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Second Amendment Questioned
dheera writes "Attorneys in Washington, DC question the scope of the Second Amendment in the first case in nearly 70 years, citing that the right to bear arms only applies to 'a well regulated militia.' 'We interpret the Second Amendment in military terms,' said Todd Kim, the District's solicitor general."
What the hell does the second amendment have to do with my rights ONLINE? I'm still allowed to shoot people in games over the internet, regardless of what the handgun rights are here in DC.
The United States Department of Justice says that the 2nd amendment is an individual right.
... do you guys (/girls) have the right to walk around town with a japanese sword hanging on your belt?
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
Right, because your grand-daddy's rifle is really going to help against tanks and automatic weaponry. And most people can buy a gas mask, but not many do, which means that anyone wanting to subdue you non-violently just has to use some simple tear gas. The times when a group of civilians could contend with an equally numerous group of soldiers are long gone.
This is a great subject for debate on Slashdot. I look forward to getting this issue settled, once and for all!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
You haven't seen the news in the last couple of years, have you? (Iraq, Afghanistan)
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
That is bullshit, and I'll tell you why. The courts have established that "Police Have No Duty To Protect Individuals".
Just reading about the case history behind this makes me spitting mad. It takes a stong constitution to even read that entire compilation.
Everyone has the right to defend their safety. In my eyes, everyone has the responsibility to defend their safety.
The times when a group of civilians could contend with an equally numerous group of soldiers are long gone.
Absolutely. But combat-capable civilians outnumber soldiers and police in our country by at least fifty to one. That tends to even the odds a bit.
To quote (from memory) a German commander on the Easter front during WWII: "Each of our tanks could beat five of theirs. We kept meeting six."
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
There's nothing magical or extraordinarily high tech about automatic weapons and rockets. If it really came down to a full on Civil War in the USA, I'm sure a few facilities could ramp up to produce the things under the radar. There are drug labs all over the place now, and look how efficient we've been at taking care of those.
Of course, all that may be unnecessarily complicated. There are plenty of international weapons manufacturers that would love to sell to the American public, and getting those products across the largely unprotected/unwatched US borders would probably be trivial.
In short, if it gets that bad, the weapons will show.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
Throughout the Constitution, the wording is very specific. When referring to individual rights, the term "The People" is used. When referring to state rights, the term "The States" is used. Unless you believe the 2nd Amendment is the ONLY EXCEPTION to this rule, it is most definitely an individual right as it says "... the right of The People ..."
If the meaning of "The People" is changed to indicate a state right, ALL our rights will be lost. Suddenly, speech, religion, assembly, redress, etc, will be State rights and everything that makes this country worthwhile will go into the shitter.
If the government can abuse a law, eventually the government will abuse a law. Maybe not right away, but a few years down the road it will happen. A good example of this is the seizing of property without due process. At first they were seizing property of convicted drug dealers. Then they started seizing the property of unconvicted drug dealers. After getting away with this obvious violation of the Constitution, they started seizing property of people with the thinnest thread of a connection to drugs, e.g. a guy had his car seized because his passenger had a joint in his possession.
-- Will program for bandwidth
The thing is, the US Military is made up of, get this, Americans. Hopefully, a large portion of them would either refuse or even defend the civilian population. I remember something about Katrina and the national guard refusing to help enforce the gun confiscation ordered by the local police.
2. Shootings are only one part of the spectrum in domestic violence. Like point one, why should guns be any more regulated than say, hammers, in this regard?
3. Accidentally killing a person whom you suspected of breaking into your home is a tragedy. But really, how often does this happen? And on the other side of that coin: civilians shoot more bad guys with guns every year than cops. Plus, they're five times more likely to be correct about the good/bad status of the shot person.
I think you've presented the classic case of the Paternal Government, the one that defaults to being everyone's best protection against themselves. You are giving up your rights for the belief that you are more secure.
damaged by dogma
Not necessarily.
Think of what the country would be like if you had no local police or state police; you are also in a country that includes other nations (Indians) some of them hostile.
One of the most important functions of a militia would be to provide for local security and peace.
We have to be careful about attributing modern viewpoints to the founders, or pretending they all thought the same way. None of them subscribed to libertarianism as we know it, although some (Jefferson) were closer than others (Adams). It isn't that they didn't believe in individual liberty -- they did. But they also had a stronger attachement than we do in the idea of community liberty.
It's interesting to read about the operation of militias in the Revolution. They operated in a primitive democratic way, choosing their leaders from the respected men of the community; nor did those leaders excercise autocratic powers. When not actually in battle, matters of strategy and tactics were debated and even voted upon. This practice infuriated Washington at first, who saw it as undisciplined. However he adjusted his style of command to this, and was a better commander because of it. The lessons he learned from this also helped him form an effective working relationship with the Continental Congress (Adams was particularly nettlesome), an example which was very important in the development of the US Constitution.
In any case, militias were not mobs or random collections of individuals. They were the defensive organ of the community. It is not that they had no discipline, they had a different kind of discipline, one of community responsibility, reputation, and mutual reliance.
Community liberty is not incompatible with individual liberty, but sometimes they do conflict, especially when the more influential in the community are able to claim greater protection. In the late 19th century, the national guard was used against strikers in Andrew Carnegie's steel mills.
The right of private firearm ownership is not, in my opinion, not directly covered by the Second Amendment, which I believe is about the right of communities to arm themselves. Most quotations from the founders that are used to support private firearm ownership are more accurately read in that light.
However, that doesn't mean it is not protected by the Bill of Rights. After all, there is constitutional right of privacy that can be asserted against the government, even though the legal concept of privacy did not exist at the time. The right to privacy is implicit in the third, fourth, fifth and fourteenth amendemnts. The fact that this is implicit makes it no less enforceable, because of the ninth amendment.
Personal firearm ownership is implicit in the second amendment. That it cannot be taken away unreasonably is implicit in the due process clause of the fifth amendment. That this implicit right has equal force as other rights is established in the ninth.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
These numbers are all from the CDC.
http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.h tml
My queries are for the years 1999-2002 (all they have), the entire U.S., all races, both sexes, all ages. (four year totals)
Unintentional death by falling : 57,760
Unintentional Pedestrian deaths: 24,079
Unintentional Drowning : 13,739
Unintentional death by burning : 13,642
Unintentional Firearms deaths : 3,164
Unintentional Bicyclist deaths : 3,099
You can also break it down by age range. If we're worried about the teen years, we can look at ages 12-18. (four year totals)
Unintentional Pedestrian deaths: 1,561
Unintentional Drowning : 1,495
Unintentional Firearms deaths : 494
Unintentional Bicyclist deaths : 453
Unintentional death by burning : 423
Unintentional death by falling : 306
Younger still, ages 1-11: (four year totals)
Unintentional Pedestrian deaths: 2,118
Unintentional Drowning : 2,870
Unintentional death by burning : 1,920
Unintentional Bicyclist deaths : 371
Unintentional death by falling : 292
Unintentional Firearms deaths : 164
Accident-wise, young kids have a lot more to worry about than guns. And teenagers are almost as likely to die on their bicycles. God forbid they're bicycling to the swimming pool... or even worse, *walking* to the swimming pool ... but yes, there are gun accidents.
Non-accidental deaths:
It's interesting to note that more than half of violent deaths attributed to firearms are suicide. Whenever you read an article in the media that mentions the number of gun deaths it's a good bet that they're including suicides.
Now I, personally, don't mind if people kill themselves. More power to them. I do agree that that there is a lower barrier to entry when using a gun and understand that depressed people might not be the best people to own guns, but gun control isn't really the solution to depression.
So, anyway, taking out suicides leaves us with:
As compared to
So, more people are definitely intentionally killed by guns than by any other single cause, roughly 11K people per year.
But...
How many times are guns used defensively? Since defensive gun use isn't something that is reported (like an offensive gun use is), numbers are harder to find. Here is the page I have bookmarked with the only numbers I've ever seen. (refers to Gary Kleck's survey and a DOJ-sponsored study, and has a table of the results of 13 other surveys). (Gary Kleck is a criminologist at FSU - and, no, he's not an NRA member. http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/p/faculty-gary-klec k.php)
Summary: Kleck thinks defensive gun use happens 2.5M times per year, other surveys listed range between 770K and 3.6M. The DOJ study thinks it's 1.5M times per year.
Let's aim low and go with 1M defensive uses per year. The question posed at the book club was "when does the ratio become w
The gov abandoned the idea of a state regulated militia in favor of a federally regulated national guard. If the right to bear arms only applies to a state regulated militia, then we lost our right to bear arms many years ago. If the DoJ interpretation of the 2nd amendment stands, then we still have it.
... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; ... " -Thomas Jefferson
What we should be asking is "WHY?" Why does the government want an unarmed population? The founding fathers made it clear that the purpose of our government was to protect rights. They also warn about modifications to the 2nd amendment.
"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." - Thomas Jefferson
"[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties." - Alexander Hamilton
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks." - Thomas Jefferson
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution, 1776.
"[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." -James Madison,The Federalist Papers, No. 46.
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." -George Mason, Co-author of the Second Amendment
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that
"The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution." -Thomas Jefferson
Gun confiscation leads to a loss of freedom, increased crime, and the government moving to the left. This has already happened in England and Australia. After Great Britain banned most guns in 1997, making armed self-defense punishable as murder, violence skyrocketed because criminals know that law abiding citizens have been disarmed. Armed crime rose 10% in 1998. The Sunday Times of London reported on the new black market in guns: "Up to 3 million illegal guns are in circulation in Britain, leading to a rise in drive-by shootings and gangland-style execution." There has been such a heavy increase in the use of knives for violent attacks that new laws have been passed giving police the power to search anyone for knives in designated areas.
Where are we going? Who is taking us there? Should we be kicking and screaming?
"Lame" - Galaxar
The UK has the fastest growing rate of gun crimes in all of western civilization.
Yes. The reason the rates increase so much, is because the actual numbers are so low.
Gun Death Rates per Nation
If you're trying to be honest about the statistics, avoid harping too much about relative increases in rates - that's like bragging about your brother growing richer faster at a rate faster than Bill Gates.
Ryan Fenton
Yeah, and the other half is people like you who want to take away everyone else's *rights* because you're scared of what they might do with that right. As is usually the case, that fear is irrational. You have absolutely nothing to fear from 99.9999% of *legal* gun owners. Yet you're so afraid of what people who own guns *illegally* might do to you, you'd rather just ban guns altogether (as if that is a solution to the problem of people being able to obtain guns illegally), and you don't care if you destroy a Constitutional right in order to do it.
It's funny how the anti-gun crowd pretends that they're just trying to interpret the Constitution, and only wish to apply it the way it was meant to be applied. In reality, if you *really* want to know how the 2nd Amendment was intended, you don't have to look very far. Read some of the writings of the people who actually *wrote* the damn thing, and it's obvious. They state explicitly that *individuals* need to be able to own guns. But of course you don't really care how it was intended. That's just a show you put on so that people will think your argument is based on the Constitution, rather than trying to destroy the Constitution.
In reality, you don't give a rat's ass about the Constitution as a whole. You just want to cherry-pick the parts *you* think are important and discard the rest. And you're sick of hearing everyone heap praise and reverence on the "Founding Fathers" because you think you're smarter than they are, and besides times have changed, etc, etc. It's people like YOU that this country needs to guard against, because in your supreme arrogance, you're willing to destroy the very foundation of our freedom. (not that thousands of people just like you haven't already done so to a large degree. sigh.)
What really angers me about the 'need firearms to protect us from the government' people is that they don't understand what they are really saying. "We need guns so the government doesn't take away our rights" they say.
That's saying that you don't have to comply with the will over the democratically elected government. It's saying that if you don't like the law, yu're going to become a terrorist. That you would rather just become a terrorist than elect people who are going to protect your rights in the first place.
The people who scream bloody murder about the government taking away the guns they need to protect their rights from the government tend to the VERY SAME PEOPLE who ELECT OFFICIALS WHO TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHTS!
How many times have you heard someone say "We need guns to protect our rights!" and then say "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear!"
How about instead of letting people say "Elect me, and I won't take away your guns!", you elect people who say "Elect me, and I'll repeal the Patriot Act!"
People who argue that they need guns to protect their rights from the government are just gun nuts. The 'protect us from the government' argument is a red herring. If their RIGHTS were really what is important to them, they'd vote for people who wanted to protect their rights instead of people who wanted to protect their guns.
But that's not what happens. Search you without a warrant? Listen in to your phone calls? Arrest and detain you, even if you're a US citizen, without access to courts or a lawyer? Torture people? Sure, we'll reelect that guy, as long as he promises we can keep our guns!
Using the right to bear arms to protect your rights is useless if you're willing to trade away all your other rights just to keep your gun. Then what are you protecting?
paintball
You would have discovered the following:
There are two types of militia, civil milita (unorganized civilians bearing own arms) and state milita (national guard, state troopers, standing forces, whatever is organized for and paid (and bearing arms owned) by the state).
Well regulated meant only one, and possibly two things. You are reading "regulated" as in today's "regulations".
Regulated, in the 1787 terminology, refers to only one thing. "Disciplined and officered." No joke, a militia with a set structure, even if self organized, is a "well regulated militia". The irony is that the term can also be read to mean "well equiped, trained and supplied."
The ratification misdeeds do not even enter into it.
What I find ironic, is that you are all begging for scraps from the tables of lords and masters with loyalties to anyone but you. Washington DC is a crime capital under a declared "state of crime emergency" since July or August of 2006 (don't remember the exact date). And it isn't just guns, some british guy got knifed and killed in his own driveway, which makes the "protect yourself by staying home" or "don't go into the dangerous parts of DC after dark" completely idiotic.
Since most of you are socialist "democrats" or so called "liberals" (my how that term stopped meaning what it used to mean in Jefferson's day), perhaps this example comes closest to your hearts. Some time ago, in their home in Germantown (rich part of Wash, DC) Theresa Heinz Kerry got ROBBED while outside of their home. Yep, John Kerry's wife... the ketchup girl. Humorously, the news barely touched on it, presumably for fear that the properties there would stop soaring in price, and also that the DC 30year gun ban would go bust if even the big antigunners are being robbed at screwdriver point (making the gunban worthless, what next, piece of rock and treebranch ban?)
(Frankly, I didn't know there were any "safe" zones in that DC, I've watched drug deals and "hot merchandise" deals, going on within plain sight of police squad cars (and the cops within them), and it wasn't a sting, nobody got busted AND there were no headlines or sirens/lights the whole day I was there. I left severely perturbed by that sight. I called the cops about it, and got the run around, they took my statement and basically blew me off. Guess if shots weren't fired, or blood spilled, it wasn't worth their time, though how would "shots be fired" in a gun ban city?)
However, you are correct, the "founders" were two separate camps which are mistaught in history class, one was the rich fascistic overlords known as the "federalists" (a hijacking of the term that has stuck) and the other, the unprepared, populist/agrarian/Jeffersonian group, lead by the very vocal Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, were the ANTI Federalists (of whom you may hear little or nothing in high school history and if you are fortunate, a tad smidgen from a libertarian professor in college, IF you are lucky). James Madison watered down the actual text, but the states all ratified the text THEY felt was necessary. Do some research while the National Archives are still available to the public. It might open everyone's eyes, especially since we're geeks, we're supposed to be libertarians at heart, seeking knowledge and truth, instead of being gimme gimme beggars and weaklings.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler