The most ridiculous thing I've heard about all week
`A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.`
Your interpretation above, of an individual right to bear arms, derives from DC vs Heller ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller) which is relatively new: 2008.
It also doesn't comport with the contemporary writings of the framers, nor the fact that the term "militia" in the constitution refers to the National Guard, which was at the time imagined as a body made up of all able bodied men between 18 and 45 years old. Additionally, at the time, only men were considered "the people".
Last I checked, they still hadn't caught him. This is not a state where more guns us going to make things better. It's a state that very clearly represents the temperature of the country: financially strong liberal strongholds arm wrestling with the government around them. (Abbott and Patrick don't hold back on how much they hate Austin.) We're just going to shoot at each more and scream Castle Doctrine about it.
"But the guy didn't kill anyone, he deserves a second chance" -- right. And the rest of us deserve some safety from people like him.
You can't ban your way to more safety if you can't reasonably control the thing that you're banning. The US government can't reasonably control who has a gun in this country, that's just a fact and it will not change as long as the second amendment is a thing.
What you can do is adjust sentencing standards so that the people who are at highest risk of re-offending in a violent way are locked up.
What is bizarre? Freedom, personal responsibility, and the right to defend oneself are not mutually exclusive. Your freedom is yours to lose, and that happens when you infringe on other peoples' right to freedom.
> because they are supposedly a threat to public safety.
Strawman. You take away someone's freedom because they committed a crime of some kind and are likely to be a violent re-offender. Most likely that means they committed a violent crime in the first place, and were just lucky to not have killed someone. That sort of determination requires looking at the totality of circumstances, too, not just checking a couple boxes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_U...
If you look at this data
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_Uni...
it seems that murder rates do not corelate with the total firearm death rate.
States that do not allow unlicensed carry of handguns have lower per capita gun death.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gun-deaths-...
A gun is far more likely to kill a member of your own family than it is to protect a member of your family in a violent altercation.
Furthermore, evidence from the lowest crime and gun death countries around the world seem to indicate the gun ownership is strongly negatively correlated with gun crimes and gun death, unsurprisingly.
It's strange that folks epistemic horizon ends at the border.
Indeed. The fact that we have to pass State laws to reaffirm rights that are explicitly outlined in the Constitution is truly ridiculous.
The full wording of the 2nd amendment is:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The phrase "well regulated" means "well supplied", as in lots of guns and ammo, i.e. ready for battle, It does not mean "lots of government regulations" to restrict the rights of individuals to bear arms. The mention of the militia is an additional reason for the people to bear arms beyond their intrinsic individual right.
> Finally, the adjective “well-regulated” implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training. See Johnson 1619 (“Regulate”: “To adjust by rule or method”); Rawle 121–122; cf. Va. Declaration of Rights§13 (1776), in 7 Thorpe 3812, 3814 (referring to “a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms”).
It doesn't seem like they agree with you?
I'd be much more comfortable with gun ownership requiring "proper discipline and training".
That's neither relevant nor true.
The case, D.C. v. Heller[1], was decided 5-4 with Scalia, joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, representing the majority.
Scalia (1986) and Kennedy (1987) were nominated by President Reagan who had won the 1984 election with 58.8% of the vote (v.s. 40.6% for Mondale).
Thomas (1991) was nominated by President Bush who had won the 1988 election with 53.4% of the vote (vs. 45.6% for Dukakis).
Roberts (2005) and Alito (2005) were nominated by President Bush who had won the 2004 election with 50.7% of the vote (v.s. 48.3% for Kerry).
Not some, __all__, of the justices that decided that case were appointed by Presidents who had won both the popular vote and the electoral college.
Not that it matters though. A justice appointed by a President who only wins the electoral college is just as much as a justice.
A militia is made up of ordinary citizens. It’s armaments are those of its members. It’s not a separate body. For it to be in working order, the populace are the ones that need to be armed and their right to bear those arms must not be infringed.
Note that the militia angle is merely an additional reasoning for why those rights exist. It’s an example, not a precondition.
But then, one of the tragedies of modern America is that the Supreme Court seems to have become as much a political entity as a judicial one.
The constitutional amendment is about a “well-regulated militia”. The purpose was common defense against military invasion, not citizens having intramural shoot-outs.
DC vs Heller disagrees
Take the Pennsylvania constitution, written also in 1776 (by many of the same authors, as we know, as the federal constitution). They also have a "2a" clause. Below:
"That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state"
There is simply no other way to interpret it -- the 2a was meant as an individual right to own common-use firearms.
Anyone who says otherwise, and is educated on the matter, is lying.
The First Amendment has similarly strong wording, but we permit government consequences for certain forms of speech/expression like libel, fraud, screaming in front of someone's house at 3am, etc.
This is a strawman, mentally ill individuals who have been diagnosed as such are already barred from possessing firearms.
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/identify-prohibited-persons
edit: To the downvoters, can you explain why?
So, shall be infringed in certain scenarios?