Is Biden banning these, too?
Let’s put it this way. Clearly the intent of Congress in the Second Amendment was to allow the people all manner of arms to overthrow tyrannical governments. And what were considered arms at this point in history? Pistols, long guns, mortars, canon/artillery, rockets and ships to name a few. So yes, canons could be bought if you could afford one. And since the framers of the Constitution intentions was to allow for citizens to overthrow tyrannical government why would they limit what types of weapons could be used?
Private citizens do own cannons.
Yes.
That was easy.
The second amendment was written to allow the citizens to overthrow a government gone rogue.
With that in mind, any weapons that our military possesses, we not only have the right, but the duty to possess.
This includes so called assault weapons, machine guns, grenades, mortars and rockets.
If you can afford it howitzers, tanks, aircraft and even warships.
It may surprise people to know that our fledgling country leased cannon and warships from private owners.
We had more rights under the crown than we do today.
Short answer: yes.
Longer answer: try the Dixie Gun Works catalog. They have a whole section devoted to cannons and cannon accessories.
Article I, Section 8 gives congress power to issue letters of Marque and Reprisal. The strong implication of this section is private ownership of warships, which include cannon, and potentially other crew-served weapons.
And, there is modern historical precedent which extends the power far beyond sailing vessels. In the early part of WWII, 1940s, a letter of Marque and Reprisal was issued to the Goodyear blimp to act as an anti-submarine asset off the west coast. While it was mostly spotting duty and the only weapon involved was a rifle, there is a modern precedent. And at a minimum there is an entire crew serving this aerial asset.
CANNONS and ARTILLERY WERE LEGAL IN PHILADELPHIA IN 1790
ORDINANCES “Ordinance of January 18 1790 An ordinance for the suppression of nuisances and enforcing of useful regulations within the city of Philadelphia For the other sections of this ordinance see Nuisances and Carriages 1 And whereas the firing of cannon or other great pieces of artillery or ordnance and the illuminating of houses within the city on occasions of public rejoicing have been attended with many great mischiefs and inconveniences It is therefore ordained and enacted That no person or persons whatsoever shall fire or discharge any cannon or other piece of artillery or ordnance or illuminate or cause or permit to be illuminated any house within the built parts of this city without the permission of the mayor of the city for the time being first had and obtained in writing under his hand under the penalty of forfeiting and paying for every piece of cannon or other artillery or ordnance so fired or house so illuminated the sum of five dollars all and every the fine and fines imposed by this ordinance shall be recoverable with costs of suit by any person who shall sue for the same before the mayor recorder or any alderman of the said and shall go one moiety to the person or persons who shall sue for the same and the other moiety for the use of the city” Ordinance of July 9 1821 p.78
A Digest of the Ordinances of the Corporation of the City of Philadelphia: And of the Acts of Assembly Relating Thereto
Corporation (PHILADELPHIA), John C. LOWBER (and MILLER (C. S.))
Robert Desilver, 1822 - Municipal charters and ordinances - 301 pages
++++++++++++++++==
“Cannons for sale Six very excellent double fortified sizes, with ammunition...”
New-York Commercial Advertiser, August 02, 1804, Page 1
for sale 4 cannons
New-York Evening Post., July 16, 1811, Page 1
for sale 200 cannons and 100 tons of shot’
New-York Evening Post ., September 23, 1828, Page 3
for sale 200 cannons and howitzers and tons of shot and ammunition
New-York Evening Post , November 02, 1844, Page 1 [NY City]
for sale 50 cannons and 100 tons of shot
New-York Evening Post , September 09, 1829, Page 1 [NY City]
U.S. Govt sells 400 cannons, 36 mortars, muskets and cartridges to the general public.
“
Evening Courier & Republic, February 07, 1866, Page 3 [Buffalo, NY]
It shows the liberal argument that the 2nd Amendment was only for firearms used for hunting. I doubt they used cannon to hunt deer and turkey.
Is Biden banning these, too?
My neighbor has cannon. So what?
Letters of Marque would come in handy down south.
L
Only if you conceal carry.
Yes.
Warships, too.
During the 1862 Sioux uprising in Minnesota, a German society bought a cannon for the beleaguered residents of New Ulm, MN. The cannon still resides in New ULM and is still fired on special occasions.
Yes, they do.
The second amendment does not specify types of weapons other than that they are arms. Cannons are legal.
I know a guy named Bud.
A former high school metal shop teacher who got the specs from the library of congress and built a 2/3 rds civil war cannon.
He had it out at my broth e r and sister in laws pine tree farm and shot it off several times.
I asked if he’d had trouble transporting it and he said oh he’ll yeah.
The verb “bear” means you have to be able to carry it.
Joe can take your tank and howitzer away if Congress allows him to do so.
Do Second Amendment “Arms” Include Cannons? I would appreciate any additional materials that anyone may have.
The short answer is no. That does not mean cannons are unlawful, just that they are not protected by the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA) referenced in the Second Amendment.
The 2nd Amendment prohibition against infringement of the right to keep and bear arms is absolute. The right to keep and bear arms is not, and never has been, absolute. That the right cannot be infringed does not imply that the right itself did not have certain inherent limitations. It most certainly did.
The right was neither created, nor defined, by the Constitution. It was a pre-existing right. It pre-existed the States and was carried forth from the colonies into the independent states before there was a Constitution. It was most certainly an individual right and not limited to the militia.
District of Columbia v Heller, 554 US 570, 580-81 (2008), Opinion of the Court by SCALIA, J.
If “bear arms” means, as we think, simply the carrying of arms, a modifier can limit the purpose of the carriage (“for the purpose of self defense” or “to make war against the King”). But if “bear arms” means, as the petitioners and the dissent think, the carrying of arms only for military purposes, one simply cannot add “for the purpose of killing game.” The right “to carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game” is worthy of the mad hatter. Thus, these purposive qualifying phrases positively establish that “to bear arms” is not limited to military use.
Heller at 624-25:
“In the colonial and revolutionary war era, [small-arms] weapons used by militiamen and weapons used in defense of person and home were one and the same.” State v. Kessler, 289 Ore. 359, 368, 614 P. 2d 94, 98 (1980) (citing G. Neumann, Swords and Blades of the American Revolution 6–15, 252–254 (1973)). Indeed, that is precisely the way in which the Second Amendment’s operative clause furthers the purpose announced in its preface. We therefore read Miller to say only that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns. That accords with the historical understanding of the scope of the right, see Part III, infra.We conclude that nothing in our precedents forecloses our adoption of the original understanding of the Second Amendment.
Heller at 627-28:
Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e. g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152–153; Abbott 333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e. g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489–490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2 Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n. 11 (G. Chase ed. 1884). Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.” 307 U. S., at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.” See 4 Blackstone 148–149 (1769); 3 B. Wilson, Works of the Honourable James Wilson 79 (1804); J. Dunlap, The New-York Justice 8 (1815); C. Humphreys, A Compendium of the Common Law in Force in Kentucky 482 (1822); 1 W. Russell, A Treatise on Crimes and Indictable Misdemeanors 271–272 (1831); H. Stephen, Summary of the Criminal Law 48 (1840); E. Lewis, An Abridgment of the Criminal Law of the United States 64 (1847); F. Wharton, A Treatise on the Criminal Law of the United States 726 (1852). See also State v. Langford, 10 N. C. 381, 383–384 (1824); O’Neill v. State, 16 Ala. 65, 67 (1849); English v. State, 35 Tex. 473, 476 (1871); State v. Lanier, 71 N. C. 288, 289 (1874).
It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M–16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.
Ex parte Grossman, 267 U.S. 87, 108-09 (1925), Opinion of the Court by Chief Justice Taft,
The language of the Constitution cannot be interpreted safely except by reference to the common law and to British institutions as they were when the instrument was framed and adopted. The statesmen and lawyers of the Convention who submitted it to the ratification of the Conventions of the thirteen States, were born and brought up in the atmosphere of the common law, and thought and spoke in its vocabulary. They were familiar with other forms of government, recent and ancient, and indicated in their discussions earnest study and consideration of many of them, but when they came to put their conclusions into the form of fundamental law in a compact draft, they expressed them in terms of the common law, confident that they could be shortly and easily understood.
The right, as it has existed since the states were colonies, is an individual right to self-defense. The right itself contains limitations as explained in the English common law pre-dating American independence.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch1.asp
Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England
Book the First - Chapter the First: Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals (1765)
5. THE fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute 1 W. & M. ft. 2. c. 2. and is indeed a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.
It has never meant a right to carry any and all weapons for any purpose. It does not mean that today.
That is the right the Constitution says shall not be infringed.
“The second amendment is not absolute” -Democrats
“The right to abortion is absolute.” - democrats.
Yes