A question for this group--

[tortoise1956]

42. Earth to J1...

Wow – where to start? J1 is still defaulting to attempted character assassination and outright lies when he can't prove his point. Let's discuss some of them – again.

J1 has created a fanciful Foreign Half/Domestic Half argument out of whole cloth to try to explain Rawle's limitations on the second amendment. Quoting from his post:

One recent tale from your infertile imagination supposed that wm rawle intended 'going abroad' to mean going out to the front & back yards of one's house. My DU link below proves rawle meant it as traveling to foreign lands.
>>> tortoise: The most common definition of "abroad", in the language of the times, was outside, as in outside of your house. This invalidates all the fancy language J1 used while talking about traveling armed in foreign countries,

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1172&pid=205510 

OK - let's look at exactly what Rawle wrote, as well as the format:

In most of the countries of Europe, this right does not seem to be denied, although it is allowed more or less sparingly, according to circumstances. In England, a country which boasts so much of its freedom, the right was secured to protestant subjects only, on the revolution of 1688; and it is cautiously described to be that of bearing arms for their defence, "suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law." An arbitrary code for the preservation of game in that country has long disgraced them. A very small proportion of the people being permitted to kill it, though for their own subsistence; a gun or other instrument, used for that purpose by an unqualified person, may be seized and forfeited. Blackstone, in whom we regret that we cannot always trace the expanded principles of rational liberty, observes however, on this subject, that the prevention of popular insurrections and resistance to government by disarming the people, is oftener meant than avowed, by the makers of forest and game laws.

This right ought not, however, in any government, to be abused to the disturbance of the public peace.

An assemblage of persons with arms, for an unlawful purpose, is an indictable offence, and even the carrying of arms abroad by a single individual, attended with circumstances giving just reason to fear that he purposes to make an unlawful use of them, would be sufficient cause to require him to give surety of the peace. If he refused he would be liable to imprisonment.

Notice 3 separate paragraphs? That is because Rawle was following the rules of English writing – when you have a change or modification to the train of thought you are pursuing, open a new paragraph. After he finished discussing how the right to bear arms is treated in other countries, he ended the paragraph and began another that stated that it wasn't an unlimited right. He then used yet another paragraph to detail two cases in which the bearing of arms would be outside the law. Notice he didn't talk about an assemblage in a foreign land in the first instance, so there is no reason to assume he was discussing foreign travel in the second instance. As a matter of fact, Rawle's precision in his writing would have led him to specify if he was using a word in other than the common accepted definition.

Of course, I suppose you could use J1' s theory as a basis to hold that if Rawle was discussing foreign travel only, then those limitations only exist while an American is outside the country, and not inside the country. So, traveling armed in the United States is fine – just don't leave the country. Since it is a pretty good assumption that Rawle was discussing actual limitations of the right while inside our borders, once again his concoction fails to hold up.

(The foreign/domestic half argument seems to be the brainchild of J1 alone as far as I can tell, since there doesn't seem to be anyone else on the internet who espouses that view. As an unsupported, illogical and nonsensical invention, it neither merits nor receives any further mention.)

Finally, J1 goes on to screech that

Tortoise above corrupts what I posted, & below is the proof. Observe how he takes one sentence from the 'british source' out of context, disregarding what followed. That is considered unethical, a misrepresentation, & a LIE, since in context it meant an individual right to belong to a militia:

He then quotes sources that state that it was an individual right, but it was limited. I stated (and I quote): “although the right to bear arms in pre-revolutionary war England was limited, it was indeed an individual right.  “ So, the two parts of this statement are 1 – it was limited, and 2 – it was an individual right. That matches what his own sources state. So what I wrote was true.

So, J1, who's the baldfaced liar here? That would be you.

As a side note - to the best of my knowledge, even after the beginning of actual hostilities, the patriots (they stopped being rebels when they won the war...) did not actively take up arms against the loyalists unless they had begun fighting for the British. This seems to be borne out on the several sources I have checked on the internet. There were differences in how Loyalists who had lost property during the war were treated afterwards, depending upon what colony they had resided in. If anyone has different information, please provide links for future research.