3 ms·

"Second Amendment zealot" here. I'm optimistic about the future of civil rights in the area of the 2A in upcoming years. There's a lot wrong with your post, b

by bm3719 5y ago

"Second Amendment zealot" here. I'm optimistic about the future of civil rights in the area of the 2A in upcoming years. There's a lot wrong with your post, but I'll just say that the right, like others, is written in a way that is absolute. If we want to restrict it, then we should amend the Constitution accordingly, as intended. Ideally, this should occur whenever a right is taken from us. This would make it clear what we're losing and force those proposing it justify doing so.

throw0101a 5y ago
> There's a lot wrong with your post, but I'll just say that the right, like others, is written in a way that is absolute. Then perhaps governments should be able to regulate it, as in the very first clause of 2A: well regulated. And if one is going to be an Originalist à la Scalia (and there is nothing in the US Constitution that says that this is the (only) valid way to interpret it), then one needs treat the Milita like it was when the 2A was written: akin to the modern day National Guard. So if you wish to bear arms as part of the Militia, I would ask: what is your rank? who is your command officer? what unit are you a part of?
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  You're wrong as the 2A has consistently been assumed to mean the right of states to have militias such as the National Guard as well as individuals would also be able to bear arms. Please show me a single Founding Father that said individuals should not be able to own a gun. the only way to rescind it is with an amendment, and good luck with that since we can't even agree on an amendment to guarantee women equal rights.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > Please show me a single Founding Father that said A corpus analysis of the words "bear" and "arms" separately and together showed: > A search of Brigham Young University’s new online Corpus of Founding Era American English, with more than 95,000 texts and 138 million words, yields 281 instances of the phrase “bear arms.” BYU’s Corpus of Early Modern English, with 40,000 texts and close to 1.3 billion words, shows 1,572 instances of the phrase. Subtracting about 350 duplicate matches, that leaves about 1,500 separate occurrences of “bear arms” in the 17th and 18th centuries, and only a handful don’t refer to war, soldiering or organized, armed action. These databases confirm that the natural meaning of “bear arms” in the framers’ day was military. * https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/antonin-scalia-was-wrong-about-the-meaning-of-bear-arms/2018/05/21/9243ac66-5d11-11e8-b2b8-08a538d9dbd6_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/antonin-scalia-was-w... * https://archive.is/TZAJs https://archive.is/TZAJs Doing a similar search in just the works of the Founding Fathers' works would bear similar results. For a fuller treatment on the subject I will refer you to Michael Waldman's The Second Amendment: A Biography where he goes into this: * https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Second-Amendment/Michael-Waldman/9781476747453 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Second-Amendment/... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Waldman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Waldman See also my other comment about a literature review: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26951279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26951279 If you want to be Originalist† (à la Scalia), then ~200 years of legal history showed collective right being the accepted view; the individual right being present (not even prevalent) for only ~50 years. † Of course nothing in the US Constitution itself says that it has to be interpreted in an Originalist way.

by bm3719 5y ago

throw0101a 5y ago

> There's a lot wrong with your post, but I'll just say that the right, like others, is written in a way that is absolute. Then perhaps governments should be able to regulate it, as in the very first clause of 2A: well regulated. And if one is going to be an Originalist à la Scalia (and there is nothing in the US Constitution that says that this is the (only) valid way to interpret it), then one needs treat the Milita like it was when the 2A was written: akin to the modern day National Guard. So if you wish to bear arms as part of the Militia, I would ask: what is your rank? who is your command officer? what unit are you a part of?

stjohnswarts 5y ago
You're wrong as the 2A has consistently been assumed to mean the right of states to have militias such as the National Guard as well as individuals would also be able to bear arms. Please show me a single Founding Father that said individuals should not be able to own a gun. the only way to rescind it is with an amendment, and good luck with that since we can't even agree on an amendment to guarantee women equal rights.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > Please show me a single Founding Father that said A corpus analysis of the words "bear" and "arms" separately and together showed: > A search of Brigham Young University’s new online Corpus of Founding Era American English, with more than 95,000 texts and 138 million words, yields 281 instances of the phrase “bear arms.” BYU’s Corpus of Early Modern English, with 40,000 texts and close to 1.3 billion words, shows 1,572 instances of the phrase. Subtracting about 350 duplicate matches, that leaves about 1,500 separate occurrences of “bear arms” in the 17th and 18th centuries, and only a handful don’t refer to war, soldiering or organized, armed action. These databases confirm that the natural meaning of “bear arms” in the framers’ day was military. * https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/antonin-scalia-was-wrong-about-the-meaning-of-bear-arms/2018/05/21/9243ac66-5d11-11e8-b2b8-08a538d9dbd6_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/antonin-scalia-was-w... * https://archive.is/TZAJs https://archive.is/TZAJs Doing a similar search in just the works of the Founding Fathers' works would bear similar results. For a fuller treatment on the subject I will refer you to Michael Waldman's The Second Amendment: A Biography where he goes into this: * https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Second-Amendment/Michael-Waldman/9781476747453 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Second-Amendment/... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Waldman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Waldman See also my other comment about a literature review: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26951279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26951279 If you want to be Originalist† (à la Scalia), then ~200 years of legal history showed collective right being the accepted view; the individual right being present (not even prevalent) for only ~50 years. † Of course nothing in the US Constitution itself says that it has to be interpreted in an Originalist way.