The Right To Bear Arms

[whitehall]

Only a radical left wing a-hole would ask if one (or more?) of the Bill of Rights was obsolete.

 

[Lakhota]

The 2nd Amendment is not negotiable...because...

It means whatever SCOTUS says it means.

 

[Lakhota]

The wording of the 2nd Amendment is irrelevant today. It now means whatever SCOTUS says it means.

 

[Lakhota]

There is nothing about the second amendment that is obsolete or even confusing. That people might think it is wrong to keep and be versed in the use of the same weapons as the military infantry don't understand that all citizens are the militia; a back-up support for the defense of our constitution. I would never attempt to overthrow the government unless it was overstepping the limits placed on it by the constitution. Every soldier, agent, politition, and law enforcement officer in the country has taken an oath to serve and protect that constitution. Violating that oath is a crime against this country and worse - against G_d. It should be named an act of treason and prosecuted as such.

The 2nd Amendment is totally obsolete - and SCOTUS has proven that.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

There is nothing about the second amendment that is obsolete or even confusing. That people might think it is wrong to keep and be versed in the use of the same weapons as the military infantry don't understand that all citizens are the militia; a back-up support for the defense of our constitution. I would never attempt to overthrow the government unless it was overstepping the limits placed on it by the constitution. Every soldier, agent, politition, and law enforcement officer in the country has taken an oath to serve and protect that constitution. Violating that oath is a crime against this country and worse - against G_d. It should be named an act of treason and prosecuted as such.

The 2nd Amendment is totally obsolete - and SCOTUS has proven that.

There is no way in hell you could have the right to speak your opinion without the support of a second amendment supporter to be their too defend that right for you.
So shut the fuck up and kiss my feet and be thankful we're still here.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

What can you say about all this? Meeting of minds, the NRA is an embarrassment to reasonable rational gun enthusiast. As I have no guns, but have excellent shooting experience. The language was absolutely developed from a different mindset and technology understanding of that time. Along with no standing army. But from the standpoint of being out in THE back country townships at that time, were dangers just on their own ,during these times I would've felt great comfort knowing that I can keep my guns. I can apply the right to bear arms no matter what during these dangerous periods. But the volatility of small weapons like the assault rifle vs. Today's modern army technology to decimate you. The second amendment is flawed!

Since you say you have no guns your opinion about guns is irrelevant. I suggest that you shut the fuck up.

NOT TRUE. This person has the same rights to their opinions as gun owners!

OH wow a person with no experience with firearms trying to give their opinion about them like you?

 

[Intense]

There is nothing about the second amendment that is obsolete or even confusing. That people might think it is wrong to keep and be versed in the use of the same weapons as the military infantry don't understand that all citizens are the militia; a back-up support for the defense of our constitution. I would never attempt to overthrow the government unless it was overstepping the limits placed on it by the constitution. Every soldier, agent, politition, and law enforcement officer in the country has taken an oath to serve and protect that constitution. Violating that oath is a crime against this country and worse - against G_d. It should be named an act of treason and prosecuted as such.

The 2nd Amendment is totally obsolete - and SCOTUS has proven that.

You could not be more wrong, and a danger to society by imposing your prejudices on others. There is no more important a time for armed Citizenry, than when Civil Rule breaks down, be it Natural Disaster, Civil Unrest, or even the absence of Civil Authority in a crisis or emergency, where people are threatened. Your notions are absurd and place people at risk. Your agenda is centralized control, for better or worse, and removing all perceived obstacles to that end, real or imagined.

 

[editec]

We've now learned that editorialists at the new yorker have no idea of what the second amendment means. No surprise there.

The 2nd Amendment means whatever SCOTUS says it means - and that will continue to change over time...

Yup.

Would that that were the ONLY issue the SCOTUS weighed in on, eh?

Corporations are persons?

Money = FREE SPEECH?!

 

[tjvh]

There is nothing about the second amendment that is obsolete or even confusing. That people might think it is wrong to keep and be versed in the use of the same weapons as the military infantry don't understand that all citizens are the militia; a back-up support for the defense of our constitution. I would never attempt to overthrow the government unless it was overstepping the limits placed on it by the constitution. Every soldier, agent, politition, and law enforcement officer in the country has taken an oath to serve and protect that constitution. Violating that oath is a crime against this country and worse - against G_d. It should be named an act of treason and prosecuted as such.

The 2nd Amendment is totally obsolete - and SCOTUS has proven that.

Obsolete only because it interferes with the liberal utopian agenda. For the rest of us who feel like protecting our families, property and homes... Not so much.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

There is nothing about the second amendment that is obsolete or even confusing. That people might think it is wrong to keep and be versed in the use of the same weapons as the military infantry don't understand that all citizens are the militia; a back-up support for the defense of our constitution. I would never attempt to overthrow the government unless it was overstepping the limits placed on it by the constitution. Every soldier, agent, politition, and law enforcement officer in the country has taken an oath to serve and protect that constitution. Violating that oath is a crime against this country and worse - against G_d. It should be named an act of treason and prosecuted as such.

The 2nd Amendment is totally obsolete - and SCOTUS has proven that.

There is no way in hell you could have the right to speak your opinion without the support of a second amendment supporter to be their too defend that right for you.
So shut the fuck up and kiss my feet and be thankful we're still here.

Lakhota I must correct myself I was wrong for what I said. You have the right to speak your opinion because of supporters of the second amendment. As a supporter of the second amendment I have no right to try and restrict your right to free speech by telling you too shut the fuck up.

 

[Care4all]

By Jeffrey Toobin

Does the Second Amendment prevent Congress from passing gun-control laws? The question, which is suddenly pressing, in light of the reaction to the school massacre in Newtown, is rooted in politics as much as law.

For more than a hundred years, the answer was clear, even if the words of the amendment itself were not. The text of the amendment is divided into two clauses and is, as a whole, ungrammatical: “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 courts had found that the first part, the “militia clause,” trumped the second part, the “bear arms” clause. In other words, according to the Supreme Court, and the lower courts as well, the amendment conferred on state militias a right to bear arms—but did not give individuals a right to own or carry a weapon.

Enter the modern National Rifle Association. Before the nineteen-seventies, the N.R.A. had been devoted mostly to non-political issues, like gun safety. But a coup d’état at the group’s annual convention in 1977 brought a group of committed political conservatives to power—as part of the leading edge of the new, more rightward-leaning Republican Party. (Jill Lepore recounted this history in a recent piece for The New Yorker.) The new group pushed for a novel interpretation of the Second Amendment, one that gave individuals, not just militias, the right to bear arms. It was an uphill struggle. At first, their views were widely scorned. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, who was no liberal, mocked the individual-rights theory of the amendment as “a fraud.”

But the N.R.A. kept pushing—and there’s a lesson here. Conservatives often embrace “originalism,” the idea that the meaning of the Constitution was fixed when it was ratified, in 1787. They mock the so-called liberal idea of a “living” constitution, whose meaning changes with the values of the country at large. But there is no better example of the living Constitution than the conservative re-casting of the Second Amendment in the last few decades of the twentieth century. (Reva Siegel, of Yale Law School, elaborates on this point in a brilliant article.)

The re-interpretation of the Second Amendment was an elaborate and brilliantly executed political operation, inside and outside of government. Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 brought a gun-rights enthusiast to the White House. At the same time, Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, became chairman of an important subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he commissioned a report that claimed to find “clear—and long lost—proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms.” The N.R.A. began commissioning academic studies aimed at proving the same conclusion. An outré constitutional theory, rejected even by the establishment of the Republican Party, evolved, through brute political force, into the conservative conventional wisdom.

And so, eventually, this theory became the law of the land. In District of Columbia v. Heller, decided in 2008, the Supreme Court embraced the individual-rights view of the Second Amendment.

More: So You Think You Know the Second Amendment? : The New Yorker

Gotta love the way racists ignored the 14th Amendment to justify gun control. Ever wonder why progressive Democrats want to firce anyone who gets a gun to have an ID, yet refuses to require an ID for voting?

you are LYING....

Democrats or liberals on the whole DO NOT REFUSE voter ID laws or the need to present id's for voting.....many democratic states have voter id laws where you have to present identification with the voter's address and name on it, like a recent utility bill, a recent paycheck, and /or a social security card, worker's id badges and a number of identification items....

what they oppose is the government issued pictured identification crap that the right wing authoritarians insist upon, which many seniors and citizens do not have....and making these citizens who do not drive, put through a more difficult process to vote than those who drive and have a gvt issued pictured id already in hand.

BIG DIFFERENCE young man....

 

[Care4all]

The Secret History of Guns

The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight.

The Secret History of Guns - Adam Winkler - The Atlantic

 

[Ernie S.]

There is nothing about the second amendment that is obsolete or even confusing. That people might think it is wrong to keep and be versed in the use of the same weapons as the military infantry don't understand that all citizens are the militia; a back-up support for the defense of our constitution. I would never attempt to overthrow the government unless it was overstepping the limits placed on it by the constitution. Every soldier, agent, politition, and law enforcement officer in the country has taken an oath to serve and protect that constitution. Violating that oath is a crime against this country and worse - against G_d. It should be named an act of treason and prosecuted as such.

The 2nd Amendment is totally obsolete - and SCOTUS has proven that.

Talking out your ass again? Is the first amendment obsolete? They were enacted the same day. 5th? It's inconvenient that defendants can't be compelled to testify against themselves so we'll just declare the language obsolete and beat black kids until they confess, OK?

 

[editec]

There is nothing about the second amendment that is obsolete or even confusing. That people might think it is wrong to keep and be versed in the use of the same weapons as the military infantry don't understand that all citizens are the militia; a back-up support for the defense of our constitution. I would never attempt to overthrow the government unless it was overstepping the limits placed on it by the constitution. Every soldier, agent, politition, and law enforcement officer in the country has taken an oath to serve and protect that constitution. Violating that oath is a crime against this country and worse - against G_d. It should be named an act of treason and prosecuted as such.

The 2nd Amendment is totally obsolete - and SCOTUS has proven that.

There is no way in hell you could have the right to speak your opinion without the support of a second amendment supporter to be their too defend that right for you.
So shut the fuck up and kiss my feet and be thankful we're still here.

What hubris.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

The 2nd Amendment is totally obsolete - and SCOTUS has proven that.

There is no way in hell you could have the right to speak your opinion without the support of a second amendment supporter to be their too defend that right for you.
So shut the fuck up and kiss my feet and be thankful we're still here.

What hubris.

Really? I don't think so.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

The 2nd Amendment is not negotiable...because...

It means whatever SCOTUS says it means.

You have the right to speak your opinion because of people who support the second amendment. Be respectful of my right and I'll do the same for you.

 

[billyerock1991]

I don't believe the second amendment is obsolete ... like everything in the constitution its always up for change, if the majority wants it, and its constitutional ... our founding fathers never thought that they would have a musket that would fire 100 rounds a minute ... they clearly felt that you as a citizen should have the right to defend yourself ... here's where we have the problem ... the constitution says you have a right to defend your self to what point ... where is the cut off point ... I don't believe that a citizen should have any weapon that fire 100 round a minute ... I feel a rifle or a hand gun is suffisant for any citizen to defend themselves ... I as a far left, tree hugging, leftie liberal, feel you have a right to have a gun ... but not a gun that fires 100, 50, 30, 25 bullets an minute

 

[billyerock1991]

The 2nd Amendment is nothing more than a fossil of days long past.

Perhaps you'd prefer to adopt the Marxist Constitution? How about China's Constitution and Bill of Rights? Would you be able to sleep better under those conditions?

Shitting bull smiles at the thought, of adopting the Marxist Constitution. Yes I think shitting bull would love that

if it were up to me, there wouldn't be any guns allowed in the confines of the united states ... anyone caught with one will receive life in prison ... that's my feelings about guns ... that doesn't make me a commie a socialist or a Marxist ... it makes me a person who dislikes guns ... now for reality ... I feel if you want to own a gun, fine .... but not a gun the fires 100, 50, 30, 25, 11, rounds a minute .. thats unexceptable in my opinion

 

[Wry Catcher]

Not confusing at all if you know how to read.

Obviously you read at a 'concrete' level. Suggesting clarity in the Second is ridiculous. Doing so when one may easily infer from Article I, sec 8 and clause(s) 14, 15 and 16 that a militia is a government organization and its members are quasi government employees under the direction of officers appointed by the State is absurd.

The inference that guns should be freely exchanged in a market economy is absurd on its face and is even recognized by Plato in The Republic on the moral dilemma of returing a weapon to a madman.

The Second is not sacrosanct, as NRA spokesperson LaPierre wants you to believe, nor is The First.

 

[GuyPinestra]

Perhaps you'd prefer to adopt the Marxist Constitution? How about China's Constitution and Bill of Rights? Would you be able to sleep better under those conditions?

Shitting bull smiles at the thought, of adopting the Marxist Constitution. Yes I think shitting bull would love that

if it were up to me, there wouldn't be any guns allowed in the confines of the united states ... anyone caught with one will receive life in prison ... that's my feelings about guns ... that doesn't make me a commie a socialist or a Marxist ... it makes me a person who dislikes guns ... now for reality ... I feel if you want to own a gun, fine .... but not a gun the fires 100, 50, 30, 25, 11, rounds a minute .. thats unexceptable in my opinion

Thank God it isn't up to you!