Leftforge Doesn't Understand the Second Amendment...

The KKK bombed his house and he still couldn't get a permit to concealed carry? That's racist! Apparently the south has come a long, long way. Now any black man (with a clean record) can get a permit to concealed carry - at least in Georgia. The state gives them out like candy! Before you going into spasms anti-gunsters: it makes sense! Think about it - anyone who legally goes concealed carry has already been "vetted" by the state. They are most law abiding of the law abiding population. They are fucking Ned Flanders but packing heat. They aren't going to be involved in robbing a convenience store, car jacking, assault, etc. They may never have to use their gun to stop a crime or defend their lives, and that's fine with them. "But they might commit suicide!" If they do that's their choice, not yours. As long as they don't take you with them, what do you care? Yes I have known folks that shot themselves. Tragic, but nobody put a gun to their head forcing them to.......put a gun to their head.

 

Seriously? NPR isn't making the assertion you're implying they made. NPR is merely reviewing a book by someone who made claims that were superficially similar to the one you manufactured out of whole cloth.

 

Sigh. The militia isn't needed...until it's needed. Hopefully, it's never needed. But if it's needed, armed civilians are what comprise it.

The militia purpose isn't the justification for the right. The right requires no justification. And the law does not "give" me rights. Rights are what I have prior to the law and one of them is to have the right of armed self-defense.

Your reasoning does not follow at all. The Constitution says explicitly that people have the right to keep and bear arms. The Supreme Court has affirmed that, yes, this is what it means. The right is not predicated on or justified by the existence of the militia.

I claim the opposite of what you claim. I claim that the right is preserved by de-coupling it from militia service because now no one can argue that, since the militia is obsolete/ineffective/impractical/outmoded/etc., there is no longer a need for people to have guns. That line of argument is now constitutionally invalid. My right to have a gun does not turn on my being part of a militia. At all.

So, your claim that this interpretation puts my rights at stake is puzzling to me, since your interpretation--with it's "justifications" for the right--is a much bigger threat.

The right to WMD does not flow from the 2nd Amendment and I challenge you to offer evidence that it does. Again, the understanding is practically universal that the 2nd Amendment is talking about small arms. In fact, from the standpoint of Constitutional law, this is a settled question, so your interpretation of "arms" is against dicta of the Supreme Court.

I could just as easily make the (silly) argument that the 2nd is talking about arms as in limbs of the body. But we know that this is not what is meant by arms from all sorts of context.

I do believe it is good. It's a statement recognizing my natural rights.

I dispute that it's reasoning is flawed, but even if it were, my rights would still remain.

If, say, a militia were proven to be ineffective to the security of a free state--gul seems to think this would be the case--it wouldn't change the fact that I still have the right to keep and bear arms. My right does not hinge on the effectiveness or existence of a militia.

 

So now I'm in charge to telling Civil Rights leaders what to say. Good to know!

 

But a necessary element nonetheless. It may have taken more than armed citizens to throw off the yoke of tyranny, but it wouldn't have happened without them.

 

Tell me, what civil right leader said "The blacks were well armed and the police knew it, yet couldn't do anything about it." Oh right, that was you, expressing an idea not in evidence. You made the assertion, even though that assertion isn't in the review you linked to, and I bet it's not expressed in Cobb's book either. Granted, some blacks may have been well armed, but "the blacks", as a group, weren't.

 

I do have one friend with a musket It's very good at providing a smoke screen:

 

What it really comes down to is this: gun fetishists trust guns more than people.

The government would daily massacre civilians were it not for guns. And the army, police, and other military resources of the government will obey orders to do just that, because people cannot be trusted.

 

I expressed that idea because a great many Civil Rights leaders have been talking about it - for about the past 50 years.

Walking alongside the Civil Rights marchers, some distance away so as not to distract the cameras, were black men carrying hunting rifles, just a mindin' their own business and making sure their friends and family members wouldn't be gunned down. Many were members of "Deacons for Defense". Most were WW-II and Korean War veterans.

 

They sure as fuck are armed now. "Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin' town - da da dada da....."

 

Bigger sigh. Upthread, you have alternatively assumed that it also needs previous training, doesn't need such training, and most importantly, that there is no interest in deciding that question.

I didn't say it was, although this puzzles me. In the text of the 2nd amendment, it clearly is. Saying it doesn't limit the right is one thing. But it is right there in the same sentence with that right. What other logical connection do you see between the two halves of the sentence? Or aren't you interested in that either?

This is, of course, a possible stance. But you see that you end up in exactly the place I predicted, where you need to defend your right to own guns with arguments that no longer include the 2nd amendment, since you have declared it irrelevant.

Yes, but when you have to argue that lots of what the constitution says is irrelevant or even false, that no longer helps your case.

You're still only considering legal challenges, not political ones. Your interpretation of the 2nd amendment might well recognize a right to privately keep arms; if that interpretation also tells us the 2nd amendment isn't soundly reasoned, then you're heading towards repealing that amendment.

Are we having this argument now? Good. As you pointed out upthread, the closest decision you can cite for this is one that assumes the use of a weapon for the militia limits the right to keep and bear arms. But your stance is that the talk about militias does not limit that right. The problem here is of course that SCOTUS used to think it did, which is from when you quote this decision, and only recently has adopted the attitude that for a strict construction of the meaning of the document, large parts of its text need to be ignored.

 

And? So, we've established that some blacks were armed. Pretty much what I said.

And, so, what the fuck is your point? These people weren't armed against The Government, per se, but rednecks, corrupt local cops, and the like. MLK wasn't prepared to overthrow the US Government or the armed forces in a second amendment fantasy of armed rebellion against tyranny.

 

Weren't the blacks of the civil rights era worried about getting killed by the local white-sheet wearing militia?

 

Yeah, I can't think of any government lead by demagogue that killed millions of their own citizens, nope not a one in recent history.

 

Umm... if the argument that America isn't Australia supposedly invalidates points we make about the success they've had in banning most weapons, then you pointing to demagoguery in some other nation can't be used in arguments in favor of guns here in America. If America can't be compared to Australia by us, it can't be compared to Iraq by you.

 

Yes, and that's why they formed the Deacons for Defense. In Bogalusa the Klan came riding into a black neighborhood waving their guns from their cars. They fired into a few houses. A ton of bullets came back at them and they fled, never to return.

They were good at what they did, and never once committed an act of retaliation against whites.







Gee, it's like people wrote books about it.

 

You don't have to be able to overthrow the US Government. Often you just have to stop abuses by rednecks, Klansmen, corrupt local cops, Democrats bent on oppression. The federal government didn't need to be oppressing blacks because local authorities were doing just fine at it.

But the Civil Rights leaders were using mental ju-jitsu, using their guns to protect themselves from late-night slaughters by the locals while conspicuously letting themselves get attacked in broad daylight on camera, to show the world what kind of regime they faced.

 

It's basic human nature - people will get away with what they think they can get away with. Best to not even let those thoughts get in their head in the first place. Thus the government is no different - if the US citizenry were ever completely disarmed.....the government might just entertain some bad thoughts. Not saying they would, but you never know. We might not see it but our grandchildren? That's another story. I like our "the people" right to bear arms just fine, limited as it is in some states. I hope gun control arguments keep going for a long time, because when the arguing stops, somebody has won the fight and sent the loser off with their tail tucked. I don't look good with a tucked tail! Don't make me tear the house apart looking for the pictures.

 

Good. And? What were you trying to contribute to the conversation? What was your point?

 

This happened in the United States?

 

That the right to keep and bear arms, and form armed units for defense, can and has protected people from tyrannical violence and state-sanctioned oppression in the United States - in our lifetimes.

 

Had anyone here actually disputed that notion?

 

The militia didn't win the Revolutionary War, as any decent historian would attest. von Steuben, who created the Continental Army, detested them. By the war of 1812, it was recognized that the militia couldn't stand against frontline troops in battlefield situations. The entire political premise of the 2nd amendment was rendered invalid by 1815. Hence the US going to a conventional military, then a volunteer military.

The supposition that an armed citizenry could defeat a modern army didn't stand up in the 1800s - without the French, that citizenry wouldn't have had any gunpowder. Without European training and discipline, it couldn't fight effectively in the field, and was limited to guerrilla tactics. Without the French navy, Yorktown would be just another notation.

It's always been disingenuious that the militia is sufficient to block the invasion by a trained army - made doubly so by the hypertech nature of drones, missiles, smart bombs, signals intelligence, and far greater C3 capabilities.

If the US military ever tried to dominate the populace, it would be the IT guys and chemists that would be the only ones with a chance to defeat them. The militia's best effect would be being more expensive to kill in ordnance than it was worth. They certainly could not stand against a hellfire missile strike or against an Abrams.

 

The most fascinating sidebar to this discussion? GUNFORGE CAN'T DECIDE AMONG THEMSELVES WHETHER MILITIAS DO OR DO NOT EXIST.

Do we actually need a poll for this?

 

I never said training was required for the militia. I explicitly state now that no training is required.

And for the purposes of gun rights, there is no interest in that question because it's irrelevant.

It isn't a justification because if it is, the 2nd Amendment becomes a contradiction: "Because the state has need X, an individual has right Y." If Y only exists because of X, then Y is no right.

I see the amendment as expressing two propositions: an armed populace is a bulwark against tyranny and that individuals have the right to possess guns. In informal language it would read like this: "Armed citizens are a defense against tyranny, so don't go trying to take away the rights of citizens to be armed."

No argument is needed. The amendment explicitly states that people have the right to own guns. There is no argument you can make that legitimately takes away that simple fact.

I don't argue that any of the Constitution is irrelevant or false, only that the militia clause in the 2nd Amendment is irrelevant to the right of people to possess guns. And the Heller ruling by the Supreme Court affirms this position.

Doubtful. Support for reducing firearms freedoms are at all-time lows. And the Heller and MacDonald decisions have only solidified this position.

As for losing my freedom to political challenges, that's always a danger in any free society. People will see things like "the right of the people" and insist that somehow it does not recognize any right of the people. Politics can turn up into down and black into white, so it's really immaterial what the text says as far as politics goes.

I don't see how that helps your side. The guns in greatest danger of being prohibited--and therefore in need of protection--are the ones most suitable for militia use. In practical matters, limiting guns to those suitable for militia use is really no limit at all. And, as I said, if Miller were to be adjudicated today with the same standard, the weapon in question--a short-barreled shotgun--would survive as such weapons are now in common military/police/security use.

None of it is ignored. And I see no contradiction between Miller and the recent rulings, other than, perhaps, circumstances behind the Miller ruling have changed.

 

And the point about the militia not being able to fight as well as trained troops is that the era's battle tactics required marching straight into enemy fire, firing in volleys, and then reloading while standing bolt upright on the battlefield. Thinking that was really stupid, what the militia did was invent modern firearms so combat tactics would match up with how a militia instinctively fights, using cover and concealment and small-unit tactics. The Army was forced to follow suit or get slaughtered.

Then what did they go hunting with all their lives?

And do you think that the bulk of the US armed forces would be willing to slaughter the American population with tanks and missiles?

 

@Federal Farmer apparently does. And @Lanzman has his doubts.

You guys really need to agree on an agenda.

 

The American Population as a whole? Nah. Some TEAtard "militia" that declares war on the Gubmint over the tyranny of gay marriage, or Christianity not being declared the official religion of the US? Oh yea.

 

Yep. Just ask the Viet Cong, the Iraqi insurgency, the Taliban, etc.

Admiral Yamamoto had it right when he dismissed any possibility of invading the U.S. mainland: "There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

 

It's sad that you don't feel safe here. Maybe Ted Nugent can recommend somewhere for you to go.