Thomas wrote:Setanta wrote:Not unless and until the Congress explicitly says as much.
How do you square this interpretation with the fact that the Second Amendment protects a "right of the people"? Clearly the founders envisioned
some scenario in which Congress would transgress against this right. Otherwise there would have been no point in inserting a right to bear arms into the Bill of Rights. Yet under this interpretation of the Second Amendment, it covers only those weapons that Congress, in its wisdom, chooses to equip "the people" with.
Can you give me some scenarios that would constitute a Second Amendment violation for you?
Historically, militia participation in European nations, and in European colonies in North America, was restricted, often on the basis of property qualifications. For example, even at the height of the Napoleonic period, the militias in England, which then basically served as a "pre-conscription" pool for the battalions of regiments serving in the field in Spain, were still restricted, although the bar had been considerably lowered. (And, essentially, drafting all males into the militias would have stepped on the toes of Royal Navy Press gangs, which swept up just about any unemployed man who didn't have an employer who would come to get him back.) In Holland, militia membership was restricted on confessional lines, with Catholics and Anabaptists excluded.
In France, the peasants were disarmed after the uprisings of the
Jacquerie in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Militias were disbanded outright in the reign of Louis XIV. Similar actions to disarm the peasants have been common in history: during the 16th century
Sengoku period in Japan, Hashiba Hideyoshi conducted a disarming of the peasants which was known as "the sword hunt" after the assassination of Oda Nobunaga--who himself had extirpated all of the armed members of Buddhist sects, and even recruited
Sohei (Buddhist warrior monks) to effect that end. Disarming peasants, and restricting participation in militias is common in history.
So, the argument of gun control opponents that the IInd Amendment is intended to prevent tyrrany is obliquely disingenuous. It is not intended to necessarily arm the population against a tyrannical government, so much as it is to assure that no one segment of the population arms to impose on another. During Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts after the revolution and before the Constitution, veterans of the war who rebelled in arms were dispersed by the state militia, who had spent the war at home after the British left Boston.
Therefore, it seems apparent to me, as it does to many other students of history, that the intent is to prevent exclusive enrollment in the militia. It give all citizens the right to participate in the militia, without further qualification.