Comments on: Supreme Court Revisits Second Amendment

Hotly Anticipated Washington D.C. Gun Ban Case Goes Before Justices

[sigotratando]

There%u2019s no need to rationalize away anything. Regardless the presence of the %u201Cmilitia clause,%u201D the %u201Cright of the people%u201D clause pretty much seals it. It is a right of individuals.
Posted by VoidMaster

One of my degrees is in psycho-linguistics, so I very much appreciate the amicus brief''s contextualizing the concept of a militia based within the Founding-era understanding & experience of it. But still, to me, it is a ''rationalizing away'' of the militia component to go past the concept of security of the free state, especially from oppression from the federal government.

Where I am affected but not totally convinced, still, that the militia component is not being rationalized away is when considering the other cultural factors both inherited & present at the time of the writing: 1) the traditional (inherited) right of people to protect themselves, & 2) the notion of a ''prefatory'' (introductory) clauses stating a *principal* concern that wasn''t its *exhaustive* concern.

I like that. I have to defer to the knowledge of people who''ve studied this, but it sounds pretty darned good within my experience in historical & contextual studies of biblical interpretation.

[voidmaster-2009]

Well, gotta run. I%u2019m out of beer. I can%u2019t argue constitutional law without beer.

[voidmaster-2009]

Thinking about it, I really consider the whole militia component to be at least as relevant today as it was then. No government has ever enslaved its own people before first disarming them.

[voidmaster-2009]

There%u2019s no need to rationalize away anything. Regardless the presence of the %u201Cmilitia clause,%u201D the %u201Cright of the people%u201D clause pretty much seals it. It is a right of individuals.

[sigotratando]

The only way to rationalize away the ''militia'' operations component of the amendment is to reason that, in the era within which the amendment was written, potential militia members had to bring their own fire arms; & to maintain the possibility of a ''free state'', those arms had to be ready & usable; & that a ''free state'' could fall from within if the lawless overpowered the law-abiding.

[voidmaster-2009]

Good link, sigotratando. Thanks.

[sigotratando]

According to the amicus brief I just read, pages 8-9 are particularly instructive to me & support your tenets completely. Here is the link to the pdf: http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/us-heller-brief-1-11-08.pdf

[voidmaster-2009]

if we are the people, & we [can] make up a militia, then we have to have weapons to do that.

Posted by sigotratando

Yes, this is exactly why the Second Amendment is worded as it is!

[sigotratando]

Either way, it does not diminish the fact that the right being protected is a right of the people.
Posted by VoidMaster

I completely agree (& am reading an amicus brief on the topic currently). And an interesting point with the Bolshevik Revolution factor. I also don''t dispute the importance of the word free, but I was not so much focused on the free part of the equation as the whole part of the equation. My insertion of ''entire'' with regard to a ''free'' state, was to underscore that I understand ''free'' as applying to the entire (the whole of the territory & the people in it) state.

But I''m not sure whether you are arguing for an individual''s right to bear arms apart of the context of a militia. It is the ''right of the people'' that is being protected, but that ''right'' has a context which appears to be rationalized away by a trickle-down sort of process: if we are the people, & we [can] make up a militia, then we have to have weapons to do that.

[billorights]

Excerpt from the case of USA vs. Timothy Joe Emerson (No. 99-10331)

And, "Militia," just like "well-regulated Militia," likewise was understood to be composed of the people generally possessed of arms which they knew how to use, rather than to refer to some formal military group separate and distinct from the people at large.

See, e.g., Debates In The Convention of the Commonwealth of Virginia, reprinted in 3 J. ELLIOT, debates in the several state Conventions 425 (3d ed. 1937) (statement of George Mason, June 14, 1788) ("Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people...."); letters from the federal farmer to the republican 123 (W. Bennett ed. 1978) (ascribed to Richard Henry Lee) ("[a] militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...."); Letter from Tench Coxe to the Pennsylvania Gazette (Feb. 20, 1778), reprinted in The documentary history of the ratification of the constitution (Mfm. Supp. 1976) ("Who are these militia? are they not ourselves.") (emphasis in original).