rumitoid

First this: Stephen Colbert
✔
@StephenAtHome

I’m surprised the NRA was affiliated with car rental companies at all, considering Hertz and Avis enforce tyrannical rules like "age restrictions" and "having a license."
8:06 PM - Feb 26, 2018

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57.8K people are talking about this

Copy and paste from: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/article202403534.html

“A well regulated m*****a being necessary to the safety of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The meaning is clear but has been twisted by the National Rifle Association (NRA) into a manifesto of permissiveness. Even advocates of sensible gun laws don’t always get it right and unwittingly parrot gun-lobby propaganda: as if the Amendment warrants the private and personal possession of powerful weapons.

In 1791, the time of its framing, the only relevant weapons were muzzle-loading, single-shot muskets of erratic accuracy, mostly used for hunting. So what was the “original intention” of those who wrote, passed and ratified the Second Amendment? The answer is twofold, and both linguistic and historical.

A word of elementary grammar. The Amendment is, in form, one unified sentence in which the first clause serves as the premise of the second clause. The two are interlocking; the second is conditioned on the first. Those who added it to the constitutional text were well aware of the centrality of the m*****a issue in Anglo-American history. In the then recent English civil war (1641-49) both sides claimed command of the m*****a, there being no “standing” (national) army. The royal and parliamentary combatants fought each other, and King Charles I was beheaded, over this unsettled issue, at least in part. The framers of the U.S. Constitution and its first 10 amendments knew this crucial history and sought to guarantee that command of any “well regulated m*****a” belonged to the people of the states, not to Congress or the president.

Linguistically, even a casual inspection of the Bill of Rights makes it clear that when these careful draftsmen intended to guarantee personal and private rights they used the word “persons,” but when speaking of a collective right they used the word “people” – as here.

Notwithstanding the labors of careful grammarians, the NRA and the gun fanatics it claims to represent have reduced the Second Amendment to an incoherent hash in public understanding. It is a mark of their success that even advocates of sensible gun laws often do not grasp its careful phrases or the interdependence of its two clauses. It is a heartless parody of constitutional language and law to pretend that there is anything “well regulated” about the supposed “right” of a mentally disturbed person to buy a weapon of war and turn it on the pupils of a public school – and yet that is the gun lobby’s terrifying logic. It is likewise a parody to say, as Donald Trump did following the Parkland shooting, that the NRA officials are “good people.” So they may be, but their aims are neither good nor public-spirited; they are self-indulgent and often deadly in final effect.

vernon

Colbert is as far left as is possible without falling off the planet.You have to be a supporter of Stalin to believe anything he says.

vernon

Why are you characters crying about the NRA they had NOTHING TO DO WITH FLORIDA.And I don't think you are capable of saying what the aims of the NRA are.

Lonewolf

The nra is the government tool to get the names and address of every gun owner to help with future confiscation

Liberty Tree

There were actually two m*****as. One was the organized m*****a that received regular training and were the first responders in times of a crisis. It was made up of able bodied men generally under the age of 45. The other m*****a was the unorganized m*****a where every abled body man was to be available to defend life and property in times of a crisis. Both were needed as a standing army was not always available in certain areas. Many live today in places where there is no standing army available or law enforcement is two few in number or unable to respond quickly.To believe that the founding fathers would expect citizens to be unarmed under these conditions is to be totally unaware of their view of citizens' rights. As far as the type of weapons, as the muzzle loader went out of style and weapons advanced the citizens would be expected to be as armed as their attackers. James Madison would not expect a citizen to defend himself with a knife in a gunfight or to have to use a muzzle loader against a repeating rifle.

saltwind 78 Loc: Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

rumitoid, There has always been restrictions on guns in this country. Its nothing new.
I think that we have to avoid mass murders in the future. One of the only ways to stop them, or at least limit them is to make military weapons unavailable to civilians. The large majority of Americans agree with this according to recent polls.
This interpretation of the second amendment that ordinary people are a m*****a is crazy. There is a part of the US Constitution that outlaws private armies.That includes so called independent state m*****as.
The way to protect democracy in this great republic is to v**e and take an active part in the political and social process, not have military weapons that only k**l innocent individuals. The United States has armed forces that could stop any military action by any group of individuals armed with AR 15s. Thats a fact, not an opinion. Protect America. Join the political party of your choice, become active and v**e. If you want to stop these all too often mass murders that plague our country, help get military assault weapons banned from civilian use.

archie bunker Loc: Texas

The Supreme Court disagrees. That's all you need to know. Now, send your check to Planned Parenthood while I send mine to the NRA.

rumitoid

Or you have to have a sense of humor.

rumitoid

The NRA has worked to produce the slaughter of Americans by their false claims about the 2nd Amendment.

rumitoid

Go back and read history: you are wrong.

rumitoid

I agree. The 2nd Amendment was specifically drafted as a defense against government tyranny. Either we allow the private use of jet fighters, tanks, nuclear bombs, aircraft carriers, grenades, long range canons, and automatic weapons, we have no defense against such possible suppression. The usefulness of the 2nd Amendment is long extinct. And it never guaranteed personal ownership, for wh**ever reason. Anytime it was meant for an individual right, The Founders were careful to say "persons" instead of "we the people."

rumitoid

No, that is not all you need to know. SCOTUS has been wrong and reversed before. Look at the Dred Scott decision. Or this.

From s***ery to segregation, from Jim Crow to George Bush, the Supreme Court has been consistently on the wrong side of the law.

The critique comes not from some outraged, isolated blogger, but from one of the most respected voices in Constitutional law: Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Irvine Law School and author of the newly published The Case Against The Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court”, Chemerinsky says in a phone interview, “has so often failed through American history at the most important times in the most important ways. There’ve been successes, but not nearly enough, and far too many failures. If they were to get a letter grade over the course of their history, I’d give them a C.”

The Case Against The Supreme Court argues that the Court is the opposite of Rodney Dangerfield — it gets too much respect, given its elitist, pro-business, anti-individual rights record.

“I realize I’m often making excuses for the Supreme Court in my own teaching and scholarship,” Chemerinsky says, “and if we look at the court over the course of history, it so often failed at the most important times, at the most important tasks.

“We tend to remember the great successes, like Brown vs. Board of Education, and forget the great failures like Dred Scott, Plessy vs. Ferguson. And I think it’s because we want to believe that our government overall is a success.”

Even the Brown decision, which ushered in school desegregation, was only a qualified success, Chemerinsky writes. Chief Justice Earl Warren, so intent on achieving unanimity among the Justices, punted on specifics with regard to implementation, allowing school districts to d**g their feet for years or even decades after the landmark case was decided.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly favored s***eholders over s***es, businesses over workers, and the rights of states over those of individuals. In death penalty cases, the Court’s record is especially egregious.

“It takes four v**es to grant cert [agree to hear a case],” Chemerinsky points out, “and five v**es to stay an execution. So there can be instances where the Justices v**e to take a death penalty case, but they don’t stop the execution. The person can be executed before the Court can hear the case.”

The Court has always been an elitist institution, Chemerinsky argues, and that legacy continues today. While the face of the Court appears different, with the bench now featuring three women, two Justices of color, one Hispanic woman, and no Protestants (each for the first time in history), the song remains the same. The Justices all come from the same intellectual backgrounds — mostly Harvard and Yale Law Schools, mostly academics, mostly from the Northeast, and mostly elevated from other elite benches.

“It’s very non-representative geographically of the country,” Chemerinsky adds. “Only two of the nine Justices grew up west of the Mississippi. Only one was appointed west of Mississippi. Every borough in New York has a Justice except for Staten Island. So it is and likely always will be an elitist court. It would be much better off if it had more trial lawyers, more trial judges, and elected officials. It’s a Court that’s not properly balanced in terms of experience, in terms of geography.”

Part of the problem, Chemerinsky argues, is that Supreme Court rules and traditions mitigate against the Court doing a better job. Life appointments, guaranteed by the Constitution, mean that some Justices, like Chief Justice Roberts, Elena Kagan, or Clarence Thomas, could serve for close to half a century. Some Presidents, like Jimmy Carter, get no appointments, while others, like Richard Nixon, had four vacancies in his first two years. The random concentration of power in certain Presidents and certain Justices doesn’t exactly create justice for all, Chemerinsky suggests.

boofhead

For every person murdered by a person using a gun in the US there are more than 100 babies murdered. These babies never got the chance to see or be held by their own mothers, to see a flower or hear a father's voice. They died struggling to avoid the needle, or the scissors, or of poison, in pain and terror for the convenience of the supposed mother. Deliberately, with intent, and thanks to the Democrats, legally and with the costs paid by me and other dupes.

Did you get that? 100 times as many k**led as all the gun murders, including those murders of black youths by other black youths who are involved in gangs and drugs and for whom I have little sympathy but they represent just one percent of the murder rate of babies. Babies! Who could be more innocent and more deserving of our protection?

When a liberal (Democrat/Progressive/RINO) calls for a gun ban it makes me want to throw up because of the outright hypocrisy and utter evil they express by ignoring the real death rate in this country. The fact that it is intended to k**l babies and is extremely successful, the a******n campaign should rot the soul of every American; the Democrats because they want it to happen and the rest of us because we allow it to happen.

We are no better than the N**i Camp guards, no better than the German people during the period of the Holocaust. Worse really because we KNOW what we are doing.

If a Democrat tries to talk to me about guns I either walk away or lose my temper. I try to walk away and choose those I talk to by their intelligence, which by definition cannot include any Liberal, but it is tough. Especially when it is a relative, but they know not to bring the subject up at least, so I have had some effect, even if it does no good.

rumitoid

I am against a******n, but it is not the topic. Address the topic.

AuntiE Loc: 45th Least Free State

The Founding Fathers on the Second Amendment
"I ask, Sir, what is the m*****a? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to ens***e them."
George Mason
Co-author of the Second Amendment
during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788

"Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."
George Washington
First President of the United States

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
Patrick Henry
American Patriot

"Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not."
Thomas Jefferson
Third President of the United States

"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that … it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; … "
Thomas Jefferson
letter to Justice John Cartwright, June 5, 1824. ME 16:45.

"The best we can help for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
Alexander Hamilton
The Federalist Papers at 184-8