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Real0ne -> RE: Constitutional erosion (8/16/2013 2:26:23 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cloudboy
Voting is a absolute right under the Constitution, whereas gun ownership is not even arguably allowed outside of a well-regulated militia.
may want to consider reading a couple history books......
By the middle of the eighteenth century, therefore, English courts could not "imagine" that Parliament intended to disarm the people of England.
In 1775, the American colonists fought for what they regarded as the rights of Englishmen. [161] Fortunately, there is ample contemporary evidence defining exactly what the rights of Englishmen were at that time in respect to the keeping and bearing of arms. In 1782, Granville Sharp, an English supporter of the American cause, wrote that no Englishman "can be truly Loyal" who opposed the principles of English law whereby the people are required to have "arms of defence and peace, for mutual as well as private defence." [162] He argued that the laws of England "always required the people to be armed, and not only to be armed, but to be expert in arms." [163] Edward Christian noted in his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, published in 1793, that "ever since the modern practice of killing game with a gun had prevailed, everyone is at liberty to keep or carry a gun, if he does not use it for the destruction of game." [164] But the most definitive opinion on the rights of Englishmen "to bear arms, and to instruct themselves in the use of them" came from the Recorder of London, the chief legal adviser to the mayor and council, in 1780. He stated:
The right of his majesty's Protestant subjects, to have arms for their own defence, and to use them for lawful purposes, is most clear and undeniable. It seems, indeed, to be considered, by the ancient laws of this kindom, not only as a right, but as a duty; for all the subjects of the realm, who are able to bear arms, are bound to be ready, at all times, to assist the sheriff, and other civil magistrates, in the execution of the laws and the preservation of the public peace. And that right, which every Protestant most unquestionably possesses, individually, may, and in many cases must, be exercised collectively, is likewise a point which I conceive to be most clearly established by the authority of judicial decisions and ancient acts of parliament, as well as by reason and common sense. [165]
[161] For extensive treatment of this subject see B. Bailyn, supra note 26. Bailyn writes, for example: "For the primary goal of the American Revolution, which transformed American life and introduced a new era in human history, was not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the [English] constitution, and the establishment in principle of the existing conditions of liberty." Id. at 19.
[162] G. Sharp, supra note 43, at 18, 27.
[163] Id. at 18.
[164] 2 W. Blackstone, Commentaries 411 (E. Christian ed. 1793-95).
[165] W. Blizard, Desultory Reflections on Police 59-60 (London 1785) (emphasis in original).
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