[inquest]

Yes, hope does. I think we may be closing in on something.

But why "personal" arms? I say that the right to keep and bear arms includes land mines and artillery pieces, albeit not nuclear warheads or anthrax, but you don't include artillery and land mines in your reading of the Second like I do.

Yes, I do include artillery and land mines in my reading of the 2nd. I narrowed my scope in my statement so as to ensure that we'd have common ground, but since you agree with me as to the broader scope, even better! You see, the purpose of my statement was to locate what we agree on, not what we disagree on.

The nature of my point was as follows. There exists, as we seem to agree, a certain class of weapons that we can say for sure, for a fact, the 2nd amendment definitely prohibits the federal government from denying our possession of. Whether it has protections beyond that, we may have disagreements over, at least for now. But we still agree on something highly significant. Because even the modest position, that it only protects personal firearms, is at war with what the political and media establishment say it says. They say that it only guarantees states the right to organize militias, and that it does not limit federal power to prohibit "assault weapons" and institute other "reasonable restrictions" on personal firearm ownership.

So my point is, we can know "for a fact" that they are wrong - even though they're not "obviously" wrong, in the strict sense of the word, since many people disagree with us. I use this example to illustrate that regular citizens such as ourselves do indeed have the right and duty, and ability, to definitively conclude that the "powers-that-be" can in fact be objectively wrong about the Constitution. It should also be apparent that if we're able to agree on this with relatively minimal effort, with a little more effort we should be able to resolve our disagreements about the other aspects of the amendment, as well as other amendments, to the point where we know for a fact that our understanding is correct.

[general_re]

Fair enough. But you're still glossing over the hard part of all this - the problem of where we draw the line. The language of the Constitution is pretty clear that we can't forbid all types of weapon in the hands of the citizenry, and common sense tells us that we can't allow all types of weapons to be available to the citizenry. But in between those two extremes, all or nothing, is a huge grey area where we have to decide exactly what is and isn't allowed, just as with Judge Moore's case here. We can know "for a fact" that it's wrong to disallow the citizenry to arm themselves at all, just as we can know "for a fact" that it would be wrong to disallow citizens all forms of religious expression. But that's not what's at issue here - what's at issue is what sort of weapons we will allow, and what sort of expression we will permit.

I use this example to illustrate that regular citizens such as ourselves do indeed have the right and duty, and ability, to definitively conclude that the "powers-that-be" can in fact be objectively wrong about the Constitution.

Yes, but only in the sorts of cases that I earlier suggested don't really happen very often. If and when the government passes and enforces a law requiring everyone to turn in anything more dangerous than a set of nail clippers, or we find someone advocating same, then we can know "for a fact" that this position contravenes the Constitution. Short of that extreme, everything else is just arguing about what is and isn't permissible, about where we should draw the line - which is, as I said, a political question, not a Constitutional question.

It should also be apparent that if we're able to agree on this with relatively minimal effort, with a little more effort we should be able to resolve our disagreements about the other aspects of the amendment, as well as other amendments, to the point where we know for a fact that our understanding is correct.

Our understanding of these other aspects being "correct" based on what? Not the Constitution - it's silent about the anthrax versus handguns issue. So what standard do we use to judge our correctness? Or are we, instead, seeking a political compromise that satisfies as many people as possible, without claiming reference to an external standard that, as far as I can see, simply does not exist?