The Second Amendment, ratified in 1791, refers ... which was created in 1903, 112 years later.

Christian news in maine.com ^ | 18January, 2004 | Larry Austin

[newsgatherer]

Handgun Control Inc. says it wants to keep handguns out of the hands of the wrong people. Guess what. If you are a law abiding citizen who owns a handgun you have the "wrong hands."

Banning guns works. That is why New York and Chicago have such high murder rates.

Washington D.C. which has strict gun controls has a murder rate of 69 per 100,000. Indianapolis, without them has an awesome murder rate of 9 per 100,000. Gun control works.

You can incapacitate an intruder with tear gas or oven spray. If you shoot him with a .357 he will get angry and kill you.

A woman raped and strangled is morally superior to a woman standing with a smoking gun and a dead rapist at her feet.

The "New England Journal of Medicine" has some excellent articles on gun control just as "The American Rifleman" carries equally great articles on open-heart surgery.

The Second Amendment, ratified in 1791, refers to the National Guard which was created in 1903, 112 years later.

The "right of the people peaceably to assemble" and "the right of the people to be secure in their homes" refers to individuals while "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" refers to the state.

One should consult an automobile technician for vehicle repairs, a computer programmer for problems with your hard drive and Sara Brady for firearms expertise.

Most citizens cannot be trusted so we need firearms laws because we can trust citizens to abide by them.

If you are not familiar with most of the above you have not been following the firearms debate. In fact you haven't tuned in to the liberals who still have their hands in your pockets and on your firearms even though the pounding defeats ...

[justshutupandtakeit]

Arms can be swords or firearms but are NOT artillary.

Tench Coxe is no authority at any rate and was an anti-Federalist I believe in any case thus opposed to the Constitution.

[Jim Verdolini]

The funding is not an issue, the granting of permission, a Letter of Marque, is the issue. Do you grant the government a right to limit your second amendment rights to a permission? No government permission, no right?

No, the second amendment protects an individual in the ownership of a specific class of weapons. ALL the court cases support this interpretation. Cannons are not in this class.

That is not saying you cannot own a cannon. it is saying that both the feds and the state have a right to restrict your ownership. They have no such right to restrict your ownership of a rifle, shotgun, or handgun with any suitability to the militia.

Read US v Miller or Emmerson and you will get a better idea of what the law really is.

Then consider....if all the federal supreme court precident prohibits the feds from limiting ones ability to privately own arms suitable for a militia, how did they manage to pass the assault weapons ban?

My answer is that it was never attacked using this precident.

[steve-b]

First, note that it mentions Government granting letters of Marque. If ships armed with cannon were protected under the 2nd, there would be no reason for government to give its permission.

The permission granted by a letter of marque is to seize or destroy vessels belonging to the target nation, not permission to carry weapons per se. Those are two different issues.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Governments are granted many powers not possessed by any individual. Try taxing your neighbor if you doubt it.

[Dead Corpse]

"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
George Mason Co-author of the Second Amendment -during Virginia's Convention to Ratify the Constitution, 1788

I still think you are a troll way overdue for a Zotting.

[robertpaulsen]

"The 14th eliminated this caveat."

Actually it didn't. If it did, every state would have concealed carry like Vermont (Equal Protection).

[Little Ray]

IMHO, a private citizen should have access to any and all weapons available to a light infantryman.

[ctdonath2]

The word "arms" IS in the Constitution. I have yet to see ANY definition or indication leading one to believe the Founding Fathers meant any restriction on the term, esp. limiting to individual usability. In many many discussions like this, I have NEVER seen any limited definition of arms other than what current posters make up.

American ships were forbidden to carry cannons during a point in the Jefferson administration when he was trying to avoid war with France or Britain.

Reference, please. Particularly the law doing the forbidding.

Nothing in the constitution protects the right to arm private ships although it was generally not forbidden.

2nd Amendment. A citizen owns a ship => the citizen has the right to arm it.

In addition, privateers were not allowed to operate without government authorization.

Key word: "operate". The issue is not permitting what they have, the issue is permitting what they do. As others have noted above, Letters Of Marque regard letting individual citizens conduct war against another country with the permission, but not the aid, of the USA gov't.

Like Hamilton and Madison said there was no right given the fedgov to abrogate the RKBA in the first place.

Exactly! Couldn't have said it better myself. The fedgov was never given the right to abrogate individual possession of ANY arms.

Nor did the amendment prevent the states from doing just that as the Southern states routinely did regarding Blacks.

Hence the need for the 14th Amendment, clarifying that the Bill Of Rights applies to all citizens directly, and the states have no power/right to abrogate RKBA. (Unfortunately, SCOTUS has insisted every enumerated right applies to the people except RKBA - but they haven't ruled the opposite either.)

[justshutupandtakeit]

Thanks for posting that excerpt but it will have little impact on those who WANT to believe the 2d allows them to have nuclear and biological weapons.

[Dead Corpse]

I've read Miller. The Fed Gov had no just power, powers given by the Constitution, to even rule on the issue. The case should have been thrown out. Period.

Letters of M&R let ship owners go out and play pirate against the pirates. It neither restricted a Right, nor granted them permission to arm.

[djf]

Indeed, there was also a pretty healthy business back then salvaging sunken vessels.

Including the cannon that were on them.

[Jim Verdolini]

“The flip side is there is NOTHING in the 1792 act (or other writings) indicating a limit on what one could own. There may have been local gov't-run armories, but those were presumably provided precisely because few in town could afford the contents (NOT because the locals were prohibited from owning such).”

When one discussed Constitutional law, one does not discuss what “might” have been meant but instead discusses what was said, written, or enacted. There is a host of actual documents, discussions, and legislation drafted by the founders that does discuss exactly what the militia was, who it consisted of, and specifically what they were to be armed with. There was specific discussion and legislation on who paid for and where cannon were to be located. The two were not mixed. Read the enabling legislation from the states when they had to come up with a plan to make the Federal Militia Act work in their own states. Never and nowhere do they discuss a militia in which the individual members come complete with cannon.

Equally, they did not prohibit cannon. It was simply not an issue. Now go to what really determines what is what, the body of legal decisions. No where in any case is the right to own a cannon protected under the Constitution. The right to own Militia small arms IS protected in case after case.

“I present: The very cannons kept by George Washington upon his front lawn, and likewise by other Founding Fathers”

I have a TV set and VCR. Is that a protected right under the Constitution

[R. Scott]

At the time the 2nd was ratified, that meant, I guess, rifles, muskets, etc., (I don't know too much about firearm history) as those were the weapons used by militias as well as for hunting and personal protection.

It also included cannon and armed warships. The muskets commonly referred to were the assault weapons of the time. Hunters preferred the slow firing rifles, not the rapid firing Brown Bess.

[ctdonath2]

it is saying that both the feds and the state have a right to restrict your ownership.

Show us where that "right" is granted to the government by the Constitution.

The 2nd Amendment, having no limitation upon what constitutes "arms", clearly indicates the gov't has no such right.

Either produce an early law or Founding Fathers quote indicating the word "arms" specifically excludes larger-than-individual weapons, or you have no basis for your argument. Remember: several Founding Fathers owned their own cannons; did they somehow violate their own laws?

[justshutupandtakeit]

Artillary was operated ONLY by those trained and given special commissions by the State. When Hamilton was a teenager he studied mathematics specifically to take the exam to become a militia artillary officer. These were the elite of the army of that day and to join them one had to study and practice.

Nostalgic mythology is not helpful in understanding the past.

[Durus]

And what constitutional understanding forms your opinion concerning semi vs. full auto?

[Jim Verdolini]

“Tench Coxe is no authority at any rate and was an anti-Federalist I believe in any case thus opposed to the Constitution.”

The anti federalists WON the debate over a bill of rights. The Federalists were for the Constitution but against a bill of rights. Coxe was on the winning side of the issue.

[djf]

The Letter of Marque served a purpose.

If an individual, or group, on a private vessel attacked and plundered someone, there would be one conclusion, if they had no Letter of Marque:

Pirates!!

And I believe there were international agreements in place back then about dealing with pirates.

[R. Scott]

Two problems with your use of the Constitution. First, note that it mentions Government granting letters of Marque. If ships armed with cannon were protected under the 2nd, there would be no reason for government to give its permission.

The letter of Marque was not issued to allow the citizen to arm the vessel, but to protect the citizen from charges of piracy.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Washington specifically said "firearms" and for good reason. And he did NOT mention that they were to be used to fight a FREE government.

Jefferson was opposed to armies and the Navy. He was useless or worse when it came to military matters. It was complete delusion to believe that our government was tyrannical or even tending in that direction. If it had he would have done nothing but mumble some high minded idealism and leave the fighting to those he hated politically like Washington and Hamilton.