Leftforge Doesn't Understand the Second Amendment...

Good, 'cause rocket science isn't covered either!

@Packard

Any text can be endlessly interpreted, so we generally stop when we think we have the right answer.

If you think I've stopped short of a better interpretation, please provide it and I'll consider it. Or, if my interpretation is flawed, show how.

Otherwise, your criticism of me seems to be that I haven't adequately interpreted the text because I don't yet have a view you like.

"I don't need to figure out what militia means exactly, I need not decide how one half of this sentence relates to the other, and it's okay if militias limit and don't limit private weapon ownership because the weapons in question aren't part of the current political debate." is all very different from "I think I have answered these questions."

When you come up with exact meaning of "the press" and "exercise of religion" and how they relate to people "assembling" you can have the First Amendment back.

And old friend started up his anti-gun shrieking again on FB. I asked him if we hadn't already discussed this enough. He said "Not until we can compromise on (blahblahblah)". I understood that to mean "Not until I get everything I want."

All of those are worthwhile points to discuss, which is why we do.

I think I've addressed all of that, but I will again so we can put this to rest.

The militia is armed citizens acting to secure a free state. That's the purpose of the militia as stated in the Second, and its organization and relation to the federal government is covered both by the Constitution and the Militia Act of 1792 (dating all the way back to the George Washington administration).

The militia clause provides a reason for the prohibition of the infringement of the natural right of the people to keep and bear arms referred to in the active clause. The government can't take peoples' weapons because people may need those weapons to resist a tyrannical government.

Since the Supreme Court has ruled (Heller v. United States) that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right not connected to militia service, the only bearing the militia clause has on private gun ownership stems from United States v. Miller, which held that weapons unsuitable for militia use are not protected. Although the Miller ruling might sound like a basis for extensive regulation, it really isn't because the arms most in controversy today are exactly those that would be useful for militia. The synthesis of Miller and Heller is that people have a right to keep and bear arms suitable for militia use.

So, I think I have answered these questions. I've left no part of the Second Amendment unevaluated or uninterpreted, and I have stated how I think the militia clause bears on the active clause.

"The press" = the printing press. All technological innovations in communications since the First Amendment was ratified are not protected.
"Exercise of religion" = worshiping Jesus. You're free to worship him in whatever respectful, pious way you choose. As long as you do that, you're safe from the government.

You left out the commas and the period.

And it only took us 20 pages. You can now proceed to debate these points with Federal Farmer and gturner, who have expressed some different views on several of the things you just said. I'm also available for debate, but only if "this point doesn't matter, so we don't have to understand it" is off the table as an argument.

He's been saying that the whole entire time. I thought it was very clear. There's really not much I disagree with either. I suppose we could debate the nuances of what should make up the militia. I honestly don't see how you missed this the whole entire time.

Just to clarify, lest people misunderstand my position.

When gul says "it [the right to keep and bear arms] can't be infringed because we need it for a militia," he is absolutely right.

But this isn't justification for the RIGHT. It's justification for the PROHIBITION AGAINST INFRINGING the right.

The Second Amendment doesn't say (paraphrase):

"We might need a militia, so people have the right to keep and bear arms."

It says (paraphrase):

"We might need a militia, so the state can't infringe upon people's right to keep and bear arms."

It's a subtle but critical distinction.

"We might need a militia, so people have the right to keep and bear arms."

It says (paraphrase):

"We might need a militia, so the state can't infringe upon people's right to keep and bear arms."

It's a subtle but critical distinction. - Paladin

Good point! If a nation needs a militia quickly wouldn't it make sense to have people that are gun savvy and practice and shoot a lot versus Peter Playstation who hasn't even seen a gun in real life?

The founding purpose of the NRA was to make sure Americans were highly skilled with a rifle so that our boys wouldn't be drafted as cannon fodder who hardly knew which end of a gun to point at the target, having noted that Civil War marksmanship was generally abysmal. A second purpose for inculcating a culture of riflemen was to make sure the nation produced rifles that were as good as or better than anyone else's in the world. Early NRA presidents including Civil War generals Wingate, Grant, and Sheridan. The State of New York built a facility for long range shooting practice, and in 1901 the US Congress created a national board for the promotion of rifle practice. A few years later they created a civilian marksmanship program so that Americans would be skilled with rifles.

Back during the Colonial period and up through the Civil War, battlefield effectiveness for a militia required them to train and drill in massed formations. That became obsolete with the advent of breech loading smokeless powder rifles, where firing in open formations is a form of suicide, so militiamen could be pretty effective without drilling twice a year - as long as they were good shots.

Yes, this I agree with, I must have misunderstood your prior statement.

Come to think of it, the individual right is linked to the militia, but not in the way liberals think. The militia can only come to being as long as there's an individual right to bear arms. In other words the militia is dependent on the individual right and not the other way around. Even if the militia doesn't exist, the individual right still stands. I'm pretty sure that's what the framers meant, now that I think about it. Their writings are consistent with that reasoning. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thought of this, but it sure is nice to know that you don't need some fancy degree from Harvard Law school to understand the Constitution.

Um, yeah, that's pretty much what everybody has been saying through the entire thread. The question is whether the right exists for the purpose of a militia or independently of that necessity.

It is independent. The right exists with or without the militia.

Yes, we've established that some people believe that.

We've also established that the 2nd is ambiguous. It's more like a Rorschach test than anything else.

We've established that the Supreme Court believes that, too.

From the state constitutions we can see that they're granting two rights. One is for individuals to keep and bear arms. That makes sense because we had large rural populations and frontiers where Indian attacks were sometimes a problem. Everybody has a right to defend themselves and their family and go hunting to put food on the table. The people also have the right to organize themselves into military units (militias) for defense against any threat to their communities or states, whether foreign or domestic, including their own government if it becomes tyrannical.

In the run up to the Revolutionary War the British government had started trying to seize arms, ammunition, and gunpowder from the colonists. At one point General Gage sent 2,000 men to seize gunpowder stores and his force was turned back by 3,000 armed colonists who had shown up to stop him. Such memories were fresh on the mind of the framers.

I've established that it is true or do we have to play the quote game again?

To you maybe, to me it's very clear and unambiguous.

Which is why @steve2^4 is correct. It's a Rorschach test. You see what you want to see based on prior conditioning. But I applaud your right to bear exactly the arms the Founding Fathers were familiar at the time the Second was written.

Right. Because those guys couldn't have possibly believed advancements in firearms wouldn't have come to a screeching halt in 1776.

And that's called "projection." You don't know what they believed, and neither do I, but I have a fair idea they'd take a dim view of the Dumb & Dumber argument that "the Gubmint grants me the right to have guns in case I need to take over the Gubmint" that turns up in every one of these threads.