"a well regulated militia"

are states which do not regulate their irregular militias and armed citizens neglecting a necessary component of any "free state?"

the 2nd amendment requires states to control their violent citizens.

 

The phrase "well-regulated" in the second amendment does not mean what you apparently think it does.

The following are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, and bracket in time the writing of the 2nd amendment:

1709: "If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations."
1714: "The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the world."
1812: "The equation of time ... is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial."
1848: "A remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person will blame the Mayor."
1862: "It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine proceeding."
1894: "The newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated American embryo city."

So, you see, the phrase "well-regulated" was in common use long before 1789, and remained so for a century thereafter. It referred to the property of something being in proper working order. Something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected.

Establishing government oversight of the people's arms or the militia was not only NOT the intent in using the phrase in the 2nd amendment, it was precisely to render the government powerless to do so that the founders wrote it.

 

I know some folks are adept at finding hidden "meanings" where there clearly are none....but seriously???

 

are events like the atlanta and boulder shootings indicative of anything that is "functioning properly." are you seriously saying that when the founders wrote "well regulated" they meant "totally unregulated" because that means functioning properly?

 

Appeal to emotion is a logical fallacy.

The phrase "well-regulated", as used in the 2a, has nothing to do with government regulation, as the word is used today.

 

So if the term means "in proper working order" doesn't that imply some type of organization. A militia without organization, leadership, and rules is not well regulated.
Does the Constitution guarantee there rights to those that are not part of a well regulated militia? (serious question for discussion)

 

Next we will be told that the fiasco on 1/6/21 was well regulated!...

 

Militias are properly armed and equipped and they get together a couple times a year to make sure this happens.

I did this when in the reserves but haven't for years. I guess I am no longer in the militia? Does the 2nd apply to me?

 

the second amendment has nothing to do with service in any militia. it protects the individuals right to keep and bear arms.

DC v Heller.

 

Here is the case you cited it says nothing about any militia one way or another. It was a case about hand guns and the police expectations in Washington DC.
"The ban on registering handguns and the requirement to keep guns in the home disassembled or nonfunctional with a trigger lock mechanism violate the Second Amendment."

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2007/07-290

 

The founders knew that if a well-regulated militia was to even be possible, that The People needed to have their right to keep and bear arms protected. The founders did not suggest that the necessity of a proper militia was the ONLY reason that arms were necessary. Guns were tools necessary for survival back then, no different than plows or hammers. Everyone had a firearm.

I don't think the founders would have been able to even imagine there would ever be a movement to strip citizens of their arms. I think it would have been absurd to suggest that, just as it would be absurd to us to think about government confiscation of hammers.

To answer your question: Yes, the right of The People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

 

huh? this is directly from the ruling

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html

 

It is of note the Heller case flipped the position the SC had long held about the rights conferred by the 2nd.
In Heller, the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment guarantees a personal right to keep and bear firearms for purposes unrelated to an organized militia. Previously, in United States v. Miller, the Court held that because a short-barreled shotgun was not suitable for use in a militia, its possession was not protected by the Second Amendment, and Miller’s indictment was lawful.
https://judicature.duke.edu/articles/stevens-j-dissenting-the-legacy-of-heller/

In his dissent Stevens makes the undeniable case (so does Breyer) that the 2nd does not strip away the government's right to regulate the possession of firearms.

The NFA, which is still in force, was the first federal attempt to significantly regulate firearms, and it has enjoyed some success (for example, fully automatic weapons are rarely used by criminals today). The NFA, though, was unique only in that it was a nationwide law. State and local governments had been regulating arms since the Founding era, with laws that ran the gamut from permit requirements to prohibitions on particular classes of weapons to bans on possession by particular classes of people. Indeed, a search of the Repository of Historical Gun Laws, a free online resource hosted by the Center for Firearms Law at Duke,7 shows that more than 1,000 state and federal laws had been enacted by the time Justice Stevens was born in 1920.

Despite all this regulation, the Second Amendment did not play a significant role in firearm policy, because it was not generally understood to encompass private uses of weapons. It certainly did not feature prominently in litigation, because few regulations interfered directly with state militias. Indeed, for more than two centuries, no federal case struck down a law on Second Amendment grounds.

Heller was a departure from accepted law.

 

And we all know from our daily shootings and deaths and woundings how well allowing every Tom,Dick and Harry that wants to tote his guns is working out so well here in the good old USA. WE LIVE IN A PERPETUAL WAR ZONE.

 

If there is a more hypocritical stance than for Repubs to work tirelessly to prevent the ability of government authorities to enact gun control measures designed to protect the public's welfare and then cite examples like the number of gun deaths in Chicago as a failing of Dems, not Repub's, I don't know what is.

 

Violent crime is HALF what it was 40 years ago. Half.

 

I think a way to measure if something was "well-regulated" would be to simply determine if it was effective. The right to keep and bear arms is not granted by the government via the 2A, it is protected from infringement by the 2A. I think the broad assumption was that everyone already had arms as part of the survival "toolkit" of the time, and that the government has a vested interest, in that a well-regulated (effective) militia should be available.

I feel the preface of "A well regulated militia" was not just left out because the militia was the primary, perhaps only, interest the federal government had with regards to the keeping of arms by The People. They could have enumerated all the reasons an individual might want to keep arms, but probably made the "broad assumption" that everyone already knew why firearms were useful and necessary to life at the time, because they all had them as part of their everyday life.

I do not believe that the founders would find a movement to disarm The People would be, at all, rational. They would find it absurd, perhaps nefarious.

 

And the problem there has nothing to do with the gun and everything to do with the fact that no system can be guranteed to safeguard everyone from everything. We live in an imperfect world. Crap happens then you die. The only thing that matters is how you live your life between birth and inevitable death.
I would suggest to you that worrying about being killed by a mass shooter is a most unprofitable use of that limited time.

 

Good to point this out. In 2nd amendment debates this is the most abused phrase by the advocates of gun control.

 

10 U.S. Code § 246 - Militia: composition and classes
(a)
The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b)The classes of the militia are—
(1)
the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2)
the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia

So-

Given that no politician who values their career would ever promote enforcing the exclusion of women, the elderly or the disabled from self identifying as 'the (unorganized) militia', we can logically extend 'all able bodied males' to simply mean 'all law abiding adults'.

Since 'the militia' can be demonstrated to effectively mean 'all law abiding adults', and its commonly argued that 'regulations' are tantamount to laws... what additional laws do we need to apply to all law abiding adults to better regulate the militia?

 

Mandatory training on safety and usage for guns.

 

I too see a great benefit to mandating training on safety and usage of guns for all law abiding adults. Personally, I think it should be required curriculum in HS, along with general safety of a lot of other common things like household cleaners and tools..

 

My belief is that the Bill of Rights does not grant anything, it recognizes various pre-existing rights and limits government from infringing, abridging, or otherwise denying them from The People. Amongst those is the right to keep and bear arms.

The Supremacy clause, (Article 6, if I recall), says that Federal Law is the supreme law of the land. Therefore, any state law that conflicts with it is preempted.

Now... we know... in practice, that has not always been the case. The relatively recent example that most readily comes to mind is various state marijuana laws. The feds could swoop in at any time and forcibly shut down marijuana businesses and jail their owners, because they are in violation of federal law. They don't, not because they can't, but because it would not be a politically popular thing to do in the states that support them.

There is no reason that states could not pass gun laws that violate the Federal laws and the Constitution as well. And, until they are challenged and overturned, enforce them vigorously. Already, there are many state gun laws that do just that.

Was the 2A a response to slave owners concerns? There was probably that component in it, I doubt it was a crucial factor in the formation of the 2A, but it was probably really important to slave states before they would agree to ratify.

There are, of course, those who feel they can profit from making everything about race these days, and they work really hard to paint skewed versions of history to that end.