Hacker News Reader

Comment by larkost | Hacker News Reader

The provision (Second Amendment) explicitly says "well regulated", and talks about gun rights in connection with being for militias. This is how that right was read until 2008. This is all about conservatives on the Supreme Court picking and choosing what they want the Constitution to say.

View on HN

tbf, that's only how it had been read from 1934 to 2008, and only by some -- it was not read that way prior to 1934, and 1934's decision in US v Miller likely wouldn't have arrived at that reading but for an extremely peculiar set of circumstances, including the fact that the defendant was dead, and the attorney didn't show up to correct false testimony from the government, which was extremely wrong in its assertion that the firearm used had no connection to military service

We know this, but arguing it to people who actively want to not understand is such a Sisyphean task...

If you read the original papers about this, it's clear that "well regulated" refers to "To adjust (a mechanism) for accurate and proper functioning." as defined in https://www.thefreedictionary.com/regulated, not "subject to arbitrary Government control".

In a plain reading, it makes sense in context for this to mean "well trained". It would be rather odd for it to both say, in a supporting clause, that it's subject to arbitrary Government control, and also in the main clause that the right "shall not be infringed".

The difference is that one inures to state governments rather than the federal government. The concern at the time was that the federal government would take guns away from people in order to neuter the States' power to defend itself. The States themselves free to do what they wanted to regulate their citizens and militias.

A well balanced breakfast, being necessary to the start of a healthy day, the right of the people to keep and eat food shall not be infringed.

Who has the right to food? A well balanced breakfast or the people?

Give me a few supreme court appointments, and it'll be whatever I want it to be.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com