Again, more nonsense. The 2nd Amendment says what is says. Only an activist court would do what you're declaring can be done. The declaratory clause is the important clause in any sentence. That is what the framers declared with the statement. There is no need to refer back to anything other than the 2nd Amendment. The operative clause is the requirement, and the prefatory clause is absolutely unnecessary to the actual meaning of the sentence. The claptrap that you're spewing here is absolutely ridiculous. Had you read, and comprehended, Heller, Brun, and McDonald, you'd see that they are entirely based on the 2nd Amendment and the traditions based around guns, at the time of the ratification of the 2nd Amendment. You must believe that Marbury v. Madison will also be overturned, because that is what gives the federal courts the power of judicial review. There's less mention of judicial review in the constitution than there is of bearing arms. Your argument says that we have no rights, regardless of what the constitution says. While that is how it works, practically, there is no basis in the traditions of our country that comport to your interpretation.
Exactly! It says nothing more and nothing LESS than what it says. So acting as if half of it didn't exist is You need to tell that to the poster I was debating in the post you quoted, who doesn't think that eliminating half of it is "distorting" it. You give me too much credit. I wouldn't know how to be an activist in court. All I can do is read history, linguistics, ... you know... everything necessary to make my case in this forum. So you're saying that you can eliminate clauses. Thereby contradicting your original statement which was "The 2nd Amendment says what is says." You CAN'T eliminate clauses. It's one phrase that is clear ONLY when it's complete and unaltered. And there was A LOT of thought that went into how it was framed. The rest of your post is irrelevant to this discussion. Heller uses linguistic and historical arguments that have been completely debunked by the country's leading linguists and historians. And the four threads I created on the topic explain why. I can't criticize Scalia's legal arguments, but his linguistic and historical arguments are complete nonsense. Which doesn't make the fact that it's the Law of the Land any less true, but it does mean that it was NOT based either in the text of the 2nd A as written, or in the historical reality at the time. So Heller can be EASILY overturned by simply pointing out the CORRECT linguistic and historical factors that I describe in these threads. Which, BTW, are not mine. They are the arguments of the country's leading linguists, philologists and historians. Nobody has managed to rebut these arguments. They instead always fall back to Heller, but make no effort to address them. So I guess that means my case is solid.
Your declaration that, "Heller uses linguistic and historical arguments that have been completely debunked by the country's leading linguists and historians." doesn't make it true. Again, appeal to authority fallacy and burden of proof. But you'll just snip out the majority of any post and only respond to small portions, so, again, you're spouting nonsense without any evidence, "professor."
A well regulated electorate, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear books, shall not be infringed. Who may keep and bear books?
Yes because the Bill of Rights was there to make sure that government militias could have guns and free speech.
Two points to keep in mind: 1) In the 18th Century, preambles were used to define the scope of a law. Historian David Koning explains: "Preambles had long existed in English lawmaking.... A preamble was supposed to narrow and clarify, not widen, a law.... The language of preambles was necessary to restrain the operative clauses.... No better example exists of this function than the attention that Thomas Jefferson gave to the issue.... It was in response to this understanding of the effect of preambles that Jefferson worked to oppose the insertion of 'Jesus Christ' into the preamble of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Such language, he knew, would narrow the protections of the bill to Christians alone." http://www.uclalawreview.org/pdf/56-5-7.pdf 2) The phrase "bear arms" had a military meaning at the time the Second Amendment was written: "The corpus data provides powerful evidence that contrary to what the Supreme Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller, 'bear arms' was used in the Second Amendment in its idiomatic military sense, and in fact that it was most likely understood to mean serve in the militia. Thus, the right to bear arms was most likely understood as being the right to serve in the militia." https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3481474 The Founding Fathers must have been very poor communicators if they intended it to make it clear that the Second Amendment protects non-militia usage of arms.
It makes it true that they were debunked by the country's leading linguists and historians. It also makes it true that you are unable to rebut any of those arguments even when I'm the one making them. As, for example, this thread. And the other threads I sent you links to.
The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Your opinion does not matter.
What's "a well regulated electorate"? And "bear books"? What does that mean? Just throwing in words doesn't make a sentence. That it means SOMETHING is also required.
Hi Golem, having fun yet...? Consider the possibility, even given the constraint of your 2nd Amendment interpretation, that "We, the People" are determined to constitute a "Militia". Now then... does that augment the 'a priori' extrapolation so that it complies with your understanding of what is entailed in the 2nd Amendment? You may want to say, "Yeah, but going on your interpretation, 'We, the People' aren't 'well regulated'. And I would reply that adult, law-abiding citizens of the United States are by virtue of our citizenship, "well regulated" -- as differentiated, for instance, from any of the mobs of illegal aliens and citizens of foreign countries who come roaming unrestrained and unhampered into our country... thanks to you-know-who.
Your syntactic salad has been tossed and served multiple times. And repeatedly been rejected. Law depends on more the sentence construction. Your examples are clever but not all encompassing of the language structure.
I've heard some gun advocates state that the 2nd A was poorly written. It was not! It was carefully written, discussed, re-written, discussed again, debated, re-written several times... until it was PERFECT. It's not the framers who got it wrong. It's those who insist on interpreting things that are not there.
Sorry but I read your post twice and I still don't understand what this has to do with this thread or, for that matter, with anything I've said. I don't know what people being "well regulated" means unless you're talking about taking Metamucil every day.
They are all encompassing of English grammar. If you think the framers decided to use some other grammar, I wouldn't know what to tell you.
ask him to find the wording in Article One Section Eight that gives the federal government any power to regulate the small arms owned by private American citizens
You point has been argued several times; that's the point. And each time the argument has been denied. You're contrived examples awkward construction doesn't make you point any stronger. You start with the desired conclusion and work backwards.
Denying it is easy. Anybody can deny that the Earth is round. Proving it wrong... not so much. We are 28 pages into this debate and the best anybody has done to rebut it is... well... just denying it, as you just said...
that has to be one of the most stupid things I have ever read. When a law is passed, the first avenue of attack is this: did congress have the constitutional power to actually enact the law/
So your excuse for the post you wrote and I responded to is that you didn't read it? What law are you talking about? The 2nd A? Of course they did! You don't think they had the power to Amend the Constitution? It followed the legitimate process for enacting an Amendment. And I thought your previous post was stupid. This one is worse! Anyway... this thread is about the grammatical structure of the 2nd A. If you want to change the subject and discuss if it was properly passed, open your own thread.
more silliness. The gun banners try to pretend their schemes don't run afoul of the second amendment by using all sorts of obfuscation-claiming the second doesn't apply to any guns made after 1790, claiming the right doesn't apply to citizens not in the militia-=or my favorite-claiming that the second amendment delegates to the federal government the power to "well regulate" those who own guns. It's all bullshit. and what is the real bullshit is that the federal government's dishonest gun control laws are all in violation of the tenth amendment
