Update: High School AP History Book Rewrites 2nd Amendment

[FA_Q2]

"Misrepresents", huh? Let's have a look...

"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."

People/person; which word is singular and which is plural (collective)?

Where does it say anything about the right of "the person" or the right of "a citizen"? Where's the word "individual"? Where's the word "personal"?

This isn't rocket science. It's English.

That’s right it is English and it should be easy as hell to understand but here you are twisting the words to make them refer to a collective right when that is blatantly false. The reference to people in no way means that right is collective in nature. It simply states that all people have that right. Simple English.


Now, the reality here is that simply does not matter. You can debate what you want the right to be until you turn blue in the face and keel over but it is not the job of the school or the texts that are used in it to teach YOUR asinine interpretation of the constitution no matter how correct you might demand that you are. The school teaches what IS, not what you want. The constitutional right that the second protects has been ruled on by the court and the SCOTUS had determined that you are wrong. I understand that does not mean we cannot debate that fact. Nor does it mean the court was correct – they have been wrong before. What it DOES mean though is that the schools have no right whatsoever to claim that the second does not protect an individual right to bear arms.


No matter how you slice it – the text is flat out wrong and defending that is nothing more than political hackery in attempting to teach your political slant on things rather than what is.

I didn't post about political slants. I posted about how English works. Stop overanalyzing.

Then why did you post that on a textbook that is clearly incorrect.

Your supposition was that the second is collective and not personal as the textbook states. That supposition is flat out wrong. Not only does it require that you ignore the language and focus on a single word that you are misusing in the sentence (people) as I have already pointed out but it also requires that you completely ignore the fact that the SCOTUS has already ruled on that supposition and found it lacking.

Again, it is political slant to defend a textbook that is CLEARLY incorrect. Are you really trying to state that the text is correct? That would require willful ignorance of what the SCOTUS has ruled and I think that you are well aware of the current interpretation of the second. It is not the job of the school to teach a political slant on the constitution which is EXACTLY what that text is doing – reinterpreting current second amendment rights with a left interpretation that is NOT current law.

 

[PixieStix]

I am so glad my son is out of school....

But America's kids are. And they will be government workers soon.

 

[FA_Q2]

Excuse me? I read what was posted, it is very clearly an abomination and a total misrepresentation of what the 2d Amendment states. I am not stupid, nor uneducated.

Uh, I have a question...
If this textbook is so "clearly" an "abomination" and "total misrepresentation" ------ how is it that no one can demonstrate that?

I mean, it really is necessary to come up with something more than ipse dixit...

It has ALREADY been established and you are simply ignoring that reality.
FACT: the second protects an individual right that is not connected with service in a militia as established by the SCOTUS

FACT: the statement in the text CLEARLY states that the right to bear arms IS connected to militia service.

FACT: the second amendment in the text is a total misinterpretation. That is not only been established in this thread BUT it is also blatantly obvious.

 

[Pogo]

That’s right it is English and it should be easy as hell to understand but here you are twisting the words to make them refer to a collective right when that is blatantly false. The reference to people in no way means that right is collective in nature. It simply states that all people have that right. Simple English.


Now, the reality here is that simply does not matter. You can debate what you want the right to be until you turn blue in the face and keel over but it is not the job of the school or the texts that are used in it to teach YOUR asinine interpretation of the constitution no matter how correct you might demand that you are. The school teaches what IS, not what you want. The constitutional right that the second protects has been ruled on by the court and the SCOTUS had determined that you are wrong. I understand that does not mean we cannot debate that fact. Nor does it mean the court was correct – they have been wrong before. What it DOES mean though is that the schools have no right whatsoever to claim that the second does not protect an individual right to bear arms.


No matter how you slice it – the text is flat out wrong and defending that is nothing more than political hackery in attempting to teach your political slant on things rather than what is.

I didn't post about political slants. I posted about how English works. Stop overanalyzing.

Then why did you post that on a textbook that is clearly incorrect.

Your supposition was that the second is collective and not personal as the textbook states. That supposition is flat out wrong. Not only does it require that you ignore the language and focus on a single word that you are misusing in the sentence (people) as I have already pointed out but it also requires that you completely ignore the fact that the SCOTUS has already ruled on that supposition and found it lacking.

Right, it does. And I do.
The job of SCOTUS is to interpret the Constitution; I have to defer to them on that. I will not defer to them, or anyone else, on what English words mean.

Again, it is political slant to defend a textbook that is CLEARLY incorrect. Are you really trying to state that the text is correct? That would require willful ignorance of what the SCOTUS has ruled and I think that you are well aware of the current interpretation of the second. It is not the job of the school to teach a political slant on the constitution which is EXACTLY what that text is doing – reinterpreting current second amendment rights with a left interpretation that is NOT current law.

And again, I'm not posting a political slant, nor am I even posting (in this instance) about the textbook. I'm addressing the point made directly by posters asserting that the word "people" means the individual..

I'm not about to address "what I want the right to mean". I don't have a horse in that race. What I am interested in is language and logic.

The textbook doesn't have a political slant. The interpretation of it does. That's a different question, which I have yet to see substantiated.

 

[Pogo]

Excuse me? I read what was posted, it is very clearly an abomination and a total misrepresentation of what the 2d Amendment states. I am not stupid, nor uneducated.

Uh, I have a question...
If this textbook is so "clearly" an "abomination" and "total misrepresentation" ------ how is it that no one can demonstrate that?

I mean, it really is necessary to come up with something more than ipse dixit...

It has ALREADY been established and you are simply ignoring that reality.
FACT: the second protects an individual right that is not connected with service in a militia as established by the SCOTUS

It says "the people". Even in the original.
SCOTUS decisions are beyond the scope of a simple breakdown of Amendments. That would make for a very very large textbook.

Not to be neglected here is that it's just a textbook -- not the etching in stone upon brains for all time. Nothing in the world precludes a reader of this textbook from questioning, validating, confirming, contradicting or otherwise developing this info in the reader's mind. Nor should it.

It's a simple textbook, not the end of freaking human civilisation as we know it. I mean we call them students because they study. Sheesh, talk about thought control...

FACT: the statement in the text CLEARLY states that the right to bear arms IS connected to militia service.

As does the original, using the same word (Militia). Without the comma (as ratified) it actually depends on that service..

FACT: the second amendment in the text is a total misinterpretation. That is not only been established in this thread BUT it is also blatantly obvious.

You're back to ipse dixit again.

 

[Polk]

No, it doesn't. It affirms the 2nd is an individual right.

If that were true, half of the language in the amendment is meaningless and the Congressional debates during the ratification process make no sense.

It is true. The second covers 2 rights that are intimately connected – the right of the states to form militias and the right of the people to bear arms. Militias would be essentially impossible if the people were not allowed to be armed as in general it was common practice for the militia to bring their own weapons with them.

Most of the left wants to ignore half the amendment. I don’t think that you will find many on the right that want to ignore any part of the second.

The right's reading of the amendment is "[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Drawing it as a two-right structure doesn't really work here, because unlike the first, the clauses here are linguistically dependent upon one another.

 

[Pogo]

That’s right it is English and it should be easy as hell to understand but here you are twisting the words to make them refer to a collective right when that is blatantly false. The reference to people in no way means that right is collective in nature. It simply states that all people have that right. Simple English.


Now, the reality here is that simply does not matter. You can debate what you want the right to be until you turn blue in the face and keel over but it is not the job of the school or the texts that are used in it to teach YOUR asinine interpretation of the constitution no matter how correct you might demand that you are. The school teaches what IS, not what you want. The constitutional right that the second protects has been ruled on by the court and the SCOTUS had determined that you are wrong. I understand that does not mean we cannot debate that fact. Nor does it mean the court was correct – they have been wrong before. What it DOES mean though is that the schools have no right whatsoever to claim that the second does not protect an individual right to bear arms.


No matter how you slice it – the text is flat out wrong and defending that is nothing more than political hackery in attempting to teach your political slant on things rather than what is.

The "quote" from me in your post isn't a post I made. It's the text from Pogo's post (#101).

Thanks for the heads up. Fixed in original post.

Ah, well now that it's directed to me .... let's look into it.

peo·ple [pee-puhl] Show IPA noun, plural peo·ples for 4, verb, peo·pled, peo·pling.
noun
1. persons indefinitely or collectively; persons in general:

2. persons, whether men, women, or children, considered as numerable individuals forming a group:

3. human beings, as distinguished from animals or other beings.

4. the entire body of persons who constitute a community, tribe, nation, or other group by virtue of a common culture, history, religion, or the like

the persons of any particular group, company, or number (sometimes used in combination): the people of a parish; educated people; salespeople. -- Dictionary.com



We're in a weird place when we have to cite the definition of a simple word like people, but the trick is, I'm the ones who are "twisting" words while you're the ones who says this plural refers to individuals in spites of the lawses of Englishes These are just hard lessons that we have to learn for myselves.

 

[FA_Q2]

The "quote" from me in your post isn't a post I made. It's the text from Pogo's post (#101).

Thanks for the heads up. Fixed in original post.

Ah, well now that it's directed to me .... let's look into it.

peo·ple [pee-puhl] Show IPA noun, plural peo·ples for 4, verb, peo·pled, peo·pling.
noun
1. persons indefinitely or collectively; persons in general:

2. persons, whether men, women, or children, considered as numerable individuals forming a group:

3. human beings, as distinguished from animals or other beings.

4. the entire body of persons who constitute a community, tribe, nation, or other group by virtue of a common culture, history, religion, or the like

the persons of any particular group, company, or number (sometimes used in combination): the people of a parish; educated people; salespeople. -- Dictionary.com



We're in a weird place when we have to cite the definition of a simple word like people, but the trick is, I'm the ones who are "twisting" words while you're the ones who says this plural refers to individuals in spites of the lawses of Englishes These are just hard lessons that we have to learn for myselves.

So, you know what the word people means. Apparently you are not ready to actually use that in the form of a sentence though. As stated already, people refers to all people but does NOT make the right a collective right to the exclusion of a personal right. The second does NOT need to read as ‘the right of Sally, John, Jacob and that guy over there have the right to bear arms.’ That is rather inane. The fourth amendment makes the same statement with: ‘The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.” According to your logic, you actually don’t have the right to privacy or to be secure in your belongings. That is a collective right…


You are arguing the meaning of a word without using any of the context that it was given in the sentence you pulled it out of. Nowhere does the use of the word people (denoting a group) somehow mean that the right protected in it was not a personal one.

ALL rights are personal rights by the way. There is no such thing as the elusive ‘collective’ right as that actually means nothing whatsoever. A right that is not retained by the individual is no right at all.

 

[FA_Q2]

If that were true, half of the language in the amendment is meaningless and the Congressional debates during the ratification process make no sense.

It is true. The second covers 2 rights that are intimately connected – the right of the states to form militias and the right of the people to bear arms. Militias would be essentially impossible if the people were not allowed to be armed as in general it was common practice for the militia to bring their own weapons with them.

Most of the left wants to ignore half the amendment. I don’t think that you will find many on the right that want to ignore any part of the second.

The right's reading of the amendment is "[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Drawing it as a two-right structure doesn't really work here, because unlike the first, the clauses here are linguistically dependent upon one another.

False and you cannot substantiate that blanket claim. The right DOES NOT read the amendment that way as can easily be established right here. It is clear that you want to cut out that half that you mentioned but you have presented NOTHING that shows the rights wants to cut out the protections for state militias.

I await something more than blanket claims of positions that you don’t actually ascribe to.

 

[Pogo]

Thanks for the heads up. Fixed in original post.

Ah, well now that it's directed to me .... let's look into it.

peo·ple [pee-puhl] Show IPA noun, plural peo·ples for 4, verb, peo·pled, peo·pling.
noun
1. persons indefinitely or collectively; persons in general:

2. persons, whether men, women, or children, considered as numerable individuals forming a group:

3. human beings, as distinguished from animals or other beings.

4. the entire body of persons who constitute a community, tribe, nation, or other group by virtue of a common culture, history, religion, or the like

the persons of any particular group, company, or number (sometimes used in combination): the people of a parish; educated people; salespeople. -- Dictionary.com



We're in a weird place when we have to cite the definition of a simple word like people, but the trick is, I'm the ones who are "twisting" words while you're the ones who says this plural refers to individuals in spites of the lawses of Englishes These are just hard lessons that we have to learn for myselves.

So, you know what the word people means. Apparently you are not ready to actually use that in the form of a sentence though. As stated already, people refers to all people but does NOT make the right a collective right to the exclusion of a personal right. The second does NOT need to read as ‘the right of Sally, John, Jacob and that guy over there have the right to bear arms.’ That is rather inane. The fourth amendment makes the same statement with: ‘The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.” According to your logic, you actually don’t have the right to privacy or to be secure in your belongings. That is a collective right…


You are arguing the meaning of a word without using any of the context that it was given in the sentence you pulled it out of. Nowhere does the use of the word people (denoting a group) somehow mean that the right protected in it was not a personal one.

ALL rights are personal rights by the way. There is no such thing as the elusive ‘collective’ right as that actually means nothing whatsoever. A right that is not retained by the individual is no right at all.

Unfortunately, as already pointed out, the appearance of people is in a subordinate clause. And that clause refers to a "Militia" -- which is a collective.

 

[Abatis]

We're in a weird place when we have to cite the definition of a simple word like people, but the trick is, I'm the ones who are "twisting" words while you're the ones who says this plural refers to individuals in spites of the lawses of Englishes These are just hard lessons that we have to learn for myselves.

You ARE in a weird place if you think that the right recognized and secured from government injury in the 2nd Amendment is in any manner dependent upon the words of the 2nd Amendment for its existence.

This is what is so ludicrous about you leftists and your defining of the words of the 2nd Amendment . . . Your "state's right" / "militia right" / "collective right" position is entirely dependent upon the purposeful ignoring /dismissing of the fundamental principles of conferred powers and retained rights and 130+ years of SCOTUS proving you wrong.

Supreme Court, 1876: "The right there specified is that of "bearing arms for a lawful purpose."* This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. . . ."

Supreme Court, 1886: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. . . . "

Supreme Court, 2008: "it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in . . . 1876 , “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. . . . ”
​

The right to arms doesn't exist because the 2nd Amendment is there or any particualr definition of terms used in the Amendment.

See, unlike the power to organize, train, drill and deploy citizens as militia, the right to keep and bear arms IN NO MANNER DEPENDS on the Constitution to exist.

The right exists and is possessed by "the people" because "We the People", when establishing the powers of the federal government, never granted a shred of power to the federal government to allow it to even compose a thought about the personal arms of the private citizen.

Why do you persist in presenting/ perpetuating these defunct and corrupt theories that stand in such clear opposition to the foundational principles and legal action of the Constitution?

Is the leftist, statist, authoritarian anti-constitution agenda really that alluring to you?

-----


* The "bearing arms for a lawful purpose" cited in this case (Cruikshank) was that of self defense, exercised by two Freedmen (former slaves but in 1873, US citizens) against the KKK. They of course were not militia members and the time of the Colfax Massacre, Louisiana had no official state militia, it having been disbanded by Congress.

 

[Little-Acorn]

THE UNABRIDGED SECOND AMENDMENT

by J. Neil Schulman
(reprinted with permission, see below)

If you wanted to know all about the Big Bang, you’d ring up Carl Sagan, right ? And if you wanted to know about desert warfare, the man to call would be Norman Schwarzkopf, no question about it. But who would you call if you wanted the top expert on American usage, to tell you the meaning of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution ?

That was the question I asked A.C. Brocki, editorial coordinator of the Los Angeles Unified School District and formerly senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishers — who himself had been recommended to me as the foremost expert on English usage in the Los Angeles school system. Mr. Brocki told me to get in touch with Roy Copperud, a retired professor of journalism at the University of Southern California and the author of “American Usage and Style: The Consensus.”

A little research lent support to Brocki’s opinion of Professor Copperud’s expertise.

Roy Copperud was a newspaper writer on major dailies for over three decades before embarking on a a distinguished 17-year career teaching journalism at USC. Since 1952, Copperud has been writing a column dealing with the professional aspects of journalism for “Editor and Publisher”, a weekly magazine focusing on the journalism field.

He’s on the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary, and Merriam Webster’s Usage Dictionary frequently cites him as an expert. Copperud’s fifth book on usage, “American Usage and Style: The Consensus,” has been in continuous print from Van Nostrand Reinhold since 1981, and is the winner of the Association of American Publisher’s Humanities Award.

That sounds like an expert to me.

After a brief telephone call to Professor Copperud in which I introduced myself but did not give him any indication of why I was interested, I sent the following letter:

“I am writing you to ask you for your professional opinion as an expert in English usage, to analyze the text of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and extract the intent from the text.

“The text of the Second Amendment is, ‘A well-regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’

“The debate over this amendment has been whether the first part of the sentence, ‘A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State’, is a restrictive clause or a subordinate clause, with respect to the independent clause containing the subject of the sentence, ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.’

“I would request that your analysis of this sentence not take into consideration issues of political impact or public policy, but be restricted entirely to a linguistic analysis of its meaning and intent. Further, since your professional analysis will likely become part of litigation regarding the consequences of the Second Amendment, I ask that whatever analysis you make be a professional opinion that you would be willing to stand behind with your reputation, and even be willing to testify under oath to support, if necessary.”

My letter framed several questions about the test of the Second Amendment, then concluded:

“I realize that I am asking you to take on a major responsibility and task with this letter. I am doing so because, as a citizen, I believe it is vitally important to extract the actual meaning of the Second Amendment. While I ask that your analysis not be affected by the political importance of its results, I ask that you do this because of that importance.”

After several more letters and phone calls, in which we discussed terms for his doing such an analysis, but in which we never discussed either of our opinions regarding the Second Amendment, gun control, or any other political subject, Professor Copperud sent me the follow analysis (into which I have inserted my questions for the sake of clarity):

[Copperud:] “The words ‘A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,’ contrary to the interpretation cited in your letter of July 26, 1991, constitutes a present participle, rather than a clause. It is used as an adjective, modifying ‘militia,’ which is followed by the main clause of the sentence (subject ‘the right’, verb ‘shall&#8217. The to keep and bear arms is asserted as an essential for maintaining a militia.

“In reply to your numbered questions:

[Schulman:] “(1) Can the sentence be interpreted to grant the right to keep and bear arms solely to ‘a well-regulated militia’?”

[Copperud:] “(1) The sentence does not restrict the right to keep and bear arms, nor does it state or imply possession of the right elsewhere or by others than the people; it simply makes a positive statement with respect to a right of the people.”

[Schulman:] “(2) Is ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms’ granted by the words of the Second Amendment, or does the Second Amendment assume a preexisting right of the people to keep and bear arms, and merely state that such right ‘shall not be infringed’?”

[Copperud:] “(2) The right is not granted by the amendment; its existence is assumed. The thrust of the sentence is that the right shall be preserved inviolate for the sake of ensuring a militia.”

[Schulman:] “(3) Is the right of the people to keep and bear arms conditioned upon whether or not a well regulated militia, is, in fact necessary to the security of a free State, and if that condition is not existing, is the statement ‘the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed’ null and void?”

[Copperud:] “(3) No such condition is expressed or implied. The right to keep and bear arms is not said by the amendment to depend on the existence of a militia. No condition is stated or implied as to the relation of the right to keep and bear arms and to the necessity of a well-regulated militia as a requisite to the security of a free state. The right to keep and bear arms is deemed unconditional by the entire sentence.”

[Schulman:] “(4) Does the clause ‘A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,’ grant a right to the government to place conditions on the ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms,’ or is such right deemed unconditional by the meaning of the entire sentence?”

[Copperud:] “(4) The right is assumed to exist and to be unconditional, as previously stated. It is invoked here specifically for the sake of the militia.”

[Schulman:] “(5) Which of the following does the phrase ‘well-regulated militia’ mean: ‘well-equipped’, ‘well-organized,’ ‘well-drilled,’ ‘well-educated,’ or ‘subject to regulations of a superior authority’?”

[Copperud:] “(5) The phrase means ‘subject to regulations of a superior authority;’ this accords with the desire of the writers for civilian control over the military.”

[Schulman:] “(6) (If at all possible, I would ask you to take account the changed meanings of words, or usage, since that sentence was written 200 years ago, but not take into account historical interpretations of the intents of the authors, unless those issues can be clearly separated.”

[Copperud:] “To the best of my knowledge, there has been no change in the meaning of words or in usage that would affect the meaning of the amendment. If it were written today, it might be put: “Since a well-regulated militia is necessary tot he security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.’

[Schulman:] “As a ‘scientific control’ on this analysis, I would also appreciate it if you could compare your analysis of the text of the Second Amendment to the following sentence,

“A well-schooled electorate, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed.’

“My questions for the usage analysis of this sentence would be,

“(1) Is the grammatical structure and usage of this sentence and the way the words modify each other, identical to the Second Amendment’s sentence?; and

“(2) Could this sentence be interpreted to restrict ‘the right of the people to keep and read Books’ _only_ to ‘a well-educated electorate’ — for example, registered voters with a high-school diploma?”

[Copperud:] “(1) Your ‘scientific control’ sentence precisely parallels the amendment in grammatical structure.

“(2) There is nothing in your sentence that either indicates or implies the possibility of a restricted interpretation.”

Professor Copperud had only one additional comment, which he placed in his cover letter: “With well-known human curiosity, I made some speculative efforts to decide how the material might be used, but was unable to reach any conclusion.”

So now we have been told by one of the top experts on American usage what many knew all along: the Constitution of the United States unconditionally protects the people’s right to keep and bear arms, forbidding all governments formed under the Constitution from abridging that right.

As I write this, the attempted coup against constitutional government in the Soviet Union has failed, apparently because the will of the people in that part of the world to be free from capricious tyranny is stronger than the old guard’s desire to maintain a monopoly on dictatorial power.

And here in the United States, elected lawmakers, judges, and appointed officials who are pledged to defend the Constitution of the United States ignore, marginalize, or prevaricate about the Second Amendment routinely. American citizens are put in American prisons for carrying arms, owning arms of forbidden sorts, or failing to satisfy bureaucratic requirements regarding the owning and carrying of firearms — all of which is an abridgement of the unconditional right of the people to keep and bear arms, guaranteed by the Constitution.

And even the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), staunch defender of the rest of the Bill of Rights, stands by and does nothing.

it seems it is up to those who believe in the right to keep and bear arms to preserve that right. no one else will. No one else can. Will we beg our elected representatives not to take away our rights, and continue regarding them as representing us if they do? Will we continue obeying judges who decide that the Second Amendment doesn’t mean what it says it means but means whatever they say it means in their Orwellian doublespeak ?

Or will be simply keep and bear the arms of our choice, as the Constitution of the United States promises us we can, and pledge that we will defend that promise with our lives, our fortuned, and our sacred honor ?

(C) 1991 by The New Gun Week and Second Amendment Foundation. Informational reproduction of the entire article is hereby authorized provided the author, The New Gun Week and Second Amendment Foundation are credited. All other rights reserved.

 

[daveman]

Perhaps we do not want our children growing up like you 'normal' people.

That's not up to you. It does NOT take a village to raise a child. My children are not yours to indoctrinate.

But it's telling that you admit your desire to brainwash children. Tell me, if your ideas are so great, why do you have to force them on kids too unsophisticated to question them? Why not present all sides and let the kids choose for themselves?

Hint: Because your ideas are intellectually bankrupt, and their acceptance can only happen in a vacuum, by threat of government force.

Differences of opinion is not brainwashing.

I teach my children to think for themselves and to form their own opinions. If your children do not agree with your opinions, it does not mean that they have been brainwashed. Perhaps they object to being brainwashed at home.

In my house, we encourage our children to determine their own beliefs.

So much for your "Your children are brainwashed!" bullshit.

 

[daveman]

That's also what the text of the amendment says.

No, it doesn't. It affirms the 2nd is an individual right.

If that were true, half of the language in the amendment is meaningless and the Congressional debates during the ratification process make no sense.

And yet, despite your petulant foot-stamping, the 2nd is an individual right.

 

[daveman]

Is it? Or are you parroting this post?....




"Misrepresents", huh? Let's have a look...

"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."

People/person; which word is singular and which is plural (collective)?

Where does it say anything about the right of "the person" or the right of "a citizen"? Where's the word "individual"? Where's the word "personal"?

This isn't rocket science. It's English.

I don't parrot; progressives have the exclusive franchise to that mindless activity. In my post immediately before the one you quoted, I acknowledged FA's assertion.

As far as your asinine interpretation, SCOTUS agrees with me.

So you lose.

SCOTUS... SCOTUS... ah yes, the infallible entity that enlightened us on how Dred Scott was three-fifths of a person while a corporation is five-fifths. Makes one wonder how many fifths they were drinking.

Do you really believe it was the same court who decided "Dred Scott was three-fifths of a person while a corporation is five-fifths"?

Wow. Just...wow.

Whether SCOTUS agrees with you or not, simple rules of English do not, and they're way older. And that was the question.. So you lose.

Really? So SCOTUS is illiterate?

 

[daveman]

UHHHHH Dave dear, and all the others blaming liberals for what the TEXAS Board of Education approved, an extremely CONSERVATIVE group is kind of par for the course as of late....

This Board SEEMS to read and touch every book in Texas schools to approve or disapprove of it or strike language in them....seems to have flubbed up on this.....

Texas school board whitewashes history - CNN.com

I think Tinydancer is right, the Board of education in TEXAS is who you should ultimately go after....

NOT ONLY is the 2nd amendment rewritten in this book but so is the 1st Amendment rewritten, yet none of you even noticed....makes me wonder if you all weren't told what to be upset about, you'd be lost.....???

The book puts ''may make no'' in the spot where it should read ''shall make no'' should be....and there is a HUGE legal difference between ''may'' and ''shall''.....

1st

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.


that book is for a high school COLLEGE course....

advanced prep course they can get college credit for..........

who authored the book?

So is the Third. They are paraphrasing each Amendment, and thereby adulterating the actual language of each Amendment.

Modernizing with paraphrase isn't necessarily adulterating. It can be, if such distortion can be shown to exist. This one hasn't.

If you don't think clarity of meaning morphs over the centuries, have the class read Beowulf. In the original.

Excuse me? I read what was posted, it is very clearly an abomination and a total misrepresentation of what the 2d Amendment states. I am not stupid, nor uneducated.

Uh, I have a question...
If this textbook is so "clearly" an "abomination" and "total misrepresentation" ------ how is it that no one can demonstrate that?

I mean, it really is necessary to come up with something more than ipse dixit...

Just because you refuse to accept the demonstration does NOT mean that no demonstration exists.

And please, tell us why your argument is anything besides ipse dixit. NOTE: "Just because!!" is not sufficient.

 

[Pogo]

We're in a weird place when we have to cite the definition of a simple word like people, but the trick is, I'm the ones who are "twisting" words while you're the ones who says this plural refers to individuals in spites of the lawses of Englishes These are just hard lessons that we have to learn for myselves.

You ARE in a weird place if you think that the right recognized and secured from government injury in the 2nd Amendment is in any manner dependent upon the words of the 2nd Amendment for its existence.

This is what is so ludicrous about you leftists and your defining of the words of the 2nd Amendment . . . Your "state's right" / "militia right" / "collective right" position is entirely dependent upon the purposeful ignoring /dismissing of the fundamental principles of conferred powers and retained rights and 130+ years of SCOTUS proving you wrong.

Supreme Court, 1876: "The right there specified is that of "bearing arms for a lawful purpose."* This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. . . ."

Supreme Court, 1886: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. . . . "

Supreme Court, 2008: "it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in . . . 1876 , “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. . . . ”
​

The right to arms doesn't exist because the 2nd Amendment is there or any particualr definition of terms used in the Amendment.

See, unlike the power to organize, train, drill and deploy citizens as militia, the right to keep and bear arms IN NO MANNER DEPENDS on the Constitution to exist.

The right exists and is possessed by "the people" because "We the People", when establishing the powers of the federal government, never granted a shred of power to the federal government to allow it to even compose a thought about the personal arms of the private citizen.

Why do you persist in presenting/ perpetuating these defunct and corrupt theories that stand in such clear opposition to the foundational principles and legal action of the Constitution?

Is the leftist, statist, authoritarian anti-constitution agenda really that alluring to you?

-----


* The "bearing arms for a lawful purpose" cited in this case (Cruikshank) was that of self defense, exercised by two Freedmen (former slaves but in 1873, US citizens) against the KKK. They of course were not militia members and the time of the Colfax Massacre, Louisiana had no official state militia, it having been disbanded by Congress.

Wow. I hope your personal right to English lessons is not infringed, because you're gonna need them to have any clue what we're talking about here. Perhaps you can squeeze them in between these leftist and statist Doctor Doom comic books.

We're talking about the use of English and a dependent clause therein. Not a law or a right "depending" on something.

A dependent (subordinate) clause is one that is set up by, and depends on, another clause. "If I type this sentence, it appears". The verb "appears" depends on "if I type this sentence"; if I do not type this sentence, it does not appear.

Back to the 2A
"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 main action is:
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"

-- but it is dependent on the previous phrase that sets it up:
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state"

This is the basis for what follows; "Since" or "because" a well regulated militia is necessary etc, the right follows. If the security of a free state does not require a well regulated militia, then the right has no basis and does not follow. Ergo the action (the right) is a dependent (subordinate) clause; it depends on what precedes. If what precedes doesn't facilitate it, then it doesn't exist. And that facilitation, in this case, refers to a "well regulated militia". Which is by definition a collective, not an individual.

That's what we're talking about. Welcome to our language. Where SCOTUS is irrelevant.

And by the way the legal right absolutely exists as a result of being codified in the Second Amendment. That's why we have a Constitution -- to declare and spell these things out. If it were not, shall we say, dependent on that..... we wouldn't need a Constitution.

 

[daveman]

Excuse me? I read what was posted, it is very clearly an abomination and a total misrepresentation of what the 2d Amendment states. I am not stupid, nor uneducated.

If you hold the exact same views as progressives, you're an "independent thinker", just like the rest of them.

Independent of what? As far as I read and see, progressives think and parrot exactly what their lemming hive-mind is directed to by their (currently) socialist messiah.

My point exactly. That's why the quotes around "independent thinker".

Hive mind, and all that.

 

[Polk]

It is true. The second covers 2 rights that are intimately connected – the right of the states to form militias and the right of the people to bear arms. Militias would be essentially impossible if the people were not allowed to be armed as in general it was common practice for the militia to bring their own weapons with them.

Most of the left wants to ignore half the amendment. I don’t think that you will find many on the right that want to ignore any part of the second.

The right's reading of the amendment is "[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Drawing it as a two-right structure doesn't really work here, because unlike the first, the clauses here are linguistically dependent upon one another.

False and you cannot substantiate that blanket claim. The right DOES NOT read the amendment that way as can easily be established right here. It is clear that you want to cut out that half that you mentioned but you have presented NOTHING that shows the rights wants to cut out the protections for state militias.

I await something more than blanket claims of positions that you don’t actually ascribe to.

I read the sentence as a whole. The current reading, under the holdings in Heller and McDonald absolutely read it as just saying "[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.", with no nexus to "militia" service.

(As an aside, even if you define the right as being connected to militia service, there's a strong legal argument that puts you at the same place you are now.)

 

[Polk]

No, it doesn't. It affirms the 2nd is an individual right.

If that were true, half of the language in the amendment is meaningless and the Congressional debates during the ratification process make no sense.

And yet, despite your petulant foot-stamping, the 2nd is an individual right.

Because part of the current membership of the Court don't know how to read the Constitution. Their 14th Amendment jurisprudence is equally askew.