Piers Morgan losing it again
- Thread starter Maverick74
- Start date
Corky was stating as fact the constitution says guns. Corky got excited and made a mistake then throws a fit and curses when the mistake is pointed out.
From the New Oxford American Dictionary
arms - weapons and ammunition; armaments
Wouldn't you agree a well regulated militia probably included cannons and war ships.
Madison understood the meaning of the word guns yet he didn't use that word.
The current opinion of the supreme court says the individual has some rights to own and possess guns. A sawed off shotgun is a gun by anyone's definition yet it's illegal to own today.
What is the courts view of what constitutes a well regulated militia ?
For the court's view, you'll have to refer to the court. For my point, all I'm saying is that the Constitution protects our rights to own and keep firearms. As to your argument with achillies here, my sole point is "arms" in this context for the citizen of the republic means "guns". I think we can agree the forefathers did not intend for individuals to own cannons and warships.
"I think we can agree the forefathers did not intend for individuals to own cannons and warships."
I don't know if this is true or not.
IMO in the constitution the word "arms" did mean all weapons of war for the militia, not just guns. Which is what this conversation is about. And I'd guess some weapons of war were owned by individuals in colonial times.
I don't know if this is true or not.
IMO in the constitution the word "arms" did mean all weapons of war for the militia, not just guns. Which is what this conversation is about. And I'd guess some weapons of war were owned by individuals in colonial times.
Oh, come now. Individuals cannot afford, could not afford, could not manage and/or operate weapons of war like ships, etc. I get that you don't want to "give" on this point, but it's just silly now.
The founding fathers were looking for the population to remain armed to protect itself from government. The "arms" that they refer to may have been larger weapons of war for militias, etc. But for the individual, "arms" meant guns. To argue otherwise is just arguing for the sake of arguing.
EDIT:
I know you'll cry "cut and paste" but this read certainly details it better and more succinctly than I could...
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1114/what-does-the-right-to-bear-arms-really-mean
Historically there have been two interpretations of the Second Amendment: the states-rights argument and the individual-rights argument. The states-rights view is that the Second Amendment merely guarantees the states the right to organize militias and citizens the right to join. (Militia here means any armed force raised for the common defense, not just the national guard.) The individual-rights view is that the Second Amendment means what it says: citizens have the right to keep and bear arms. The states-rights view currently prevails in federal case law, but the individual-rights view is probably closer to the framers' intent. A reasonable restatement of the amendment might go something like this: "Since we as a nation have found it necessary to organize citizen militias to defend against tyranny and may be compelled to do so again, and since these militias are necessarily composed of volunteers supplying their own weapons, the right of individuals to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
And then other topics more related to the spirit of the thread...
OK, some gun-control advocates will concede, but that merely means infringed by the federal government. As an article in Mother Jones put it, "The legal precedents are clear: Almost any state or local gun-control action is fine; the Second Amendment does not apply. On the federal level, only laws interfering with state militias are prohibited."
This is a crock. The legal precedents are far from clear. They're also pathetically sparse, suggesting a reluctance on the part of the courts and the legal community generally to deal with the issue. (An enlightening article in the Yale Law Journal a few years ago was titled "The Embarrassing Second Amendment.") In almost every other aspect of law the Bill of Rights has been broadly construed to restrain the states as well as the federal government. Few today would argue that states can abrogate the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. Yet many are prepared to let them gut the second, on the grounds that the framers didn't foresee urban violence on the scale we face now. Maybe they didn't, but so what? Civil-liberties advocates don't accept urban violence as an excuse to curtail other constitutional rights, such as the protection against unlawful search and seizure.
Accepting the Second Amendment at face value doesn't mean you can't regulate gun ownership. No one can argue plausibly that the authors of the Bill of Rights meant to make the authorities powerless to disarm criminals. The framers likely would have objected to a blanket proscription of handguns, which they would have seen as legitimate weapons of self-defense, and arguably they would have opposed a ban on assault rifles, the AK-47 being to today's oppressed what the long rifle was to those of 1776. But local gun registration presents no obvious constitutional problems. Criminals don't register guns, of course; that's the point. Arrest a carful of mopes with guns and no permits and you have a good ipso facto case for throwing the book at them. How much better to approach gun control on a reasonable basis rather than make a religious war out of it.
On private ownership of battleships. Interesting read.
http://suite101.com/article/patriotism-and-profit-the-american-privateers-a62563
http://suite101.com/article/patriotism-and-profit-the-american-privateers-a62563
Have you not read your leftist manual? Or is is manuel? Anyway, BARE arms in the leftist interpetation is the right to wear short sleeved shirts. Try to keep up with modern day history for christs sake.
There's no question about it, even during the civil war you could argue that the Merrimack and Monitor were privately funded. I'm not disputing anything your link quotes or refers to, nor that privateers were relied on to support war efforts in order to add to an organized force. I'm speaking strictly to the Constitution and the Right to Bear Arms.