Originally posted by: smack Down
Originally posted by: Craig234
Originally posted by: bamacre
Originally posted by: XMan
Every other amendment in the Bill of Rights concern the rights of individual members of the state. Why should the second be any different?
:thumbsup:
It is an individual right, to have the right to arms *for the purpose of defending the nation's security*.
It's not an unrestricted right for any purpose any more than the right to religion lets you practice your belief in walking around town naked, or your right to free speech allows you to slander without penalty or advocate the murder of the president or rioting or reveal classified information or publish nude photos of someone who has not consented.
Every other amendment in the Bill of Rights has no phrase that it's ok to ignore, like 'A well-regulated milita...' Why should the second be any different?
Your right that the phrase shouldn't be ignored. The phrase gives states and the people to form milta. It does nothing to require people form a milta or in any way reduce the right to keep and bear arms.
It doesn't say 'they have the right to form a milita'. It says, as I read it, in order to be able to form a militia for our security, people have the right to the arms to do so.
While I'd agree that it doesn't require them to form that militia at any given moment, when times change such that the militia is no longer how we get security, that matters.
We didn't have a half-trillion dollars a year permanent military for security then. We didn't have any standing military. Now we do, and the militia needs have changed.
Other things haven's, as much; free speech still has a lot in common with then, freedom from searches does, freedom of religion does. Im not sure any have changed like that.
The founding fathers said the constitution should be changed with the times, not stay the same, and if the militia isn't an example where things have changed, I don't know what is.
It makes perfect sense to me for the Court to allow the right in the amendment to be kept current with the times, so its spirit is followed.
But so many people who want gun rights don't seem too interested in what it says, they're just after the agenda they want.
I think that if someone offered to claim that shooting people can be a political act and therefore guns are protected free speech, lots of gun owners would say "YA!"
