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."
Article I, Section 8 gave Congress the authority to arm the militia, but it didn’t say that the only arms the militia could use would be those provided by Congress, now, did it? The law was that the militia, the People, were to provide their own arms, powder and ball; but, if they couldn’t, Congress was authorized to provide them.
"The people" doesn't mean everyone. When the Founders meant everyone they wrote "persons".
If you had read US v Heller, the DC Circuit Court defined who "the people" were. And it wasn't everyone. It wasn't even every citizen.
You need to get yourself on firmer ground before you start throwing around words like "stupid".
Bump!
This does not erase the fact that the "militias" proscribed therein were comprised of average, everyday Americans...not soldiers. They brought their own personal firearms to war, REGARDLESS of Article I, Section 8. All that rhetoric sounds nice on paper, but it does not account for the total REALITY behind the composition of early militias.
Any country which denies its individual citizens the right to keep and bear arms is rife for tyrannical dictatorships. or worse.
Correct. And the second amendment was written to protect the right of the people to do that.
In a nutshell.
Your individual gun rights outside of a Militia are secured by your state constitution. Two different issues.
Yes, that's right. The Militia Act stipulated that they must have acquire a military arm, at that time a single shot smoothbore musket, which is not to be confused with a "civilian" smoothbore fowling piece, which most militias where armed with during the Revolution.
“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.”
You make a good point, but things have changed considerably since the early days of our republic. Back then, a man could buy the same weaponry as the soldiers used—a musket or a rifle—and a citizenry so equipped would be in a position to put up a stout defense against a tyrannical government. But not anymore. Hunting rifles don’t let you effectively engage tanks and F-18’s. I think if a major purpose of the Second Amendment is to protect against a tyrannical government (which appears to be the case), then, logically, we should have the right to similar arms.
It's meaning would be the same.
I was pleased to see in one of the briefs filed in Heller that the topic of prefatory language has been addressed quite thoroughly by the courts. It has been recognized that such language does not limit the scope of the operative clause.
Congrats!
The kids and I went out this afternoon and went through over 400 rounds of .22LR.
You've done yourself proud with this post.
In your mind, only libraries would be protected. But the actual grammatical structure only establishes that there is a relationship between the two; presumably that the protection will accomplish the end. But there is no implication whatever that the protection can be limited to only books kept in a library.
Nor is there any implication that the government is responsible for creating libraries. The expectation would be that people, left undisturbed by the government, will create libraries using the books that they have a protected freedom to keep and read.
He's not espousing the formation of government militias in this quote.
No, they did not. They determined that a well regulated Miltia was necessary to the security of a free state. Not an armed populace.
It’s right there in the second amendment.
But Paulsen, you are leaving out.. The right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
It’s right there in the second amendment......:)
Yep. And if state governments can disarm the people, then they can eliminate a resource specifically allocated to the Congress in Article 1 Section 8 - Powers of Congress (”To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”). Which is why the 2nd Amendment applies to the states even without the 14th Amendment. Let me repeat - if the states can disarm the people, then the Congress and the President (as commander in chief) can be denied the services of the militia to perform their three Constitutionally defined missions - no way that’s what was intended. Certain persons who are posting on this thread just want to dodge that fact. Why? Simple - they want to continue to maintain various classes of citizenship - one for whites and one for “colored.” For instance, historically a number of states had laws against concealed carry of handguns, which would never be enforced against a white person by juries. That’s what RP wants. BS sez me.
Outstanding! Thanks.
What protects individuals' rights from the federal government?
In what parts of the Constitution does the phrase "the people" not include all free citizens who are eligible to vote?
Did you mean to add "shall not be infringed"? Absent the "militia" phrase, a tyrant could reasonably argue that it only protected, say, hunting or sporting weapons. As it is, however, it protects at minimum those weapons which could be usefully taken up as arms in a well-functioning group of citizens joined together to defend their community.
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