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Moonhead -> RE: Then Amend the Constitution (12/19/2012 4:48:33 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
quote:
ORIGINAL: Moonhead
In that context, "people" are adult males who need to be tooled up in case they have to be drafted. The idea is that under extremity, every man (and if necessary woman and child) in the country can form a "well regulated militia".
Of course, it could be argued that the need for the second amendment ceased to exist as soon as a standing army was introduced, but a lot of people seem a bit too attached to it to let it go...
I just wondered, Moonhead. Only, because if 'people' meant any person, of either sex or of any age, I'm kind of surprised that none of the gun-grovellers who worship the 2nd Amendment nightly (the words of it painted over their hearths, or similar) haven't already argued 'Why didn't those elementary schoolkids who were shot have guns themselves'?
Lovely, lovely, lovely, delicious 2nd Amendment. Lotsa lotsa lotsa guns. Shiny, metally and loud. Lovely! [:)]
Because their constitutional rights were infringed, due to them being underage, unlike the gunman, who was old enough to vote.
[:D]
This is something that there's been years of hair splitting arguments and failures to set clear legal precedents over, sadly. While the original amendments (which it's worth remembering were not ratified by every State, giving nitpickers something else they won't shut up whining about to this day) were drafted with specific aims in mind, these are now mostly ignored in favour of literalist interpretations to try to twist the meaning wanted out of them. Thus there's a big contingent who hold that the point of the second amendment is not to ensure that a resistance army can be formed easily in the case of future invasions, but to allow people to hoard guns in case they need to overthrow the government should it turn all horribly authoritarian and autocratic. (Appallingly, there was a talking head who tried to defend the shooting of Giffords on those grounds, though mercifully that was a hardcore Libertarian wingnut rather than one of the GOP's cheerleaders on Fox.) Years of legal wangling have forced the current interpretation of the second amendment into a compromise somewhere between what it was first put there for (the whole of the armed population are technically reservists) and what people who need a gun or to to feel better about themselves insist (that everybody is entitled to load up on as much military hardware as they fancy).
Strangely, of course, the people who insist on the latter interpretation of the second amendment being correct are rarely as insistent on other elements of the bill of rights or the constitution being observed: many of them would quite like to see the back of the separation of Church and State that's the philosophical bedrock of the Constitution done away with, to pick the most obvious example.
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