@oralloy,
CalamityJane wrote:maporsche wrote:You mention amending the constitution. What would need to be amended in the constitution except the individual freedom to own firearms. If you think the constitution needs to be amended for gun control measures to be implemented, I don't think it's too much of a leap to think you believe that we need to amend the constitution so that we can start to remove firearms from the citizens of the USA.
You surely aren't suggesting that we need to amend the constitution so that we can mandate trigger locks or keeping firearm unloaded at home? Are you?
Okay let's look at the exact context of the 2nd Amendment:
"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."
My interpretation "right of the people" incorporates the state, the military
and not every individual American. It does nowhere stipulate that every
individual has the right to bear arms. To "bear arms" is a military term,
and as such it was intended for military to keep and bear arms.
If you restrict the right to the militia, you have to have a militia. And in that case, people could just join the militia to get their gun.
And the Ninth Amendment would still protect the right of non-militiamen to carry guns for self-defense.
CalamityJane wrote:How would I change it? Simply to this: ".....the right to bear arms for lawful purposes only", which interprets to military, police force and individuals who
can prove that they are in need of self protection (such as owners of jewelry stores, etc.). Everyone else is exempt from the right to bear arms.
Oralloy wrote:
Quote:Since all people have the lawful right to defend themselves,
your proposed language would allow anyone to carry guns for self-protection
without having to establish some obscure "need" beforehand.
In the
HELLER case, the USSC cited with approval
to Judge Thomas Cooley:
" Every late-19th-century legal scholar that we have read
interpreted the Second Amendment to secure an individual
right unconnected with militia service. The most
famous was the judge and professor Thomas Cooley, who
wrote a massively popular 1868 Treatise on Constitutional
Limitations. Concerning the Second Amendment it said:
“Among the other defences to personal liberty
should be mentioned the right of the people to keep
and bear arms. . . .
" That Cooley understood the right not as connected to
militia service, but as securing the militia by ensuring a
populace familiar with arms, is made even clearer in his
1880 work, General Principles of Constitutional Law. . . .
" It might be supposed from the phraseology of this
provision that the right to keep and bear arms was
only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an
interpretation not warranted by the intent. The militia,
as has been elsewhere explained, consists of those
persons who, under the law, are liable to the performance
of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service
when called upon. But the law may make
provision for the enrolment of all who are fit to perform
military duty, or of a small number only, or it
may wholly omit to make any provision at all; and if
the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of
this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the action
or neglect to act of the government it was meant
to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly
is, that
the people, from whom the militia must be taken,
shall have the right to keep and bear arms;
and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose. . . ."
[emphasis added by David]
David
