To: dirtboy; don asmussen; Dead Corpse; Tarkin
Amendment 2
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Nunn v State of Georgia, 1846
Judge Lumpkin in a nice rebuke of Marshall writes in part:
"The language of the second amendment is broad enough to embrace both Federal and State governments--nor is there anything in its terms which restricts its meaning. The preamble which was prefixed to these amendments shows, that they originated in the fear that the powers of the general government were not sufficiently limited. Several of the States, in their act of ratification, recommended that further restrictive clauses should be added. And in the first session of the first Congress, ten of these amendments having been agreed to by that body, and afterwards sanctioned by three-fourths of the States, became a part of the Constitution. But admitting all this, does it follow that because the people refused to delegate to the general government the power to take from them the right to keep and bear arms, that they designed to rest it in the State governments? Is this a right reserved to the States or to themselves? Is it not an inalienable right, which lies at the bottom of every free government? We do not believe that, because the people withheld this arbitrary power of disfranchisement from Congress, they ever intended to confer it on the local legislatures. This right is too dear to be confided to a republican legislature." Judge Lumpkin
Amen.
515 posted on 01/18/2006 5:09:36 PM EST by jwalsh07
Left it out again.