4 ms·

"bare arms" The Constitution, afaik, is silent on the matter of shirt sleeves. However, a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free St

"bare arms" The Constitution, afaik, is silent on the matter of shirt sleeves. However, a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. The crime is that the States have given up on forming those well-regulated militias and that we have a continuous standing army in a Military-Industrial-Congressional complex whose corruption boggles the mind.

pdonis 3y ago
> the States have given up on forming those well-regulated militias The States claim that state-run National Guard units are the "well-regulated militias". Their claim is wrong, but not for the reason you imply. The reason their claim is wrong is that the 2nd Amendment is about the right of the people to keep and bear arms to resist a tyrannical government--any tyrannical government: not just the Federal government, but the State governments as well. If the States can organize a militia and then say individual citizens no longer have the right to keep and bear arms outside that organized militia, that defeats the purpose of the 2nd Amendment just as much as the Federal government having a standing army and claiming it's an organized militia.
- RajT88 3y ago
  That's actually incorrect. The second amendment is entirely about state militias, and anyone claiming it's related to resisting a tyrannical government hasn't actually read the documents they claim to have read. Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution outlines militias as a duty of congress, and the function of the militias (note: resisting a tyrannical government is not listed!) Article II, Section 2 defines the President as the commander in chief of the military and militias. The above is what the second amendment is making reference to. There are following acts of congress that clarify who gets to be in a militia: the militia acts of 1792, 1795, 1862 and 1903. These allow for people of different races and genders to join militias. The militia act of 1903 clarifies that there are different types of state militias: formal and informal. Formal is things like the National Guard, Texas Rangers, etc. Informal is - in times of emergency, the state can basically just round up a posse for the outlined purposes in Article 1, Section 8. The second amendment does guarantee personal firearm ownership under this possibility, connected to possible service in an informal militia. You're welcome.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    The problem with this perspective is that many states have some equivalent of the Second Amendment in their state constitution, including some of the original states - and in many cases those explicitly spell out RKBA as an individual right. I think it's reasonable to at least wonder why the same people who wrote those state constitutions would, when discussing the federal one, not have the same thing in mind when authoring 2A.
    - RajT88 3y ago
      That's not a problem of this perspective, that's an entirely separate issue: The still evolving debate between what takes precedence: Federal powers or State powers? Sometimes state, sometimes federal. This is why all parties are trying to pack the courts with ideologues of various leanings.
      - int_19h 3y ago
        You misunderstand my point. It's not about which constitution takes priority (the answer here is actually very simple: for federal laws, only federal constitution applies; for state laws, the state constitution additionally applies). The point is that the original US Constitution, as well as the Bill of Rights, was worked on and ratified by the same people who worked on their states' constitutions at that time, and you can, in general, see very clear parallels between state and federal constitutions when it comes to rights. So, given that at least some state constitutions from that same period explicitly spell out individual right to keep and bear arms, I find it dubious that it was not one of the considerations when they adopted the same right on the federal level. The fact that the verbiage of 2A cites militia as a justification implies that this is the one they thought most important, but not that there weren't any others; and, of course, the verbiage doesn't actually condition RKBA on militia membership in plain reading. There are also letters and other discussions from that time that, on the whole, make it fairly clear that militia was understood as including everyone (and not just those states might choose to designate as such), and that the right was thus really meant to be universal.

pdonis 3y ago

> the States have given up on forming those well-regulated militias The States claim that state-run National Guard units are the "well-regulated militias". Their claim is wrong, but not for the reason you imply. The reason their claim is wrong is that the 2nd Amendment is about the right of the people to keep and bear arms to resist a tyrannical government--any tyrannical government: not just the Federal government, but the State governments as well. If the States can organize a militia and then say individual citizens no longer have the right to keep and bear arms outside that organized militia, that defeats the purpose of the 2nd Amendment just as much as the Federal government having a standing army and claiming it's an organized militia.

RajT88 3y ago
That's actually incorrect. The second amendment is entirely about state militias, and anyone claiming it's related to resisting a tyrannical government hasn't actually read the documents they claim to have read. Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution outlines militias as a duty of congress, and the function of the militias (note: resisting a tyrannical government is not listed!) Article II, Section 2 defines the President as the commander in chief of the military and militias. The above is what the second amendment is making reference to. There are following acts of congress that clarify who gets to be in a militia: the militia acts of 1792, 1795, 1862 and 1903. These allow for people of different races and genders to join militias. The militia act of 1903 clarifies that there are different types of state militias: formal and informal. Formal is things like the National Guard, Texas Rangers, etc. Informal is - in times of emergency, the state can basically just round up a posse for the outlined purposes in Article 1, Section 8. The second amendment does guarantee personal firearm ownership under this possibility, connected to possible service in an informal militia. You're welcome.
- int_19h 3y ago
  The problem with this perspective is that many states have some equivalent of the Second Amendment in their state constitution, including some of the original states - and in many cases those explicitly spell out RKBA as an individual right. I think it's reasonable to at least wonder why the same people who wrote those state constitutions would, when discussing the federal one, not have the same thing in mind when authoring 2A.
  - RajT88 3y ago
    That's not a problem of this perspective, that's an entirely separate issue: The still evolving debate between what takes precedence: Federal powers or State powers? Sometimes state, sometimes federal. This is why all parties are trying to pack the courts with ideologues of various leanings.
    - int_19h 3y ago
      You misunderstand my point. It's not about which constitution takes priority (the answer here is actually very simple: for federal laws, only federal constitution applies; for state laws, the state constitution additionally applies). The point is that the original US Constitution, as well as the Bill of Rights, was worked on and ratified by the same people who worked on their states' constitutions at that time, and you can, in general, see very clear parallels between state and federal constitutions when it comes to rights. So, given that at least some state constitutions from that same period explicitly spell out individual right to keep and bear arms, I find it dubious that it was not one of the considerations when they adopted the same right on the federal level. The fact that the verbiage of 2A cites militia as a justification implies that this is the one they thought most important, but not that there weren't any others; and, of course, the verbiage doesn't actually condition RKBA on militia membership in plain reading. There are also letters and other discussions from that time that, on the whole, make it fairly clear that militia was understood as including everyone (and not just those states might choose to designate as such), and that the right was thus really meant to be universal.