a 2nd amendment meaning poll

[Cain]

Acting like the text means anything shows a tremendous ignorance of how power is actually wielded.

You should have written something to this effect in your original post. Unfortunately, I did take your words to have meaning, and I probably should not have.

Political power is also wielded by the belief that 1) certain texts are sacred and 2) they possess a particular meaning. If people think the 2A means XYZ, then that understanding has power.

It's a bit facile to say courts are reducible to raw power. Loose constructionist interpretations are also a consequence of a difficult amendment process, a broken legislature, and stubbornly backward states that would insist on Jim Crow.

As far as the Second Amendment goes, actual historians criticize Scalia's take as textbook "law office history." Second Amendment mythology is pervasive among the laity, including advocates of strict gun control.

 

[acbytesla]

Who cares what the founding fathers thought? A bunch of out of touch aristocrats and slavers, screw 'em. What the 2nd amendment (and nearly everything else about our government) means today is very different from what they intended, which is good. The originalist view that the intentions of a bunch of syphilis-addled freaks from the 18th century are important is very much begging the question.

I think you are being a bit hyperbolic. That said, I don't care that much about what they thought. Hell, Jefferson who was not a delegate to the Constitutional Convention that created the US Constitution (He was the Ambassador to France) said in his writings that it was hubris to create a Constitution that would rule over future generations as the problems and the people would be drastically different.

 

[BobTheCoward]

No need to speculate. You are definitely weird.

A rule is a rule. But should you obey a law that is outdated and no longer relevant?

Yes.

But every law is two parts. if you choose to not do X, you receive outcome A, and if you chose to do X, you receive outcome B. Choosing to do X and receiving outcome B is obeying the law.

 

[bruto]

And yet, everybody seems to find a successful interpretation in that lack of detail. It seems like any given person's method of interpretation should have returned an ERROR code on occasion.

What do you mean by "successful?" A lack of detail more or less demands an interpretation, but whatever is the current law is the only successful one. That does not mean it is not subject to argument and change.

 

[BobTheCoward]

What do you mean by "successful?" A lack of detail more or less demands an interpretation, but whatever is the current law is the only successful one. That does not mean it is not subject to argument and change.

Successful in that it always produces a result. No one ever comes back and says this time it just isn't possible to interpret it on the given question.