Meh, it’s hard to get too upset when they use the tired and false “it isn’t a personal right”.
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One person’s amendment is another’s commandment.
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Well we are aren’t we? (Stares at you with steely eyes as I fondle my holstered pistols’ handles.)
I dunno. I suppose it takes a lot of courage to defend gun control in front of a BoingBoing crowd, eh what??
This must be a good one! 
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I find the implication that an invasion from Spain is needed to dethrone the 2nd Amendment and replace it with with the God of Abraham rather refreshing.
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“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.”
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But “necessary” as a positive good, to be provided by the amendment? Or “necessary” as in a necessary evil, to be mitigated by the amendment? Are “the people” keeping and bearing Arms in order to participate in the Militia, or to protect themselves from it?
It seems unlikely the authors intended both of these interpretations at once.
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It clearly says “the right of the people”. Just like all the other rights in the Bill of Rights was for the people. Remember the standing army back then was very small. They relied on the State Militias to be called up in the event of war. It wasn’t until early 1900s that the feds started to reform the militia structure into the National Guard we have today.
“Well regulated” means well equipped and maintained and in working order. (i.e. a well regulated watch keeps proper time.) If you read the militia laws at the time, they had requirements of the type and amount of equipment you had. Basically you had to be an asset, not a liability. This included cannons owned by the rich and loaned out to the government when needed.
It is pretty clear, that in order to secure the new country, they needed an armed Militia, and in order to have that Militia, you needed the people who made up the Militia armed.
Now you can argue that perhaps that isn’t needed today. You can’t argue what it actually means.
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Ablative absolute, know’m sayin’?
Legal precedence may support a particular interpretation of the law, but that does not mean the interpretation is moral.
Within your prized two hundred years of legal precedence are some serious ethical blunders, e.g. Dred Scott v. Sandford.
Some people may favor upholding tradition and ensuring consistency with the past, while others favor the lives of their children more, and advocate progress away from our violent histories.
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President Merkin Muffley: You’re talking about mass murder, General, not war!
General “Buck” Turgidson: Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
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I am dont disagree with that point. I disagree the guy in AZ with an open carry hand gun in an ice cream shop is in a militia.
But let’s make this point meaningless. As a condition of owning a firearm, you have to be in the national guard reserve.
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Is there a significance to the number 5127? I thought Ruben might have found that stat somewhere in the number of annual gun deaths, or recent child gun deaths or something.
I think we should stop calling the advocates of minimum gun regulations “gun nuts” or “ammosexuals.” For a while I thought “gun maximalists” made sense, because they want maximum use and availability of guns, but it still sounds like a good thing on the surface. Lately I’m thinking “unregulated militia” is the term we should use heavily. These people think we can have a “well-regulated militia” somehow comprised of unregulated individuals. Meanwhile, the individuals making up every meaningful, real-life militia we’ve ever depended on in the US have been regulated within an inch of their lives. When the regular Army switched over to berets (2001?), there were posters demonstrating exactly where the rim of the beret should cross your forehead, how close it should be to your ears, the exact jaunty angle at which it should be cocked. Why would we have any militia where the uniforms are regulated to that level of detail, but guns are unregulated? Advocates of unregulated militias [militias comprised of individuals whose choice or ownership of guns is unregulated] are the ones who want to throw out the Second Amendment. Those of us who want reasonable gun regulations are the ones who really endorse the Second Amendment.
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[quote=“japhroaig, post:33, topic:62688, full:true”]
But it doesn’t say that either. Only that in order to have a militia, you need a pool of armed people to pull from.
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Another positive of truly applying regulated militias is… You get better trained and responsible gun owners. Formal training a few weekends a year at the minimum would go a long way in improving the capability and responsibility for someone who took a two hour gun safety course a decade ago.
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But it says ‘well regulated’. And I honestly think it is a damn fine idea. (The damn fine idea being that specific part of the amendment)
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Regulated as in legislated or regulated as in well supplied and in working order?
A clockwork government to fit a clockwork universe.
I’ll take well supplied, well trained and competant, and working order to start.
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