27 ms·

To "bear" means to carry. "You may have this firearm but you cannot carry it in a manner which is fit for purpose anywhere other than your own private property"

• sandworm101 2y ago
  But that would comport with the 2nd's militia concept: guns owned and kept for militia use in times of emergency, not everyday carry.
  • pc86 2y ago
    I'm happy to get into a 2A debate (as funny as it sounds it is a hobby of mine!) but it seems like a tangent for this thread specifically. I'll just say that this definition of "militia" is completely incorrect in the historical context in which it was written. The next thing you'll say is that "well-regulated" means regulated by the government which is also 100% incorrect. Militia is the people - it's everyone, individually. Well-regulated means well-functioning, fit for purpose. In order for individual people to be fit for militia/defensive service, they cannot be deprived of their right to make, purchase, own, use, and/or carry firearms. My favorite quote related to this: "I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people." - George Mason, address to Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788
    • ceejayoz 2y ago
      > I'll just say that this definition of "militia" is completely incorrect in the historical context in which it was written. That's also true for the definition of arms. You can define "militia" as "all the of-age white males" if we get to define "arms" as "muskets". Fair trade!
      • pc86 2y ago
        I'm happy to debate or discuss this in good faith but this isn't a good faith argument. "Arms" meant (means) state-of-the-art, military-level hardware. The muskets that civilians had in their homes were as good or better than what you'd be issued by the burgeoning American military, to the extent that you were issue anything and weren't just expected to bring your own. Throughout all of American history, perhaps with the exception of nuclear arms and vehicles like tanks and submarines, firearms research and development has occurred in private industry and made its way into the military later.
        • ceejayoz 2y ago
          > The muskets that civilians had in their homes were as good or better than what you'd be issued by the burgeoning American military... Probably not cannons and grapeshot, though.
          • pc86 2y ago
            Took me 10 seconds on Google: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/29/joe-biden/joe-bidens-dubious-claim-about-revolutionary-war-c/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jun/29/joe-biden/... But the specifics are irrelevant, the spirit is clear. "The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." - Sam Adams, address to Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
            • ceejayoz 2y ago
              > Took me 10 seconds on Google... Finding an article that says, essentially, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, and then goes on to talk about government licensed privateers - akin to the modern setup of a security guard licensed to carry in a state that doesn't otherwise permit it. Is there evidence outside of that of personal home ownership of cannons? (Let alone of a widespread nature?) Do we think Sam Adams would advocate personal ownership of nuclear bombs, or do we think he'd perhaps see such things as a category slightly different than the muskets of his time?
              • pc86 2y ago
                We can hem and haw and guess about what we think the founders would think, or we can look at what they said and what the historical context of firearms ownership is. We don't have private ownership of nuclear arms now and pointing there is IMO another explicitly bad faith argument, in part because it's clear you don't particularly care what the founders' intentions were because there are thousands of pages of discussions and arguments showing that regular every-day people were allowed to - encouraged to, in cases required to - own weapons on par or better than military armaments of the day. And despite that, my guess is you have a problem with people owning or carrying AR-15s, or with people carrying handguns on them when they go to a restaurant, etc. I'm happy to be proven wrong though! The start of this little digression was private citizens carrying their personally owned handguns outside of their home as is plainly meant by the word "bear" in 2A. So rather than moving the goalposts to Sam Adams's opinion on private ownership of nuclear weapons or whatever other bad faith things you want to bring up, I'd rather focus on that.
      • psunavy03 2y ago
        > You can define "militia" as "all the of-age white males" if we get to define "arms" as "muskets". Fair trade! Ah yes, the argument that was explicitly rejected by the Supreme Court as "bordering on the frivolous." I suppose the First Amendment is also limited to quill pens, parchment, and yelling to passersby from a literal soapbox?
        • ceejayoz 2y ago
          Sure. They also said home-grown marijuana exclusively for in-state personal use in California was "interstate commerce". > I suppose the First Amendment is also limited to quill pens and parchment? The First Amendment, as the Second, was fully intended to have common-sense exceptions. Shit, John Adams himself signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts into law.
          • int_19h 2y ago
            I don't think many people would consider the Alien and Sedition Acts an example of a "common-sense exception" to 1A.
            • ceejayoz 2y ago
              I agree! But one of the more prominent Founding Fathers disagreed! This is why I find "but the Founding Fathers wanted everyone to be able to own an AR-15" uncompelling. It's fairly clear evidence they thought the First was way less comprehensive than we currently interpret it, yet people interpret the Second the opposite way.
              • psunavy03 2y ago
                . . . so two wrongs make a right?
                • ceejayoz 2y ago
                  I'm not sure how you get that from my comment. If one is to cite what the Founding Fathers intended as justification for an absolute individual right to bear arms, one must confront the fact that they clearly didn't consider the fairly simply written First Amendment to be absolute. That points to an attitude of "well obviously we're not gonna be stupid about it" for other amendments introduced at the same time... like the Second. If they felt the Alien and Sedition Acts complied with the First Amendment, I think it's reasonable to believe they'd consider the assault weapons ban to comply with the Second.
    • enragedcacti 2y ago
      George Mason was an anti-federalist arguing his opposition to the Constitution. When he says "They consist now of the whole people" he is referring to the present moment under the Articles of Confederation. He goes on to argue his opposition to the constitution, saying: > If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor; but they may be confined to the lower and middle classes of the people, granting exclusion to the higher classes of the people. If we should ever see that day, the most ignominious punishments and heavy fines may be expected. He very clearly believed that the federal government under the Constitution would have the power to determine who did and did not belong to the Militia which is one of many reasons he voted against ratification. He also clearly believes that the federal government has the task of regulating it given the talk of punishments and fines, though he seems fine with that as long as they are reasonable. That it was ratified in that form makes your referenced quote an argument against your reading of the second amendment.
    • andrewla 2y ago
      That particular quote does not really support the presumption here. In that debate, as with most ratifying debates around the constitution and the bill of rights, the concern is that the federal government not usurp the ability of states to arm their militias. That quote in context [1] clearly is about who the members of the militia are drawn from, not the implicit militia-ness of all citizens. He even states this explicitly later in the same argument: "Under the present government, all ranks of people are subject to militia duty". In the end, they wrote what they wrote and they ratified what they ratified -- "the right of the people" and not the right of the "several states" or the "militia of the several states" as is used elsewhere in the document. So it's a right of the people, period, and "keep and bear" has a plain meaning (Scalia wrote something to the effect of "you cannot interpret 'he filled and kicked the bucket' to mean 'he filled the bucket and died'). Some state constitutions (contemporaneous and known to the authors of the constitution) carved out an explicit self-defense or individual right to arms, but this language was not encoded into the second amendment. Whenever I encounter quotes from the constitutional ratification debates that purport to claim an individual right to keep and bear arms, on closer inspection in context, they are arguing about states vs. federal authority, not an individual right. If you choose to respond by offering other supporting quotes, please give a link to the full context and due consideration of it, because I have yet to see an actual quote that holds up. [1] https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/rc/rat_va_13.htm https://constitution.org/1-Constitution/rc/rat_va_13.htm
    • MattGrommes 2y ago
      I don't understand why if they used the words 'well-regulated militia' that so many pro-gun people argue that what _they actually meant_ was "any random person". They had words for that and they chose the words 'well-regulated militia'.
      • potato3732842 2y ago
        Regulated like pressure regulator, not regulated like the sort government bureaucracy HN idolizes. The latter meaning came later. Basically the same situation as when you read "gay" in a historical context.
        • MattGrommes 2y ago
          Interesting. How does pressure regulator relate to humans? It seems like any random civilian being able to gun down dozens of people is pretty out of regulation.
          • deleted 2y ago
            [deleted]
        • snakeyjake 2y ago
          >Regulated like pressure regulator I've read every single word that Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin ever wrote that survived to be collected into the various volumes of their collected writings. Regulated has always meant "controlled". The pressure regulator schtick sounds like some BS the NRA came up with after snorting some coke through the pile of rubles Putin gave them to poison the minds of Americans. Here's the full text of the Federalist Papers: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1404/1404-h/1404-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1404/1404-h/1404-h.htm "regulated" appears 26 times, often in a military context, and it always means what everyone thinks it means and is never used the way you propose. >Elections in Ireland, till of late, were regulated entirely by the discretion of the crown, and were seldom repeated, except on the accession of a new prince, or some other contingent event. Do you have any historical examples that support your usage of the word?
    • Hikikomori 2y ago
      The 2nd amendment is now written in the blood of your schoolchildren. Responsible gun ownership works, see most of Europe.
  • psunavy03 2y ago
    Except that is not the definition of the Second Amendment according to US Supreme Court case law.
    • enragedcacti 2y ago
      So can we safely assume that in 2007 you were steadfastly in support of the constitutionality of regulating weapons that fall outside of reasonable use in a Militia as in US v. Miller? Or does your complete and total deference to case law only go in one direction?
      • ang_cire 2y ago
        Per Miller: > In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is *not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment*, or that its use *could contribute to the common defense*. If you point to Miller, it becomes clear that military weapons were more acceptable for personal ownership under their interpretation of the 2A than a sawed-off shotgun, which was considered only useful for crimes when the NFA was passed (similar to other "concealable" arms). Consequently, the common refrain that "well-regulated militia" now implies something like the National Guard, would thus also imply that in fact it's more reasonable to privately own a tank or fighter jet than a suppressor. I don't think that most anti-2A advocates really understand that our current legislative limits on gun ownership are about as restrictive as they can be. Amend the 2A if you like (and it probably should be, even if only for clarity), but don't try to amend history. There is no textual interpretation of the 2A that would not allow for private firearm ownership. Every state constitution that directly preceded the Federal US constitution had a section that said some variation of: > "That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the 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." That specific quote came from Pennsylvania's constitution (Article 13), which was a Quaker colony at the time, that was much less friendly to firearms than other states, but even they explicitly spelled out the right to arms for personal defense. Heller (2008) reaffirmed this. That we have the largest standing army on Earth now would be horrifying to the founders, because they knew exactly the kind of Imperialism and Authoritarianism that follows, as opposed to a muster-able militia. As Huey Newton noted: "Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment." > So can we safely assume that in 2007 you were steadfastly in support of the constitutionality of regulating weapons that fall outside of reasonable use in a Militia Yes, absolutely. I don't think that, for instance, anyone should own chemical weapons, or weapons like cluster munitions. Generally, any weapon that you would not deploy defensively in a conflict should not be in the hands of a defensive force (the citizenry/ militia). I don't think anyone should have nukes, period, but that's a different discussion.
  • agensaequivocum 2y ago
    These two threads have many sources showing the individual right was not the prevailing understanding, but that it was taken for granted. https://x.com/2aHistory/status/1712209761171612093 https://x.com/2aHistory/status/1712209761171612093 https://x.com/MorosKostas/status/1645290263299117056 https://x.com/MorosKostas/status/1645290263299117056