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Post A Reply Login Name: Password: Message: HTML is enabled. UBB Code™ is enabled. [QUOTE]Originally posted by Malnurtured Snay: [QB] [URL=http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/L-secondamendment.htm]The Second Ammendment[/URL] Essentially, the 2nd Ammendment doesn't give individuals the right to own a gun: it gives militas those rights. Nothing new here, I'd just to see Rob and Omega bumble their way through this with their claims of "Founder's Intentions" and other such nonsense. [QUOTE]Pro-gun advocates claim that this amendment guarantees their individual right to own a gun, and that gun control laws are therefore a violation of their constitutional rights. In fact, the term "violation of our Second Amendment rights" has become a battle cry in gun lobbyist literature, repeated everywhere in their editorials and essays. However, this raises a fascinating observation. If gun control laws are so obviously a violation of the Second Amendment, then why doesn't the National Rifle Association challenge them on constitutional grounds before the Supreme Court? The answer is that they know they face certain defeat, for reasons we shall explore below. Consequently, the NRA has abandoned all hope in the courts. Instead, the NRA has chosen to lobby Congress to prevent gun control legislation, and has become in fact one of the most powerful lobbies on Capital Hill. This is a supreme and exquisite irony, given the conservative and libertarian's love of constitutions and hatred of democracy. But, at any rate, the NRA is fighting for its perceived constitutional rights on Capital Hill, by bribing our legislators with millions of dollars in campaign contributions. The reason is because the Supreme Court -- this nation's final arbiter on the interpretation of the Constitution -- has always ruled that the Second Amendment does not extend the right to keep and bear arms to individuals, but to the well-regulated militias mentioned in the first part of the amendment. Specifically, these are militias that are regulated by the federal and state governments. Article I, Section 8 authorizes Congress: [small]"To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; to provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively the appointment of officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress."[/small] The Founders were passionately opposed to standing peacetime armies -- in fact, Thomas Jefferson listed it as one of their grievances against the British Crown in the Declaration of Independence. Intent on eliminating this evil, they created a system whereby citizens kept their arms at home and could be called by their state militias at a moment's notice. These militias eventually became the states' National Guard, and the courts have always interpreted them that way. In 1886, the Supreme Court ruled in Presser vs. Illinois that the Second Amendment only prevents the federal government from interfering with a state's ability to maintain a militia, and does nothing to limit the states' ability to regulate firearms. Which means that states can regulate, control and even ban firearms if they so desire! Even so, this left a question about how much the federal government can limit a citizen's right to own a gun. In 1939, the Supreme Court addressed this issue in United States vs. Miller. Here, the Court refused to strike down a law prohibiting the interstate commerce of a sawed-off shotgun on the basis of the Second Amendment. Rejecting the argument that the shotgun had "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia," the Court held that the Second Amendment "must be interpreted and applied" only in the context of safeguarding the continuation and effectiveness of the state militias. In other words, the federal government is free to regulate and even ban guns so long as it does not interfere with the state's ability to run a militia. Since then, both the Supreme and lesser courts have consistently interpreted the right to bear arms as a state's right, not an individual's right. At times they have even expressed exasperation with some gun advocates' misinterpretation of the Second Amendment. In United States v. Warin, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1976 upheld the conviction of an illegal gun-owner who argued that his Second Amendment rights had been violated. In pointed language, the court wrote: "It would unduly extend this opinion to attempt to deal with every argument made by defendant...all of which are based on the erroneous supposition that the Second Amendment is concerned with the rights of individuals rather than those of the states." In 1972 Justice William O. Douglas wrote: "A powerful lobby dins into the ears of our citizenry that these gun purchases are constitutional rights protected by the Second Amendment....There is no reason why all pistols should not be barred to everyone except the police." Gun advocates have bitterly decried the "activist courts" that have supposedly changed the plain meaning of the constitution. But over 100 years of courts have interpreted a states'-rights meaning, and so has a broad body of constitutional scholars. Gun advocates simply have a different "plain meaning" of the constitution than everyone else, one that coincidentally legalizes their desired goal of owning weapons. The only apparent recourse for gun advocates now is to reject the system of judicial review that has led to a perfect record of court defeats. But the alternative is even worse: trusting Congress to pass laws that respect our constitutional rights. On all other issues but gun ownership, the idea is anathema to conservatives and libertarians. But even accepting the gun lobby's interpretation of the Second Amendment does not spare the gun owner from gun control. The amendment simply states that the people have a right "to keep and bear" arms. It says absolutely nothing about regulating them for safety, design or caliber. The gun lobby argues that the lack of of such language means that individuals are free to own any arms they please, and government cannot use constitutional silence to infer permission to regulate them. But this isn't true; look at the First Amendment. It simply says that "congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech" -- yet the government regulates countless forms of speech -- slander, malicious falsehoods, fraud, insider trading, etc. -- and these regulations are upheld by the Supreme Court. The same principle applies to the regulation of guns. This point becomes especially important when considering the regulation of arms by category. For example: do the people have a right to own nuclear weapons? (Pro-gun advocates contemptuously call this the "nuclear straw-man argument," yet they have not even come close to providing a satisfactory answer to it.) How about chemical and biological weapons? Tanks? Battleships? Bombers? In a society where people get drunk, angry, jealous, self-destructive and mentally ill, you certainly wouldn't want the unregulated sale of nuclear weapons on the market. Prohibition of such arms seems like the best thing to do, but, strictly speaking, that too would be a violation of the Second Amendment. Some pro-gun advocates admit that a literalist interpretation allows the right to keep and bear all arms, including nuclear weapons, and that this is surely archaic. Certainly the Founders could not have foreseen or intended this situation. However, pro-gun advocates claim the correct reaction of modern America should be to amend the constitution to exclude ownership of nuclear weapons; creatively interpreting the constitution is the wrong way. This is a curious argument, for a couple of reasons. First, the entire rationale of an individual right to keep and bear arms is to defend against a tyrannical government. But to surrender an advantage as overwhelming as nuclear weapons and smart weaponry to the government is irrational. Given the fanaticism of the gun lobby to protect themselves from government tyranny, this meek acquiescence towards weapons of terrible destruction is more than little strange, and begs explanation. It suggests that, down deep, the gun lobby is not really serious about its claim that government threatens them. (How could they be, in a democracy with high-speed, mass communication?) What is more likely is that they feel the need to empower themselves, and firearms are sufficient to fulfill that need. The argument is also strange because it concedes a point to gun control; namely, that there are some weapons so deadly that they should not be allowed in society. That is exactly what gun-control advocates have been arguing, and you don't need nuclear weapons to achieve the feared results; the U.S. already has the high murder statistics to prove it with handguns alone. The argument is also strange because the gun lobby fervently hopes to avoid public mobilization on a constitutional amendment limiting the right to keep and bear arms. A huge majority of Americans favor stricter gun control laws; and as long as they're excluding nuclear weapons they might as well throw in assault weapons and Saturday Night Specials. But ultimately, calling for a constitutional amendment banning the ownership of nuclear weapons is moot. Individuals do not even have a guaranteed right to keep and bear firearms, much less modern military weapons. To overcome the Supreme Court on this issue, the gun lobby would have to promote fundamental changes in our political structure that would surely be disimprovements.[/QUOTE] [/QB][/QUOTE]

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