Paladin3
Diamond Member
- Mar 5, 2004
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I like how your use of ellipses ignores the other part of these consitutional words that are pretty much quite relevant and provides further context and more meaning to the declared right. ...but this is the same NRA nutball tactic of reinterpreting the constitution that they have been doing for the last 30 or 40 years. Only these words matter! Not those others in that sentence!
With all the commas in the 2nd Amendment it's not a very clear statement. Anyone reading it to say guns are ONLY allowed if you are in an organized militia is assuming just as much as someone who says it gives the people the ABSOLUTE right to bear arms.
Luckily, we know what the authors intended. The wanted the federal government to be unable to disarm citizens, so those armed citizens could be called up as a state militia in case their state needed to protect itself from an over reaching federal government. Just because that doesn't seem very likely to happen right now doesn't mean you can just ignore the amendment as no longer necessary.
Unless you have the votes to change it.