You can gauge an appropriate response if you see them cumin.
I donāt see āthe right of the state to keep and bear armsā as the second clause.
The militia argument is inconsistent with every other amendment in the bill of rights. In every other amendment āthe peopleā refers to individuals. Originally white male landowners, but with the 14th amendment it was corrected, and it continues to be corrected to a more inclusive āpeopleā by statute.
The āmilitiaā of the first clause was more likely the armed forces of the US, which at the time had been built from individuals who were not professional soldiers in a standing army. They were people whose skill at arms was developed through personal practice and hunting. The proto-government had relied on their home grown skill (and the French) to field an effective fighting force without having the infrastructure of a standing army.
This amendment was written by rebels afraid of strong government as way to ensure revolution was always possible. See Jeffersonās musings on āThe tree of Libertyā and how we should have armed revolt every few decades.
Perhaps you donāt think we need the right to keep and bear arms with our standing army and paramilitary police. The people who wrote the amendment may have thought we needed it becomes those things.
And maybe they were wrong. But that doesnāt change why they wrote it.
Truly we were a bunch of irregulars.
No problem.
This isnāt the 19th Century, America.
This is one of the things that has bothered me about the Heller and McDonald decisions; the fact that they were based on a right to self defense seems about as far from originalism as the court could get. The words āself defenseā and ādefense of homeā do not appear in the constitution anywhere.
Exactly. It seems all this talk of self-defense is really a twisting by the courts to support the notion of individual right to bear arms without admitting that the Constitution actually has the means for its own undoing written right in to it.
Weāre not better people because we have iPhones.
In the another thread, we were just discussing the rape rate. 1 in 4 is a good reason to carry. Yes, society has problems, what else is new?
I believe youāre forgetting something.
Hereās a much shorter version:
Obama declares guns to be really awesome, writes executive order that everyone should have one.
The NRA would be out of business by the end of the week.
Well, the Continental Army wasnāt really a standing army. It was several successive armies. Early (1775) enlistment periods were short, for fear of the possibility it evolving into a permanent army. But in later armies they got longer.
On the other hand the first one was largely about conquest rather than defence; one of the big fears about having a standing army. The rebels had created a āContinental Congressā expecting that the entire continent would rush to join, pausing only for adulation and the occasional rapturous fainting incident. When that failed they used their āContinental Armyā to invade Canada in 1775. They were defeated.
That would still increase the number of guns around. My way leads to less.
Um, no. Everyone in Congress does exactly the opposite of what he asks.
O-M-G!! How do they live in countries without American freedoms? I mean, do the Dutch hunt gay people?
I donāt see anything contradicting the analysis. The Continental Army was built from the ground up for the Revolution. It was designed to be torn down to the bare minimums after the war, with a core that could remobilize an cadre of reservists to serve as the root for draftees, state militias and volunteers to be added to to bring the army up to the strength needed to handle the conflict at hand.
The modern standing armed forces is about 0.45% of our population. The Continental Army was about 0.02% of the total population after demobilization. None of which changes the āRight of the people to keep and bear arms,ā to refer to the states, state or federal militias or anything else then āthe peopleā as the rest of the Bill of Rights states.
Couldnāt say about the Dutch, but hate crimes affect a much larger percentage of the LGBT+ community then assault or murder affect the general US population.seems to me to be a reason a person might feel they need a gun while out and about.
Hereās the UK,
Hate Crimes in general in the US:
Maybe. But the nature of gun ownership since that time has surely changed. After all, an arsenal of semi-automatic guns isnāt precisely the same thing as a (incredibly inaccurate and time consuming to load) musket. Shit changes. The constitution was written in such a way to take that into account.
Iām well aware of the hate crime statistics. You know what? Arming all citizens to the teeth isnāt the solution. Iām more afraid of you or Joe Citizen with a gun than I am of the cops, and I donāt like the cops.
The solution to crime and violence isnāt āhey, letās add guns!!ā