But that would comport with the 2nd's militia concept: guns owned and kept for militia use in times of emergency, not everyday carry.
Militia is the people - it's everyone, individually. Well-regulated means well-functioning, fit for purpose. In order for individual people to be fit for militia/defensive service, they cannot be deprived of their right to make, purchase, own, use, and/or carry firearms.
My favorite quote related to this:
"I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people." - George Mason, address to Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788
That's also true for the definition of arms.
You can define "militia" as "all the of-age white males" if we get to define "arms" as "muskets". Fair trade!
"Arms" meant (means) state-of-the-art, military-level hardware. The muskets that civilians had in their homes were as good or better than what you'd be issued by the burgeoning American military, to the extent that you were issue anything and weren't just expected to bring your own. Throughout all of American history, perhaps with the exception of nuclear arms and vehicles like tanks and submarines, firearms research and development has occurred in private industry and made its way into the military later.
Probably not cannons and grapeshot, though.
But the specifics are irrelevant, the spirit is clear.
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." - Sam Adams, address to Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
Finding an article that says, essentially, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, and then goes on to talk about government licensed privateers - akin to the modern setup of a security guard licensed to carry in a state that doesn't otherwise permit it. Is there evidence outside of that of personal home ownership of cannons? (Let alone of a widespread nature?)
Do we think Sam Adams would advocate personal ownership of nuclear bombs, or do we think he'd perhaps see such things as a category slightly different than the muskets of his time?
The start of this little digression was private citizens carrying their personally owned handguns outside of their home as is plainly meant by the word "bear" in 2A. So rather than moving the goalposts to Sam Adams's opinion on private ownership of nuclear weapons or whatever other bad faith things you want to bring up, I'd rather focus on that.
"Nothing like machine guns exist, let alone in private hands, let alone widely so" is part of that historical context, yes.
> We don't have private ownership of nuclear arms now...
As the apocryphal Churchill quote about whores goes, "We've already established that [some arms don't fall under the 2nd]; we're merely haggling over [which]..."
If your argument is that machine guns didn't exist in the late 1700s therefore they're not covered by the second amendment, then surely the internet isn't covered by the first amendment and you should be able to be arrested for any online comments you make, right?
> its operation does not match the modern use of the term... It was never used during any combat operation or war... Production was highly limited and may have been as few as two guns...
I'm not sure this works any better than the privateers example.
> If your argument is that machine guns didn't exist in the late 1700s therefore they're not covered by the second amendment, then surely the internet isn't covered by the first amendment and you should be able to be arrested for any online comments you make, right?
It has exactly the same sorts of widely-supported exceptions. I can't exercise my freedom of speech via threats, fraudulent claims, false advertising, lying to a FBI agent, etc. I can, and should be, arrested for such things.
(I also like to think modern social media and its societal impact would give the Founders some pause.)
You're saying since MGs didn't exist, they shouldn't be covered - or at least presenting that as a valid argument? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
If that argument holds truth, than the entire internet should be exempt from 1A protections, shouldn't it?
Frankly, I think if the Founders had anticipated its rise, they'd have put a few more qualifications on the First. I think we're in the fuck-around-find-out phase of the technology outpacing the societal capacity to cope with it.
We absolutely agree on this!
Are we arguing we just start ignoring laws when we don't like them. The Constitution has a very clear means for changing it, which we've done dozens of times in the past. If we want to change it we can, nobody is holding onto it for the sake of it. We're following the law.
My argument is that it's old, doesn't really apply well to the modern world. You say you can simply change it if you want to but your system doesn't really allow for that anymore. You have multiple 9/11 in dead schoolchildren and you still don't care.
What it does is putting guns in everyday situations, a road rage incident that ends in deaths rather than some bruises. Since there's no room for any exceptions to this right state lawmakers cannot make any laws that excludes people that should not be able to buy guns either.
Is there evidence of a law against the personal ownership of cannons?
The Founding Fathers existed in a time where gun control was “they are big, heavy, and don’t shoot very fast”. That they did not anticipate a Glock with a 100 round drum is fairly understandable.
Ah yes, the argument that was explicitly rejected by the Supreme Court as "bordering on the frivolous."
I suppose the First Amendment is also limited to quill pens, parchment, and yelling to passersby from a literal soapbox?
> I suppose the First Amendment is also limited to quill pens and parchment?
The First Amendment, as the Second, was fully intended to have common-sense exceptions.
Shit, John Adams himself signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts into law.
This is why I find "but the Founding Fathers wanted everyone to be able to own an AR-15" uncompelling. It's fairly clear evidence they thought the First was way less comprehensive than we currently interpret it, yet people interpret the Second the opposite way.
If one is to cite what the Founding Fathers intended as justification for an absolute individual right to bear arms, one must confront the fact that they clearly didn't consider the fairly simply written First Amendment to be absolute. That points to an attitude of "well obviously we're not gonna be stupid about it" for other amendments introduced at the same time... like the Second.
If they felt the Alien and Sedition Acts complied with the First Amendment, I think it's reasonable to believe they'd consider the assault weapons ban to comply with the Second.
"I do not know who was the particular wretch alluded to: but I discharged every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition law, because I considered & now consider that law to be a nullity as absolute and as palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image; and that it was as much my duty to arrest it’s execution in every stage, as it would have been to have rescued from the fiery furnace those who should have been cast into it for refusing to worship their image."
Seems the Founders did not all support that viewpoint.
That’s fair! But also a challenge for guessing their intents with the Second.
(Notably, one of them is still on the books. Jefferson didn’t repeal. He had a personal dislike of Adams for quite some time.)
What they’d think of today’s weaponry would probably vary somewhat. The Scalias, Alitos, and Thomases of the Court would rather not confront that. They seem certain of their crystal balls.
If you read Scalia's book, he goes into great detail about this but it boils down to a) you can't read minds as a judge and b) different people voted to pass the law for different reasons, so which ones are valid?
> If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor; but they may be confined to the lower and middle classes of the people, granting exclusion to the higher classes of the people. If we should ever see that day, the most ignominious punishments and heavy fines may be expected.
He very clearly believed that the federal government under the Constitution would have the power to determine who did and did not belong to the Militia which is one of many reasons he voted against ratification. He also clearly believes that the federal government has the task of regulating it given the talk of punishments and fines, though he seems fine with that as long as they are reasonable. That it was ratified in that form makes your referenced quote an argument against your reading of the second amendment.
That quote in context [1] clearly is about who the members of the militia are drawn from, not the implicit militia-ness of all citizens. He even states this explicitly later in the same argument: "Under the present government, all ranks of people are subject to militia duty".
In the end, they wrote what they wrote and they ratified what they ratified -- "the right of the people" and not the right of the "several states" or the "militia of the several states" as is used elsewhere in the document. So it's a right of the people, period, and "keep and bear" has a plain meaning (Scalia wrote something to the effect of "you cannot interpret 'he filled and kicked the bucket' to mean 'he filled the bucket and died').
Some state constitutions (contemporaneous and known to the authors of the constitution) carved out an explicit self-defense or individual right to arms, but this language was not encoded into the second amendment.
Whenever I encounter quotes from the constitutional ratification debates that purport to claim an individual right to keep and bear arms, on closer inspection in context, they are arguing about states vs. federal authority, not an individual right. If you choose to respond by offering other supporting quotes, please give a link to the full context and due consideration of it, because I have yet to see an actual quote that holds up.
[1] https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/rc/rat_va_13.htm
Basically the same situation as when you read "gay" in a historical context.
I've read every single word that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin ever wrote that survived to be collected into the various volumes of their collected writings.
Regulated has always meant "controlled".
The pressure regulator schtick sounds like some BS the NRA came up with after snorting some coke through the pile of rubles Putin gave them to poison the minds of Americans.
Here's the full text of the Federalist Papers: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1404/1404-h/1404-h.htm
"regulated" appears 26 times, often in a military context, and it always means what everyone thinks it means and is never used the way you propose.
>Elections in Ireland, till of late, were regulated entirely by the discretion of the crown, and were seldom repeated, except on the accession of a new prince, or some other contingent event.
Do you have any historical examples that support your usage of the word?
Regulated technical parameters like pressure and voltage are not subject to regulations (unless we construe the simple feedback mechanism to be a couple of rules).
It is blatant word semantic equivocation to conflate government regulation and pressure regulation.
The word "controlled" doesn't help much; it can be similarly equivocated as a near synonym of "regulated". Regulated pressure is controlled. A regulated industry is controlled.
I don't like guns, but I think the masses right to own arms is more constitutional than the standing army.
The bill of rights is a list of things the federal government cannot do (and through case law, individual states). It is entirely restrictions on the government, not restrictions on citizens. It's a stretch to assume that the one word "regulated" in 2A actually mean restrictions on citizens when no other word in the first ten amendments restricts any citizens' rights.
https://x.com/2aHistory/status/1712209761171612093 https://x.com/MorosKostas/status/1645290263299117056
> In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is *not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment*, or that its use *could contribute to the common defense*.
If you point to Miller, it becomes clear that military weapons were more acceptable for personal ownership under their interpretation of the 2A than a sawed-off shotgun, which was considered only useful for crimes when the NFA was passed (similar to other "concealable" arms). Consequently, the common refrain that "well-regulated militia" now implies something like the National Guard, would thus also imply that in fact it's more reasonable to privately own a tank or fighter jet than a suppressor.
I don't think that most anti-2A advocates really understand that our current legislative limits on gun ownership are about as restrictive as they can be. Amend the 2A if you like (and it probably should be, even if only for clarity), but don't try to amend history.
There is no textual interpretation of the 2A that would not allow for private firearm ownership. Every state constitution that directly preceded the Federal US constitution had a section that said some variation of:
> "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."
That specific quote came from Pennsylvania's constitution (Article 13), which was a Quaker colony at the time, that was much less friendly to firearms than other states, but even they explicitly spelled out the right to arms for personal defense. Heller (2008) reaffirmed this. That we have the largest standing army on Earth now would be horrifying to the founders, because they knew exactly the kind of Imperialism and Authoritarianism that follows, as opposed to a muster-able militia.
As Huey Newton noted: "Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment."
> So can we safely assume that in 2007 you were steadfastly in support of the constitutionality of regulating weapons that fall outside of reasonable use in a Militia
Yes, absolutely. I don't think that, for instance, anyone should own chemical weapons, or weapons like cluster munitions. Generally, any weapon that you would not deploy defensively in a conflict should not be in the hands of a defensive force (the citizenry/ militia). I don't think anyone should have nukes, period, but that's a different discussion.
Nitpick: The standing army the founders were worried about was professional state (like government, not like US state vs local vs federal) law enforcement as that was the capacity in which the jackboot of the occupying British army was being used.
Which we also already have, and which our military can become at any given moment with the right legal wrangling (or disregard for legality). It's the concentration of force that is the problem, not the particular structure of the institution.