rumitoid

SCOTUS made this decision: "a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as s***es",[2][3] whether ens***ed or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court,[4][5] and that the federal government had no power to regulate s***ery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States. Dred Scott, an ens***ed man of "the negro African race"[3] who had been taken by his owners to free states and territories, attempted to sue for his freedom. In a 7–2 decision written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the court denied Scott's request. The decision was only the second time that the Supreme Court had ruled an Act of Congress to be unconstitutional.[6]

Are we to rely on the Constitution and Supreme Court for doing what is right? Or a common sense response to what is our daily, present day reality?

The 2nd Amendment was approved in 1791. Its wording is highly controversial. Death by gun violence is not. We have an outdated Amendment. Our weapons are no longer single shot. We have no m*****a, well-regulated or not (accept for Right Wing d******c t*******t groups). The obstinate refusal to do anything against the frequent assault by guns on our citizens is madness or criminal.

Chocura750

Our enemies are laughing their brains out at the moron in the White House.

JW

Actually, they're not. They are quaking in their boots. The tenor of North Korea's bombast has changed for the first time since the armistice in 1953 and a new power struggle is beginning in Iran. Our enemies are taking us seriously for the first time since 1945.

peter11937 Loc: NYS

The only thing worse than an armed populace is a disarmed one. Mao, Stalin and Hitler all agreed that disarmed was the way to go, and together they murdered over 100 million unarmed people.

karpenter Loc: Headin' Fer Da Hills !!

Agreed
Post Violent Crime Stats On Who's Doing It
Then There Can Be A Discussion

peter11937 Loc: NYS

here's one. https://www.infowars.com/fbi-far-more-murders-committed-with-knives-than-assault-rifles/
and this https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/upshot/gun-deaths-are-mostly-suicides.html

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Are all liberals constitutional illiterates?

The Dred Scott ruling occurred in 1854.

The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified by the states on December 6, 1865, abolished s***ery “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Congress required former Confederate states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment as a condition of regaining federal representation.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified July 9, 1868, granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including former s***es, and provided all citizens with “equal protection under the laws,” extending the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states.

The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified February 3, 1870, prohibited states from disenfranchising v**ers “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.



Piers Morgan‏ @piersmorgan
The 2nd amendment was devised with muskets in mind, not high-powered handguns & assault rifles. Fact.

Carol Roth‏ @caroljsroth
Replying to @piersmorgan It was devised 4 people 2b able 2 protect themselves w same type of weaponry used by those from whom they might need protection

Piers Morgan‏@piersmorgan
@caroljsroth Where exactly does it say that in the Constitution - must have missed it?

Carol Roth‏@caroljsroth
@piersmorgan right next to the word "muskets"

The Second Amendment: The Framers' Intentions

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states: "A well regulated M*****a, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The reference to a "well regulated" m*****a, probably conjures up a connotation at odds with the meaning intended by the Framers. In today's English, the term "well regulated" probably implies heavy and intense government regulation. However, that conclusion is erroneous.

The words "well regulated" had a far different meaning at the time the Second Amendment was drafted. In the context of the Constitution's provisions for Congressional power over certain aspects of the m*****a, and in the context of the Framers' definition of "m*****a," government regulation was not the intended meaning. Rather, the term meant only what it says, that the necessary m*****a be well regulated, but not by the national government.

To determine the meaning of the Constitution, one must start with the words of the Constitution itself. If the meaning is plain, that meaning controls. To ascertain the meaning of the term "well regulated" as it was used in the Second Amendment, it is necessary to begin with the purpose of the Second Amendment itself. The overriding purpose of the Framers in guaranteeing the right of the people to keep and bear arms was as a check on the standing army, which the Constitution gave the Congress the power to "raise and support."

As Noah Webster put it in a pamphlet urging ratification of the Constitution, "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe." George Mason remarked to his Virginia delegates regarding the colonies' recent experience with Britain, in which the Monarch's goal had been "to disarm the people; that [that] . . . was the best and most effectual way to ens***e them." A widely reprinted article by Tench Coxe, an ally and correspondent of James Madison, described the Second Amendment's overriding goal as a check upon the national government's standing army: As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

Thus, the well regulated m*****a necessary to the security of a free state was a m*****a that might someday fight against a standing army raised and supported by a tyrannical national government. Obviously, for that reason, the Framers did not say "A M*****a well regulated by the Congress, being necessary to the security of a free State" -- because a m*****a so regulated might not be separate enough from, or free enough from, the national government, in the sense of both physical and operational control, to preserve the "security of a free State."

It is also helpful to contemplate the overriding purpose and object of the Bill of Rights in general. To secure ratification of the Constitution, the Federalists, urging passage of the Constitution by the States had committed themselves to the addition of the Bill of Rights, to serve as "further guards for private rights." In that regard, the first ten amendments to the Constitution were designed to be a series of "shall nots," telling the new national government again, in no uncertain terms, where it could not tread.

It would be incongruous to suppose or suggest the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, which were proscriptions on the powers of the national government, simultaneously acted as a grant of power to the national government. Similarly, as to the term "well regulated," it would make no sense to suggest this referred to a grant of "regulation" power to the government (national or state), when the entire purpose of the Bill of Rights was to both declare individual rights and tell the national government where the scope of its enumerated powers ended.

In keeping with the intent and purpose of the Bill of Rights both of declaring individual rights and proscribing the powers of the national government, the use and meaning of the term "M*****a" in the Second Amendment, which needs to be "well regulated," helps explain what "well regulated" meant. When the Constitution was ratified, the Framers unanimously believed that the "m*****a" included all of the people capable of bearing arms.

George Mason, one of the Virginians who refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked a Bill of Rights, said: "Who are the M*****a? They consist now of the whole people." Likewise, the Federal Farmer, one of the most important Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution, referred to a "m*****a, when properly formed, [as] in fact the people themselves." The list goes on and on.

By contrast, nowhere is to be found a contemporaneous definition of the m*****a, by any of the Framers, as anything other than the "whole body of the people." Indeed, as one commentator said, the notion that the Framers intended the Second Amendment to protect the "collective" right of the states to maintain m*****as rather than the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms, "remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis."

Furthermore, returning to the text of the Second Amendment itself, the right to keep and bear arms is expressly retained by "the people," not the states. Recently the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed this view, finding that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right held by the "people," -- a "term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution," specifically the Preamble and the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Thus, the term "well regulated" ought to be considered in the context of the noun it modifies, the people themselves, the m*****a(s).

The above analysis leads us finally to the term "well regulated." What did these two words mean at the time of ratification? Were they commonly used to refer to a governmental bureaucracy as we know it today, with countless rules and regulations and inspectors, or something quite different? We begin this analysis by examining how the term "regulate" was used elsewhere in the Constitution. In every other instance where the term "regulate" is used, or regulations are referred to, the Constitution specifies who is to do the regulating and what is being "regulated." However, in the Second Amendment, the Framers chose only to use the term "well regulated" to describe a m*****a and chose not to define who or what would regulate it.

It is also important to note that the Framers' chose to use the indefinite article "a" to refer to the m*****a, rather than the definite article "the." This choice suggests that the Framers were not referring to any particular well regulated m*****a but, instead, only to the concept that well regulated m*****as, made up of citizens bearing arms, were necessary to secure a free State. Thus, the Framers chose not to explicitly define who, or what, would regulate the m*****as, nor what such regulation would consist of, nor how the regulation was to be accomplished.

This comparison of the Framers' use of the term "well regulated" in the Second Amendment, and the words "regulate" and "regulation" elsewhere in the Constitution, clarifies the meaning of that term in reference to its object, namely, the M*****a. There is no doubt the Framers understood that the term "m*****a" had multiple meanings. First, the Framers understood all of the people to be part of the unorganized m*****a. The unorganized m*****a members, "the people," had the right to keep and bear arms. They could, individually, or in concert, "well regulate" themselves; that is, they could train to shoot accurately and to learn the basics of military tactics.

This interpretation is in keeping with English usage of the time, which included within the meaning of the verb "regulate" the concept of self- regulation or self-control (as it does still to this day). The concept that the people retained the right to self-regulate their local m*****a groups (or regulate themselves as individual m*****a members) is entirely consistent with the Framers' use of the indefinite article "a" in the phrase "A well regulated M*****a."

This concept of the people's self-regulation, that is, non-governmental regulation, is also in keeping with the limited grant of power to Congress "for calling forth" the m*****a for only certain, limited purposes, to "provide for" the m*****a only certain limited control and equipment, and the limited grant of power to the President regarding the m*****a, who only serves as Commander in Chief of that portion of the m*****a called into the actual service of the nation. The "well regula[tion]" of the m*****a set forth in the Second Amendment was apart from that control over the m*****a exercised by Congress and the President, which extended only to that part of the m*****a called into actual service of the Union. Thus, "well regula[tion]" referred to something else. Since the fundamental purpose of the m*****a was to serve as a check upon a standing army, it would seem the words "well regulated" referred to the necessity that the armed citizens making up the m*****a(s) have the level of equipment and training necessary to be an effective and formidable check upon the national government's standing army.

This view is confirmed by Alexander Hamilton's observation, in The Federalist, No. 29, regarding the people's m*****as ability to be a match for a standing army: " . . . but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights . . . ."

It is an absolute truism that law-abiding, armed citizens pose no threat to other law-abiding citizens. The Framers' writings show they also believed this. As we have seen, the Framers understood that "well regulated" m*****as, that is, armed citizens, ready to form m*****as that would be well trained, self-regulated and disciplined, would pose no threat to their fellow citizens, but would, indeed, help to "insure domestic Tranquility" and "provide for the common defence.

rumitoid

Yes.

rumitoid

No one said anything about disarming. Reasonable controls is the point.

rumitoid

Our enemies are being pushed to the brink of war. Not good.

JW

Z

JW

Our enemies are finally realizing that the USA is no longer embarrassed by its own power. They are beginning to realize that we are no longer ashamed of Hiroshima, we only regret that it was necessary. They are beginning to understand we are serious about rejecting their behavior.

rumitoid

The 13, 14, and 15 Amendment were ignored by the South for a Century, just FYI. We no longer have a m*****a, or the need for one. And this non-existent entity of "m*****a" you name "armed citizens" is not "well trained, self-regulated and disciplined." Your entire argument is absurd from start to finish.

Yet championing the possible "well-regulated m*****a," that phrase implicitly means rules of control.

karpenter Loc: Headin' Fer Da Hills !!

I Want Him To Post Violent Crime Stats From DOJ And FBI
That's His War In The Streets
If He Does It Himself, He'll Learn Something
And Can Stop Using The Vague 'Gun Violence' Line

Like It Applies Equally To All Demographics

Big Bass

Er..... b*m and a****a are left wing.