Conservative Yankee

We are talking about what the language in the Constitution means. To believe the Second Amendment creates an individual right to enable armed insurrection is one thing;  believing it prudent to own a gun is another—not every good idea needs to be a constitutional right.

Nancy:

Exactly right: God intended every American to be thoroughly packing at all times to maintain full armed countervailance against each and every other American. If only every American would accept that duty and arm their kids too, we have a perfect nation.

I can see the red blood of your American spirit flowing in your veins: Apple pie, mother, the pledge, the flag and your gun to fondle.

There is nothing so indicative of the need to pack firearms than other people actually writing down their ideas!  What a provocation! Let’s all go buy a gun so that we can touch them and be reassured as we are threatened by discussion. The nexus between the marketplace of ideas and the need to carry is undeniable for a right thinking American.

To be “well-regulated”, a militia of the sort that I’m thinking of does not have to be a “rabble-at-arms”, Issywise. There have been cases of “rabbles-at-arms” whipping the tar out of regulars, or at least fighting them to stalemates; think of Iraq or Afghanistan. And if a war like that remains stalemated for a long time, the political masters of the regulars will tire of it and withdraw (as in Vietnam).

You must be thinking I’m a Republican and an NRA member; wrong on both counts. I’m a libertarian (note the lower-case “l”) and I quit the NRA long ago when it became plain to me that the NRA had degenerated into a GOP fund-raising auxiliary.

Paul G

You wonder how I might feel if a liberal, left-leaning law professor was proposed for the Supreme Court.

Felix Frankfurter was the very left-leaning law professor you speak of. He used his law professor formalistic thinking to defeat, or attempt to defeat, every progressive movement in the law for 23 years. Frankfurter once wrote an opinion upholding an apportionment scheme that gave one citizen 100 times the representation of another.

Many Justice have been and are part time law professors and it hasn’t destroyed their wits, but it is the ones like Scalia and Frankfurter who were full-time law professors, who dwelt for years in nether worlds of formalistic legal thinking allegedly divorced from such prosaic considerations as how the law actually affects living people. They become intellectually self-absorbed and arrogant: all the while being just as deterministic as the worst of sociologically bent judges. I deplore appointment of any professional law professor—they are all to abstracted and arrogant to be worthwhile.

It amuses the living dog poop out of me to hear individual right 2nd Amendment advocates quote George Mason in support of their meaning of the 2nd Amendment.  Mason, rather than Jefferson, would be better qualified for that memorial on the Tidal Pool but for two things—he walked out of the Constitutional Convention and opposed its ratification. He was the closest to a peer and friend that George Washington had, but Washington never spoke to him again.

Mason did not serve in the first Congress that enacted the 2nd Amendment along with the rest of the Bill of Rights. Mason opposed ratification of the Amendment in the Virginia legislature.

You would do better to quote King George on the meaning of the 2nd Amendment. George just lost a war. Mason made his specific arguments against the Constitution in the Constitutional Convention and in Virginia’s ratifying convention. Mason had nothing to do with the drafting of the 2nd Amendment (let alone “fathering” it), and again made his specific arguments against ratifying the 2nd Amendment in the Virginia Legislature.  Mason’s specific arguments on all counts were specifically considered and specifically rejected by the enacting authorities.

You couldn’t find a better figure in history to evidence what the 2nd Amendment doesn’t mean.

I think you must have meant to rely on Tom Clancy’s jurisprudential view of the 2nd Amendment—the founders intended the word “militia” to refer to middle aged white guys with beer guts stowing their PBR back into the garage fridge to mount their pickup trucks with their deer rifles in hand to throw off some organized tyranny threating liberty. I suggest you do your jurisprudential research in law libraries and not by watching Tom Clancy movies.

Your assertion that “militia” did not mean organized arms of the state governments to the founders is, unfortunately for you and Scalia, in direct opposition to what the term meant to the founders. That is made clear when the 2nd Amendment itself speaks of “well regulated militia,” not Tom Clancy mobs of civilians with guns.

In fact, one of the prime motivators for the Constitutional Convention itself was exactly such a mob insurrection (Shay’s rebellion) which had to be put down by “well regulated” military arms of the state, established by and regulated by state law. The 2d Amendment was meant to confront your view of citizenship, not to enable it.

You sure packed a whole bunch of misunderstandings into such a small post. But then you are a voter, aren’t you? And Scalia delivered on the felt necessities of his favored political party, just as he did in 2000 and will until he dies in the saddle: all along claiming he’s more intelligent and more disciplined than other justices.

It would be more honest of both of you to just say, “We’ve got the power and so we get to declare what the law is,” rather than pretending you are guided by principle or history.

I wonder how you might feel, Issywise, if a President Obama were to propose a liberal, left-leaing judge for the Supreme Copurt who just happens to be a former or current law professor?

And besides, the Framers, who put the 2nd into the Constitution, understood that there was an individual right to keep and bear arms. In the debate over the Bill of Rights, George Mason of Virginia, the “father” of the 2nd, said, “I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

So you see, a militia is not anything like the Army National Guard, who are not permitted to keep their personal weapons at home. The Guard is a uniformed, paid auxiliary of the Regular Army, not a true militia, who serve without pay (or with the barest minimum of pay, when called to active duty) and because militia duty is a necessary, shared civic responsibility to the community (not to the country at large). The Guard was created in the early 1900s in order to break those ties with the community or state and make the former state militias a part of the larger national army.

Well, yes, CY, Lennon, despite his “socialist” leanings, was worth about $50 million when he died. But if every hypocrite was worthy of death, most human beings would be dead right now. Nearly all of us fall short of the standards we set for others and for ourselves.

I take it then, CY, you disapproved of John Lennon, his music, his lifestyle and his political leanings? For all that, he had to die?

Sad that you should think so. I won’t say he’s as big a hero to me as he is to Purple Girl, but nothing he said or did made him deserve to die the way he died.

Considering how Saddam passed out AK-47s to all and sundry just before the US invasion, perhaps he wasn’t all that bad ... 

What do the candidates say about gun control?

Check this out:

http://www.2008electionprocon.org/guncontrolregulations.htm

It’s important to recognize that the Justices of the Supreme Court are political creatures with political views.

Unfortunately, many judges first decide what outcome they want, then tell their research clerks to find a rationalization for that result.  Think back to 2000, and the Supreme Court’s decision that Bush should be president, then their twisted and bizarre rationalization to support that decision.

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling essentially overturning Brown vs. Board of Education was similarly idiotic. 

These people on our court are intellectually corrupt and intent on destroying our constitution.  Just like the people who appointed them. 

The Supreme court comes out with rulings that make no sense at all and leave the rest of us to try to make sense of the decision.  Too often there is no sense—just a political agenda.

As for this ruling, I disagree with much of the analysis in the media. 

The people of this country did not want a central federal government because they’d had such a bad experience with England as a central government, located far away, unresponsive to their needs.  So the way that people were brought around to agree to become a member of a nation with a central, federal government, was by assurances that the authority and rights of the federal government would be strictly limited.  The federal government’s rights and authority are set forth in the constitution—if they were not given authority, they don’t have it. 

The people as individuals have all rights, from birth.  The government has no natural rights because it does not even exist unless people form one.  The federal government only has the rights and authority specified in the constitution.  Anything not included as a grant of authority remains a right of the people. 

The constitution does not give the federal government the authority to prohibit individuals from owning guns, so they cannot do so. 

The state militia is a different story, since it does not have any natural existence or natural rights, and theoretically the federal government could have argued that it alone had the right to defend the nation, and state militias were not allowed.  The 2nd amendment applies only to state militias.

As for individuals, assuming they are born with the right of self-defense, that does not mean it cannot be regulated and controlled under other powers of the federal government. 

All individuals are born with the personal right to pee—the federal government could not prohibit that natural right.  But the federal government certainly could regulate time place and manner, to protect the health and safety of the citizens. 

We have a plague right now of gun violence.  Based upon the health and safety needs of the population, the government should be able to severely restrict and regulate gun ownership.  For example, no guns outside the home.

And the people in the community should help.  Everyone who suspects their kid, boyfriend, husband, whoever, has a gun, get the gun when he’s out of the house, and turn it into a church anonymously, have them get it to the police.

That’s all very nice, Mr. Younger, but I quit the NRA back in the 1990s and refused to have anything more to do with them because they’re just a fund-raising auxiliary of the GOP—-and I’m a disillusioned former conservative Republican (I’m now a libertarian—-note the lower-case “l”). The System, as created by the two major parties, is rotten. I tend to vote with the LP in presidential elections, and I figure I’ll do it again this year—-since Ron Paul’s not running, Bob Barr (who was once my congressman) looks to be the best bet.

I was an avid Anti Handgun supporter after the murder of John Lennon- My lifelong Hero. I saw no reason for anyone to own a hand gun, only useful in killing people, no other use. But years have passed and reality has set in. If laws restrict handguns the only ones who will have access are the criminals.
And considering the way our country is quickly becoming a Police State- I am very likely to go out and buy one before they take that Constitutional right away Too- considering it’s one of the last 2 rights and freedoms still standing.Even our right to Freedom of Religion is being gutted, thanks to the Christian Taliban.
I fear this Gov’t more than any Middle Eastern Radical Extremeist- The Neo Cons have damaged our country far more effectively then even those who attacked US on 9/11 (which was caused by the MIC to begin with by their refusal to get out of the ME in the ‘70’s when WE Told them To!)