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To: DeaconBenjamin
There is a huge problem with"divining" the intent of the Founders on the constitution.

Others can do it just as well as we can.

From: The Embarrassing Second Amendment.

"A standard move of those legal analysts who wish to limit the Second Amendment's force is to focus on its "preamble" as setting out a restrictive purpose. Recall Laurence Tribe's assertion that the purpose was to allow the states to keep their militias and to protect them against the possibility that the new national government will use its power to establish a powerful standing army and eliminate the state militias. This purposive reading quickly disposes of any notion that there is an "individual" right to keep and bear arms. The right, if such it be, is only a states's right. The consequence of this reading is obvious: the national government has the power to regulate--to the point of prohibition--private ownership of guns, since that has, by stipulation, nothing to do with preserving state militias. This is, indeed, the position of the ACLU, which reads the Amendment as protection only the right of "maintaining an effective state militia...[T]he individual's right to keep a nd bear arms applies only to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated [state] militia. Except for lawful police and military purposes, the possession of weapons by individuals is not constitutionally protected."

I don't know about you, but I just want the amendments to mean what they say. I think that the consequences of anything other than a straight interpretation can be dangerous.

158 posted on 05/07/2002 6:43:02 PM PDT by Luis Gonzalez
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To: Luis Gonzalez
Tribe's argument lacks substance because the contemporary meaning of "the militia" was every able-bodied man, with very limited exceptions.

I have extensively researched the legislative intent behind the 14th amendment, and believe that the US Supreme Court reached a ridiculous conclusion in Wong Kim Ark (wherein the current understanding of the 14th amendment received its legal underpinning) based on the assertion that British common law governed American immigration practices. Moreover, I believe that the whole concept that a mere accident of birth can confer citizenship is illogical, and should be repudiated.

No doubt the justices believed that the impact of their decision would be de minimis -- certainly there were very few Chinese women who entered the United States in the mid 19th Century, before immigration was shut off. Moreover, the likelihood that Europeans, Central Americans, or South Americans would have boarded a ship for several days so as to have their child in the US would have appeared an absurdity.

Yet today, the impact is hardly de minimis. In fact, other nations, including Britain, have moved away from this standard. Yet we retain this ill-considered rule, apparently as much from fears of being labeled racist as for any credible reason.

185 posted on 05/08/2002 5:04:18 AM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
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