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To: ExSoldier
1. The Amendment was crafted during a time of war. The verbiage "well regulated" is not a legal term of art as most would place it today. It is in reality a term of military logistics: "well regulated" really means "of like type and caliber" for logistical and reasons of military discipline. 2. The Amendment was crafted at a time when the legal government was still King George of Britain. Therefore to affix the national guard theory AT THAT TIME IN HISTORY, you would in reality have been referring to the Tories loyal to the KING! Do you really think this is what the Founding fathers meant?

The second amendent was crafted by the first Congress, although similar provisions existed in the Constitutions of some states, and also showed up in the state conventions which ratified the main body of the Constitution. Some states refused to ratify absent a bill of rights, others only ratified because they were promised that the first Congress would pass one and send it to the state legislatures for ratification. The BOR was passed in 1791, the peace treaty ending the revolutionary war was signed at Paris in 1783, even though the war itself ended a couple of years earlier, so we were not at war with England at the time, nor was the King George the lawful ruler, and had not been for over a decade. The memory was fresh however. The militia was not then defined in federal law, that came the following year.

Bottom line, you need to revise your arguements a bit. I find Hardy's "The Second Amendment and the Historiography of the Bill of Rights" to be very good. Also see To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, Joyce Lee Malcom, Harvard University Press, 1994. Another good source of material is GunCite which contains a very meaty excerpt from Malcom's book.

45 posted on 06/20/2003 10:40:02 AM PDT by El Gato
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To: El Gato
Thanks...I stand corrected. I'll try and fine tune this to accomodate the new facts but I find the arguments to be cogent and persuasive as they stand. There is a danger to being too picky while debating, as long as your arguments do not turn on outright fallacy...I'd hate to substantively change a winning combo. I've never been challenged on this set of arguments, even by other history teachers. Only freepers! LOL Thanks for keeping me on my toes. Any ideas on how to SIMPLY do this, so that it remains simple and easy to remember?
49 posted on 06/20/2003 11:43:04 AM PDT by ExSoldier (M1911A1: The ORIGINAL "Point and Click" interface!)
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