Historically speaking, and in the constitution, the 'militia' is run by the state. There is NO such thing as a 'private militia' that is approved by any state, ever. You are declaring Miller, noting that In Miller, the Supreme Court unanimously held that a federal law requiring the registration of sawed-off shotguns did not violate the Second Amendment because such weapons did not have a “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia) which Heller didn't overrule, as an infringement, by your logic. Miller and Heller, working together, allow for the regulation of weaponry, beyond that which is needed by a reasonable person to reasonably to protect house and home. the first amendment separates church from state.
You like 'context', so I'd ask you to consider the newly-formed United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. This former colony had just undergone a terrible, vicious war for independence from a tyrannical, overbearing central government. Moreover, the security and well-being of individuals throughout the new, sovereign states was by no means certain -- there were large contingents of "Americans" who were barely loyal to the new country at all, and they regularly punctuated their disregard for it by refusing to pay taxes on staples, like whiskey! There were roving bands of hostile Indians, thieves, marauders, and criminals of every description. Add to that the fact that firearms had to be relied on in many parts of the United States quite literally to "put-food-on-the-table", or at least to keep pillaging wild animals from eating or destroying all of a person's food crops. There was no 'Uncle Sugar' welfare system, so, if one had no firearm, he and his family might literally starve to death! Do you comprehend that there actually was a hell of a lot MORE to the 2nd-Amendment than merely creating a background for the occasional use of some paramilitary organization...? Now, you on the Left typically say that this was only true 'way back then', but that none of that applies now (except for the part about our constantly being plagued with "criminals of every description"). SO, Golem, to 'cut to the chase', as they say, instead of repeatedly rolling-out your interpretation of what may, or may not, have been in the back of the minds of those who authored the Constitution , why don't you and your faction simply undertake to have the 2nd-Amendment stricken from the Constitution and have done with it! You'll fail, of course, as your faction has in this 'endeavor' for many decades, but at least it will give all of you something to do besides complaining endlessly.
Yes, you are hopelessly lost: You cannot even quote me correctly. I didn't say it wasn't A RIGHT. I said the 2a is not a GRANT of a right. It recognizes a pre-existing right, and explicitly restricts the government from infringing upon it. At inception this would be the feds only, and post ratification of the 14th amendment its THE ENTIRE GOVERNMENT. Don't like that? Don't amend the constitution and add broad sweeping language that means what it says. Want to fix it: Go ahead and see Article V. Your insults denote my legal expertise, while we examine jurisprudential theory and constitutional law. You understand I'm a subject matter expert and I'm just trying to help you learn something?
Miller says what's protected by the right is ordinary military equipment. So where is my select fire rifle and grenades? Additionally: Miller has a lot of problems given that it was a generated decision in which the defense offered no evidence, the defendant was DEAD by the time of the scotus hearing, and his lawyer mysteriously got a fed court appointment after tanking the case. https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...012a672da72167/1600229932628/Brian-L-Frye.pdf ^ Please read this scholarly work. https://volokh.com/2010/02/27/united-states-v-miller/ ^ And this article.
We turn to the phrases “keep arms” and “bear arms.” Johnson defined “keep” as, most relevantly, “[t]o retain; not to lose,” and “[t]o have in custody.” Johnson 1095. Webster defined it as “[t]o hold; to retain in one’s power or possession.” No party has apprised us of an idiomatic meaning of “keep Arms.” Thus, the most natural reading of “keep Arms” in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.” The phrase “keep arms” was not prevalent in the written documents of the founding period that we have found, but there are a few examples, all of which favor viewing the right to “keep Arms” as an individual right unconnected with militia service. William Blackstone, for example, wrote that Catholics convicted of not attending service in the Church of England suffered certain penalties, one of which was that they were not permitted to “keep arms in their houses.” 4 Commentaries on the Laws of England 55 (1769) (hereinafter Blackstone); see also 1 W. & M., c. 15, §4, in 3 Eng. Stat. at Large 422 (1689) (“[N]o Papist … shall or may have or keep in his House … any Arms … ”); 1 Hawkins, Treatise on the Pleas of the Crown 26 (1771) (similar). Petitioners point to militia laws of the founding period that required militia members to “keep” arms in connection with militia service, and they conclude from this that the phrase “keep Arms” has a militia-related connotation. See Brief for Petitioners 16–17 (citing laws of Delaware, New Jersey, and Virginia). This is rather like saying that, since there are many statutes that authorize aggrieved employees to “file complaints” with federal agencies, the phrase “file complaints” has an employment-related connotation. “Keep arms” was simply a common way of referring to possessing arms, for militiamen and everyone else.7 At the time of the founding, as now, to “bear” meant to “carry.” See Johnson 161; Webster; T. Sheridan, A Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1796); 2 Oxford English Dictionary 20 (2d ed. 1989) (hereinafter Oxford). When used with “arms,” however, the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose—confrontation. In Muscarello v. United States, 524 U. S. 125 (199 , in the course of analyzing the meaning of “carries a firearm” in a federal criminal statute, Justice Ginsburg wrote that “s]urely a most familiar meaning is, as the Constitution’s Second Amendment … indicate[s: ‘wear, bear, or carry … upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose … of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.’ ” Id., at 143 (dissenting opinion) (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 214 (6th ed. 199). We think that Justice Ginsburg accurately captured the natural meaning of “bear arms.” Although the phrase implies that the carrying of the weapon is for the purpose of “offensive or defensive action,” it in no way connotes participation in a structured military organization. From our review of founding-era sources, we conclude that this natural meaning was also the meaning that “bear arms” had in the 18th century. In numerous instances, “bear arms” was unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia. The most prominent examples are those most relevant to the Second Amendment : Nine state constitutional provisions written in the 18th century or the first two decades of the 19th, which enshrined a right of citizens to “bear arms in defense of themselves and the state” or “bear arms in defense of himself and the state.” 8 It is clear from those formulations that “bear arms” did not refer only to carrying a weapon in an organized military unit. Justice James Wilson interpreted the Pennsylvania Constitution’s arms-bearing right, for example, as a recognition of the natural right of defense “of one’s person or house”—what he called the law of “self preservation.” 2 Collected Works of James Wilson 1142, and n. x (K. Hall & M. Hall eds. 2007) (citing Pa. Const., Art. IX, §21 (1790)); see also T. Walker, Introduction to American Law 198 (1837) (“Thus the right of self-defence [is] guaranteed by the [Ohio] constitution”); see also id., at 157 (equating Second Amendment with that provision of the Ohio Constitution). That was also the interpretation of those state constitutional provisions adopted by pre-Civil War state courts.9 These provisions demonstrate—again, in the most analogous linguistic context—that “bear arms” was not limited to the carrying of arms in a militia. The phrase “bear Arms” also had at the time of the founding an idiomatic meaning that was significantly different from its natural meaning: “to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight” or “to wage war.” See Linguists’ Brief 18; post, at 11 (Stevens, J., dissenting). But it unequivocally bore that idiomatic meaning only when followed by the preposition “against,” which was in turn followed by the target of the hostilities. See 2 Oxford 21. (That is how, for example, our Declaration of Independence ¶28, used the phrase: “He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country … .”) Every example given by petitioners’ amici for the idiomatic meaning of “bear arms” from the founding period either includes the preposition “against” or is not clearly idiomatic. See Linguists’ Brief 18–23. Without the preposition, “bear arms” normally meant (as it continues to mean today) what Justice Ginsburg’s opinion in Muscarello said. In any event, the meaning of “bear arms” that petitioners and Justice Stevens propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a hybrid definition, whereby “bear arms” connotes the actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia. No dictionary has ever adopted that definition, and we have been apprised of no source that indicates that it carried that meaning at the time of the founding. But it is easy to see why petitioners and the dissent are driven to the hybrid definition. Giving “bear Arms” its idiomatic meaning would cause the protected right to consist of the right to be a soldier or to wage war—an absurdity that no commentator has ever endorsed. See L. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights 135 (1999). Worse still, the phrase “keep and bear Arms” would be incoherent. The word “Arms” would have two different meanings at once: “weapons” (as the object of “keep”) and (as the object of “bear”) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying “He filled and kicked the bucket” to mean “He filled the bucket and died.” Grotesque. Petitioners justify their limitation of “bear arms” to the military context by pointing out the unremarkable fact that it was often used in that context—the same mistake they made with respect to “keep arms.” It is especially unremarkable that the phrase was often used in a military context in the federal legal sources (such as records of congressional debate) that have been the focus of petitioners’ inquiry. Those sources would have had little occasion to use it except in discussions about the standing army and the militia. And the phrases used primarily in those military discussions include not only “bear arms” but also “carry arms,” “possess arms,” and “have arms”—though no one thinks that those other phrases also had special military meanings. See Barnett, Was the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Conditioned on Service in an Organized Militia?, 83 Tex. L. Rev. 237, 261 (2004). The common references to those “fit to bear arms” in congressional discussions about the militia are matched by use of the same phrase in the few nonmilitary federal contexts where the concept would be relevant. See, e.g., 30 Journals of Continental Congress 349–351 (J. Fitzpatrick ed. 1934). Other legal sources frequently used “bear arms” in nonmilitary contexts.10 Cunningham’s legal dictionary, cited above, gave as an example of its usage a sentence unrelated to military affairs (“Servants and labourers shall use bows and arrows on Sundays, &c. and not bear other arms”). And if one looks beyond legal sources, “bear arms” was frequently used in nonmilitary contexts. See Cramer & Olson, What Did “Bear Arms” Mean in the Second Amendment ?, 6 Georgetown J. L. & Pub. Pol’y (forthcoming Sept. 200, online at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1086176 (as visited June 24, 2008, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file) (identifying numerous nonmilitary uses of “bear arms” from the founding period). Justice Stevens points to a study by amici supposedly showing that the phrase “bear arms” was most frequently used in the military context. See post, at 12–13, n. 9; Linguists’ Brief 24. Of course, as we have said, the fact that the phrase was commonly used in a particular context does not show that it is limited to that context, and, in any event, we have given many sources where the phrase was used in nonmilitary contexts. Moreover, the study’s collection appears to include (who knows how many times) the idiomatic phrase “bear arms against,” which is irrelevant. The amici also dismiss examples such as “ ‘bear arms … for the purpose of killing game’ ” because those uses are “expressly qualified.” Linguists’ Brief 24. (Justice Stevens uses the same excuse for dismissing the state constitutional provisions analogous to the Second Amendment that identify private-use purposes for which the individual right can be asserted. See post, at 12.) That analysis is faulty. A purposive qualifying phrase that contradicts the word or phrase it modifies is unknown this side of the looking glass (except, apparently, in some courses on Linguistics). If “bear arms” means, as we think, simply the carrying of arms, a modifier can limit the purpose of the carriage (“for the purpose of self-defense” or “to make war against the King”). But if “bear arms” means, as the petitioners and the dissent think, the carrying of arms only for military purposes, one simply cannot add “for the purpose of killing game.” The right “to carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game” is worthy of the mad hatter. Thus, these purposive qualifying phrases positively establish that “to bear arms” is not limited to military use.11 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html I expect you to address the argument made, and the sources provided. Ginsburg made the ruling in Muscarello, argue with her logic there. Expect you to argue with someone who is not there? Yes, because their argument is in writing and you claim you have refuted it.
Unless one has an agenda, it is virtually impossible to misconstrue the words, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." The framers and founders would not like people interpreting and adding spurious meaning to the words as you and many others do. George Washington said the right to own a gun was the second most important right of the people behind the right to vote. Can't get more clearer than that. I certainly don't have to read and rely on threads in PF to get an understanding of the 2nd amendment. I repeat: the 2nd amendment does not say, imply, or insinuate that only if you are part of the militia the government cannot infringe on your right to keep and bear arms.
You insult me, so don't complain about being insulted. You asserted I was hopelessly lost, an ad hom, which is not a statement of any legal value nor fact, yet you claim to be a lawyer, and you sure as hell aren't qualified to render such a sweeping assessment of someone whom you've never met nor do not know. Moreover, on your point, how many people do you honestly believe are able to make that distinction correctly about the second amendment? Probably very few, if any at all, so If I'm 'hopelessly lost' then so is the rest of the nation. Yes, you're the 'expert', you're the 'lawyer', eh? Okay, so why don't you act like it, instead of indulge in meaningless petty ad homs? Explain that, Mr "lawyer".
Okay, I will, I'm always willing to better educate myself. But, answer me this, Heller didn't reverse Miller, did it?
I completely agree. But then you are saying that you have an agenda. Because you just did. But taking them out of context. You are quoting the main clause. It stands on its own. And the OP demonstrates what the idiom "keep and bear arms" meant at the time the 2nd A was drafted. But, just in case there remained any doubt as to what it means, the framers were kind enough to include MORE context. And you just obliterated and eliminated that context. If that's not "having an agenda", I don't know what is. Do you think they'd be ok if they just.... "skipped"... a few? I'm not talking about Washington. I'm talking about the 2nd Amendment as approved by Congress and ratified by the states. BTW, as I show in a different thread (off-topic here) Washington was one of the most animate about eliminating "composed of the body of the people" from the Amendment, as passed by The House to describe "A well regulated militia". So the 2nd A certainly DOES NOT refer to "everybody". But that's a different topic. Of course it doesn't! Where in the world did you get the idea that it might? I don't think you're reading the OP of this, or the other threads I mentioned.
Hopelessly lost refers to your argument being offbase having taken a wrong turn at first principles, as stated. I am perfectly qualified to point out your argument is couched in a mistake of law, I do not need to know you personally to say that nor is it anything about you personally. Legal Ballbuster is a direct insult, and by the way acknowledges my credential so its not just me claiming to be a lawyer you admit that I am. It doesn't matter how many people correctly make the distinction. We do not depend on lay persons having a proper conception of the law, that's why we have courts and lawyers. I don't tell a plumber how to plumb because I don't know how. Me not knowing how doesn't change how it works. Me saying something hopelessly offbase like "you don't need an s trap just make a straight pipe" and being corrected is not me being personally insulted. I didn't engage in ad hominems, that's a strawman you've created. I corrected you on the law, you're welcome. Thank you are the words you're looking for.
I'll cut the crap you think I'm stupid? Don't tell someone they're hopelessly lost and expect them to read your mind that it meant something else, there is no meaning to that other than what it says. Say what you mean and if anyone should know that it's you. You claim to be a lawyer but your sure is hell don't act like it and I've known a few in my 71 years. You like you act more like a person under the age of 30 whose immaturity has yet to learn that being overly and needlessly defensive is not a good quality.
Stupid? I have no idea what your level of raw intelligence is and refuse to speculate. You certainly are uninformed or incorrect in what you wrote in the post that began this chain. I didn't expect you to read my mind, I expected you to read what was written. That's why writings are preferred to spoken agreements: Words mean what they mean, there are rules and its written down to understand. I did in fact say what I meant, you seem to have an interpretation issue. As stated: Its not just me, you acknowledge it. If you hadn't noticed: 1) This is an internet forum so a certain amount of jocularity and informality is appropriate and expected; 2) you're not paying my hourly nor are you opposed by someone paying my hourly, making you not a party, meaning I don't have to follow any sort of ethics rule guideline to be extra super polite in a way that even a karen could find no fault with. I can just speak as normal, provided I follow the forum rules which I did. Needlessly defensive am I says the person who doesn't understand referring to an argument as being off base is not a personal insult. Do you know what projection is? Back to the topic at hand: The right recognized by the 2nd amendment (not granted, recognized as in it pre-exists) does not depend on militia service, this is plainly obvious from the construction of the sentence.
Nice tap dance, now reread my comment, It goes to only one point , nothing more, and it stands. FYI, There's nothing jocular about sloppy ad homs. As for your final comment on the 2nd amendment I'm not sure you're correct on that point I've read a lot from scholarly sources from scholarly sources that disagrees
Short barreled shotguns have been used by the United States military since WW1. They are, in fact, used by the military. Not only that, an SBS required a tax stamp, therefore they aren't outlawed and, a right can't be taxed. The 1st Amendment doesn't say **** about "separating church and state"
so the people need to be able to have firearms so that the militia can be armed. I never said anything about a private militia the militia is the people, the state is also the people. The Constitution isn't a cafeteria No. I said nothing about this at any point in the thread so no I'm not saying whatever garbage you made up that's a straw man fallacy.
Never argue with gun grabbers just beat them in court https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-843_new_m648.pdf The only way to apply gun rules is by Strict Scrutiny https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf There is no requirement to be in a militia https://www.britannica.com/event/McDonald-v-City-of-Chicago The second amendment apples to state and local rules Anything else that these goofballs pontificate or attempt is heading for the ashbin of history as we roll back hundreds of gun laws in court coming very soon. And not soon enough.
No tap dancing, just a statement of fact. Again: You're projecting, I did not engage in ad hominem. You did. Lol go ahead and quote what you're reading then
GOOD: Another Win for Dick Heller: DC Repeals Limit on Rounds Carried by Permit Holders. 'The District was coming up on the date by which the city had to respond to the lawsuit, justifying the 20-round limit. It seems that the city’s attorneys couldn’t manage to come up with an argument that wouldn’t have been laughed out of court under Bruen.' 'Given the current legal landscape, as Rob Romano reported last night, the city threw in the towel and used “emergency rulemaking” powers to repeal the 20-round limit.' Thank you, again, Mr. Heller!
what is the real gut buster is that the kangaroos on the court didn't ever explain why congress actually had the power to require registration they just assumed it
Only if those regulations can be justified as serving a compelling government interest. It seems to me that awhile ago I typed up a long reply to some of your posts that I then never got around to posting and ended up saving in a text file until I had time to proofread it. I'll have to see about digging it out. Although I still don't know if I have time to proofread it.
That is incorrect. Any gun restriction that cannot be justified as serving a compelling government interest is unconstitutional, even if other kinds of weapons remain available. Further, people have the right to enough firepower for effective self defense. So restrictions cannot restrict guns severely enough to impede self defense even if those restrictions can be justified as serving a compelling government interest. As if protecting our civil liberties from infringement was extremist or radical. Nothing is going to be imposed. The left have no power to impose anything at all.
Connecting the right to keep and bear arms to the militia means that we have the right to have grenades, bazookas, and full-auto weapons. Actually the version that was passed and ratified quite clearly says that it is the people who have the right to keep and bear arms. Certainly everyone who counts as a member of "the people" has the right to keep and bear arms.
