Thought provoking article

[x-y-no]

Right, but its in the same sentence as the discussion of a well regulated militia. In fact this is how the states justify the right of citizens to bear arms, as their citizens are automatically part of the 'unorganized militia'. But then the question becomes, how can an unorganized militia be well regulated?

Some of these issues may see review in the Supreme Court soon. Since US v Miller it has been pretty much assumed by all courts that there is no individual right independent of the militia, but the DC circuit appeals court just ruled the opposite way in Parker v District of Columbia. Further appeal seems likely to me.

[LSU2001]

From what I understand the Parker case has been lauded as a benchmark pro-gun rights case and I am eager to see how the Supreme Court rules on the appeal. I know I am biased towards gun ownership but I really think the Parker case is a very good example of reading the constitution as is without placing inferences to the "intent" and "practicality" of the amendments. I hope the appointment of originalist judges to the bench continues and I hope that the Supreme Court holds the same view. Even though the keep and bear arms part is in the same sentence as the militia part, I personally believe that the two are distinct. I feel that the framers wanted to state that a well regulated milita is necessary to preserve a free state(prevent tyranny) and in order to have a militia the citizens must be armed. If only the govt is allowed to have arms there is nothing to resist tyranny. Even though personal arms would be next to useless against modern military equipment the idea of a protracted civil war with an armed citizenery helps prevent tryannical notions of our elected leaders. I also know that this idea is extremly remote but I still like the idea. This brings to mind the quote by Ben Franklin (even though i will probably get it wrong) that goes something like this>

"Any person willing to give up freedom for security deserves neither freedom nor security"

[coriolis]

I wonder if there's commentary in the Federalist Papers. If I get a chance I'll look into it this weekend.

[coriolis]

Federalist No 29 by Hamilton raises the question of a standing army. It questions the wisdom of maintaining a full time militia 1. because of the expense, and 2. because of the possibility that the militia would be used against the citizenry.

The term "militia" seems to mean an organization that is under the control of the government - not a loosely organized group of armed citizens."

He suggests keeping a core of "professional" soldiers to be supplemented by armed citizens as the need arises. He also suggests that these citizens should assemble at intervals for training.

Here's the key passage: "The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate size upon such principles as will really fit it for service in case of need. By thus circumscribing the plan it will be possible to have an excellent body of well trained militia ready to take the field whenever the defence of th State shall require it. This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens. This appears to me the only substituee that can be devised for a standing army; the best possible security against it, if it should exist." (Emphasis mine)

I interpret that to mean that the citizens should be armed to protect themselves against a tyrant who may try to sieze control of this country.

[Stephanie]

My point about Philadelphia is that the gun laws are the same as for the State of Pennsylvania and they are lax as compared to the state of NJ. Philadelphia has the highest crime rate of any city in the NATION. I hope I'm not jinxing NJ but while there have been murders by people using guns, there have not been daily reports of innocents being killed by stray gunfire. To me, this is an example where the gun control laws are WORKING.

[LSU2001]

coriolis wrote:
The term "militia" seems to mean an organization that is under the control of the government - not a loosely organized group of armed citizens."

LSU2001 Wrote:

The following is an exerpt of the Parker opinion that seems to state a much more broad idea of what a militia should be and who the "right" to keep and bear arms is a right of the people not simply a govt controled milita.

"We think the Second Amendment was similarly structured.
The prefatory language announcing the desirability of a well-regulated
militia—even bearing in mind the breadth of the
concept of a militia—is narrower than the guarantee of an
individual right to keep and bear arms. The Amendment does
not protect “the right of militiamen to keep and bear arms,” but
rather “the right of the people.” The operative clause, properly
read, protects the ownership and use of weaponry beyond that
needed to preserve the state militias. Again, we point out that if
the competent drafters of the Second Amendment had meant the
right to be limited to the protection of state militias, it is hard to
imagine that they would have chosen the language they did. We
therefore take it as an expression of the drafters’ view that the
people possessed a natural right to keep and bear arms, and that
the preservation of the militia was the right’s most salient
political benefit—and thus the most appropriate to express in a
political document."

http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/com ... -7041a.pdf

[coriolis]

That's quite an intense read. I got to page 36 where the passage above comes from. I'll save it and finish reading it later.

Good stuff.

[kevin]

The judges are wrong. The people are represented by the militia. Its voting males who own property. Clearly you don't arm the slaves, and you don't arm the women, and you don't arm the urban workers. You arm the bankers, you arm the distillers, you arm the rural farmers. People who will kill indians (afterall the constitution deals with treaties concerning them), and who will kill British soldiers. That is the intention of the constitution.

It is not to have AK-47s in the hands of extremists. Its not to allow lunatics to purchase handguns.

Cho was a lunatic. A sociopath. Someone who was quite clearly ill.

He would never be qualified to be part of a militia or any civil organization. He had no right to a gun.

[Aslkahuna]

As an aside, Mexico has very restrictive laws about gun ownership and about bringing weapons and ammunition into the Country-enough said about that.

Steve

[BUD]

If stricter regulation on the sale of guns will not affect criminals, why don't we have stricter regulations on the sale of ammunition? When you go to buy bullets for your gun, you show your gun registration and then you can buy amo. I'm sure that true criminals could bypass this system but it would be more difficult than it is today. Would that infringe on the 2nd amendment right?

Will not work they will make it.I know people who makes bullets and its easy.

[BUD]

Regardless of if guns are made illegal or not, there are millions of them already circulating around the US. Say 99% of gun owners voluntarily turned their guns into the government after a firearm ban passes, it would still be as easy to purchase a gun as a rock of crack is because they are everywhere, and the government has very little control over the criminal underworld. There are so many guns in America that the problem is endemic. If you can't beat 'em......join them

99% of gun owners voluntarily turned their guns in???????NO will never happen Civil war will start first.

[coriolis]

I think that the need for the citizens to protect themselves against a usurper government is critical too. Granted that a bunch of sportsmen armed with 22's and shotguns will be no match for the army, but it's still a deterrent to some degree.

Quote from Kevin: "Its voting males who own property. Clearly you don't arm the slaves, and you don't arm the women, and you don't arm the urban workers." That sounds like something that would have been said in Periclean Greece. It's interesting to compare their concept of citizenship to ours. It's not much different.

[LSU2001]

The judges are wrong. The people are represented by the militia. Its voting males who own property. Clearly you don't arm the slaves, and you don't arm the women, and you don't arm the urban workers. You arm the bankers, you arm the distillers, you arm the rural farmers. People who will kill indians (afterall the constitution deals with treaties concerning them), and who will kill British soldiers. That is the intention of the constitution.

It is not to have AK-47s in the hands of extremists. Its not to allow lunatics to purchase handguns.

Cho was a lunatic. A sociopath. Someone who was quite clearly ill.

He would never be qualified to be part of a militia or any civil organization. He had no right to a gun.

I will have to respectfully disagree with the part about the judges being wrong. While I am by no means any type of legal scholar, having read the opinion and some of the supporting documentation I find the judges arguements quite compelling. As far as Cho not being qualified to have a gun. I would think that a background check should have found his previous arrests and commitments to a mental instution. It seems that the gun control laws that instituted the background checks did not work in this case. YOu are right he should have been denied the right to purchase a firearm. I think this shows the relative ineffectiveness of gun control laws when they cannot even enforce the already existing provisions.
JMHO
Tim

[Yarrah]

Things are going pretty good over here though without a large part of the population owning a gun. I don't see why citizens of a Western country would need a gun anyway.

[GalvestonDuck]

I would think that a background check should have found his previous arrests and commitments to a mental instution. Tim

If I recall correctly from what I've read so far, he was never charged with the crimes, was he? And was he committed or was he just seen on an outpatient basis? Wouldn't patient confidentiality prevent some of his mental health history from being available (with the exception of the court declaration)? Nevertheless, the court decision should have been enough to prevent him from being able to purchase a weapon.

[x-y-no]

The judges are wrong. The people are represented by the militia. Its voting males who own property. Clearly you don't arm the slaves, and you don't arm the women, and you don't arm the urban workers. You arm the bankers, you arm the distillers, you arm the rural farmers. People who will kill indians (afterall the constitution deals with treaties concerning them), and who will kill British soldiers. That is the intention of the constitution.

It is not to have AK-47s in the hands of extremists. Its not to allow lunatics to purchase handguns.

Cho was a lunatic. A sociopath. Someone who was quite clearly ill.

He would never be qualified to be part of a militia or any civil organization. He had no right to a gun.

I will have to respectfully disagree with the part about the judges being wrong. While I am by no means any type of legal scholar, having read the opinion and some of the supporting documentation I find the judges arguements quite compelling. As far as Cho not being qualified to have a gun. I would think that a background check should have found his previous arrests and commitments to a mental instution. It seems that the gun control laws that instituted the background checks did not work in this case. YOu are right he should have been denied the right to purchase a firearm. I think this shows the relative ineffectiveness of gun control laws when they cannot even enforce the already existing provisions.
JMHO
Tim

I think Kevin's point was that the "original intent" of the Constitution did not involve a particularly expansive interpretation of "the people" - being largely (but not exclusively) confined to white male property owners.

I think there are some tricky problems with reading the second amendment more expansively - why, for instance, is "arms" read to mean such a limited set of weapons? If the intent was to provide a counterbalance to despotic use of the standing military (as indeed it seems to have been) can that credibly work without "the people" having access to real military "arms" like mortars, RPGs, field artillery, assault helicopters, fighter aircraft etc? And would it be wise to allow such access outside the context of a well-regulated militia?

Finally, I'm a little leery of depriving people of rights on the basis of ambiguous "mental health" issues. Obviously this guy had no business having guns, but was that really clear before the fact, just given the rather limited set of encounters that police and mental health officials had with him? Returning to the original intent issue of protecting the people against despots, it's worth recalling that despots will often use accusations of mental illness to discredit dissidents. Many Soviet dissidents, for instance, were committed to mental hospitals by that government. Not that I think we're anywhere near that deplorable situation in this country today - just a caveat that any such power needs checks and balances.

[jasons2k]

Ok ... since this is still here, I'll post a little bit of this thought-provoking reply.

Nugent: Gun-free zones are recipe for disaster
POSTED: 11:25 a.m. EDT, April 20, 2007
By Ted Nugent
Special to CNN

Editor's note: Rock guitarist Ted Nugent has sold more than 30 million albums. He's also a gun rights activist and serves on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association. His program, "Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild," can be seen on the Outdoor Channel.

Read an opposing take on gun control from journalist Tom Plate: Let's lay down our right to bear arms

WACO, Texas (CNN) -- Zero tolerance, huh? Gun-free zones, huh? Try this on for size: Columbine gun-free zone, New York City pizza shop gun-free zone, Luby's Cafeteria gun-free zone, Amish school in Pennsylvania gun-free zone and now Virginia Tech gun-free zone.

Anybody see what the evil Brady Campaign and other anti-gun cults have created? I personally have zero tolerance for evil and denial. And America had best wake up real fast that the brain-dead celebration of unarmed helplessness will get you killed every time, and I've about had enough of it.

Nearly a decade ago, a Springfield, Oregon, high schooler, a hunter familiar with firearms, was able to bring an unfolding rampage to an abrupt end when he identified a gunman attempting to reload his .22-caliber rifle, made the tactical decision to make a move and tackled the shooter.

A few years back, an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Mississippi, which was a gun-free zone, retrieved his legally owned Colt .45 from his car and stopped a Columbine wannabe from continuing his massacre at another school after he had killed two and wounded more at Pearl.

At an eighth-grade school dance in Pennsylvania, a boy fatally shot a teacher and wounded two students before the owner of the dance hall brought the killing to a halt with his own gun.

More recently, just a few miles up the road from Virginia Tech, two law school students ran to fetch their legally owned firearm to stop a madman from slaughtering anybody and everybody he pleased. These brave, average, armed citizens neutralized him pronto.

My hero, Dr. Suzanne Gratia Hupp, was not allowed by Texas law to carry her handgun into Luby's Cafeteria that fateful day in 1991, when due to bureaucrat-forced unarmed helplessness she could do nothing to stop satanic George Hennard from killing 23 people and wounding more than 20 others before he shot himself. Hupp was unarmed for no other reason than denial-ridden "feel good" politics.

She has since led the charge for concealed weapon upgrade in Texas, where we can now stop evil. Yet, there are still the mindless puppets of the Brady Campaign and other anti-gun organizations insisting on continuing the gun-free zone insanity by which innocents are forced into unarmed helplessness. Shame on them. Shame on America. Shame on the anti-gunners all.

No one was foolish enough to debate Ryder truck regulations or ammonia nitrate restrictions or a "cult of agriculture fertilizer" following the unabashed evil of Timothy McVeigh's heinous crime against America on that fateful day in Oklahoma City. No one faulted kitchen utensils or other hardware of choice after Jeffrey Dahmer was caught drugging, mutilating, raping, murdering and cannibalizing his victims. Nobody wanted "steak knife control" as they autopsied the dead nurses in Chicago, Illinois, as Richard Speck went on trial for mass murder.

Evil is as evil does, and laws disarming guaranteed victims make evil people very, very happy. Shame on us.

Already spineless gun control advocates are squawking like chickens with their tiny-brained heads chopped off, making political hay over this most recent, devastating Virginia Tech massacre, when in fact it is their own forced gun-free zone policy that enabled the unchallenged methodical murder of 32 people.

Thirty-two people dead on a U.S. college campus pursuing their American Dream, mowed-down over an extended period of time by a lone, non-American gunman in illegal possession of a firearm on campus in defiance of a zero-tolerance gun law. Feel better yet? Didn't think so.

Who doesn't get this? Who has the audacity to demand unarmed helplessness? Who likes dead good guys?

I'll tell you who. People who tramp on the Second Amendment, that's who. People who refuse to accept the self-evident truth that free people have the God-given right to keep and bear arms, to defend themselves and their loved ones. People who are so desperate in their drive to control others, so mindless in their denial that they pretend access to gas causes arson, Ryder trucks and fertilizer cause terrorism, water causes drowning, forks and spoons cause obesity, dialing 911 will somehow save your life, and that their greedy clamoring to "feel good" is more important than admitting that armed citizens are much better equipped to stop evil than unarmed, helpless ones.

Pray for the families of victims everywhere, America. Study the methodology of evil. It has a profile, a system, a preferred environment where victims cannot fight back. Embrace the facts, demand upgrade and be certain that your children's school has a better plan than Virginia Tech or Columbine. Eliminate the insanity of gun-free zones, which will never, ever be gun-free zones. They will only be good guy gun-free zones, and that is a recipe for disaster written in blood on the altar of denial. I, for one, refuse to genuflect there.

[LAwxrgal]

I would think that a background check should have found his previous arrests and commitments to a mental instution. Tim

If I recall correctly from what I've read so far, he was never charged with the crimes, was he? And was he committed or was he just seen on an outpatient basis? Wouldn't patient confidentiality prevent some of his mental health history from being available (with the exception of the court declaration)? Nevertheless, the court decision should have been enough to prevent him from being able to purchase a weapon.

See, that was part of the issue. The loophole in the privacy laws allowed him to purchase guns -- and the rest, unfortunately, is history. I agree with you that this deranged bastard should not have been allowed to own a firearm, but for the rest of us, isn't it a matter of us using them responsibly?

[x-y-no]

WACO, Texas (CNN) -- Zero tolerance, huh? Gun-free zones, huh? Try this on for size: Columbine gun-free zone, New York City pizza shop gun-free zone, Luby's Cafeteria gun-free zone, Amish school in Pennsylvania gun-free zone and now Virginia Tech gun-free zone.

He wants immature, emotionally volatile high school kids carrying guns in school every day just in case some psycho comes along? How long before the tally of cheating boyfriends/girlfriends or overly tough teachers/administrators nationwide far outstrips the loss at Columbine? I give it maybe two months tops.

Nearly a decade ago, a Springfield, Oregon, high schooler, a hunter familiar with firearms, was able to bring an unfolding rampage to an abrupt end when he identified a gunman attempting to reload his .22-caliber rifle, made the tactical decision to make a move and tackled the shooter.

Gee ... he managed that in one of those "gun free zones" didn't he? How, exactly, does this help Nugent's argument?

A few years back, an assistant principal at Pearl High School in Mississippi, which was a gun-free zone, retrieved his legally owned Colt .45 from his car and stopped a Columbine wannabe from continuing his massacre at another school after he had killed two and wounded more at Pearl.

Again, he managed this in one of those "gun free zones." But suppose it weren't? Lets say one student in 50 has their gun with them. In a school population of, say, 2500 that's 50 students wandering the halls with their guns drawn looking to gun down the shooter. How many of them die of mistaken identity? How many innocents do they kill by accident? You may call this argument exaggerated, but is it really any less reasonable than the notion that somehow having students in school armed all the time would overall reduce violence?

I'm by no means anti-gun, but I've seen too many too many total idiots, often drunk or stoned, behave in insanely irresponsible fashion with guns. I took the trouble a long time ago to get quite a bit of rigorous training. But very few do.


EDIT: And by the way, what do you figure you'd need to pay people to get them to teach in an environment where some substantial part of the student population is encouraged to be armed?

[kevin]

I think Kevin's point was that the "original intent" of the Constitution did not involve a particularly expansive interpretation of "the people" - being largely (but not exclusively) confined to white male property owners.

Yes.

I think there are some tricky problems with reading the second amendment more expansively - why, for instance, is "arms" read to mean such a limited set of weapons? If the intent was to provide a counterbalance to despotic use of the standing military (as indeed it seems to have been) can that credibly work without "the people" having access to real military "arms" like mortars, RPGs, field artillery, assault helicopters, fighter aircraft etc? And would it be wise to allow such access outside the context of a well-regulated militia?

Not outside of a well-regulated militia, but yes, I believe that the people collectively have the right to such weapons outside of the military. This is mostly taken into account by the national guards of the respective state, but I would be willing to support a broader, even conscription oriented, 'militia' if it would make handguns and assault rifles less available. People should be able to defend their homes, but not to have their own private arsenals. The militia can have as large a weapon supply as the people wish it.

Finally, I'm a little leery of depriving people of rights on the basis of ambiguous "mental health" issues. Obviously this guy had no business having guns, but was that really clear before the fact, just given the rather limited set of encounters that police and mental health officials had with him? Returning to the original intent issue of protecting the people against despots, it's worth recalling that despots will often use accusations of mental illness to discredit dissidents. Many Soviet dissidents, for instance, were committed to mental hospitals by that government. Not that I think we're anywhere near that deplorable situation in this country today - just a caveat that any such power needs checks and balances.

Yes I'd have to agree with you about hesitancy. People have already been discredited in this country for being communists or terrorist sympathizers, and if the country did become authoritarian this would set a precedent for the denial of weapons to many 'lunatics'. Its not an easy problem.