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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961

Actually, unorganized militias have someone in authority as disignated by the governor or who ever called for volunteers.

What otter and the brit are trying to do is twist everything so it is anti private gun.

Really telling that you don't use my screen name, JLF. Very classy of you.

Re the rest: I can't speak for 'Otter' - but your surmising of my argument is balls. You're just desperately trying to create a straw man and clearly getting upset that I won't take on the role. My argument is that the notion of the militia, in the 2nd Amendment, is full of holes as support for the ownership of private guns.

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Now, since you could not, evidently, read these in the thread where they were posted, (or most likely choose to ignore the opinion of a supreme court justice) here they are again.

Now, since you will argue that I do not have a clue as to what I am talking about in reference to militia as it applies to the second amendment, and I am unsure as to your qualifications to actually make intelligent arguments concerning constitutional law in the US, please, read the statement, and understand that his qualifications are, in my opinion, far superior to yours, unless of course you hold a degree in US law, and have been practicing Constitutional law and sat as a judge in a US court.

This pretty much shuts down every argument until such time as the second is repealed, amended, or the British invade in response to the ass whuppin we and the french gave them prior to 1783, and we alone did in 1812.

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The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

quote:

Now, since you could not, evidently, read these in the thread where they were posted, (or most likely choose to ignore the opinion of a supreme court justice) here they are again.

Now, since you will argue that I do not have a clue as to what I am talking about in reference to militia as it applies to the second amendment, and I am unsure as to your qualifications to actually make intelligent arguments concerning constitutional law in the US, please, read the statement, and understand that his qualifications are, in my opinion, far superior to yours, unless of course you hold a degree in US law, and have been practicing Constitutional law and sat as a judge in a US court.

This pretty much shuts down every argument until such time as the second is repealed, amended, or the British invade in response to the ass whuppin we and the french gave them prior to 1783, and we alone did in 1812.

Sweet Jesus, JLF. You've excelled yourself: not content with telling me what my argument has been so far, the better for it to fit into your standard array of arguments for a standard kind of opponent, you want to tell me what my argument's going to be in the future. Brilliant!

Nothing in these excerpts refers to the meaning of 'organised'. Were you getting threads mixed up? How was this a response to me?

From this statement,

"Nowhere else in the Constitution does a "right" attributed to "the people" refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention "the people," the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset. This contrasts markedly with the phrase "the militia" in the prefatory clause. As we will describe below, the "militia" in colonial America consisted of a subset of "the people"— those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to "keep and bear Arms" in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as "the people""

... I get the impression the writers accept that the 'militia' argument is not, in itself, sufficient to justify the private ownership of guns. Am I incorrect here? Because, that is *actually* what my argument has been about, versus what you've furiously insisted it must be about. The militia argument, on its own, is full of holes, as previously mentioned.

"Now, since you will argue that I do not have a clue as to what I am talking about in reference to militia as it applies to the second amendment, and I am unsure as to your qualifications to actually make intelligent arguments concerning constitutional law in the US, please, read the statement, and understand that his qualifications are, in my opinion, far superior to yours, unless of course you hold a degree in US law, and have been practicing Constitutional law and sat as a judge in a US court. "

Wow, classic appeal to authority. Yes, yes ... the State is always right. So, if that judgment ever gets overturned, which is something I see gunsters forever fretting about, it will be right then, too - won't it?

And in general, breathtaking pomposity regarding that little remark about 'intelligent conversation', JLF. Seriously, get off it. Nobody's ever going to look up to you as the authority you like to think you are.

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The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State.

Really - how can you respect this, as you apparently do, as any kind of 'last word'? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but where's the limitation on weapons here? I mean, not just your M60 machine gun - but anti-aircraft guns, cannons, tanks, jets? This is insanity, JLF.

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

I have read what they said, and Washington did not write the second amendment. And in fact, had no more to do with it than Obama has to do with passing the appropriations bills down there that the nutsuckers are borrowing and spending and being fiscally irresponsible with. (Helpful Hint: They were both Presidents.)

Here is what the guy who wrote it said in the speech reporting the bill to the congress:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.


(looks to me that his mind was of what we, nowadays, would call a military bent).

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You might want to read what the people who wrote the 2nd said it meant. I tend to think they had a better idea of what they meant than you do. I agree with them, you agree with people trying to find any excuse to deny an idividual right.

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Recognizing religious based pacifism is irrelevant.

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

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You might want to read what the people who wrote the 2nd said it meant. I tend to think they had a better idea of what they meant than you do. I agree with them, you agree with people trying to find any excuse to deny an idividual right.

Who then did you mean by they, I guessed wrong at washington, how about Jefferson or adams or who did you have in mind? There is no they, unless Madison had a tapeworm.

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Recognizing religious based pacifism is irrelevant.

Yeah, not to the guy that wrote it, and how it fits into what Madison certainly said it meant.

It is clear that he was talking a militia, as in a volunteer (organized or unorganized) military force from his speech.

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You might want to read what the people who wrote the 2nd said it meant. I tend to think they had a better idea of what they meant than you do. I agree with them, you agree with people trying to find any excuse to deny an idividual right.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

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You might want to read what the people who wrote the 2nd said it meant. I tend to think they had a better idea of what they meant than you do. I agree with them, you agree with people trying to find any excuse to deny an idividual right.

They no doubt did have a better idea of what it meant than I do. However, I don't trust present-day American gunsters' view of what it meant, because to my mind they're generally much too full of the hundreds of years' worth of spinning since the day it was written.

As for 'I agree with them, you agree with people trying to find any excuse to deny an individual right' - Firstly, I'm sorry, but as I've said repeatedly over the past couple of weeks, that's balls. Straw man balls, specifically. I've only been questioning the 'militia argument'. I've tried not to go beyond that because it's only ever led to stale old arguments fired at 'generic anti-gunsters', or even 'generic Brits'. Just tedious.

But re individual rights: you'd be right if you thought that I don't give a flying toss about the freedom of individuals to carry guns. I don't. I am infinitely more concerned about the freedom from being shot. I'm well aware that you and other gunsters get irritable about it being cast in those terms, because you've had such a monopoly in invoking that word 'freedom' in support of your own side for so long - but, and please try to take it on board: this is not just some bit of clever-arsed sophistry on my part. You will probably find that the average Brit will agree: it really, really is much more important to us to be free from the fear of being shot than it is to be free to carry a gun.

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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

quote:

You might want to read what the people who wrote the 2nd said it meant. I tend to think they had a better idea of what they meant than you do. I agree with them, you agree with people trying to find any excuse to deny an idividual right.

They no doubt did have a better idea of what it meant than I do. However, I don't trust present-day American gunsters' view of what it meant, because to my mind they're generally much too full of the hundreds of years' worth of spinning since the day it was written.

As for 'I agree with them, you agree with people trying to find any excuse to deny an individual right' - Firstly, I'm sorry, but as I've said repeatedly over the past couple of weeks, that's balls. Straw man balls, specifically. I've only been questioning the 'militia argument'. I've tried not to go beyond that because it's only ever led to stale old arguments fired at 'generic anti-gunsters', or even 'generic Brits'. Just tedious.

But re individual rights: you'd be right if you thought that I don't give a flying toss about the freedom of individuals to carry guns. I don't. I am infinitely more concerned about the freedom from being shot. I'm well aware that you and other gunsters get irritable about it being cast in those terms, because you've had such a monopoly in invoking that word 'freedom' in support of your own side for so long - but, and please try to take it on board: this is not just some bit of clever-arsed sophistry on my part. You will probably find that the average Brit will agree: it really, really is much more important to us to be free from the fear of being shot than it is to be free to carry a gun.

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

FR

For me, the tricky part of applying an originalist yardstick to the Second Amendment is (in)consistency.

Folks often seem to pair an 18th-century definition of "militia" with a 21st-century definition of "arms."

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

FR

For me, the tricky part of applying an originalist yardstick to the Second Amendment is (in)consistency.

Folks often seem to pair an 18th-century definition of "militia" with a 21st-century definition of "arms."

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

FR

For me, the tricky part of applying an originalist yardstick to the Second Amendment is (in)consistency.

Folks often seem to pair an 18th-century definition of "militia" with a 21st-century definition of "arms."

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

FR

For me, the tricky part of applying an originalist yardstick to the Second Amendment is (in)consistency.

Folks often seem to pair an 18th-century definition of "militia" with a 21st-century definition of "arms."

Once more, the "the second amendment only applies to flintlocks" argument. Okay then as someone else stated, the freedom of the press only applies to handset printed newspapers, the right to privacy does not apply to telephones, cell phones, computers, and every other communication device invented since the constitution was written.

This argument is perhaps the dumbest put forward on the gun debate.

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Once more, the "the second amendment only applies to flintlocks" argument. Okay then as someone else stated, the freedom of the press only applies to handset printed newspapers, the right to privacy does not apply to telephones, cell phones, computers, and every other communication device invented since the constitution was written.

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

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Once more, the "the second amendment only applies to flintlocks" argument. Okay then as someone else stated, the freedom of the press only applies to handset printed newspapers, the right to privacy does not apply to telephones, cell phones, computers, and every other communication device invented since the constitution was written.

Not being an originalist, I'm fine with extending the Bill of Rights to modern realities.

But that then raises the question, "What's the modern equivalent of an early American militia"?