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What Does the Second Amendment Really Say?

Here is What I Think:

  • The Second Amendment Does Not Guarantee Private Gun Ownership.

    Votes: 39 38.2%

  • The Second Amendment Does Guarantee Private Gun Ownership.

    Votes: 63 61.8%
  • Total voters
    102
lobosrul said:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

The Bill of Rights just enumerates which of these rights the authors held to be unalienable.
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Their interpretation of what God willed to us, then. That's fine and dandy and explains US gun law to my satisfaction.
 
GlennB said:
Their interpretation of what God willed to us, then. That's fine and dandy and explains US gun law to my satisfaction.
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That's how the authors of the US constitution thought of it. Or a modern way to think of it:

We believe everyone is entitled to certain rights. We'll create a document that limits the government in its ability to take away rights that we deem to be important.
 
GlennB said:
Their interpretation of what God willed to us, then. That's fine and dandy and explains US gun law to my satisfaction.
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Kind of. They thought of them as the 'natural rights'. Now, whether or not natural rights exist doesn't actually change the document in practice. Even if they do not, the document assumes that they do and constrains the government as if they do.

This isn't intrinsically religious belief. Reading some Locke will go a long way in understanding where they were coming from. The formation of the government was founded in Enlightenment thinking.
 
Loss Leader said:
The poll doesn't have enough options.

In my opinion, the 2nd Amendment has a sunset clause. It guarantees the right to private gun ownership only so long as a citizen's militia is necessary for the security of a free state.

That condition expired at some point between the end of the Civil War (when a standing army was firmly established) and WWI (when weapons were created that made personal rifles irrelevant to modern warfare).

In my opinion, the 2nd Amendment no longer applies. I am aware that my opinion is not accepted by any actual court or tribunal, let alone the Supreme Court.
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Many of the laws of the time, and other amendments before passing, had 'justification clause' type lines. As far as I could find when looking for another thread these never actually constrained the main of the law, and none have 'sunset' because of a passing of the justification.

The Constitution does have a mechanism for deciding an Amendment has 'sunset', and as that has not been employed I can't agree with your opinion on it.
 
lobosrul said:
That's how the authors of the US constitution thought of it...
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That's exactly right. That's how they thought of it. The rights they refer to only existed in the Founders' minds. The Constitution was an opinion piece.

Don't take it out of context. They were revolutionaries fighting a colonial power. They were ruled by a monarch. The King of England who ruled by divine right. Everything they wrote is in that context of a colonial people trying to throw off the rule of a monarchy.

The rights they refer to as "being self-evident" were what they believed a man's rights (technically a white man's) should be. Not what they were or had been. I don't think there was another government in the world at that time that recognized those rights, not all of them anyway.

Saying people are born with the right to carry a gun for self-defense, that sounds like bigtime woo to me! YMMV

:cool:
 
GlennB said:
Where did these initial "rights" come from then? God-given in the 11th Commandment?
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It really doesn't matter, it is assumed we are born with them. I much prefer that philosophy to being born with no rights and only having rights by government decree.
 
newyorkguy said:
That's exactly right. That's how they thought of it. The rights they refer to only existed in the Founders' minds. The Constitution was an opinion piece.

Don't take it out of context. They were revolutionaries fighting a colonial power. They were ruled by a monarch. The King of England who ruled by divine right. Everything they wrote is in that context of a colonial people trying to throw off the rule of a monarchy.

The rights they refer to as "being self-evident" were what they believed a man's rights (technically a white man's) should be. Not what they were or had been. I don't think there was another government in the world at that time that recognized those rights, not all of them anyway.

Saying people are born with the right to carry a gun for self-defense, that sounds like bigtime woo to me! YMMV

:cool:
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Does being born with the right to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government with your grievances also sound like bigtime woo to you?
 
I was taught no one was born with the right to anything. That Americans had to fight and shed blood to win our rights. That if you were born in a monarchy, you were a subject of the King or Queen and your rights would be very different.
 
Gawdzilla said:
That's the only source of rights, what humans think they are. And the result is the bog we find ourselves in now.
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Yeah, those pesky human rights. Things run much smoother in North Korea.
 
I thought the Constitution and the Bill of Rights didn't confer any rights? They only recognized the preexisting ones.
 
tyr_13 said:
Many of the laws of the time, and other amendments before passing, had 'justification clause' type lines. As far as I could find when looking for another thread these never actually constrained the main of the law, and none have 'sunset' because of a passing of the justification.

The Constitution does have a mechanism for deciding an Amendment has 'sunset', and as that has not been employed I can't agree with your opinion on it.
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If you had said the "first ten amendments" and not just "amendments" you would be correct. However one amendment, had been 'sunset', or repealed: the 18th. If three quarters of the states, by way of state conventions, or through their elected legislators agree that the 2nd amendment should no longer apply, then so be it.
 
lobosrul said:
If you had said the "first ten amendments" and not just "amendments" you would be correct. However one amendment, had been 'sunset', or repealed: the 18th. If three quarters of the states, by way of state conventions, or through their elected legislators agree that the 2nd amendment should no longer apply, then so be it.
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That would be the point where the folks that have been waving the Constitution would decide it doesn't apply if they don't like the results.
 
newyorkguy said:
I don't think there was another government in the world at that time that recognized those rights, not all of them anyway.
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That's... a pretty big concession within the scope of one sentence.

Besides, wasn't the whole deal largely about re-establishing the rights they believed themselves to have back home? It's not like they pulled the right to bear arms from thin air.
 
newyorkguy said:
I was taught no one was born with the right to anything. That Americans had to fight and shed blood to win our rights. That if you were born in a monarchy, you were a subject of the King or Queen and your rights would be very different.
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Except for functionally they are barely different at all. Americans enjoy few rights that, say, British people don't.
 
lobosrul said:
If you had said the "first ten amendments" and not just "amendments" you would be correct. However one amendment, had been 'sunset', or repealed: the 18th. If three quarters of the states, by way of state conventions, or through their elected legislators agree that the 2nd amendment should no longer apply, then so be it.
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Yes. How does that make me incorrect? The 2nd Amendment hasn't gone through a repeal by adding another Amendment. I wasn't claiming that no Amendment has.
 
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