The Second Amendment and it's origin.

[nadinbrzezinski]

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.


The gun owners of the day were expected to drill every month with the local militia. Granted, drill rarely included actual shooting. Lead balls were damn expensive. (So were the guns themselves). In fact, some of it included plenty of beer and food...

Our modern Court, has in my view, eviscerated the well regulated requirement with Heller.

In the modern day this drilling requirement in the Amendment describes the State Guard to a damn T. Yes, they drill once a month, like the original militias, and due to current requirements, two weeks a year.

The founders originally did not even want to have a core of professional soldiers, because of the abuses by royal forces at the end of the Colonial period. There were debates back and forth, even after the Bill of rights on the need for an army. The Navy was settled before even independence was achieved and the Marines soon after. But the army, the debate was settled in 1812. You might remember the US got well, invaded.

Regardless, for a good while, you could argue all the way to the civil war, state militias pretty much were made up of locals, and there were not that many, mostly rifle and shotgun owners. They started to become more professional after the civil war.

We need to go back to that well regulated...that means armed forces and police. Private citizens should be licensed. And as I said in a few other places, all civilian guns, once it is practical, must receive smart gun technology, to literally match them to shooter. Look into that, once the technology is mature it will be a technological solution that makes sense.

I know the other argument those who love to argue intent of founders but know jack shit of this history like to claim that "being necessary to the security of a free state," mean to prevent the rise of tyranny. Well bubba, you and your AR -15 will do none to a modern Army. Now asymmetrical warfare does, but the Michigan Militia and a lot of our gungeoners like to pretend you can fight Uncle Sam and win in a stand up fight...good luck with that fantasy. We will remain out of the line of fire though, thank you very much!

The final clause, often cited by NRA types is this. "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." This clause is dependent on the other ones. Your right to bear arms is within a militia, and here is where Heller, in my mind, eviscerated intent. And lord knows we have plenty of letters and other documents from that period.

To be honest, even Madison would have a cow, and Jefferson would eat crow in his fear of regulars, as he called soldiers back then. His precious militia is the modern day guard and he'd have a heck of a time recognizing the RKBA arguments.

In some ways we also need to look at the present. Jefferson was not wedded to these documents like those given by God at Mt Sinai...he was aware they were written by fallible men, white upper crust men, and that future Americans could and should change things to meet their current conditions. In a few of his private letters he even knew slavery was a poison pill, but that is for another day.


Will this happen? A serious look and sensible laws that allow gun owners to be responsible and keep guns, but with sensible gun laws? Right to concealed carry gotta go (got the most part), for example, Unicorns have a better chance of farting in the forest. I hope to be proven wrong.

[MannyGoldstein]

1. What, you don't think the militia part was a typo?

A goof?

Those Founders sometimes got drunk nd wrote stuff by accident, no?

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. I know, I know...goofs all of them.

[patrice]

17. "Militia" becomes less relevant if you have a tendency to either drop or ignore the 3rd comma.

Please see my post below about a discussion lastlib and I had about this a few months ago.

[BeyondGeography]

2. France has had 16 Constitutions since 1789

And we're still farting about over something that was written when you could get off four shots a minute if you were really skilled. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Why I said they want to shoot those military grade guns

Like their forefathers in the militia, well, join the militia.

And a very well trained shooter could bring it up to six shots with a Brown Bess.

[BeyondGeography]

5. Six...ironic

The semi-automatic rifle used by Lanza allowed him to squeeze off six rounds per second, and fire up to 50 bullets before reloading.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/deadly-shooting-reported-conn-elementary-school-article-1.1220164#ixzz2F5qYyP1K

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. I know

The Brown Bess had a shorter barrel than the Kentucky, why a very well trained shooter could do that, not for long though. You could keep that rate for a minute to two.

Also the Brown Bess is a minute, not a second.

[Logical]

8. I thought he only used pistols. n-t

[elehhhhna]

24. 50 rounds in 8 seconds.

christ. wipe out a kindergarden class in 8 seconds.

[Azathoth]

9. Would you really want to draft a new Constitution in today's political climate?

I wouldn't.

[Logical]

7. No one's who's life depends on it will ever trust electronic technology to make it work. This..

Includes police officers and security guards.

Batteries die, electronics fail, that's why people use mechanical guns because they are reliable.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. Police is actually testing it in the field.

Good news if you lose control of your gun, is the bad guy gets to aim it at you and get a very satisfying CLICK, instead of bang. So I would not be that cocksure about it.

Oh and we heard the same arguments about cops never wearing body armor early on because it would slow them down and it was bulky and would prevent them from doing their job. A generation or two later a police officer is an idiot if he goes to the field without it.

Oh and here you go.


http://www.livescience.com/1449-shot-stopper-smart-guns-smarter.html

[Logical]

11. I have read about that study. The current technology is 90% reliable...

Which means one out of every 10 potential firings will fail.

The technology could improve.

The funny thing about smart gun technology is the NRA is opposed to it and the violence policy Center is supposed to it. So something must be right.

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. That is why I said, once it matures.

Once it reaches 99%. Where I take exception is the idea of embedding the chip in the owner. The watch is a good idea. The sci fi versions rely on actual matting of you to the grip.

Personally, I'd love it in my guns. It's taken away, they got a pummeling tool, but better yet, zero chance, or as near as you can get, for a gun accident involving a child. It's truly a no brainer and better than mechanical gun locks.

[Logical]

13. Stopping kids from accidentlly shooting themselves is the biggest benefit to me!

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. Me as well

Absolutely...

[jody]

14. Congress has all the authority it needs for the militia in Article I, Section 8, clauses 15 & 16.

The Second Amendment is redundant if it pertains only to militia.

2A obligates government to protect RKBA along with the other enumerated rights.

Before the Articles of Confederation or Constitution there were state constitutions.

A DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE COMMONWEALTH OR STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA 28 Sept. 1776
"That all men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and inalienable rights, amongst which are, the enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."
And
"That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power."

VT (1777) used the same words in its Constitution but changed "Inalienable" to "unalienable"

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Yes, but you know what the context of men was

At the time right?

It did not mean what you are reading. It meant white and with property, preferably land owner. It did not include women, well obviously, it did not include slaves...or indentured servants.

Also for the defense of themselves and the state.... That state part s critical to any of these discussions. Themselves is not primary, in any way, but the local town during an Indian raid was.

And as standing army...because these militias were the heart of the colonial armies.

Heller really subverted that, in ways that we will pay until our political class develops a spine and grows a pair.

And the NRA has subverted it as well.

[patrice]

16. I think you're on the right track with this & there was support for you in a post here a few

months ago, which observed how often you see the 2nd Amendment misquoted by dropping the 3rd comma.

The poster, lastlib, made the point that, though now days most people have very little idea of the mechanics of the logic of independent and subordinate clauses, which is applied by means of commas, the founding fathers were educated men with pretty conservative attitudes towards the grammar and mechanics of English composition, so there's a huge difference in the logic of the 2nd amendment with that 3rd comma compared to without it.

The 3rd comma makes "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" a SUBORDINATE clause, NOT part of the main clause.

Without the 3rd comma, which apparently is a frequent "mistake", the main clause seems (and gun nuts WANT us to believe it) to be "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" and the other two phrases are modifiers of that sentence.

With the 3rd comma the main clause is, "A well regulated militia ... shall not be infringed", establishing a right to an REGULATED defense, with 2 subordinate clauses that modify that something like this:

"Militia" in "A well regulated Militia shall not be infringed" is modified first by a verbal/participle functioning as an adjective making it "Militia" "being necessary to the security of a free State".

- and -

"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" is another verbal, an infinitive in this case, functioning as an appositive noun, which re-states and adds information about the form of the regulated militia as a collective right of the people. That makes it the collective right of the people to a well regulated militia.

Just as an aside, I think it's also kind of interesting how my copy of The Constitution has three nouns capitalized in the 2nd Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall no be infringed.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. It is indeed,

But also we need to look at the milieu when they start screaming second A. Hell, in their time I would be forbidden from owning property, let alone a gun. I am a woman. Abigail Adams wrote long on her frustrations, she was well ahead of the curve for her age. She wanted some rights for women that her husband could not comprehend, women, delicate flowers that they are could not own property.

So when they scream original intent, it wasn't for me to have an arsenal, assume for a second I am male and own property...but for me to own that gun within the militia.

Another reason for that, we mostly did not have a gun manufacturing industry. And guns were luxury items. So use your rifle to put food on table, but come drill for our common security.

After 1812 the army kept mostly, control of it's guns. The end of the civil war saw many northern troops take their riffles. Part of the reason, the army was switching to the Henry, so the muskets were no longer state of the art.

[patrice]

20. Oh, I agree completely about "original intent" compared to where we are now & I have written about

that here listing ALL of the shortcomings of our glorious Constitution, especially for persons without property, indigenous persons or persons of color, and women.

Add up all of the years of transfer of value from those who were oppressed by our Constitution to when any sort of attempt at amelioration of their status was attempted at all and you have a real dollar SHOCKER.

I love thinking about the fact that it took them the better part of a year to write it, arguing and debating and drafting and re-drafting AND THEY FORGOT TO LAY DOWN THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE, so when they went back to their communities with the finished work, they were told to get there asses back together and define what became The Bill of Rights, which took them few more months.

My conclusion, I think similar to some legal discussions now, has to do with how we should regard The Constitution as a LIVING developing document (hence the amendments) compared to a frozen/static/dead (irrelevant) object.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. And this, Jefferson is standing in the background

From his grave and applauding.

Living evolving document.

In his letters between him and Adams he touched on that repeatedly.

The man was far from perfect, but especially him, got how imperfect the Constitution really was and how much more work it needed.

[patrice]

22. Perfection is sterile. There's a kind of genius in imperfection. Some of the great poets were

kind of obsessed with it as a type of theology. You also see it in philosophies like the Tao, symbolized by that black and white Yin:Yang symbol.

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. That is an interesting connection.

[loyalsister]

25. How the 2nd Amendment could be rewritten to accommodate today's world astounds me

Guns are overproduced and too easily available in this country

That some guns are particularly designed to kill people is rarely mention. Yes, there are other lethal weapons but this is the only one available to nearly anyone who really wants to kill people, and other than a bomb, and it is the easiest way to kill A LOT of people.

There is no way the founders expected those conditions, nor the fact that people would have to set their values aside try to cheer for foreign wars that have little personal or societal gain. And definitely as a character in a video game. They understand the kinds or prevalence of mental illnesses that have emerged in this country.

** The picture of Michelle Bachman's gun nut photo has taken on a whole new meaning.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. What the founders expected was Switzerland

Which is the closest to what they wrote. And would fit their life well.

Part of the problem is that we want the guns, keep and bear, but ignore the responsibility that goes with it, at the time volunteering at the state militia...in other words...universal conscription of any and all gun owners with state of the art infantry weapons.

Oh and the founders did not expect foreign entanglements. And they distrusted a core of professional soldiers.

[loyalsister]

27. do you think

They expected state vs. state altercations and local national guard type "militias" would be effective?

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. To them the State militia, drilling once a month,

And raised in case of invasion or insurrection, should be enough.

[napkinz]

29. right!

So just as with the First Amendment, "You can't yell fire in a crowded theater" ... with the Second Amendment, "You Can't Open Fire ..."