RWStanding wrote: ↑Tue Oct 03, 2017 8:31 pm
Right to Bear Arms
The 2nd Amendment to the USA Constitution does not say:
'The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.'
It is quite plainly qualified:
"A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State."
A rational person might assume this means the arms being for Militia use and regulated by them.
"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".
Nice extra and strategically placed commas. And who said correct punctuation doesn't matter?
''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.''
For idiots: 'Because a properly-organised militia is essential for the safety of a free country it is therefore important that the people of each state have an inalienable right to an armed militia, regulated by the people of each state, to protect them and thus our great, good and free country (apart from the slaves)'.
Bah! The stupid thing doesn't mean anything.
Why didn't they just say, 'It is the inalienable right of every citizen to have as many guns and other weapons as they desire' ? It would have saved a lot of bother.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... ent-106856
''How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment
A fraud on the American public.” That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum.
Twenty-five years later, Burger’s view seems as quaint as a powdered wig. Not only is an individual right to a firearm widely accepted, but increasingly states are also passing laws to legalize carrying weapons on streets, in parks, in bars—even in churches.
Many are startled to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t rule that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to own a gun until 2008, when District of Columbia v. Heller struck down the capital’s law effectively banning handguns in the home. In fact, every other time the court had ruled previously, it had ruled otherwise. Why such a head-snapping turnaround? Don’t look for answers in dusty law books or the arcane reaches of theory.....''