Daryl Hunt
Your Worst Nightmare
- Banned
- #7,201
By Peter Weber
That's the opinion of Rupert Murdoch's conservative New York Post. And it's not as far-fetched as it may seem.
Well, let's read the text of the Second Amendment, says Jeffrey Sachs at The Huffington Post:
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.
It's astonishingly clear that "the Second Amendment is a relic of the founding era more than two centuries ago," and "its purpose is long past."
As Justice John Paul Stevens argues persuasively, the amendment should not block the ability of society to keep itself safe through gun control legislation. That was never its intent. This amendment was about militias in the 1790s, and the fear of the anti-federalists of a federal army. Since that issue is long moot, we need not be governed in our national life by doctrines on now-extinct militias from the 18th century.
"Fair-minded readers have to acknowledge that the text is ambiguous," says Cass Sunstein at Bloomberg View. Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion in Heller, was laying out his interpretation of a "genuinely difficult" legal question, and "I am not saying that the court was wrong." More to the point: Right or wrong, obsolete or relevant, the Second Amendment essentially means what five justices on the Supreme Court say it means. So "we should respect the fact that the individual right to have guns has been established," but even the pro-gun interpretation laid out by Scalia explicitly allows for banning the kinds of weapons the shooter used to murder 20 first-graders. The real problem is in the political arena, where "opponents of gun control, armed with both organization and money, have been invoking the Second Amendment far more recklessly," using "wild and unsupportable claims about the meaning of the Constitution" to shut down debate on what sort of regulations might save lives.
More: Is the Second Amendment obsolete? - The Week
I'm not a legal expert or a credentialed constitutional scholar. However, regardless of how you want to spin the Bill of Rights to justify your extremist position, the FACT is that having millions of law abiders walking around with handguns and long guns is great as it leads to more order. Bad actors know not to try and stick someone up, because their octogenarian victim might turn the tables on them and give them an express ticket to Judgment Day.
Let's take a look at the 2nd amendment line by line.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
This means that the well regulated Militia is formed by the state to guard against the forming of the tyranny of the Federal Government. The problem with this is, as late as 1898, Governors were using their Organized Militia as bully boys to support their Rich Cronies business ventures. In 1898, that happened here. And throughout the history this was done over and over. The intent was good but the application was often times not. But that doesn't change a thing. The intent was the same for the original formation. But due to the Spanish American War, the first part of the National Guard Act was passed but no one really took it seriously. It was tightened up a bit more in 1908. But due to the War Department finally coming to the realization that the original 75,000 strong Army could no longer apply ever again, the law of the National Guard Act of 1917 was passed and it still stands today. All of a sudden, the States had no Organized Militia anymore. And even if they did form a separate State Militia (the name was changed to SDF to get around the new Militia laws) the State could not afford to equip and train their SDF people to the level that the Feds could the National Guard or the Regulars. The intent of the first line of the second amendment became lost. The Feds did take control of it but it was gleefully relinquished by each and every state. The States could have blocked it just by standing together. But with WWI coming on the States were scared shitless. The clause was telling the Feds what they could not do but the States allowed it to happen anyway.
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
People break these two apart. We shouldn't. It's really all one thought. The Rights of the People (or the State) to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed. The Federals cannot infringe on the rights of the State when it comes to firearms. Yes, according to this even the 1934 Firearms Act might be deemed illegal unless it's done under the guise of Public Safety and not under Gun Control which is something entirely different. That should be up for debate at state levels, not Federal Levels. I doubt if the Feds could legally do anything to a State that decides to disregard the 1934 Firearms act in the Supreme Court or any Federal Court unless they can prove that the original intent of the Firearms act was Public Safety. It might be an interesting case. Certainly much more deserving than what is usually tried to argue lately on firearms. The second half of the 2nd amendment is telling the Feds that they cannot infringe on the States Firearms Rights and this includes all people in the State.
While the first half is out of date, the second half is not and stands as it is written. And it must be taken in it's intended purpose by our Founding Fathers and the Bill of Rights.