Leftforge Doesn't Understand the Second Amendment...

Again, the right isn't connected to militia service.

Says you.

Ah, so a person's right to keep and bear a particular "arm" was infringed, by the very government that the amendment was put into place to defeat, should it ever infringe any of our rights. Gotcha!

We don't have to outrun the federal government. That's why the amendment protects guns instead of track shoes.

Huh? How'd you get *that* out of what I wrote?

I'm sorry, I confused you with FF.

You'd have to be familiar with the details of the Miller case (go read the Wikipedia article), but the ruling permitted the prohibition only because the judges thought the arms involved were not suitable for militia service. It should be noted that there was *no defense* presented in Miller and that, by the same standard today, the weapons involved would be protected.

What's significant is that Miller did establish that just the type of arms that would be useful to militias are the ones protected by the 2nd.

How is letting the government determine what arms are or are not suitable for militia service, not considered an "infringement"?

In your interpretation.

So keep 'em in the house unless they're secured in a locked case on your way to the range and back, and Stand Your Ground behind your own front door. I just hope it's a solid-core front door so that when you mistake that twig tapping against the window at 4 a.m. for an intruder, you don't take out one of your neighbors by mistake.

It's not mine. I got it from the Supreme Court.

No. I enjoy shooting in the outdoors where it is safe and lawful to do so. And my right to bear arms extends outside my home, which means I'll be carrying a gun for my own defense. As for Stand Your Ground, I'll avoid gunplay where possible, but if it isn't, I'll do what I must to defend myself.

I'm not going to shoot through a window in response to a tapping. But any of my neighbors paying me a visit at 4 a.m. would be well-advised to ring the front bell just the same.

I asked you several times whether the US currently was defended by militia. You wavered between yes and no, and then repeated that when asked about the criteria for a militia. Each time, you said it didn't matter because it didn't have bearing on the right to own guns, which I had granted at the outset.

Here's what you said about any rights that might be contained in the 2nd amendment beyond the one you happen to be interested in:

How is the government trampling on our rights as a militia? We are still free to train, hold meetings, and everything else.

Then we have no argument. I'm not interested in defining what the militia is or isn't, or debating whether it's an effective deterrent or not. As I said, it has no bearing on the individual right to keep and bear arms (excepting what I noted re: Miller), so it doesn't matter.

You could PROVE conclusively that militias were absolutely useless and it wouldn't change the standing of the right. Since my focus is the right and not the militia, there's no need for me to argue this with you.

I don't acknowledge those as rights, really. You seem insistent that I make this argument, but I see no reason to do so. I've said--and this is consistent with the drafting of the 2nd, legal precedent, historical context, common understanding, and everyday experience--that the weapons protected by the 2nd are small arms, suitable for defending oneself or one's community. Nerve gas and nukes don't qualify. (If you want further support for my position, explain how one would "bear" a nuke or a chemical warhead.)

If you want to start an advocacy group that lobbies Congress to recognize the inalienable right to WMD, be my guest. But that's not MY position and I'd appreciate it if you quit trying to make it my position.

My quote is incomplete there. I was suggesting that if there was a right to own nerve gas or WMD (there isn't), that I'm happy to have the government trample on it. Packard for some reason can't grasp that the 2nd is about small arms and is trying to make the pro-gun side embrace an absurd, absolutist definition of "arms."

I'm perfectly willing to do so, if we were to have a militia system as outlined by Madison in the OP. If we had that type of system, it wouldn't be an impossible task to take on the government should it become necessary.

Convenient excuse. How's your buddy Cliven doing these days?

I think what he's trying to do, and I've seen this ridiculous argument before, is say that supporters of the second amendment believe they should have nukes. Either that or he's saying that we think the militias should have nukes in order to have an equal armament as the U.S. That would imply that in some scenario the govern has turned tyrannical, the militia is called to defend against this tyrannical government. The militia is as big as Madison envisioned that I pointed out in the OP. And the only way to deter this tyrannical government is for the militia to have nukes, which in turn implies that the U.S. government would fire nukes on its own soil and towards its own people. If that were the case, then we would be truly fucked anyway. Ultimately I think Packard is waiting for one of us to either defend having nukes in every back yard or one of us to not defend it so he can play some kind of gotcha game. Whatever he's up to, I wish he would just spit it out already.

Can you provide examples of successful armed civilian uprising in the U.S.?

Aside from the founding of the country?

I'd argue that there's never been a need for an armed civilian uprising precisely because we have things like the 2nd Amendment.

And you're dragging the goalpost. You said all armed civilian resistance was ineffective and have now narrowed it to just the United States (where it's never been needed). Examples outside the United States--and involving resistance against U.S. armed forces--provide plenty of support for my position.

Oops - I forgot about Afghanistan - they did make our lives a pain in the ass for not having a lot of high tech weaponry.

Yes, Martin Luther King's marches. The blacks were well armed and the police knew it, yet couldn't do anything about it. From NPR, no less:

'Guns Kept People Alive' During The Civil Rights Movement

I'm very much concerned with how the history of the southern freedom movement or civil rights movement is portrayed. And, I'm very conscious of the gaps in the history, and one important gap in the history, in the portrayal of the movement, is the role of guns in the movement. I worked in the South, I lived with families in the South. There was never a family I stayed with that didn't have a gun. I know from personal experience and the experiences of others, that guns kept people alive, kept communities safe and all you have to do to understand this is simply think of black people as human beings and they're gonna respond to terrorism the way anybody else would. ...The southern freedom movement has become so defined, the narrative of the movement has become so defined by non-violence that anything presented outside that narrative framework really isn't paid that much attention to. I like the quip that Julian Bond made...that really the way the public understands the civil rights movement can be boiled down to one sentence: Rosa sat down, Martin stood up, then the white folks saw the light and saved the day.

On Martin Luther King Jr.'s attitude about weapons...

If you look at the early period of his leadership in the civil rights movement, particularly the period of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, his household, as one person noted, was an arsenal, with guns all over the place. William Worthy, who was a journalist...tried to sit down in an armchair in Martin King's house and was warned by Bayard Rustin, who was with him, that he was about to sit down on a couple of guns. King was a man of the South, after all, and he responded to terrorism, he responded to violence the way most people in the South would be inclined to respond. So when the Klan...bombed his house in 1956, he went to the sheriff's office and applied for a gun permit to carry a concealed weapon. Now, he didn't get the permit...but Martin King always acknowledged — if you read his writings — the right to self-defense, armed self-defense.​

Let's say the US government starts thinking the US civilians could be a threat so go into full-on gun grabber mode. Would you want to be part of the crew going door to door trying to round them up? I'm betting after the bodycount starts to escalate they start grabbing the low-hanging fruit like old senile cat ladies and shit with their dead husbands shotguns in the closet - and put on a dog and pony show about how they are "winning the war on guns".

Weren't @Marso et al. predicting that would happen in '08?

And that's where your argument breaks down. The 2nd amendment says a militia is a prerequisite to having a free state. So either you have no interest in having a free state -- and I know that isn't true --, or believe the politics behind the 2nd amendment to be irrelevant; either they've always been useless, or they have become obsolete.

Either way, you are rolling out the red carpet for everyone who says that yes, this law gives you the right to keep your guns; and it is a bad law, because its political justification is not or no longer valid. At that point, you have lost the 2nd amendment as political backing. It covers you legally, but laws can be changed by political will. You can continue to argue in favour of a right to bear arms politically for other reasons, but no longer by pointing at the Constitution.

If these rights flow from the 2nd amendment, you'll either have to acknowledge them or admit that you disagree with the 2nd amendment, see above. If they don't flow from the 2nd amendment, you have to show as much or admit that you are not interested in what the 2nd amendment says, see above.

The point remains: If your interpretation of the 2nd amendment tells us that you don't believe it is a good law, as its reasoning is flawed and some of the rights it may grant aren't even worth discussing, then you lose it as any kind of political argument.

You really are fucking bananas.

That statement, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with American gun culture. If you or anyone else truly believes that "guns keep people alive", then your society has already gone to hell and you may as well use that gun on yourself.

Unbelievable.

Wouldn't the various State Defense Forces be modern day militias?

But we have a militia, so your entire premise is false.

Not at all. Instead of guessing what I mean, you could just read what I say. I'm saying that you don't believe you should have the right to your private nuke, because you understand perfectly well that the 2nd amendment needs massive reinterpretation in a modern world.

You lot seem to be of many different minds about that. Clearly, your consensual understanding of the 2nd amendment doesn't cover what the words in it mean.

Achieved with small firearms alone? Hardly.

So you hate Martin Luther King just like you hate all the other gun nuts.