Posted on 03/16/2008 2:51:10 PM PDT by kiriath_jearim
Guns were an essential tool in frontier life when the United States was formed hundreds of years ago, and even today the right to carry them remains a fundamental part of the country's identity.
Hence the heated emotions surrounding an issue that comes before the Supreme Court this week -- how modern society should interpret gun rights that were written into the Second Amendment of the Constitution during a very different era.
The deadly impact of gun-toting criminals in recent years has made its way into the nation's conscience with a spate of gruesome mass shootings, particularly at schools and universities.
But the massacres, such as the nation's worst school rampage to date when a 23-year-old South Korean gunman at Virginia Tech University killed 32 people including himself last year, have largely failed to rouse any widespread movement against the right to bear arms.
Instead, the local press in Blacksburg, where the shootings occurred, focused on the opposite notion after the fact -- whether the killings could have been prevented or reduced if students or professors were allowed to carry guns in class.
America's love for guns "comes from the history and the geography of the nation, the fact that it was a very decentralized, sparsely populated frontier-dominated culture without a sense of a sovereign government," said William Vizzard, a professor of criminal justice at California State University.
The reason that even some liberal Americans will not take up the cause for abolition of guns is a relic of that older time, a "political cultural trend from the frontier society that was very self-reliant," Vizzard said.
When the first colonists arrived on what are now US shores, it was an every man -- or at least every group -- for himself mentality that ensured the strong survived and which fueled settlers' fights with Native Americans already on the land, the French arriving from Canada, and the Spanish moving up from Florida.
And once the United States gained its independence from Britain the founding fathers determined that an armed population was the best way to resist takeover by dictatorship or aristocracy, according to Eugene Volokh, law professor at University of California Los Angeles.
The United States' third president Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and one of the main authors of the US Constitution of 1787, believed firmly in this principle.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms in his own land," Jefferson wrote. "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
And the Second Amendment to the Constitution, added in 1791, assures that: "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."
According to Justice Joseph Story, the "right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic, since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers," he wrote in an academic paper.
However, he noted that "among the American people there is a growing indifference to any sense of militia discipline," and questioned "how it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization."
Today, a large part of what pushes millions of Americans to join the powerful gun lobby the National Rifle Association (NRA) is a "you're not-gonna-tell-me-what-to-do reaction to government," accord to Vizzard, a former agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
In addition, sheer consumerism plays its role.
"Each culture develops its interest in something, and in the United States' consumerism, guns are just a part of that."
“No, they did not. They determined that a well regulated Miltia was necessary to the security of a free state. Not an armed populace.”
Good grief, are you still posting here? What part of the “...right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” don’t you understand?
(1) Is the grammatical structure and usage of this sentence and the way the words modify each other, identical to the Second Amendment's sentence?; and
(2) Could this sentence be interpreted to restrict 'the right of the people to keep and read Books' only to 'a well-educated electorate' -- for example, registered voters with a high-school diploma?"
"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."
That's like me asking, "What if the entirety of the Second Amendment read 'A well regulated Miltia is necessary to the security of a free state'."
You are wrong on this. I have done a lot of research on late 18th Century arms in the new Republic and their were quite a few a rifles around at the time, but the vast majority of Americans at that time owned and used smooth bore guns, also known as "fowling pieces." One could fire it either with buckshot or round ball, just like todays shotguns.
BTW, do you know what the most popular weapon was on the late 19th Century Frontier; Colt six shooter? Winchester rifle? No it was the double barrled shot gun.
The people are guaranteed the individual right to keep and bear arms as part of a well regulated state Militia. It's an individual right that is only exercised collectively -- like voting. That's what's protected by the second amendment from federal infringement.
Your individual right to keep and bear arms outside of a Militia is protected by your state constitution.
Would the Militia Act, and all other previous texts still have been written, and passed?
But what if it said, “A well-stocked library, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed.”
Many Southerners were of Scottish background. The Scots had been fighting English oppression for centuries. England eventually beat down the Scots, and after the Act of Union in 1707 the English victors pretty mnuch tried to erase Scottish history and culture. The Disarmament Act of 1756 stripped the Scots’ right to keep and bear arms. The American descendants of those Scottish patriots remembered that disarmament very well, and vowed never to be subjected to the same oppressive conditions. Indeed, the Disarmament Act was well known to the American colonists in general. Hence, the insistence upon Second Amendment. Our Founding Fathers knew very well what an oppressive government could do, and they also knew that the only security The People had against such tyranny was to be armed.
This doesn't invalidate the need for individuals to own arms. It recognizes the need to develop an elite corps of soldiers. Just like we recognize the need for special forces in our military.
Is that right? Curious that the Militia Act of 1792 gave Militia members 6 months to acquire one.
Well, they are around here.
If we're gonna die, we'll die with our boots on.
The militia=the people=you and I
Do you disagree with that?
You mean, today? No.
I only went back to 1792 in order to determine the original meaning of the text. We knew who "the people" were. We knew who comprised "the well regulated Militia". A coincidence, I suppose, that the two groups were identical.
And militias were made up of guys off the street/farm. Average guys had to have guns - and did - to have militias.
I spent all day yesterday as a rifle rangemaster on the boy scout range. The Ladies are often better shots than the young men. We had a mom that had never shot before by the end of the day had way exceeded what we require of the boys for their rifle merit badge. Also had three teenage female crew members shooting for their first time every one of their shots was at least on the paper and one had a qualifying target(all five in the black) told them to take their targets to their crew adviser as they get credit to one of their awards. Way to keep those politicians in fear.
"I ask, sir, what is the militia?It is the whole people, except for a few public officials."
— George Mason, in Debates in Virginia Convention on
Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788
Then why didn't the second amendment read, "An armed populace, being necessary to the security of a free state ..."?
The Founding Fathers discussed this and rejected it. An armed populate was useless without training, and training everyone was out of the question.
That is correct. Nor does it. State constitutions protect the individual right.
Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia".
“Then why didn’t the second amendment read, ‘An armed populace, being necessary to the security of a free state ...’?”
Because they said the “...right of THE PEOPLE to keep and bear arms....”
I can ask you why your mother didn’t drown you at birth, but it would be as stupid a question as the one you posited.
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