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To: Jim Robinson

Maybe Rudy can't read...the 2nd Amendment only uses the word "regulate" in reference to the militia - not the right to keep and bear arms.


398 posted on 02/07/2007 4:48:59 PM PST by RebekahT ("Government is not the solution to the problem, our government is the problem." -- Ronald Reagan)
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To: RebekahT; Jim Robinson
Maybe Rudy can't read...the 2nd Amendment only uses the word "regulate" in reference to the militia - not the right to keep and bear arms.

You are correct, but there's an additional deceptive way that he, and all the other anti-gun types, use the term "regulate", in reference to the 2nd Amendment term "well-regulated".

In late Eighteenth Century America, the term "well-regulated" had nothing at all to do with our modern concept of government "regulations". The bureaucracies which plague us today simply did not exist. The meaning of the term was more akin to "properly ordered or organized and smoothly functioning as intended".

Thus, a clockmaker who built a grandfather clock and adjusted it to keep proper time would then describe it as "well-regulated", i.e. it was functioning properly as it was intended. By the same logic, a well-regulated militia would be one in which the citizen-soldiers would be properly armed, equipped and trained (drilled) in the skills needed for the performance of their militia duties. It was understood that they would generally use their own "small arms" (in the use of which they were already effectively skilled, i.e. 'well-regulated'), while the States were to provide the heavy weapons (cannon, etc.) and the officers. None of this had anything to do with the federal government "regulating" (restricting, limiting, infringing) in the modern sense the terms under which they could own or possess their own weapons.

790 posted on 02/07/2007 8:21:11 PM PST by tarheelswamprat (So what if I'm not rich? So what if I'm not one of the beautiful people? At least I'm not smart...)
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