This one is really amusing:
Now Jason seems to think we ignore that part of the US Constitution, and of course HE and other gun-banners seem to think they KNOW the true meaning. It means that the Militia is the National Guard, and it should have heavy government laws against the ownership of guns to only those people serving in the National Guard, and anybody else wanting a gun can go pound sand.
Well of course those serving in the National Guard or any other American Armed Force DON’T own their issue guns, and never will, even if they get the Medal of Honor and pony up a lottery ticket’s worth of cash to BUY the weapon that they served with.
Further the National Guard didn’t exist at the time of the US Constitution, and wasn’t formed in its current state until over a century later, and really if any of the people who helped write that Amendment were around, they’d probably hate the idea. The framers didn’t like the idea of “Standing Armies” for the exact reason why we shouldn’t like our modern militarized SWAT teams.
I don’t think they’d really mind our ACTUAL standing armies because unlike SWAT teams they are DEPRIVED of all rights to arms while state-side, hence why the terrorist attack on Ft. Hood was such a blood bath. Everybody who was shot that day was more than capable of killing the rampaging terrorist….well they would be if the tools they were trained with weren’t locked up in armories, or they were allowed access to their personal arms.
Further Jason seems to not understand that there is a thing called “Google”, and he could actually look stuff up.
If Google still had the “I’m feeling Lucky” button it would take you here:
The following are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, and bracket in time the writing of the 2nd amendment:
1709: “If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations.”
1714: “The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the world.”
1812: “The equation of time … is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial.”
1848: “A remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person will blame the Mayor.”
1862: “It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine proceeding.”
1894: “The newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated American embryo city.”
The phrase “well-regulated” was in common use long before 1789, and remained so for a century thereafter. It referred to the property of something being in proper working order. Something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected. Establishing government oversight of the people’s arms was not only not the intent in using the phrase in the 2nd amendment, it was precisely to render the government powerless to do so that the founders wrote it.
Ouch!
Further you don’t need to just hang onto those 27 words, the guys who wrote the Bill of Rights also wrote other stuff. Books, papers, articles, and correspondence where they talked about their ideas of liberty, government, and ownership of individual weapons. These thoughts were shared as they came up with the most succinct writing of the 2nd Amendment.
Even worse for the poor, ignorant Antis are State Constitutions, specifically those here in the East that were written BEFORE the bill of rights.
Like Massachusetts, you know where John Addams lived, and we have Mass Graves of British soldiers that are all nicely marked with plaques:
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. Pt. 1, art. 17 (enacted 1780).
I also really dig on Vermont’s:
That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State — and as standing armies in 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. Ch. I, art. 16 (enacted 1777, ch. I, art. 15).
Yeah, we never gave that little bit a lick of thought, Jason.
What’s your excuse when it comes to the “Shall Not Be Infringed”? Does that part just not count?
Let us look at the words they ignore:
Necessary
Free State
Right
The People
keep AND BEAR
and of course… Shall not be infringed.
Yeah… if it really is about the National Guard (as ahistorical as that is) what does the “Shall not Infringed” mean then?
Is it wrong for a commanding officer to order his troops to arm or disarm?
Is is wrong for a president or governor to order various units to arm or disarm?
How *exactly* would the amendment apply if it merely refereed to people who are issued government owned weapons as part of a government job?
Glenn Reynolds has an interesting article on the subject.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/03/09/second-amendment-militia-guns-military-swat-constitution-column/6230769/
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1. SCOTUS pointed out that, when the federal government is paying the bill (i.e., ANY time those National Guardsmen are getting paid by the US Treasury Department, or even getting points towards retirement and NOT getting paid at all), they aren’t part of the militia anymore — they are part of the federal Armed Forces. The only time they are part of the militia (as a unit) is when the governor calls them up and pays all costs out of solely state funds — like when they get called out for disaster relief or riot control and it isn’t under a federal emergency yet. The case involved the governor of Minnesota suing to keep MN Air National Guard personnel from supporting anticommunist actions in Central America during “weekend” drills. (Actually, aviation units don’t generally do “weekend” drills, it’s more like, “You guys on Tanker 123 come in next month on Wednesday the 12th and Monday the 31st. You’re supporting the Navy off Colombia.”)
2. Even when they are acting as a militia, the National Guard is what the Framers called a “select militia”, which was one of teh ways anti-Federalists claimed the government could disarm the militia — by enacting a select militia, and excluding anyone they didn;t want to be armed. (I.e., exactly what the anti-gun bigots want.) The Federalists responded that, even with a select militia, the whole of the militia was still the general population. If only there was some source of writings contemporaneous to teh Constitutional debate, that could be examined to see what the Framers intended. . . you could call it the Federalist Papers, and the counterarguments could be called the Antifederalist Papers. . . if only such a thing existed. . .