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Comment by treeFall | Hacker News Reader

Only if you believe that words have no meaning. If you're already at that place in your mind, anything is possible regardless.

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The problem isn't them. We just not too long ago have a court case that questioned whether the President is considered an "officer of the United States." The unfortunate part of law is, half of law is arguing about what 'is' is.

So its not necessarily that words don't have meaning. Its more of, the words can change meaning.

Not only that, but this same court removed the constitutional right to an abortion because it wasn't enumerated in the Constitution. Now, they completely invent criminal immunity out of thin air (which btw was never necessary in the last 250 years until we had a criminal president), when the intent of the drafters to never elevate any person above the law was crystal clear.

The Roberts court is just arbitrarily choosing whatever justification they happen to like for any given case to push an extremist agenda.

It would have been easy to bring Obama up on murder charges of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, but was not, due to this same presumed immunity

> Not only that, but this same court removed the constitutional right to an abortion because it wasn't enumerated in the Constitution.

I'm as against this court as the next guy, but don't constitutional rights need to be, you know, in the constitution?

No, because rights are not granted by the constitution, rights are self-evident and natural, and people retain them without them being explicitly enumerated.

The constitution merely enumerates certain rights where the founders wanted to be extra clear that those things were rights, but it is not a limiting document.

The 9th amendment states this explicitly: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Gotcha. So how do we know what rights we have for sure?

Some rights, such as bodily autonomy, are so self-evident the Founders didn’t feel the need to enumerate them.

No, the 9th recognizes that the Constitution doesn't capture every possible right in its enumeration.

Not quite. If you’ve been following federalists you’ll see they’re rewriting and redefining whatever they need to in order to achieve their ends.

A majority on the supreme court seem willing to bend reasonable definitions backward to get whatever they want. Second amendment 'right' to (non-militia) personal firearms for example.

Thats about the worst example one can give, given that it has broadly been considered to allow [personal firearms] since the start of the country. The grammar isn't even confusing.

[edit] removed the word militia to avoid confusion between historic and modern definition.

Then why do they even mention militias at all?

At the time the rationale for a right was frequently included in the text, just as a modern reading of the right implies it is being used as an explanatory clause. The entire concept was that there would be no governmental army and in times of need, citizens would be able to use their arms and organize for mutual defense. In this context, "Militia" is synonymous with an decentralized armed citizenry without government oversight. The clause provides this rationale and coveys a sentiment against a standing army. here are what some state constitutions had to say about gun ownership, prior to the bill of rights.

Article XIII of the Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights of 1776 read:

>That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

Similarly, as another example, Massachusetts’s Declaration of Rights from 1780 provided:

>The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.

James Madison produced an initial draft of the Second Amendment as follows:

>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.

I pulled the quotes from this link, which has more text and discussion.

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt2-2/ALDE_...

Define “the people”. For works of it’s time, it is broadly used to mean both individuals and an elected government.

You’re utilizing one definition of a term that never had concrete meaning, so your reasoning is both imprecise and potentially erroneous.

I think it is pretty clear.

It is hard to see why a state would feel the need to include the government's ability to own weapons at all, let alone in a document listing rights and protections for individual citizens. Furthermore, the statements already draw a distinction between the people and an army controlled by the government.

The document wasn’t for individuals. That’s quite the misunderstanding of basic history here.

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