Amendment 2 Blues

[grantcart]

13. Excellent except on one point

A proper reading of the history of Amendment 2, as well as of the Constitutional Law related to it, makes clear that it is -- at very least -- intended to protect individual rights, as well as group (militia) rights.

The second ammendment was explicitly ambiguous. We know that by using the tool of literary criticism and reading of the first ammendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

compared to the second ammendment

As passed by the Congress:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In other words if they wanted to make it an explicitly worded right for individuals they knew how to do so, as is showed by the clear unambiguous language of the first ammendment.

It is also clear that the emphasis was on the militia part of the formula when you look at Madison's original ammendment

James Madison's initial proposal for a bill of rights was brought to the floor of the House of Representatives on June 8, 1789, during the first session of Congress. The initial proposed passage relating to arms was:


The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.[87]

In any case the phrase "well regulated", almost universally forgotten by the NRA, indicates that unlike the freedom of speech which needed no qualifying phrases the freedom to bear arms is one that had to be done in the context of regulations that would also safeguard society.

The NRA has an excellent record of fighting bans on guns in court but almost never challenge regulations in court because it is such an integral part of the constitution.

The second ammendment was clearly designed to incorporate the idea of protections of individuals to form into organized groups to save the constitution and not an absolute right to bear guns for individuals.

Of course that doesn't mean that gun owners cannot argue that the constitution doesn't implicitly support their individual rights to own a gun along the same lines that we argue that privacy laws support a woman's right to control her own body. However if the writer's of the first ammendment wanted to make an explicit clear statement for individual ownership of fire arms they were capable of doing so. They didn't do it in the second ammendment, perhaps they didn't even think it was necessary to do so.