The Second Amendment Doesn’t Say What You Think It Does

[Max Rockatansky]

Goldwater made a clear distinction between the government regulating itself, constitutionally, and regulating the people, unconstitutionally.

He also respected the idea of a home being "a man's castle", keeping religion out of government and focusing on the economy and national defense as government priorities.

[MisterVeritis]

It is interesting that you put gay marriage and abortion into the same bucket. Both issues should have been resolved by the body intended to resolve them, the legislatures. One kills a human life.

We all have our reasons for leaving a party. Don't you have far more in common with the left than you do the right?

Sorry, but I have no respect for people who troll others then report those with whom they disagree. Such people, if sane, are malicious. If insane, then they can't be reasoned with.

You come to a political board but you have no desire for political discourse. Fascinating.

What is it you believe I reported? And why would you believe it so?

I understand you don't enjoy being bested. No one does. Ask Crep and Safety. They are bested here by everyone.

[Chris]

Ok, guys, let's stick to the topic.

[MMC]

To determine the meaning of the Constitution, one must start with the words of the Constitution itself. If the meaning is plain, that meaning controls. To ascertain the meaning of the term "well regulated" as it was used in the Second Amendment, it is necessary to begin with the purpose of the Second Amendment itself. The overriding purpose of the Framers in guaranteeing the right of the people to keep and bear arms was as a check on the standing army, which the Constitution gave the Congress the power to "raise and support."


It is also helpful to contemplate the overriding purpose and object of the Bill of Rights in general. To secure ratification of the Constitution, the Federalists, urging passage of the Constitution by the States had committed themselves to the addition of the Bill of Rights, to serve as "further guards for private rights." In that regard, the first ten amendments to the Constitution were designed to be a series of "shall nots," telling the new national government again, in no uncertain terms, where it could not tread.

It would be incongruous to suppose or suggest the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, which were proscriptions on the powers of the national government, simultaneously acted as a grant of power to the national government. Similarly, as to the term "well regulated," it would make no sense to suggest this referred to a grant of "regulation" power to the government (national or state), when the entire purpose of the Bill of Rights was to both declare individual rights and tell the national government where the scope of its enumerated powers ended.


In keeping with the intent and purpose of the Bill of Rights both of declaring individual rights and proscribing the powers of the national government, the use and meaning of the term "Militia" in the Second Amendment, which needs to be "well regulated," helps explain what "well regulated" meant. When the Constitution was ratified, the Framers unanimously believed that the "militia" included all of the people capable of bearing arms.


George Mason, one of the Virginians who refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked a Bill of Rights, said: "Who are the Militia? They consist now of the whole people." Likewise, the Federal Farmer, one of the most important Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution, referred to a "militia, when properly formed, [as] in fact the people themselves." The list goes on and on.

By contrast, nowhere is to be found a contemporaneous definition of the militia, by any of the Framers, as anything other than the "whole body of the people." Indeed, as one commentator said, the notion that the Framers intended the Second Amendment to protect the "collective" right of the states to maintain militias rather than the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms, "remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis."


Furthermore, returning to the text of the Second Amendment itself, the right to keep and bear arms is expressly retained by "the people," not the states. Recently the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed this view, finding that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right held by the "people," -- a "term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution," specifically the Preamble and the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Thus, the term "well regulated" ought to be considered in the context of the noun it modifies, the people themselves, the militia(s)......snip~


https://www.lectlaw.com/files/gun01.htm

[MisterVeritis]

He also respected the idea of a home being "a man's castle", keeping religion out of government and focusing on the economy and national defense as government priorities.

There is no Constitutional requirement to keep religion out of the people who run the government. Beyond doing no harm what parts of the Constitution allow or direct the federal government to run the economy?

[MisterVeritis]

Ok, guys, let's stick to the topic.

Okay. The Second Amendment is part of a larger document establishing how the government will be set up and run. I do not believe it can be properly understood divorced from the rest of the Constitution (and the Declaration of Independence).

Legislators were to legislate. Judges were to decide cases and controversies. The executive runs the departments and executes the laws. The Bill of Rights was a further brake on government intrusion into the citizens' business (and the States).