[ExTxMarine #36] The 2nd Amendment says something about "shall not be infringed". But apparently, you are okay with infringement...if it is only a little bit.[coloradan #37] If this is actually your position, then you would have no argument against a state that decided to make all firearms illegal. Please describe what laws you think actually do violate the Second Amendment - or doesn’t it exist for you either?
[5th MEB #39] You obviously never have read or don’t understand the words of the Second Amendment, or you eyes are brown because your full of crap. If you tell me your eyes are blue it just means your a quart low.
One time, for the pitifully slow, or willfully ignorant.
The right to keep and bear arms is not defined in the 2nd Amendment. It was a pre-existing common law right that was and is protected by the 2nd Amendment. It was not a right granted by the 2nd Amendment, but a right that existed in the colonies, was brought forth into the states upon independence, and recognized and protected by the Constitution.
U.S. Supreme Court, Ex Parte Grossman, 267 U.S. 86, 108-09 (1925)
The language of the Constitution cannot be interpreted safely except by reference to the common law and to British institutions as they were when the instrument was framed and adopted. The statesmen and lawyers of the Convention who submitted it to the ratification of the Conventions of the thirteen States, were born and brought up in the atmosphere of the common law, and thought and spoke in its vocabulary. They were familiar with other forms of government, recent and ancient, and indicated in their discussions earnest study and consideration of many of them, but when they came to put their conclusions into the form of fundamental law in a compact draft, they expressed them in terms of the common law, confident that they could be shortly and easily understood.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk1ch1.asp
Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England
Book the First - Chapter the First: Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals (1765)
5. THE fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute 1 W. & M. ft. 2. c. 2. and is indeed a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.
It has never meant a right to carry any and all weapons for any purpose. It does not mean that today.
District of Columbia v Heller, S. Ct. 554 US 570 (2008)
Heller at 620:
We described the right protected by the Second Amendment as “ ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose’ ”
Heller at 626:
Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. See, e.g., Sheldon, in 5 Blume 346; Rawle 123; Pomeroy 152–153; Abbott 333. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. See, e.g., State v. Chandler, 5 La. Ann., at 489–490; Nunn v. State, 1 Ga., at 251; see generally 2 Kent *340, n. 2; The American Students’ Blackstone 84, n. 11 (G. Chase ed. 1884).
The right, as it has existed since the states were colonies, is an individual right to self-defense. The right itself contains limitations as explained in the English common law pre-dating American independence. It has never meant a right to carry any and all weapons for any purpose. It does not mean that today.
That is the right the Constitution says shall not be infringed. The right itself has inherent limitations.
There is a right to keep and bear lawful arms, in a lawful manner, for a lawful purpose. That right shall not be infringed, not even a little bit.
If not for civilians owning equal or better armaments than their government leaders, many countries, the United States included, would NOT EXIST!
On multiple occasions, the resistance/revolution movements borrowed weapons, cannons, rifles, ammunition, ships, and other armaments FROM PRIVATE OWNERS to fight their governments for the right to have freedom!
Your suggestion that “legal limits” are acceptable means you think the government should tell We the People how we will be allowed to defend ourselves from their tyranny or other attacks. Sure, let’s see how that works for We the People...history has many examples of how that works out.
People were making unserialized weapons WAY before our Constitution was even thought of...your willingness to bow down to your government masters will not make your chains any lighter than mine!
It was meant to allow the people to maintain "the security of a free state" literally against the other states.
In Federalist #8, Alexander Hamilton was afraid that each state would raise its own army to defend against neighboring states:
The institutions chiefly alluded to are STANDING ARMIES and the correspondent appendages of military establishments. Standing armies, it is said, are not provided against in the new Constitution; and it is therefore inferred that they may exist under it. Their existence, however, from the very terms of the proposition, is, at most, problematical and uncertain. But standing armies, it may be replied, must inevitably result from a dissolution of the Confederacy. Frequent war and constant apprehension, which require a state of as constant preparation, will infallibly produce them. The weaker States or confederacies would first have recourse to them, to put themselves upon an equality with their more potent neighbors. They would endeavor to supply the inferiority of population and resources by a more regular and effective system of defense, by disciplined troops, and by fortifications. They would, at the same time, be necessitated to strengthen the executive arm of government, in doing which their constitutions would acquire a progressive direction toward monarchy. It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.The expedients which have been mentioned would soon give the States or confederacies that made use of them a superiority over their neighbors. Small states, or states of less natural strength, under vigorous governments, and with the assistance of disciplined armies, have often triumphed over large states, or states of greater natural strength, which have been destitute of these advantages. Neither the pride nor the safety of the more important States or confederacies would permit them long to submit to this mortifying and adventitious superiority. They would quickly resort to means similar to those by which it had been effected, to reinstate themselves in their lost pre-eminence. Thus, we should, in a little time, see established in every part of this country the same engines of despotism which have been the scourge of the Old World. This, at least, would be the natural course of things; and our reasonings will be the more likely to be just, in proportion as they are accommodated to this standard.
In Federalist #29, Alexander Hamilton argues that the militia is a counter-force to standing armies:
If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security. If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia, in the body to whose care the protection of the State is committed, ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions...James Madison, Federalist #46:"The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.
But though the scheme of disciplining the whole nation must be abandoned as mischievous or impracticable; yet it is a matter of the utmost importance that a well-digested plan should, as soon as possible, be adopted for the proper establishment of the militia. The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate extent, upon such principles as will really fit them for service in case of need. By thus circumscribing the plan, it will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia, ready to take the field whenever the defense of the State shall require it. This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist...
Where in the name of common-sense, are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens? What shadow of danger can there be from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits and interests?
But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole...You cite recent SCOTUS rulings, I cite two actual Framers of the Constitution writing about the intent of a militia of the People and its need to be as comparably armed as a standing army. That does mean "any and all weapons for any purpose" that a standing army ruled by a despotic tyrant might desire.That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism...
Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger...
To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties...
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of...
Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it.
-PJ
One more thing...
The old English common law that you cite is based on a paradigm that the Framers rejected.
The old English way was that arms were kept locked up in a central armory and distributed to the townspeople when the castle was under threat of attack. The arms were the property of the local Baron, not the people.
The Framers purposely changed that. The militia is created by Article I Section 8 and Article II Section 2 of the United States Constitution. The 2nd amendment is what moved us away from the English armory and to the personal ownership and possession of any arms that an army might deploy against the People.
-PJ
Suppose a state bans possession of all semiautomatic firearms, and then all pump action firearms, and then all bolt-action firearms, and then all multiple-barrel firearms, and then all revolvers, and then all bolt-action firearms, and then all firearms capable of firing one or more shots, such that then all firearms are completely prohibited.
At what point in this progression would you say the Second Amendment has been violated?
Or would it never be violated, because only “lawful” firearms are protected by the Second Amendment, which just happens to be an empty set in this hypothetical case?