The militia

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

82. Responses:

"Does any other country have a right to own guns in their founding documents?"

I don't know. IMHO, neither case would validate or invalidate such an inclusion in our BoR.

At the time standing armies owed their continued positions and livelihood to the central government. Folks believed in the governments and infrastructures they had developed and wanted to restrain a more distant and remote government. Please note that there is no Constitutional prohibition on a standing army but sentiment against one was strong. Militias were used and were effective in fighting the Revolution. Each person (white males of age that is) had the right and duty to be armed and serve.

Let me not argue for the court but only quote:

{“ ‘(T)he people’ seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution… . (Its uses) sugges(t) that ‘the people’ protected by the Fourth Amendment , and by the First and Second Amendment s, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendment s, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.”

This contrasts markedly with the phrase “the militia” in the prefatory clause. As we will describe below, the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”—those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people.”

We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans.}

"Now I do feel we should be able to own guns but it should not be an absolute right free from regulation."

I don't believe there are any rights absolute and free from regulation, do you?

Thanks for your 'pass'. Wouldn't your position fit one of the first 2 choices?