D.C handgun ban violates 2nd amendment

[Flybrick]

I do not understand the rabid mentality of it being a right to possess a lethal weapon.

Leaving the 'gun' portion out of my point, I believe, and believe the framers also did, that the government doesn't give any rights to citizens.

Citizens give the rights to the government to administer on their, the citizens, behalf.



I'm a gun owner but the concept applies, or should, to every part of US life, in my opinion.

[wintergreen48]

2. When writing an introductory clause to a clause granting a right in a constitution, a less important rationale for that right should be cited, rather than a more important rationale.

Therefore: A well-regulated militia, etc.

Premise 2 flies in the face of common sense, English composition, and, I would think, the drafters' of the Constitution inclination, everywhere else in the Constitution, to keep the rights granted as broad as possible.

The Constitution nowhere else gives a reason for granting a right; why in this case give a reason, unless the reason is the reason?

There's your problem: you assume that the Constitution 'grants rights,' and you are attempting to parse the 2nd Amendment very narrowly so as to limit the scope of the 'right' that is 'granted.' But in fact the Constitution does not grant any 'rights' at all, it assumes that all rights already exist, and people are pretty much free to do 'whatever,' so that what the Constitution does is to state the very narrow grounds/reasons/conditions in which the government my infringe upon those wide-ranging, pre-existing rights.

[TheCalvinator24]

I'm sure you know this better than I do, so I answer with some trepidation.

"Militia" at the time was regular guys who, when some emergency arose, would grab their guns and defend the locality. They were not uniformed soldiers in the employ of the state.

"Militia" means something different today- the National Guard, say.

The first question is, was the 2nd A. intended to protect the right to bear arms or guarantee there was a state militia? At the time, those two questions were one question. (People bearing arms = militia) That is not the case anymore.

The second question is, who cares? If you parse the 2nd A. with a prefatory clause, not an operative clause, it doesn't matter what the prefatory clause is, so the meaning of militia doesn't matter..

It would matter what the prefatory clause is because the operative clause could not be read to be contradictory to the prefatory clause.

And because the term "militia" meant all able-bodied men capable of fighting in defence of their state, there is no contradiction between the use of Militia in the prefatory and the reading of the right as an individual right.

The board jammed up, so this is the second time I'm typing this. Bear with me.

Militias in the 1700s were individuals bearing arms. That's why the prefatory clause couldn't contradict the operative clause at the time of the drafting of the Constitution.

Nowadays militias are something other than that- like the National Guard- at least some of the time.

It is possible to have a state militia without private individuals bearing arms. The stated goal of the prefatory clause can be met without the action of the operative clause, that is, we can have a state militia without the right to bear arms.

So, now, can we assume that the right to bear arms was granted simply to allow individuals to bear arms, even though the stated purpose was to maintain a militia?

And I call it an assumption because both the language and the circumstances have changed since the 1700s.

Scalia acknowledges this in his parsing of the word "arms," to refute the argument that what's being allowed by the Constitution are only whatever were "arms" in the 1700's, just muskets, say.

Trouble is, if you apply that argument to "arms," then you'd had better be prepared to apply it to "militia," and if you do that, you're back where you started.

It matters not how times have changed. If the right at the time of drafting was designed to protect the individual ownership of firearms, then that is what it is designed to do. If we don't think that right is necessary anymore, the remedy is to AMEND THE CONSTITUTION, not legislate it away from the bench.

[TheCalvinator24]

Scalia acknowledges this in his parsing of the word "arms," to refute the argument that what's being allowed by the Constitution are only whatever were "arms" in the 1700's, just muskets, say.

Trouble is, if you apply that argument to "arms," then you'd had better be prepared to apply it to "militia," and if you do that, you're back where you started.

The term "arms" still means the same thing today as it did then, so your attempt at analogy fails. The fact that there are more, "scarier" types of arms now than then is irrelevant.