Posted on 11/22/2007 9:41:05 PM PST by Aristotelian
The Supreme Court has a historic opportunity to affirm the individual right to keep and bear arms.
The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case that will affect millions of Americans and could also have an impact on the 2008 elections. That case, Parker v. D.C., should settle the decades-old argument whether the right "to keep and bear arms" of the Constitution's Second Amendment is an individual right--that all Americans enjoy--or only a collective right that states may regulate freely. Legal, historical and even empirical reasons all command a decision that recognizes the Second Amendment guarantee as an individual right.
The amendment reads: "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." If "the right of the people" to keep and bear arms was merely an incident of, or subordinate to, a governmental (i.e., a collective) purpose--that of ensuring an efficient or "well regulated" militia--it would be logical to conclude, as does the District of Columbia--that government can outlaw the individual ownership of guns. But this collective interpretation is incorrect. . . .
Our Founding Fathers lived in an era where there were arms in virtually every household. Most of America was rural or, even more accurately, frontier. The idea that in the 1780s the common man, living in the remote woods of the Allegheny Mountains of western Pennsylvania and Virginia, would depend on the indulgence of his individual state or colony--not to mention the new federal government--to possess and use arms in order to defend himself is ludicrous. From the Minutemen of Concord and Lexington to the irregulars at Yorktown, members of the militias marched into battle with privately-owned weapons.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
The Framers knew that militias were comprised of citizen soldiers who supplied their own weapons. The amendment was not meant to imply collective ownership but rather individual ownership of weapons -- weapons they could bring to a fight at a moment's notice.
The interns must be writing the headlines over the holidays....
;-)
And the editors asleep - or drunk.
Recently, the WSJ edit page’s Dan Henninger had George Wallace being “shot dead.”
The local rag (StarTribune) had a story today about a “pedestriam” being killed by the light-rail train yesterday.
This is a good article, though I would like to have seen a little more analysis of the grammar as it relates to the dependent clause and the subject of the sentence. A strict grammatical approach is all that is needed to clearly see that what the framers were talking about was first and foremost an individual right to keep and bear arms, with a dependent clause shedding some contextual light on the reason for that right. Any other reading is wholly anti-English (grammar, that is).
A well-educated populace being necessary for the prosperity of a free State, the right of the People to keep and read books shall not be infringed.
...and, a liberal's interpretation of it:
Only well-educated people may keep and read books.
This weekend I’m going to plunk a couple of old pumpkins with some 9mm hollow point, close range!!
Off topic a bit, but oh, well!!
I’m anxious as to what the court will decide. I feel we should be allowed to own and carry whatever our soldiers and Marines carry.
If the SC were to decide that the 2nd allows the Army to bear arms, it would be the most stupid and ludicrous interpretation of a law in human history.
Normally I would assume the same, but the author of this piece is Mike Cox, the Michigan State Attorney General.
There, fixed it.
oops, I see what you mean now.
...and, a liberal's interpretation of it: Only well-educated people may keep and read books.
Very good Skibane. - tom
Sir, could you please fix the misspelling in this article’s title? Thanks.
And it says
THE RIGHT SHALL NOT BE ——
It doesn’t say the People shall be granted the right
In other words the RIGHT ALREADY EXISTS and it shall not be infringed
And if the geniuses on the Court some how think it is obsolete etc then it is not up to them to repeal it but the congress and the states through the Amendment process
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