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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_...
Do you have anything to support your position? anything in the federalist papers?
What about the simple fact of reality of the time that every citizen was allowed to own arms without being in a formal organization?
How the NRA rewrote the the 2A:
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/how-...
The decision to legally depower the first clause of the 2A came in 2008, not 2013, sorry about that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
In the 18 and 19th century, commentary around the 2A included the militia requirement, focusing more on what a militia was than if it was a requirement at all (see wiki commentary section in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...). The idea that militia isn’t a requirement doesn’t even come into play until the late 20th century and is legally deleted in the 21st.
If the information already included in your own Wikipedia links dont convince you of this, I wont be able to either.
Similarly, I don't buy the argument that it only restricts the federal government, not the states. The 10th amendment is clear that states are prohibited from infringing on some individual rights. This is obviously the case with the 6th through 8th,unless you think states and cities are free to conduct juryless trials and have cruel and unusual punishments
The vast majority of Americans have never even witnessed a gun fired in public. Which is crazy if you think like a European might: "If everybody had guns then bad people would just shoot other people all the time". There is nothing in ordinary American life hinting that guns are dangerous. You have to look at statistics in order to form some kind of an idea that there is a problem.
The fact that there are so few incidents, relatively speaking, speaks volumes for the decency of the people, how responsible they are with their guns.
I like to draw an analogy to the Nordic countries where we have "the freedom to roam". Anyone can roam around on public (and even private) land and put up their tent for the night, pick berries etc. This causes very little problems, because people learn from a young age to behave responsibly in nature.
But then you have (too) many countries in Europe where wild camping is illegal. That means there's no culture around it. And the thought is that if they now made it legal it would just exacerbate the problems they have now, like people throwing trash in nature, causing wildfires etc. Yes, in the short term it probably would, because you just neutered people's ability to display responsible behavior by not letting them create a culture around it. If people are raised with that responsibility it tends to not become a problem during adulthood.
That's why I support gun rights in practically every country. Teach people from a young age to be responsible with guns and let that flourish in adult life. Trust people. Don't punish everyone for a few bad eggs.
Then they passed the 14th Amendment. And the original intention behind the 14th Amendment, was nothing to do with guns at all – it was to protect the rights of the recently freed slaves – nobody was even thinking about guns at the time they voted for it. And then, decades later, the Supreme Court started to interpret the 14th Amendment as applying parts of the Bill of Rights to the states. They used the 14th to apply the 1st to the states in the 1925 case of Gitlow v. New York. And then in the 2010 case of McDonald v. Chicago they did that to the 2nd as well. It was hard to argue not to do it with the 2nd when they'd already done it with most of the others.
No, I'm saying that a consistent originalist interpretation would be that the Bill of Rights should not be applied to the States, absent a constitutional amendment clearly stating that, and understood as stating that at the time it was adopted. The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, it wasn't interpreted as applying the 1st to the states until 1925 – over 50 years later.
If people wanted states to be bound by the 1st Amendment – or the 2nd or the 4th or the 5th – they should have passed a constitutional amendment explicitly saying so, not relied on SCOTUS to de facto amend it by interpreting the 14th as saying something that few thought it meant at the time it was adopted.
There's also that "well regulated militia" bit in the text.
We could require several months of membership in a firearms club and a minimum level of proficiency required to be displayed at a gun range, and it shouldn't violate any SANE interpretation of the Second Amendment, while keeping random 18-20 year olds from being able to buy an AR15 on a psychotic whim.
We also routinely required guns to be surrendered inside of cities back in the 1800s because we understood that there was a difference between being armed on your private property and being armed while getting smashed in a bar.
Huh, interesting. That would be a fascinating test of Bruen, wouldn't it?
Okay, they read it out of the intentionally vague language of the 14th Amendment. But nobody who voted for the 14th thought that it meant that.
Everyone who voted for the 14th actually knew what it meant at the time – it was a narrow measure to stop Democrats from taking away the civil rights of newly freed slaves. It was written in a vague and ambiguous way as a political fudge to make it easier for legislators to vote for it, given many of their (racist/pro-confederate) constituents opposed it. It was not written with the intention that it would be read as carte blanche imposing the near whole of the Bill of Rights on the states, which is essentially what incorporation amounts to.