2nd amendment being an absolute guarantee of freedom is up for interpretation.
What well regulated militia are you a part of?
What well regulated militia are you a part of?
If I say “for X purposes, do Y” I’m telling you to do Y. You can’t do Z just because you think that serves X purposes better.
And even if you believe the right must be connected to militias, those aren’t necessarily formal organizations. The Minutemen, for example, where self-organizing independent militias that were composed of just whoever brought a gun with them. They comprised 1/4 of the militias that fought in the Revolution. Many of the state militias, too, were BYOG. You think the framers just forgot how they won the war they had just fought? The point obviously is to protect the possibility of such militias being formed by preventing the government from disarming ordinary citizens.
Now, if you’re a “living Constitution” guy and think that the constitution means whatever you want it to mean in the present time, that’s fine. But then you don’t need to rely on the tortured reading of the “militia” phrasing. Just say it’s an outmoded right that we are not going to enforce.
Just remove it.
You know perfectly well that's not what the doctrine of a "living Constitution" is about. Constitutional scholarship is not made up of people who agree with you and people just making shit up.
As opposed to what? Textualist? The Constitution is not an unambiguous, coherent document that can have a rigorous interpretation without masses of precedent and case law. It was intentionally ambiguous so that broad swathes of people would vote in favor of it, thinking it said what they wanted. We've been arguing about it ever since. The usual criterion is to maintain stability so we know what to expect, but occasionally someone manages to engineer a major reversal, like the reading of the 2nd amendment in the 20th century switching to allow everyone and his brother to have firearms without restraint.
I'm more of a Jeffersonian in this: a Constitution perpetuated this many generations on is a form of tyranny by our ancestors.
> I'm more of a Jeffersonian in this: a Constitution perpetuated this many generations on is a form of tyranny by our ancestors.
Then you must believe secession is constitutional and legitimate.
Part 1: The US Constitution grants enumerated powers to the US Federal Government. If there is any ambiguity in the Constitution as to whether or not the US Federal government can do something, then the answer is 'they can't.'
Part 2: If you believe the constitution is tyrannical in itself, that future generations owe no allegiance to it, then you logically support secession. Why should anyone be bound by any agreement made in the past, perpetually, without external remediation? Secession is the answer; in order for the Constitution to be valid, it has to be voluntary, and it's not voluntary unless secession is legitimate.
Part 2: The reference is to a specific quote from Jefferson. Again, what you're saying just doesn't follow.
[1] The modern definition of "regulated" to mean this comes mainly from the creation of the FDA and other such government agencies which made meat, drug, and other such products regular as opposed to varied.
While that's true, it doesn't mean that the militia was meant to be free of government control. The constitution provides for congress calling forth the militia and The Militia Acts of 1792 gave the president the power to call upon the militia to quell invasion or rebellion.
We still have that - it's called the draft now, though. ("The Militia" is every man of fighting age and condition, in the original definition)
From "Concerning the Militia":
"To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss"
This pretty clearly carries the implication that being "well-regulated" is more than just well-equipped.
It is, however, clear that the intention was to continue the policy of citizens bearing arms, even treating that as an implicit part of the culture of the time. Madison says, in "The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared", as an offhand remark, "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, ...", and in comparison to Europe, it is expected that Americans can be trusted with guns: "Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
Notably...
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.” – Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778
“The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” – Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.” – George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788
“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
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” – Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
[0]https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-be...
[1]https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...
He wasn't warning against the dangers of giving up one's rights to the creeping authoritarianism of the state, he was complaining that people were giving up the "essential Liberty" provided by an effective Federal government for the "temporary safety" purchased by refusing to fund it.
Or to quote from the NPR article, "(...) far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation."
Interestingly enough, the context is being used here to invert the meaning of Franklin's beliefs, rather than clarify them.
The citation given is incorrect and the two quotes are from unrelated debates. It is not at all clear that "everyone" here refers to citizens at larger rather than members of the state militia, that is, the duly constituted state militia, not the ad hoc militia of able bodied men.
> “The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” – Samuel Adams [2]
This was in the context of a proposed amendment to the body of the constitution, that was rejected. And even here the caveat "peaceable" is thrown in, which is a loophole big enough to throw a whole busload of bans through.
I'm not going to pick through the remainder, which I assume are similarly ambiguous.
Either way I think this is a fruitless approach (namely attempting to clarify the preamble) -- the preamble to the amendment is clearly the motivation of it, but the body of the amendment carries the force. In the interests of public safety, the courts have reluctantly allowed the right to be infringed, and frankly, this is what everyone, including the NRA, wants. If courts rules that it was illegal to restrict the ownership or bearing of arms in any way, there would be a new amendment to supersede the second in a week.
[1] https://archive.org/details/debatesotherproc00virg/page/274
[2] https://archive.org/details/debatesandproce00peirgoog/page/n...
Also, He is speaking against congress limiting it. The following two paragraphs in that citation are talking about how men in government can't be trusted to keep their word not to infringe / create tyranny.
> And even here the caveat "peaceable" is thrown in, which is a loophole big enough to throw a whole busload of bans through.
While "peaceable" isn't defined in stone here, I would take it to mean a person who hasn't been convicted of violent crimes or has intent to commit such crimes. That wouldn't really open the floodgates to bans other than ones we already have for criminals / people making threats. It could possibly justify red flag laws though.
> If courts rules that it was illegal to restrict the ownership or bearing of arms in any way
I don't think that would happen and it wouldn't be what they wanted back then either. Several other quotes mention peaceful men bearing arms which I think would keep the no felons can buy guns laws.
I provided a link to the original source. He is arguing about who is responsible for arming the militia -- congress or the states, or whether citizens in the militia are responsible for bringing their own armaments. The important thing, he notes, is that every man have a firearm, whether by his own provenance or the state's or congress's provisioning.
Directly quoting, he says, in light of the organization of the militia being subject to both federal and state oversight, as to whether the members of the militia should be required to arm themselves:
> So that our militia shall have two sets of arms, double sets of regimentals, etc., and thus at a very great cost we shall be doubly armed --- The great object is that every man be armed --- But can the people afford to pay for double sets of arms, etc.? Every one who is able may have a gun.
Read the link and I dare you to offer an interpretation that explains why, during the discussion of arming the militia he engages in a total non sequitur of mentioning that all people should have guns?
It would be very easy to revisit Heller in this light and say that gun violence is a problem in DC, and thus owning a handgun is a non-peaceable act in itself.
In that context, it seems that to the writer, "well-regulated" meant trained, likely continuous training kept up at somewhat regular intervals (in how to use their weapon, and how to care for it so that it is ready to use), and that they should keep their knowledge up ("evolutions") on more recent advances in weaponry so that they have some idea how to care and use those as well.
> "...the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
Today, there are many people who are showing that they cannot be trusted with arms. They use them instead of reason, they use them for illegal purposes, they use them as toys, they don't take regular training to understand them, they - in short - don't act like militiamen should act. They certainly don't seemingly act "well-regulated".
Are these the kind of citizens the Framers - and perhaps the Federalist papers - had in mind to keep and bear arms?
The expectation was varied over who would arm the militias -- Congress, the states, or the people bringing their own weapons. To preserve the possibility of the last option, they wrote the second amendment so that when people went to join the militia, they would already have their own guns (and other armaments, like cannon, horses, etc.) that they could bring along.
This involves a whole bevy of unstated assumptions about firearm ownership based on the experience fighting the British. So if I were to rephrase the amendment to remove the brevity, I think it would read something like this: "In order that the states may raise and maintain a militia that is well-organized and trained, people must own and be prepared to bear their own personal armament in service of that militia, and therefore Congress may not forbid people from owning arms and by doing so prevent the states from raising militias outside of Congress's authority."
So I personally feel that this sentiment, while noble for the time, is outdated and no longer applicable, especially since the remnants of state militias are insignificant compared to the deployed power of the federal standing army, and we don't expect that to change. But it is what it is, and we have a process already for modifying the constitution when its dictates are no longer applicable, as we did with slavery, as we did with the voting age, as we did with income taxes. We should be using the power of amending the constitution to update it to reflect the reality of firearm ownership in the present time.
I guess the one thing if you accept my interpretation of the amendment that might be open to interpretation is that the states could arguably have the power to regulate the right to keep and bear arms as they see fit; the debate was mostly federal vs. state rather than government vs. individual, even if in the end it is expressed as an individual right that enforces the state's right.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20883656 and marked it off-topic.