Leftforge Doesn't Understand the Second Amendment...

Oh No! Out of ammo! Now what do I do?

Oh yeah!

Man Afraid Of His Shoes pic of someone (him?) shooting an AR -15 platform weapon reminds me. Today I read an article about a guy who made an AR style weapon chambered for.....hang on to your hats....458 Weatherby Magnum! It weighs 12 pounds, but the heavy weight makes the recoil manageable. Here's a general idea of the size difference. The energy difference is...off the scale.

The meaning of "well-regulated militia" is now immaterial since the Supreme Court has ruled the 2nd is an individual right not connected to participation in the militia. The operative part of the amendment--"the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"--is explicit in its meaning.

I was maybe ten pounds overweight when I cleared this round of evil pins:

Won't someone think of the bowling pins?!?

Holy crap! I couldn't shoot those pins shooting off a sandbag. You did that offhand? Yowsza!

Even if we assume that it's immaterial for the question of whether you get to keep your guns, shouldn't something that is "necessary for the security of a free state" still be relevant? Unless you explicitly want to say that things have changed so much, that the whole frame of the 2nd amendment no longer applies?

So the Supreme Court decided it can invalidate whole sections of the Constitution?

It didn't invalidate anything. It said--as is obvious per the normal rules of English language--that the prefatory clause is not the operative part of the amendment. The prefatory clause is a subordinate clause; it can be deleted and the sentence still has meaning. The operative clause is the main clause; it cannot be deleted and leave what remains a complete sentence. No matter how hard you want to turn that prefatory clause into some means to limit or control the right, you can't do it.

It's as if the amendment said:
"A well-educated populace being necessary to a secure state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed."

No matter how you try to spin what a "well-educated populace" or a "secure state" mean, the right that is recognized is one of individual persons to own, possess, keep, acquire, read, etc. books. No doubt, some statist would try to claim that certain books don't contribute to being well-educated and therefore could be banned...

An armed populace is a cornerstone of the security of a free state; they cannot be dominated by a tyrant.

Never said the whole thing didn't apply, only that the militia connection is now immaterial to the individual right (explicitly stated in the ruling), so any arguments about what constitutes a "well-regulated militia" have no implications for my right to keep and bear arms.

Shhh.... I'm hoping they'll agitate enough to get the militia a fuck ton of spanking new hardware for us to play with. My only belt-fed machine gun dates back to the 1950's. We need new stuff! Surplus M-1A1 tanks, retired A-10's, anti-tank missiles!

Kickin' it old school.

Out there perpetuating the white, racist, patriarchal hegemony, eh?

Never use the fuel drums as cover!!!!

No. One of the targets was white. The other two were obviously zombies.

But they say "Don't Shoot" on them. The perfect cover.

So is "an armed populace" the same thing as a "well-regulated militia", or isn't it?

And can they be dominated by a tyrant that has nukes, if they don't?

What's your obsession with nukes, nobody's talking about nukes.

5 pins in 5.4 seconds. I've heard of people doing it in less than 2!

You can't have a "well-regulated" militia without an armed populace because they wouldn't have any weapons, or wouldn't be remotely familiar with any weapons distributed to them. The idea of the militia is that it's always available locally in an emergency, kind of like forming a posse. You just put out the word for everyone to show up and suddenly you have an armed fighting force, just like Lexington and Concord.

Remember, the people who wrote the Second Amendment and subsequent militia regulations had been to that rodeo themselves and knew how it worked.

For purposes of individuals keeping and bearing arms, it's irrelevant. But if you want my answer, they are not identical. The former encompasses the latter. You can be an armed citizen and have zero participation in the militia.

Armed resistance is everywhere. And the tyrant's agents are vulnerable, even if he isn't. So is he going to nuke everything?

Actually, I am. You're not, because it destroys your argument.

So does the US or do its states have a well-regulated militia?

Is that a "No"?

No, it doesn't. If nukes were an all-purpose cure-all, the Iraqi insurgency would've been eliminated rather quickly.

But even without moral restraint, a tyrant can't nuke everywhere. If he does, he has nothing left to rule.

Neither. The militia is a gathering of the people, neither a federal nor a state institution.

That's a "no."

IOW, Cliven Bundy and any other bunch of Yobs with Gunz.

And they wonder why the rest of us keep a weather eye on them.

The state involvement was intended to keep a militia operation from turning into a cluster fuck. Somebody needs to set the objectives and there needs to be a chain of command, otherwise the "emergency response" force just spends three days arguing about who should be in charge.

Since the states no longer bother with appointing officers, the sanest approach when called up is to ask any military veterans to step forward to submit a brief resume, rank attained, service branch, specialties, etc. They can quickly sort themselves out as if they were back in, and everyone else gets to start as a private unless they have some relevant civilian expertise that would be useful, such as being a doctor, policeman, or medevac pilot.

And of course in a big call up the men are getting paid just like a National Guardsman, but they're not generating tax revenue, so we have to pay for all the fun by taxing the women.

A gathering? So your view of the militia being "well regulated" is even more loose than that of Farmer and gturner, right? They at least suggested regular training and identifiable officers.

And if guns were an all-purpose cure-all, no-one with a gun would ever lose a fight. "Cure-all" is a strawman. The question is whether the right to keep arms should include nukes, since the minimum requirement for the weapons you're allowed to keep has to be that they suffice for a militia that outweighs a standing army, as Farmer pointed out.

No, you can keep all kinds of weapons that don't outweigh a standing army, as the Supreme Court has ruled. For example, a service pistol. They are a common military weapon yet they don't win many big battles.