The pushback on the "individual right" thing is always so funny to me, because if you really believe that 2A was about membership in a "militia" then it's meaning is that the government can't disarm itself.
It's truly hilarious, given the context of when it was written.
>2A is absolutely not about individual rights. No Founder ever talked about it in this way. It's about militias.
Absolutely untrue.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
- Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
I don't need to refute it any further with additional quotes., it's a ridiculous statement.
Furthermore the mentioning of the recent Heller case in the Supreme Court is not an appeal to authority. Read the majority and minority opinions, they are comprehensive in every argument for and against the individual/collective interpretation of the right and arguments for your position are handled expertly by the majority.
That does seem like a justifiable interpretation, and I'm inclined to agree. They mentioned militia for a reason. And it makes sense -- if the point of arming the citizenry is as a check on federal tyranny, then a militia is how it will have to happen. The idea that the 2A is about self-defense seems a very recent interpretation.
>Note that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" is a precondition, according to the 2A, for a "well-regulated militia"
Arms are indeed a precondition for a militia, but it seems to me the 2A only exists because the need for a militia was perceived at the time. I'm not so sure that's the case today. In any event, you make a very good point about the danger of 'creative' interpretations.
A bold interpretation. Does that include babies and seniors with dementia? They are part of the people by most definitions. Should we allow them to have arms? Hand a .22 pistol to an eight-month old? If not, where do you draw the line? Is a well-regulated militia a very distinct subset of the people?
> The state exists for the welfare of the people.
Theorists of the state would dispute that, and we have endless examples that contradict you. States generally exist to serve themselves, often at the expense of the people.
> To say it isn’t for the defense of the people is an argument of semantics.
The interpretation of a foundational text of US democracy is a matter of semantics. Semantics is about what words mean. You say they mean one thing. I happen to disagree with you. So yes, the whole nature of this dispute is semantic, and not in the sense of "semantics are trivial". The gist of the question is in assigning meaning to the words of 2A. And if you think they "just mean something and it's so obvious that no alternative meanings can be discussed," then you are begging the question.
2A explicitly says it is in defense of a state, not a people.
I think most people that actually follow the "it was about membership in the militia" interpretation really do believe that only the government should be allowed to have weapons. That's fine, and there's an argument to be made there, but I'd appreciate it if they just made that argument rather than rewriting history.
You're wrong as the 2A has consistently been assumed to mean the right of states to have militias such as the National Guard as well as individuals would also be able to bear arms. Please show me a single Founding Father that said individuals should not be able to own a gun. the only way to rescind it is with an amendment, and good luck with that since we can't even agree on an amendment to guarantee women equal rights.
The 2A was written with tyranny in mind but the 2A does not mention tyranny. It recognizes militia, recognizes security of free state (which can come from foreign sources), and the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
If you start with the right to self defense, and add a right to bear arms => you now have self defense + a gun. But your argument is you're not allowed to use it for your "right" to self defense?
>So you believe that prior to 1788 no right of self-defense existed?
The framers of the constitution believed the bill of rights merely codified natural human rights that have always existed.
>Again, the 2nd only concerns tyranny, and prevents the government from disarming militias in order to have a check on tyranny.
The right to keep and bear arms is ascribed to the people.
In practice, rights are whatever you can get away with. You have the right to travel freely in most public land, but you may be eaten by a bear. But the legal distinction helps in restraining the government, to the point that they acknowledge them. If the government stops acknowledge the right of people to bear arms then you're left with the result those of us that can get away with it will and the rest will be killed or imprisoned.
Yeah, sometimes legal strategies are odd. I guess the point is that 2A was always about militias; essentially everything up until Thomas' concurrence in Printz considered 2A in the context of militia readiness, and the draft of 2A was even more explicitly about militias. It's sort of unassailable, but obviously not actually unassailable, because now we have Heller.
Myself, I think 2A is just an anachronism. Militias as they were at the founding don't exist anymore. Almost no one in modern US society meets military readiness standards. Armed forces use bonkers weapons of war the founders could never have imagined. Even individual person-on-the-street weapons are pretty boggling by 18th century standards. And this is just considering firearms, expanding "arms" to whatever the US military considers to be a weapon (software/hardware exploits, biological weapons, chemical weapons).
Further, I think "2A as a check on government" is meritless because Congress regulates militias, and the Constitution (Article I, §8) reads: "The Congress shall have power to... provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions." Allowing governments to suppress insurrections is the opposite of allowing checks on government.
I'm not like, super into gun control--I think the US is too big for a one-size-fits-all policy and I think a lot of implementations just land men of color in prison w/ felonies. But none of the pro-gun 2A interpretations make sense to me, and from where I sit the debate is more a reflection of Congress' ongoing slide into irrelevance and sclerosis as other less encumbered institutions in the US do the actual legislating.
Is the militia not any able bodied citizen capable of fighting for defense of self or state?
The militia argument was completely broken in 2008 with DC vs Heller that specially said 2A is not a collective right, but absolutely an individual right.
So, wether you can read the intention of people who just used guns to rebel against their government and form a new one was really to make sure that only the government could rule on appropriate arms - or not - it is moot now.
True, but those who say the 2A is a “collective” right for the militia would not usually say that any male aged 17 to 45 should be able to purchase an AR-15 via their membership in the unorganized militia and Selective Service card.
The collective right concept attempts to turn the 2A right into the idea that Congress shouldn’t pass a law to take away weapons from its own soldiers and army, which makes very little sense.
The 'militia' is an outdated concept with as much relevance to modern life as the muskets they once used, but it was always intended to be a popular (as in 'of the people') manifestation of the state. As far as Heller goes, Scalia conjured that one up from thin air and no amount of weasel words from a justice can change historical fact. The 2A was never an individual right until Scalia declared it to be so, and this change is unlikely to last as long as many 2A proponents think it will.
Correction: until 2008 in Heller, the Supreme Court had never clearly and definitively ruled the 2A is an individual right. It had previously referred to the 2A as an individual right in dicta (non binding opinions) that date back to the 19th century, and many courts and legislators back to the 19th century had also done so.
The interpretation of the 2A as a “collective” right associated with membership in the national guard/militia is largely a creation of 20th century lawyers.
That said, I personally believe the 2A as intended by the founders is likely no longer suited for the modern world and some amendment to limit its scope would be reasonable.
> ""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."
I think was this was meant to mean was: Any citizen has the right to join their local/state militia, and keep their service rifle and uniform with them at home.
It was not the NRA that pushed for this interpretation. If you are interested in the Second Amendment, I recommend reading this US Supreme Court Case opinion in full: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html
It explains the meaning of the words and phrases, and their intention, and provides ample justification in the way of founding-era sources.
> There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.” [...] When the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny. [...]
> That of the nine state constitutional protections for the right to bear arms enacted immediately after 1789 at least seven unequivocally protected an individual citizen’s right to self-defense is strong evidence that that is how the founding generation conceived of the right.
> the interpretation of the Second Amendment as granting an individual the right to have personal guns independent of a militia is a very recent interpretation
IIRC, in colonial America, the militia was understood as basically "all male citizens," and its members typically used personal weapons.
That makes the text and structure of the Second Amendment make a lot of sense: if a militia is necessary for security, and an armed populace is required for a militia, then to protect the militia you have to protect the right of the populace to be armed.
> The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.
Then, the next time it appeared, it was reworded as
> A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms.
Before being whittled down to nix religious exemption and leave ambiguous who runs the militia
> 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.
Judging from the Congressional record nobody focused on the fact that the militia clause got flipped between meetings, so take from that what you will.
I'm so sick of hearing this talking point. It's immediately followed by "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Who's right shall not be infringed? The militia's? No. The people's. The militia is made up of the people. The militia has historically been comprised of people bringing their own arms to fight. How do you bring your own arms, when they're banned from personal ownership?
James Madison's original draft of the 2A mentioned that even those that wanted to bear arms privately for their own reasons should not be required to participate in a militia in order to do so.
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.
It was removed as "too verbose", but the intention still remains.
It's truly hilarious, given the context of when it was written.
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