[Scott Dorsey]

James wrote:
On Monday, December 23, 2019 at 9:10:47 AM UTC-5, Scott Dorsey wrote:
=20
The initial intention of the second amendment was to preserve the ability=
=20
to have a revolution; that is, it exists to protect the right to form an
independent militia. As such, it really shouldn't apply at all to handgu=
ns,
which are of little military use, and it should instead protect your righ=
t
to own tanks, bomber aircraft, and nuclear weapons, which are the current
state of the art military hardware in much the way that guns were in 1789=
.
=20
The thing is, modern military hardware can make asymmetric warfare very v=
ery
effective, and there are some good arguments why one might not want to al=
low
private ownership of nuclear weapons, for instance.
=20
So we are kind of stuck in a difficult place that was never really forsee=
n
by the founding fathers, and which people on both sides of the aisle toda=
y
persist in ignoring.

It's not just to preserve the ability to form a militia. When the 2A was wr=
itten firearm ownership was ubiquitous. People used them for hunting for fo=
od and for recreation, for self-defense. I.e. basically the same reasons th=
ey own them today. Sure, resistance against tyranny was also part of it - t=
he British made efforts to confiscate arms and ammunition to maintain contr=
ol over the population. Dictatorships are famous for confiscating firearms.=

It doesn't actually say that, though. What it says is that because citizens
have a right to resist, therefore they have an inherent right to have arms.

All of that stuff about hunting, recreation, and self defense isn't actually
written on the paper. Much of it has been inferred by the courts, but court
interpretations change.

It was also made clear that the 2A didn't grant people a right, it was expl=
icitly acknowledging a natural right. The correct answer to "why do you nee=
d a gun?" is "it's none of your damned business" if someone doesn't have a =
history of behaving criminally, isn't mentally deranged. And by criminally =
I mean robbery, murder, etc. I don't mean because a government has criminal=
ized firearms.

Yes, but that's how the constitution works. Right in the preamble, it points
out that all rights are natural, and that rights cannot be granted by a
document, only taken away.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."