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Comment by jriot | Hacker News Reader

You mean unconstitutional opinion.

Quite honestly, the amendment should have been worded differently and I believe that is part of the reason we are in the mess we have found ourselves in today. For some reason, many Americans only ever seem to quote the final clause of the amendment:

    ..., the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

However, the meaning of the final clause is modified by what comes before it:

    A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ...

Now, there are two important things to note:

1) in the context of the constitution, "person" or "persons" is used when referencing an individual or individuals but "people" is used when speaking generally about a collective group. This can also be seen in the 4th amendment:

    The right of the **people** to be secure in their **persons**, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...

2) Madison wrote the 2nd amendment as a way to provide the States recourse against a corrupt Federal government. At the time when the constitution was drafted, states were much more distinct and separate entities, and the revolutionary war was fresh on the mind so the ability for individual states to train there own militias was an important stipulation.

Bearing this in mind, I do not believe that the 2nd amendment was written as a right provided to individuals but instead as a right afforded to states.

Outside of discussing 18th-century language, do you really believe Americans are going to turn over their guns because a politician comes along and says we have been misinterpreting it thus we must all turn in our guns?

Alone, most likely not. However, the second amendment has never been formally challenged in such a way and there is little legal precedent formalizing the right for Americans to individually own weapons.

It would be naive to think that any change to US law with regards to guns will change anything overnight but we have to start somewhere and allow for the culture around gun ownership to change over time.

> there is little legal precedent formalizing the right for Americans to individually own weapons.

As an American I don't need a legal precedent to say I can own certain property, a legal precedent needs to be set to say I can't own certain property.

In that case, the 4th amendment is also a right afforded not to individuals because it uses the same wording that the 2nd does regarding "right of the people".

If you want to argue that the "persons" part means the individual, then that would require that you ignore the first part. This contradicts what you said earlier about "being modified by what comes before it".

No, not quite. Notice what comes after "the right of the people" in the 4th amendment: "...to be secure in there persons", then later: "...and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"

The 4th amendment outlines specific rights afforded to individuals. There is no such verbiage in the 2nd amendment. Instead, all that is referenced is the State.

> "...to be secure in there persons", then later: "...and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"

Exactly, that protects the state from it's persons being searched. Because as you just said, the phrase "right of the people" denotes a collective right:

> The 4th amendment outlines specific rights afforded to individuals. There is no such verbiage in the 2nd amendment. Instead, all that is referenced is the State.

When the 4th amendment mentions "right of the people" it means the right of the state. Any persons are just entities of the state and the right does not belong to the individuals. Otherwise it would have said "the right of the persons", as you had argued earlier in the thread regarding the language of the 2nd amendment.

QED.

The United States Supreme Court directly disagrees with you. See Heller.

I agree with the 4 justices who dissented: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZD1.html

Right. Meaning you misrepresented the law.

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