I am so tired of hearing how the NRA blocks all attempts at getting gun-control laws no matter how sensible the laws would be.I’m also tired of hearing about Second Ammendment Rights. All rights have some limitations for the common good. You may have a driver’s license, for example, but drunk driving is still illegal. You may have children, but child abuse is still illegal. You may marry, but polygamy is still illegal. Why should the 2nd Amendment be any different from other rights that are limited for the greater good?

Period. This is a MacGuffin which the GOP maintains to make the Democrats look like Volvo driving blah, blah, blahs….
The NRA are handmaidens to that cause and the actual issues
are lost in the scuffle. But as long as people vote with their .308s, it’ll remain on the GOP platform.

Pilt

If only those in favor of getting rid of guns would put a sign in their yard: “No guns on this property.”
Then, those of us who owned guns wouldn’t have to use them, and the left could have a fine opportunity to put their money where their collective mouth is.
But, no liberal ever does that. Always want to use someone else’s money.

A little confused here…but….

It’s not as simple as “getting rid of guns.” Nearly no one advocates that, just a more limited arsenal in some cases.

Even the simplest law, such as “one gun per month” is fought tooth and nail by the NRA, while (as a gun owner myself – surprise!) I can’t imagine why anyone would need to have that many guns around. My father and I hunted together for many years. He used the same 30-30 and I used another long gun. We never felt like our 2nd Amendment rights were being trampled!

Does this make sense to you? ‘Cause your reply left me scratching my head…

Pilt

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.

OK, so let me pretend to be an originalist here (I’m laughing too). I think it is safe to say that the Founding Fathers did not put the first two clauses in the Second Amendment just for the fun of it. The question then is, What they heck did they mean by it? Well, let’s see. They were concerned about fighting intruders, British or otherwise. They were concerned about the national government getting too powerful and turning into a monarchy. So they wanted to make sure that the states and the people that inhabited them had the means to defend themselves against the British and, possibly, a president who got too big for his britches.

Interestingly, the Second Amendment is not the only mention of “militias” in the Constitution.

Article II, which sets forth the powers of the president, includes the following language: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;”

Hmmm. It seems like the Founding Fathers had a pretty clear vision of the states having militias.

Reading these two provisions together, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here by saying that when the founders were thinking about having ready militias in the states, specifically well-regulated militias, when they wrote the Second Amendment. They were not concerned about the rights of individuals to possess guns so that they could hunt or shoot their neighbor for trespassing.

So, my message to the NRA is, if you have a gun, you better be ready, willing and able to join a state militia (now known as the National Guard) and go off to war if the president decides to call the militias in the actual services of the United States.

Just being an originalist.

Of course, we all know that Mr. Originalist, Antonin Scalia, will find a creative way of ignoring the first two clauses of the Second Amendment. And that, my friends, will prove that originalism is just the lipstick on the pig that is arch-conservatism.

This phrase seems to be overlooked.

I’m no Constitutional scholar, but doesn’t this mean that any militia would be formed as a group, under clear terms and an obvious leadership structure?

And, if so, doesn’t that mean that we are not referring to individual rights, but rather the rights of the government to not only allow gun ownership, but to regulate it?

Pilt

ps: Of course, the larger issue is that time has indeed changed. Gun ownership has likely had the “unintended consequence” of arming gang members and criminals to the exclusion of normal citizens…whose chance of retaking their nation by force is an impossible dream….

“gang members and criminals” are armed and fighting only when fighting over territories in which illegal drugs, from alcohol to whatever nanny is banning now, have the opportunity to make vast profits because things people want have been made illegal.
The war on guns is a direct offshoot of the war on drugs.
Nanny starts the latter war to win the former.

Why won’t the NRA and all of its nit-witted mebers take a flying leap? If there is any one thing this country can do without, it’s the NRA. They promote themselves as an organization that promotes gun safety and responsible ownership, and in actuality they are anything but. They’re a pseudo-political,right-wing organization opposed to any type of responsible and safe gun ownership. Responsible gun owners make it a point to avoid the NRA and recognize it for the fraud it is.

Good point. By the way, has Charlton Heston’s hand been pryed open now that it is cold and dead. One NRA member at a time.

I wonder if the acronym NRA really means “Not Reasonable Anytime” the words “gun control” are uttered?

Let me be more specific. I’ll concede that a reasonable interpretation of the constitution gives ordinary citizens the right to bear arms. But I’ll only concede that by doing so, they are part of a “well regulated” militia. By this interpretation, they don’t even need to join the National Guard. Gun owners ARE the National Guard. Last time I checked, the President invoked his right to call up the National Guard and shipped them off to Iraq. This could be a great savings to the Pentagon. They won’t even need to provide the weapons and ammo. Just tell all the loyal patriotic gun owners to bring theirs along. Especially the ones who already own assault rifles with the automatic conversion kits. After all, by their Constitutional “right” they posses these things to protect the country. Right? The President has made a great case that there has never been a greater threat to our country. Pack your guns and your bags. You just got a free flight to Baghdad.
Sarcasm aside, if this is really going to be the gun lobby’s argument, they have to at least concede that they are subject to state regulation.
The City of Philadelphia is fighting the good fight, but they will unfortunately, lose. Harrisburg needs to make this change. Ok, you can all stop laughing now.

Thanks! Well said.

It would be great to see some of these uber-patriots, armed with their shotguns, marching off to war, in all their Cabela’s finery… I can imagine them asking for a reinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment on their way to the front lines….

Don’t get me wrong, I have no hurt with hunters. I was one and I know a lot of them. The ones who blindly support the NRA may do it more out of a sense of “us against them” than anything else. Fighting against the supposed Liberal gun-haters empowers them….the same way that looking down their noses at hunters and shooters empowers many Progressives…

OK. Flame away…

Pilt

Blackrobe –

What you read as a “qualification” in the Second Amendment, I read as an explicit right meant to be preserved and guaranteed by the Founders. Like I said in my earlier posts to Greg, go back and read the reasoning of the Founders in the Federalist Papers. When they spoke of a “well-regulated” militia, they weren’t talking about some permanent, standing army; they were referring to ordinary citizens who, collectively, might be called upon to band together and defend the country. The first (and best) line of defense, the Founders reasoned, would be for each able-bodied citizen to arm themselves against threats both foreign and domestic. No where in the Federalist do the Founders discuss any sort of LIMITATION on the right to keep and bear arms. In fact, while some these days seem to focus on the “well-regulated” portion of the Second Amendment, the Founders seemed to emphasize the “shall not be infringed” term quite emphatically. Again, except for those in power and the well-connected, England was a largely disarmed country. The Founders saw the abuses created by that policy and wished to balance power a bit in their new country. As it pertained to the Second Amendment, the Founders “circumscribed” nothing. The people were the “militia” and gun ownership was not limited to membership in any exclusive group or regulated formation. The “well-regulated” phrase in the Second Amendment was, more or less, something of a declaration of a collective purpose (i.e., defense of the country against internal or external threats). That does not translate into exclusivity in gun ownership (i.e., limiting who is able to own a gun). It merely says that, as a country, we have a right of self-defense, one in which citizens, in times of need, could band together to fight for their freedom. Ergo, as a member of the “militia”, any American’s right to own a firearm should not be infringed upon.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but while your historical references may be accurate, the reality today is far different in this nation than it was when those scholars and learned men were fussing over the Federalist Papers.

We’ve outlawed slavery and given women the right to vote in the meantime.

Surely you can see how parsing the specific intent of the wording of the 2nd Amendment can seem like like a parlor game.

I’ve made the point before, but I’ll do it again here and now.

if, as you suggest, the major intent was to allow citizens to “rise up against tyranny,” they you’d have to explain to me exactly how that would happen in the United States in 2008. Do you see a bunch of hunters banding together to attack foreign invaders who are going to mass at our borders with muskets? Or would those hunters use their shotguns to fire on the bombs or nuclear missiles which might be descending from the skies?

And since we already have a well-regulated militia in the form of the National Guard, how exactly would these untrained folks be organized? In essence, if there is no current mechanism for including them in a defense plan of some sort, then it seems to me that the Federal Government doesn’t see them as helpful in any way and is making the tacit statement that they would never turn to them as this “well regulated militia.”

To Blackrobe’s question about a gun control dichotomy within the party? Well, I’d say that’s the nature of the Democratic Party. For good or ill, we have a rather “large tent” and we welcome dissenting and counter views on many issues. Often this is to our detriment come election time, because, unlike the lock-step GOP, some of us will take opposing views that aren’t completely “by the book.”

And certainly the separation on guns is a cultural one. Urbanites, who, more often than not, don’t grow up with guns, have a skewed “media view” of the weapons. They don’t understand (and I don’t blame them for this) how a gun can be used for sport….rather than mere violence.

Perhaps they are confused by people like Dick Cheney, who somehow managed to do both.

Sorry. That was too easy…

Pilt

Watch the movie Red Dawn. Good cast (Swayze, Jen Grey, Charlie Sheen) but a rather bad movie from the Reagan era. It is the story of Cuba and the Soviet Union invading the US and taking control of the western half of the country. Then you will understand the scenario that the right wing believes is possible and that they must defend against.

...but I’d really hate to think so.

If the Right believes tribe like that, it’s only because some of them want to live in a mythic land where (cue the announcer…) “A small rag-tag group of citizen soldiers, outgunned and out-manned, rise up and save the republic.”

Unless they have a fleet of Blackhawks and F-16s, I don’t see it happening.

Pilt

To those that believe carrying a gun is a God given right and will protect them in any situation, there is a place you can do some good. Become a city cop. These guys face the scum of the earth everyday and much of this scum are carrying guns. City police departments are looking for new recruits everyday. But there is one big difference between those that just want to carry a gun and those that have to carry one to do a job. A cop and his family know that when he leaves for work he may not come home. That’s everytime he goes to work. Not some days…every day! Gun control isn’t about going to the gun shop with your bro’s and see who can buy the biggest gun or shootin’ up some old car in the woods. Its about getting handguns off city streets and putting policeman back in control of the city areas where drugs and murder are commonplace. All too often, its either a young kid or a cop laying in the street…never going home again. Try thinking outside your own little world and see gun control for what it really is. As much as you and the NRA may want to think its all about you and your engraved .357 in that gun cabinet you bought from Cabelas…........its about saving lives, not saving your hobby.
JP