctly concluded in Heller , these arguments are inconsistent with the text and context of the Second Amendment. The structure of the Second Amendment has invited decades of dueling interpretations. The part of the amendment that could be its own stand-alone sentence— the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed —is known as the "operative clause.
Anyone who is not a member of a well-regulated militia would have no such right. The late Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion in Heller , thought it made no sense to read the prefatory clause that way, because that would essentially nullify the direct and clear meaning of the operative clause.
While the prefatory clause could give insight into some of the specifics of how to apply the operative clause, he argued, it could not make the right to arms contingent on militia service. Scalia pointed out that the amendment refers to "the right of the people. A prefatory clause mentioning a purpose, Scalia argued, is not sufficient to overwhelm the commonsense and contextual meaning of a right guaranteed to everyone. Furthermore, he said, contemporaneous usage makes it clear that the phrase bear arms cannot be restricted to a military context, as Justice John Paul Stevens suggested it should be in his dissent.
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