Which parts of the US Constitution need to have a more modern interpretation?

You're the originalist, the debate is on what it meant in 1787. Based on my schooling, the first clause is the main clause, and the second clause is the subordinate/dependent clause, which, according to my schooling, puts the second amendment in a militia context. Now, I don't recall my English teacher talking about the second amendment, I'm just applying what I learned to it. Not only that, the historical use of 'bear arms' is decisively militaristic, (one bears arms to defend against attackers or muster for militia drills each month, one does not 'bear arms' to shoot rabbit) which confirms my point. Although I provided substantiation in another post, I will provide it again on request. In fact, my research tells me that Scalia pulled 'prefatory' and 'operative' out of his butt, no doubt to please his NRA rich buddies who aided in financing his rise to the court.

 

I'll file that in the wishful thinking file. Nice try, though.

 

How quaint.

How weak.

 

anyone who is honest understands that the term the RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS recognizes an individual right and reiterates the fact that the federal government was never given ANY power WHATSOEVER to interfere with private citizens right to keep and bear arms. YOU CONSTANTLY IGNORE KEEP and fixate on BEAR which is dishonest. and YOU IGNORE that your statist and specious misinterpretation of the second amendment conflicts with Article One, Section Eight and the Tenth amendment. It also complete runs contrary to the historical context in which the Bill of Rights was created, and the words and letters of the Founders

FIND ME ONE-I REPEAT ONE document from that era that suggests that the founders believed that the new federal government could restrict the arms of private citizens

 

it is your side that is weak. We have everything. We have the constitution, we have the words of the founders, we have USSC case law and we have most armed citizens on our side. which like it or not-is the ultimate check on statist nonsense.

 

And you ignore the fact that they didn't the 2nd to do it.

 

can anyone tell me what that word salad means? Obviously the writer is ignorant of the fact that the founders VIOLATED THE LAW OF THE EMPIRE to keep and bear arms and the reason why the war started was that the BRITISH TRIED TO SEIZE the arms of the patriots and these men wanted to make sure that the NEXT government they lived under had NO SUCH POWER TO DO THAT

DUH

 

Which doesn't negate the fact that they didn't have a 2nd and still freed themselves.

 

This says "may" have arms for defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law. That isn't a right, it's permission.

 

what a stupid claim. what they wanted to do was to make sure the citizens of the nation they were created didn't have to face living under another government like the British. Do you realize how completely silly your argument is? They were able to speak against the british without the First because they had the military win.

 

we are dealing with several leftists who hate the fact that the people most likely to oppose their collectivist schemes are those who support the right of free citizens to be armed.

 

I don't find your implied premise that compelling, considering that the founders of the United States were primarily influenced by the jurisprudence and political philosophy of Great Britain when drafting the Second Amendment. The experiences and legal traditions of the British Isles were more directly relevant to your American context, given the colonial relationship with Britain and the direct impact of British laws on the colonies.

I don't mean to be patronizing, but to understand this, we need to look at history, which I'm going to do.

Several key British influences include the aforementioned English Bill of Rights of 1689. This document, which came about after the 'Glorious Revolution' (of 1688 ), was particularly influential. It included provisions affirming the right of Protestants to bear arms, a response to the prior disarmament under the reign of James II. This historical context informed the founders' understanding of the need for an armed citizenry to prevent tyranny, noting that their great fear of standing armies was a state of affairs pertinent to the era. Today, it's anachronistic, because a modern country such as America cannot survive without a standing army, which has been expanded to our great military.

It's well established that the founders were also well versed in English common law, which included various protections for individual rights. Legal thinkers and texts from Britain, such as those by William Blackstone, heavily influenced American legal thought.

Furthermore, British philosophers such as John Locke, whose theories on natural rights and government by consent were foundational to your American political ethos, had a significant impact. Locke’s ideas about self-defense and the role of government in protecting the rights of citizens shaped the ideological underpinnings of the right to bear arms.

While there were certainly broader European influences on the political philosophy of the founders, such as the works of Montesquieu and Rousseau, these generally pertained more to concepts of government structure, democracy, and the separation of powers rather than specific jurisprudential issues related to the right to bear arms. It appears you are conflating the two, failing to make this important distinction. Actually,. now that I think about it, all I really needed to do was respond with the above paragraph, but you got me started so I went a little overboard

In your specific case of the Second Amendment, the direct legal and cultural lineage from Great Britain was the dominant influence, reflecting a response to the perceived risks of a standing army and the importance of a militia for the security of a free state, themes deeply embedded in the British experience of civil-military relations leading up to the 18th century.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-philosophy/American-constitutionalism
https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/john-locke
https://www.worldhistory.org/Montesquieu/

 

None of which requires militia membership for keeping and bearing arms. Clearly the thought was "If we need the militia. it would be good for its members to muster already armed. And as I've mentioned a few times the late 1700'S and early 1800's were a time of expansion and growth with settlements far from population centers, so it made comment sense for them to be armed; and the 2A made that happen.

 

So you just keep proving that we don't need a 2nd to protect us from govt tyranny.

 

You keep harping on your 'gun banner' and 'collectivists' theme, which is false. We believe in reasonable regulation, not the elimination of guns. The American tradition of the frontiersman, his owning rifles and handguns to hunt and to defend with, is well established and cannot be undone.

The question before us is not against that tradition, but what, in point of fact, was the real history of the second amendment, why it was put in the constitution, and the true context for it's conclusion, and I assure you, women and blacks were not included, statutorily, in the militias of 1787. At the time, the state militias were deemed to be the best defense against new 'president' who might even be thinking of, or be tempted to, enact a scheme using a standing army to usurp the powers of the states to defend themselves against foreign invasion. Thing is, that mindset is a dinosaur, an anachronism given the great militaries of the United States, and the National Guard, which can be federalized during emergencies by the US President, a state of affairs contrary to founders intent. so much for 'originalism'.

Moreover, you incessantly imply Democrats are communists, and 'collectivist' is your dogwhistle euphemism. I suspect a mod or two admonished you for calling us commies, and now you are just calling us 'collectivists', but we know what you mean, just as blacks know when they are euphemistically being called racial slurs, carefully chosen dogwhistle terms that are fooling no one.

So, sorry to pull your covers, but it needs to be done, you can't hide your true hard right wing hate-the-left nature, no more than Hannity, Limbaugh, ad nauseum, could. I wouldn't mind if your arguments were on par with that of William Buckley's or someone of his caliber or even half as good would be challenging, but, alas, well, nevermind...

 

reasonable to gun banners is unreasonable to honest folks who support our constitution. One of your fellow travelers claims that it is reasonable to limit all firearms to a ONE ROUND Capacity. You want to pretend that the second amendment doesn't prevent the federal government from limiting or banning guns and you deny the validity of the current USSC case law, while hanging your hat on the clearly bogus expansion of the commerce clause that FDR used to create unconstitutional federal gun control.

Nothing you support in terms of additional restrictions are REASONABLE when judged as increasing public safety

 

that's as stupid as saying because some people actually have not died from cancer despite having no medical intervention, we don't need medicine if we are stricken with that disease

 

lets cut through all the disingenuous bullshit. Do you want to pretend that the founders believed that the federal government could ban the ownership or possession of firearms by free citizens acting in a private capacity

yes or no?

 

The second amendment wasn't necessary to arm the citizenry. People were armed since weapons were invented. No way to put that genie back in the bottle in 1787.

The north had 8 signatures to ratify the constitution. Virginia, being part of the south, and the northernmost state of the south, the north realized they needed Virginias's signature to make 9 signatures, the 2/3rd required for ratification. Patrick Henry was deeply suspicious that the new constitution would empower the new congress with the power to usurp the state militia into the continental army, for whatever purpose, and it didn't even have to be tyranny, it could have been, even more likely to have been, foreign invasion. However, Virginia was a plantation economy and Patrick Henry was one of the big plantation owners of the era, who argued fiercely against ratification. Originally, the second amendment, *instead of 'free state', it was written 'free country'. That was problematic for Patrick Henry. To assuage his fear, and to get the constitution ratified, they changed it to 'necessary for the security of a free state', thus assuring the anti-federalists that the new federal government wouldn't use a standing army to usurp the state's militia. See, Henry needed the militia for three reasons. 1. Policing. 2. State defense, 3, most importantly, for Henry, slave patrols. That is how how the second amendment came to be, preservation of the state militia against the fear of standing armies, which they view, quite intensely, as anathema to liberty and freedom. However, in modernity, that point is an anachronism for obvious reasons.

*Though my opinion is presumptive, it is a fact that in Madison's proposal to Congress on June 8, 1789, which included a draft of amendments to be added to the Constitution, he suggested language that included the concept of a "well-armed and well-regulated militia being the best security of a free country." However, this wording evolved through the debates in Congress and ultimately led to the more concise language of the Second Amendment that focuses on "the security of a free state." This language shift reflects the emphasis on state rights and the role of state militias, a central concern for many at the time, especially Anti-Federalists who were wary of federal power.

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-0126

 

And hadn't England tried to confiscate them. People talked for a long time but Freedom of Speech was specifically also cite.

. I'm not debating wordy blather that I suspect is not even originally yours.

 

void

 

How about we first cut through all the assumptive bullshit?

Your question, when diagrammed, is asking if I 'want to pretend...'.

I don't pretend.

Next question.

And, cutting through your disingenuous bullshit, diagram your sentence if you are unable to articulate with precision. Rewrite it, this time, without the sloppiness, and though I can guess what you actually mean, I'm not a very good mind reader. If you weren't a post grad, I wouldn't bother asking.

 

why not just ignore my post if you are afraid to answer the question

 

You don't even know who I am, so why would you even care?

We are anonymous, remember?

I write to filter out simplistic minded people.

Thank you, now go.

 

Your question asked me if I 'pretend', and from there on, it wouldn't matter what you are asking me I am pretending about, because if I don't pretend, that answers your question.

I answered it. 'I don't pretend'. That renders the part of the question which follows it moot.

That's because your question is sloppy, but my answer isn't.

Did you not read the part of my comment which read:

How about we cut through the assumptive bullshit?

And here you are assuming, once again.

If I were afraid, I wouldn't have asked you to rewrite your question without the sloppiness. You have a post graduate degree, so methinks you should welcome the challenge of writing with precision. I should find such a thing natural for an attorney, that is, if you really are an attorney, as you claim.