2A words

When I was a history major at college, I had a chance to read a book on the Constitution written well after the Civil War… As to the 2nd Amendment, it stated that the 2nd Amendment had fallen by the wayside, “owing to the fact that the people now trust the government”… The implication then was that the 2nd Amendment was always about a citizens militia ready to stand against an oppressive government…

I think an armed government wary citizen militia was the origin intent…

 

Agreed. A well regulated armed militia to protect the freedom of the state AND the unencumbered right of the citizens of said state to keep and bear arms. Or broken down to present: Our state police to protect the state, and people like me with enough pew pews to mop up anything that gets missed.

 

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, unconnected with service in a militia, for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home, and that the District of Columbia's handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" violated this guarantee.[1] It also stated that the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that guns and gun ownership would continue to be regulated. It was the first Supreme Court case to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense or whether the right was intended for state militias.[2]

 

SCOTUS rulings,,, often made by left leaning or right leaning courts for political reasons, are eventually overturned by courts leaning in the opposite direction… They are rulings, and the are seen as “the law” for a time, but they are only opinions, and opinions change…

 

A well regulated Militia (being necessary to the security of a free State) and the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I have no degree in English, but this is the way I'd personally reword the sentence. I may be wrong.

 

There is no “and” in the 2A… It simply says the government can’t forbid the people the right to an armed well regulated citizen militia…

 

A little history about state militia.


https://www.nationalguard.mil/about-the-guard/how-we-began/


Oregon's militia, if I am reading this correctly all citizens of oregon to this day ages 18-45 are in the militia whether they like it or not, or they should be fined.


The organic laws laid out plans for a militia of a battalion of mounted riflemen commanded by an officer with the rank of major, with annual inspections.[6] Every male settler between 16 and 60 who wanted to be "considered a citizen" had to be a part of the military; failure to do so would incur fines.[6] (This remains so under modern Oregon law, though now both sexes are included, and the age range is only 18 to 45.)[43] Under the first Organic Laws, power to call out the militia was vested in the Executive Committee, though any officer of the militia could also call them out in times of insurrection or invasion.[6]

 

This is a part of a paragraph from the federalist paper #46 by Madison

Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops.

 

The 2A is about freedom. If you are trying to break the words down, then you don't fully understand that basic concept.

 

why not review the over 1400+ cases against the 2A that have been adjudicated at the state and federal level where courts have interpreted the 2A to be the literal translation as it was written - "i" have a right to keep and bear arms in my home". that's it in a nutshell. combined with the 14th amendment, as the argument against 2A always seems to go, the 14A guarantees an individual's rights to a laundry list of individual rights.

you don't need an english teacher to tell you what the 2A means, you just need reading comprehension remediation . most JD's are fairly well fluent in the English language so i'm confident the judges and the lawyers continue to interpret the Bill of Rights correctly. yours is a specious argument.

 

It's pretty clear when referencing The Federalist letters the US military was never intended to have more power than the states militia.

The Anti Federalists wanted no federally controlled military at all, citing the fall of the Roman and British empires.

Joe Biden openly mocks the founding fathers vision of this country with his, "you'd need F15s and some nukes to take on the government" .

 

Read more, you will understand their language. I have found terms like former and latter were used a lot. The federalist letters were written then printed in the newspaper, there are lots of capitalizations after commas in those. Without looking at the original document sent to newspaper there is no way of knowing what grammatical errors are the fault of the writer or the newspaper. Also keep in mind what they were writing with, those pens aren't alway going to make perfect periods and commas.

Edit
I think part of what you are not getting is who the militia is, it's you. It's anyone who can take up arms to defend this country. Keep in mind the people who wrote the constitution were still alive when it was ratified. I am pretty sure if ordinary citizens weren't supposed to be armed someone would have taken their guns back then. People much smarter than you and I have been studying this document since it was written, if there was a loophole in the second amendment, someone would have found it by now.

 

I think the comma placement is a interesting point. With modern writing conventions it would seem that the sentence has two explanatory statements. This interpretation would lead one to question whether the statement about the right to bear arms is explaining what a free state is or if it goes with the shall not be infringed part.

I looked at the other amendments to look at their writing style and also to see where else they used the word ''right''. What it appears like to me is they wrote differently and presumably thought in different patterns than we do currently. They used commas to delineate smaller concepts that make up the big idea of the sentence. They put commas where we would not in many cases.

Also it seems like when they refer to anything as a right they are implying it to be a natural right as opposed to one granted by government.

Basically it seems to me that the most obvious take aways from reading an amendment is the right interpretation. They were not meant to be riddles. Applying modern grammatical conventions only confuses the matter.

My take on 2a is it grants the right to form militias and acknowledges right to bear arms as a natural right.

 

As Gumby points out, anyone who is confused over the wording of the 2A need only read what else the founding fathers said on the matter.
They wrote about it more than enough to make their position very clear.
Everyone has the right to bear arms. Period end of statement. No limitations intended.
And the other part is not just stating that people have the right to create militias, but actively encouraging their formation. The militia could have many purposes, but the most essential was that it could stand against the federal govt.

The founding fathers also were more afraid of democracy than they were a dictatorship. We were very deliberately created as a republic. The founding fathers would be very disappointed to see what we've done with their beautiful creation.

 

Mkay good luck with that. You have a long road to convince a lot of people of your supposed "gotcha" thoughts. You have it exactly backwards, it's pretty amazing you don't understand these basic things, but then again we are living on the precipice of destruction so what amazes me gets less and less surprising.

Let us know how it goes internet warrior.

 

Agreed, its a disgrace how far we have destroyed their creation. Pathetic really. Perhaps we deserve to just start over.

 

The more I study this subject the more I realize how unconstitutional Oregon's measure 114 is. It would be like needing to buy a permit to practice religion, or needing to buy a permit to have free speech, or needing to buy a permit to vote.

Restrictions on any type of firearms, is like saying you have freedom of religion, as long as its not Muslim, or Hindi.