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The way you're talking about the second amendment I expect that you don't want the same interpretation applied to the first amendment the Fourth amendment or th
by elmerfud 2y ago
The way you're talking about the second amendment I expect that you don't want the same interpretation applied to the first amendment the Fourth amendment or the 5th amendment. Because if that was the case then it simply the federal government is the ones that cannot compel you to be a witness against yourself or the federal government cannot deprive you of your security of property or papers and the federal government is the one that cannot limit your freedom of speech but the state can do all of those things at will without regard to any federal powers. If that's your official position please state that clearly because the supreme Court has said that the second amendment is not a second class freedom compared to the others. And it was never the intention for it to be by the founders.
- temporarely 2y agoThank you.
- skissane 2y ago> The way you're talking about the second amendment I expect that you don't want the same interpretation applied to the first amendment the Fourth amendment or the 5th amendment. No, I'm saying that a consistent originalist interpretation would be that the Bill of Rights should not be applied to the States, absent a constitutional amendment clearly stating that, and understood as stating that at the time it was adopted. The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, it wasn't interpreted as applying the 1st to the states until 1925 – over 50 years later. If people wanted states to be bound by the 1st Amendment – or the 2nd or the 4th or the 5th – they should have passed a constitutional amendment explicitly saying so, not relied on SCOTUS to de facto amend it by interpreting the 14th as saying something that few thought it meant at the time it was adopted.
- beaglesss 2y ago[flagged]
- skissane 2y agoI disagree: I think the reference to "arms" was originally understood as applying primarily to small arms, not artillery. I think, in the first few decades of the 2nd Amendment being in force, federal restrictions on purely private ownership of artillery – and especially large artillery – would likely have been upheld, while federal restrictions on purely private ownership of small arms would almost surely have been struck down. While people at the time could not have foreseen nuclear weapons, they are more like large artillery than small arms, so I think federal restrictions on purely private ownership of them would likely have been upheld even given the original meaning of the 2nd Amendment. (By "purely private", I mean to exclude military units organised by state or local governments.)
- beaglesss 2y agoDude you could buy a cannon at the founding (and still can no background check).
- skissane 2y agoThe point is, if the federal government had tried to restrict private ownership of certain kinds of artillery in the early 19th century, would it have been held to have violated the 2nd? Nobody can say for sure, because the issue (to my knowledge) never came up – but if it did, I expect SCOTUS would have drawn a legal distinction between small arms commonly used for infantry, hunting and personal self-defense, versus larger scale military weapons. Such a distinction can be defended on originalist grounds, since small arms was the primary thing the people who voted for the 2nd were thinking about. It actually raises an interesting historical question – to which I don't know the answer – in the debates on the proposal and ratification of the 2nd, was the status of larger scale weapons under it ever raised?
- thinkmassive 2y agoYou could own a fleet of ships all outfitted with many cannons
- 2y ago