Gun nuts have redefined the Second Amendment over the past 40 years
serf
Member Posts: 9,217 ✭✭✭✭
Just being the devil's advocate here.You need to understand the opposite side arguments to defeat them, that is all.
This author of the article is a highly educated person also so he will try or has to find a clink in our Armour.
serf
In 1939, the Supreme Court unanimously endorsed this militia-based understanding of the amendment. Three years later, a federal appellate court noted that it was “abundantly clear” that the Second Amendment “was not adopted with individual rights in mind, but as a protection for the States in the maintenance of their militia organizations against possible encroachments by the federal power.” This legal consensus over the Constitution’s meaning held for another three decades.
But the political consensus underpinning it started to unravel in the tumult of the late 1960s. Protests, riots and rising crime led many Americans to buy guns for personal protection. Among them were White Americans dismayed by civil rights activism. Members of gun groups like the National Rifle Association demanded their organizations focus more on politics instead of marksmanship and recreation, the domains that primarily defined the NRA’s earlier years.
Comments
The 1939 SCOTUS made a huge mistake, as did the referenced appellate court.
We here all understand (as diagramed by Scalia in Heller) that the construct of the 2nd Amendment confirms the right is one of the individual and nothing else.
The stupidity of this appellate court is further proven because the decision was made after the tragic passing of the 17th Amendment which was a construct by the political parties to federalize the Senate under the guise of empowering the individual voter. With the 17th Amendment, the power of the individual state was subordinated to the power of the political parties and thus elections to the Senate became national rather than a result of the citizens of a state voting for local representation that would select Senators to protect the rights and power of the individual states.
Therefore, the individual right to protect the security of freedom is more important this past century and going forward than it was at any time in our history.
From the link:
In the wake of the mass shootings in Uvalde, Tex., Buffalo and now Tulsa, Republicans have turned to the Second Amendment to defend their opposition to expanded background checks and restrictions on the most dangerous weapons. In reality, they are talking about an interpretation of the amendment — one that dates back not to the Founders in 1791, but to the gun lobby in the relatively recent past. But these conservatives don’t have a monopoly on interpreting the amendment. That power is reserved to the American people.
This Yale and Oxford indoctrinated Social Justice Warrior either does not understand our history, or is hell bent upon re-writing it. Does he not see the irony in referring to a power 'reserved to the American people' when 'The Right of The People' is the first phrase in the operative clause of the 2nd Amendment?
Brad Steele
Well if the majority of people feel that it is a collective right and not an individual right then we are all had. All law decisions with SCOTUS are interpretations of what they think is right, not what our Fore fathers/mothers thought.
But this important basic right will only work if the people have the will to figure out that all of man's governments are far from being infallible and the lost of personal responsible with firearm possessions will/would be a grave decision to give up to 534 people in any kind of government unless it was perfect in all things. Which it never will be.
serf
The beauty of the American system, serf, is that the will of the majority is not law. We have institutions such as the Senate and the courts that by design temper the whim of the majority.
We have not crossed the threshold into the anarchy of democracy just yet.
Possible in the future, but thus far our Republic is holding on.
Brad Steele
How many people have given their life already Don for our freedoms?
And The Supreme court goes down to nine people regardless of their training ,it's too small of a number to rule and hold fast over the majority sometimes too and there are two very important decisions coming this Summer! So keeping the peace and unity here is looking like the1860's all over again. For one side or the other is going to disagree.
serf