History 102: Which people form part of a well-regulated militia?

Yes. Same topic. It's completely irrelevant who was considered part of the militia. The militia was the stated reason, provided as the ultimate reason for the right, not the ONLY reason.

 

And again that phrase doesn't mean what you think it does and doesn't limit any thing. At the time the military was divided into three types of units. Regulars, reserves, and militia. Miltia were in most countries an ad hoc bunch called up in extremis, aka when things had gone completely to hell. Only in America was the miltia highly thought of. Learning that lesson was why it took Washington a while to get his army on an even footing with British regulars and why valley forge was so essential to the American army.

 

Just caught your edit and it's an important point.

Furthermore, I will add that the right to bear arms is nothing more than an extension of the broader natural rights to self-defense/self-preservation, from which not only our Second Amendment right evolved, but our Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights as well.

Another important thing to keep in mind here that is relevant to the right to bear arms and the ancient right to self-preservation is that arms served more than just a military purpose. Far more often they have served as a means for men and women of all ages to hunt and put food on their tables, which was a right that many Europeans moved to America obtain. In the Old World land and hunting rights were severely restricted by avaricious barons and kings who were notorious for gobbling up forest land for their own exclusive personal use and profit.

Most Americans don't know this, but there was a complementary charter to the famed Magna Carta called the Forest Charter, that dealt with this very issue of land seizures and land use:

Charter of the Forest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_the_Forest

Forest Laws
https://famguardian.org/Publications/PropertyRights/R5forlaw.html

It's amusing that Chicken Little anti-2A gun grabbers would have us believe that firearms were considered something limited to militia service by the men and women who settled and founded this country in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

 

The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature’s authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms. Specifically, there is no indication that the Framers of the Amendment intended to enshrine the common-law right of self-defense in the Constitution.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZD.html

It's sad that pseudo-intellectual gun lovers hide behind distorted interpretations of the 2nd resulting in a preventable public health crisis killing thousands and injuring thousands more each and every year. Madison would spin in his grave at the sight of adolescent men in combat gear inside the MI state capital building trying to intimidate elected officials possible due to an obscene perversion of his writings.

 

Yeah, our Founders took that for granted. They didn't think liberals would come along and disarm people and leave the criminals with guns.

Oh, wait, yes they did:
“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria), 1774-1776

 

It's the only reason mentioned in the 2nd A. Again: I'm debating the 2nd A. Anything unrelated, open your own thread.

 

As is clear, nothing in that phrase excludes other reasons, nor was membership in the militia a condition to bearing arms. Sorry.
It's related. Thanks.

 

You're the guy who wants only government to have guns... you know... so you can oppress the people with your authority. And this is just another glad handing expression of your desire to remove the ability of the people to defend themselves against the crime you so fervently cultivate and the policy you support.

 

It differentiates a well regulated militia from a militia that is not well regulated.

 

Gosh... So, when you support folks like the marauding ANTIFA and BLM folks, you're admitting that you're advocacy results in a preventible public health crisis? How convenient.t We'll remember you wrote this.

You know what a preventable public health crisis is? Allowing unvaccinated illegal aliens into the country. Want another one? Allowing looting and arson to exist in democratic cities. Another one? Emptying the jails pushing criminals back onto the streets to commit yet more crimes and murders. Oh the list you like....

 

Which doesn't in any way respond to the assertion that only well regulated militias may have arms. Obtuse isn't your friend here. The right of the people to bare arms shall not be infringed. Read the text. It's right there if only you'd read it.

 

He might have trouble with that....

 

Here's what the Heller decision had to say about this.

"JUSTICE STEVENS relies on the drafting history of the Second Amendment—the various proposals in the state conventions and the debates in Congress. It is dubious to rely on such history to interpret a text that was widely understood to codify a pre-existing right, rather than to fashion a new one. But even assuming that this legislative history is relevant, JUSTICE STEVENS flatly misreads the historical record. It is true, as JUSTICE STEVENS says, that there was concern that the Federal Government would abolish the institution of the state militia. See post, at 20. That concern found expression, however, not in the various Second Amendment precursors proposed in the State conventions, but in separate structural provisions that would have given the States concurrent and seemingly nonpre-emptible authority to organize, discipline, and arm the militia when the Federal Government failed to do so. Cite as: 554 U. S. ____ (200 31 Opinion of the Court See Veit 17, 20 (Virginia proposal); 4 J. Eliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 244, 245 (2d ed. 1836) (reprinted 1941) (North Carolina proposal); see also 2 Documentary Hist. 624 (Pennsylvania minority’s proposal). The Second Amendment precursors, by contrast, referred to the individual English right already codified in two (and probably four) State constitutions. The Federalist-dominated first Congress chose to reject virtually all major structural revisions favored by the Antifederalists, including the proposed militia amendments. Rather, it adopted primarily the popular and uncontroversial (though, in the Federalists’ view, unnecessary) individual-rights amendments. The Second Amendment right, protecting only individuals’ liberty to keep and carry arms, did nothing to assuage Antifederalists’ concerns about federal control of the militia. See, e.g., Centinel, Revived, No. XXIX, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, Sept. 9, 1789, in Young 711, 712. JUSTICE STEVENS thinks it significant that the Virginia, New York, and North Carolina Second Amendment proposals were “embedded . . . within a group of principles that are distinctly military in meaning,” such as statements about the danger of standing armies. Post, at 22. But so was the highly influential minority proposal in Pennsylvania, yet that proposal, with its reference to hunting, plainly referred to an individual right. See 2 Documentary Hist. 624. Other than that erroneous point, JUSTICE STEVENS has brought forward absolutely no evidence that those proposals conferred only a right to carry arms in a militia. By contrast, New Hampshire’s proposal, the Pennsylvania minority’s proposal, and Samuel Adams’ proposal in Massachusetts unequivocally referred to individual rights, as did two state constitutional provisions at the time. See Veit 16, 17 (New Hampshire proposal); 6 Documentary Hist. 1452, 1453 (J. Kaminski & G. Saladino eds. 2000) (Samuel Adams’ pro 32 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA v. HELLER Opinion of the Court posal). JUSTICE STEVENS’ view thus relies on the proposition, unsupported by any evidence, that different people of the founding period had vastly different conceptions of the right to keep and bear arms. That simply does not comport with our longstanding view that the Bill of Rights codified venerable, widely understood liberties."

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf

Case closed.

 

Fake news. The Supreme Court has already debunked this claim. Your incherent reading leads to the absurd conclusion that the purpose of the 2nd amendment was to make sure that the militia could have guns.

The right of the people to keep and bear Arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED is very clear. When it takes you 16 paragraphs to explain 14 easily understood words it's clear that you are up to no good.

 

You got me! My purpose in life is to conquer the world! How did you learn about my evil plans?

 

It doesn't because that's not what this thread is about.

 

Well regulated since no regulations are actually means nothing beyond in working order.

 

LOL - Save for the text of the amendment itself...

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms"

....and the words of the Founders and Framers, which have already been posted in this thread.

Of course, the ignoramus who wrote the part you put in bold text isn't seeing the forest from the trees, either. The Founders' intent to enshrine our ancient right of self-defense is what the entire Constitution is all about, not just the particular rights articulated in the Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments, but you'd have to do a lot more than read the opinions of four liberal judges in one Supreme Court case to know that.

What's nauseating is the Left's unwillingness to even address the root cause of what pseudo--intellectual gun grabbers now euphemistically refer to as a "public health crisis". This violence is merely a symptom of the myriad disastrous consequences of the Left's failed social welfare schemes that are now exploding in our faces as the first generation of the people who were born after the enactment and implementation of these grand programs have reached adulthood. The Cult of Fiasco was warned over 50 years ago about the Pandora's Box it was manufacturing but did anyone lesson?

From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century Eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, there is one unmistakable lesson in American history; a community that allows a large number of men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos. Crime, violence, unrest, disorder -- most particularly the furious, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure -- that is not only to be expected; it is very near to inevitable...
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 1965

Can you hear him now?

But the Left in general and Democrats in particular don't even want to begin to address their failed policies, much less do anything to correct them, so they prattle about and tinker with the symptoms while the crime, violence, unrest, disorder and furious, unrestrained lashing out at the whole social structure continues unabated, because the only thing "progressives" care about is power. To compound their errors, they went Full Retard with their Defund Police movement last year and now the violence in Democrat-run cities is exploding. Surprise, surprise, surprise...

And what has the Left's worthless euphemisms accomplished?

We need look no further than the nearest city in my area to find out:

And how are things in New York, Chicago, LA, and other Democrat-run cities who drank the Left's Defund & Dismantle kool aid?

The "progressive" Cult of Fiasco doesn't care...

 

Reagan used to say that it isn't so much that our friends on the left are evil but that they believe so many things that just aren't so. This whole thread is a clear demonstration of that axiom.

 

That fantastical assertion along with the "they're coming for your guns" ruse is probably responsible for millions of guns being bought by gullible rubes. You know........just in case the prez starts suggesting people be locked up.

 

Him being a Supreme Court justice and you being.....well.......you.......I'm going with JP Stevens.

How odd that European countries with social safety nets far more extensive than ours don't have the same degree, not even close, of gun violence as we do. Gun possession being the glaring differentiator. Sorry, back to the drawing board for you. Perhaps curling up with some of Voltaire's works for inspiration will do ya. Meanwhile, in the real world...........

History provides us with many other examples. For instance, in the 1970s, car crashes were thought of as inevitable. Since then, death rates have decreased by more than two-thirds—despite there being more and faster cars on the road, and millions of more miles traveled—thanks to the public health approach. Instead of trying to ban cars, we used good public health techniques. We improved car safety through engineering (installing airbags and 3-point seatbelts). We educated parents about the importance of child car seats. We passed laws about drunk driving. And we funded research on how to make us safer. We knew that policy was necessary, but not sufficient.

Now compare that to our approach to firearm injury. In 1996, the now infamous Dickey Amendment was passed. It ostensibly banned use of government funds to advocate for gun control (which, by the way, was already illegal). But after its passage, all money that our country’s research institutions had received for firearm injury prevention, dried up. As a result, government-funded research on the public health approach to firearm injury prevention has been 50-100 times smaller by dollars spent than for diseases and injuries that kill a similar number of people. And that means that we have had no reliable data on gun injuries, and minimal data on deaths. We have been relying on the goodness of philanthropy and non-profits to develop new ways to stem the tide. We have also been stuck in tired arguments between banning guns and arming everyone, thinking that policy debates alone were sufficient, instead of doing the hard work to reduce risk and improve safety. Considering the number of guns in private hands in America, we’re kidding ourselves if we think that laws alone will fix this problem.
https://time.com/5951001/gun-violence-public-health-crisis/

 

Caught in your own logic trap isn't a good look on you.

 

Do you ever get dizzy when you deflect and pivot that fast?

 

Given the roaring success of their Covid hysteria I guess they figured the time was ripe to trot out the "public health crisis" tack nationwide, they've been itching to for years.

 

Nope.