2nd Amendment's Actual Meaning?

[ConservativeMetalhead]

OK, so there is this guy on YouTube (Freatork1: www.youtube.com/user/Freatork1) saying that the 2nd doesn't say we actually we have a right to individually own guns. Now, this is LONG, but please read it all the way through and tell me what's wrong with it:

---------------------
Bouviers Law Dictionary:

CITIZEN: "persons. One who, under the constitution and laws of the United States, has a right to vote for representatives in congress.."

PEOPLE: "A state; as, the people of the state of New York; a nation in it's collective and political capacity."

BODY POLITIC: " ..As to the persons who compose the body politic, they take COLLECTIVELY the name, of PEOPLE, or nation; and INDIVIDUALLY they are CITIZENS..."
--------------------------
Sketches of American Policy
By NOAH WEBSTER.

"This association of all the individuals of a community is called the body politic or State... The members, spoken of COLLECTIVELY, are called PEOPLE, spoken of SEVERALLY, they may be called CITIZENS..."
------------------------
The Oxford English Dictionary defined to "bear arms" as: "to serve as a soldier, do MILITARY SERVICE, fight."

Now, look at the original draft of the Second Amendment:

1. "..but no person religiously scrupulous of BEARING ARMS shall be compelled to render MILITARY SERVICE in person."

It's clear from the original draft alone that "bearing arms" and "military service" are the same thing. But a look at the first re-worded version puts it beyond doubt:

2. "..compelled to BEAR ARMS."

1. Compelled to render military service.
2. Compelled to bear arms.
-------------------------
Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)

MILITIA: "The body of soldiers in a State ENROLLED for DISCIPLINE. . . The militia of a COUNTRY are the able bodied men ORGANIZED into COMPANIES, REGIMENTS and BRIGADES, with OFFICERS of all grades and *REQUIRED BY LAW* to attend military exercises on certain days only."
------------------
"Well regulated" means regulated by law, and NOT just a bunch of gun owners who can "function properly."

Mr. Benson: "moved to have the words "but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms," struck out... If this stands part of the constitution, it will be a question before the JUDICIARY on every REGULATION you make with respect to the ORGANIZATION OF THE MILITIA."

The Federalist No. 29 by Alexander Hamilton:
"The POWER of REGULATING the militia, and of commanding its services in times of insurrection and invasion are natural incidents to the duties of superintending the common defense, and of watching over the internal peace of the Confederacy... This desirable UNIFORMITY can only be accomplished by confiding the REGULATION of the militia to the direction of the NATIONAL AUTHORITY... If a WELL-REGULATED MILITIA be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the REGULATION and at the disposal of that BODY which is constituted the guardian of the national security..."

Luther Martin:
"..it was speciously assigned as a reason, that the GENERAL GOVERNMENT would cause the militia to be better REGULATED and better disciplined than the STATE GOVERNMENTS... That leaving the POWER to the several STATES, they would respectively best know the situation and circumstances of their citizens, and the REGULATIONS that would be necessary and sufficient to effect a WELL REGULATED MILITIA in each."

The Articles of Confederation:
VI. "..but every STATE shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of filed pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage."
------------
The REASON for the Second Amendment:

George Mason. - "The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practiced in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless--by disarming them. Under various pretenses, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them.. I wish that, in case the general government should neglect to arm and discipline the militia, there should be an express declaration that the state governments might arm and discipline them."

 

[Colonel]

http://www.nraila.org/media/PDFs/nra_amicus_heller.pdf

 

[CoRoMo]

...tell me what's wrong with it:

A great deal.

He's obviously doing a lot of cherry-picking, waxing and polishing there. If you would like to read the proper grammatical break-down of the 2A text, review the SCOTUS's majority opinion from Heller.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-290.pdf

What your internet [strike]intellectual[/strike] there is trying to do is what the dissenting Justices attempted in Heller. He's trying to convince someone that it means what he wants it to mean. Poor guy, I bet he's confused about a good many more things than the basics of our Constitution.

 

[Cosmoline]

PEOPLE: "A state; as, the people of the state of New York; a nation in it's collective and political capacity."

Only in the broadest, modern sense. Look at the way the Constitution uses the phrase "the people". It is very distinct from "the states" or "the several states." There are several amendments and many clauses within the Constitution which apply to "the states" and govern relationships between the federal government and the states. If the founders had drafted the Second as an amendment dealing with state-federal intergovernmental relationships, they would have said "the right of THE STATES" or "THE SEVERAL STATES". But they didn't. They said "the people," which is the same phrase used in the portions applying to citizens in general. Put another way, they could have simply said "the right of the states to arm and maintain militias shall not be infringed." Which is how the antis long read the Second. But you can't get to that interpretation without taking a magic marker to the text of the Constitution.

Early drafts of the text support this view, since they also deal with the right of THE PEOPLE, not of states. In that case they addressed the peripheral right of Quakers and others to refuse to bear arms for the militia. So far from being a guarantee of State's rights, the original draft was going to prevent the states from forcing people from bearing arms against their beliefs.

 

[ConservativeMetalhead]

Only in the broadest, modern sense. Look at the way the Constitution uses the phrase "the people". It is very distinct from "the states" or "the several states." There are several amendments and many clauses within the Constitution which apply to "the states" and govern relationships between the federal government and the states. If the founders had drafted the Second as an amendment dealing with state-federal intergovernmental relationships, they would have said "the right of THE STATES" or "THE SEVERAL STATES". But they didn't. They said "the people," which is the same phrase used in the portions applying to citizens in general. Put another way, they could have simply said "the right of the states to arm and maintain militias shall not be infringed." Which is how the antis long read the Second. But you can't get to that interpretation without taking a magic marker to the text of the Constitution.

Early drafts of the text support this view, since they also deal with the right of THE PEOPLE, not of states. In that case they addressed the peripheral right of Quakers and others to refuse to bear arms for the militia. So far from being a guarantee of State's rights, the original draft was going to prevent the states from forcing people from bearing arms against their beliefs.

I've gladly put his YouTube channel link up if you wish to debate him.

 

[legaleagle_45]

please read it all the way through and tell me what's wrong with it

The people arguement is completely refuted by the useage of the identical term in the 1st, 4th and 9th amendments.

Now, look at the original draft of the Second Amendment:

Ok. So why did you not reproduce it in full? Here it is:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.

You will note that the original draft placed the RKBA at the beginning and seperated it from the remainder by a semicolon, indicative of a completely seperate clause.

It's clear from the original draft alone that "bearing arms" and "military service" are the same thing.

Actually, it is not. The term "bear arms" which was adopted by Scalia in Heller and which is in conformance with dictionaries of the day was this:

carry upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.

The primary and intended beneficiary of this clause was Quakers, who were morally opposed to defending themselves against other persons.... a more general objection than merely serving in the military. Thus, the definition adopted in Heller makes perfect sense within the context of this clause.... in fact it it is a better definition than the one proposed by our youtube expert. What we have is this "Those who have moral objections to using deadly force against other persons (a true pacifist) shall not be compelled to serve in the military". That is the standard used both then and now to determine whether one is a conscientous objector. The meaning sought by our youtube expert is this: " Those that oppose serving in the military shall not be compelled to serve in the military." Sorry, this interpretation fails.

"Well regulated" means regulated by law"

No it does not, and our youtube expert reveals himself as a hack. It means functioning properly, or in good working order... well trained and able to be employed for battle. This is clear from the useage of the day... from Hamilton, Federalist #29:

To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people,

The REASON for the Second Amendment:

Totally incorrect and we know this for a fact.

George Mason is also known as the father of the Bill of Rights (as is Madison) because he wrote the "Master Draft" on June 8, 1788. This "master Draft" was adopted by the Virginia Ratifying Convention almost verbatim on June 27, 1788 as their proposal for amendments to the Constitution. Madison lifted the language which became the 2nd amendment almost verbatim from the Virginia Ratifying Convention proposals....

What is interesting in this respect is not what the proposals had in common, but how they differed. Let us start with the Mason quote cited by your youtube expert, specifically this language:

I wish that, in case the general government should neglect to arm and discipline the militia, there should be an express declaration that the state governments might arm and discipline them.

Now take a look at the proposals offered by Virginia... Virginia split its proposed amendments into 2 sections, the first entitled: "That there be a declaration or bill of rights asserting, and securing from encroachment, the essential and unalienable rights of the people, in some such manner as the following:" Included in this section was the following:

17th. That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; ...

19th. That any person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms ought to be exempted, upon payment of an equivalent to employ another to bear arms in his stead.

The other section was entitled merely AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION. Included in this section was the following:

11th. That each state respectively shall have the power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining its own militia, whensoever Congress shall omit or neglect to provide for the same. ...

What one would have to think if our youtube expert is to believed is that Virginia proposed two completely seperate amendments to the Constitution to accomplish exactly the same thing... and one of those two was put into a category entitled " a declaration or bill of rights asserting, and securing from encroachment, the essential and unalienable rights of the people".

Such a conclusion defies all rules of statutory construction... but there is more. The Mason Master Draft did NOT contain the provision which provided for the power of the state to organize, arm, and discipline its own militia. Mason quote from our youtube expert is the VERY FIRST instance in the historical record that such a defect in the constitution was made, and simultaneously with making that objection, Mason proposes a solution, which solution is copied almost verbatim in the proposed amendment # 11.

And guess what folks, at the time Mason made those comments, well two weeks had passed from the date he wrote the Master Draft.

QED, your youtube expert is a hack.

 

[ConservativeMetalhead]

The people arguement is completely refuted by the useage of the identical term in the 1st, 4th and 9th amendments.



Ok. So why did you not reproduce it in full? Here it is:



You will note that the original draft placed the RKBA at the beginning and seperated it from the remainder by a semicolon, indicative of a completely seperate clause.



Actually, it is not. The term "bear arms" which was adopted by Scalia in Heller and which is in conformance with dictionaries of the day was this:



The primary and intended beneficiary of this clause was Quakers, who were morally opposed to defending themselves against other persons.... a more general objection than merely serving in the military. Thus, the definition adopted in Heller makes perfect sense within the context of this clause.... in fact it it is a better definition than the one proposed by our youtube expert. What we have is this "Those who have moral objections to using deadly force against other persons (a true pacifist) shall not be compelled to serve in the military". That is the standard used both then and now to determine whether one is a conscientous objector. The meaning sought by our youtube expert is this: " Those that oppose serving in the military shall not be compelled to serve in the military." Sorry, this interpretation fails.



No it does not, and our youtube expert reveals himself as a hack. It means functioning properly, or in good working order... well trained and able to be employed for battle. This is clear from the useage of the day... from Hamilton, Federalist #29:





Totally incorrect and we know this for a fact.

George Mason is also known as the father of the Bill of Rights (as is Madison) because he wrote the "Master Draft" on June 8, 1788. This "master Draft" was adopted by the Virginia Ratifying Convention almost verbatim on June 27, 1788 as their proposal for amendments to the Constitution. Madison lifted the language which became the 2nd amendment almost verbatim from the Virginia Ratifying Convention proposals....

What is interesting in this respect is not what the proposals had in common, but how they differed. Let us start with the Mason quote cited by your youtube expert, specifically this language:



Now take a look at the proposals offered by Virginia... Virginia split its proposed amendments into 2 sections, the first entitled: "That there be a declaration or bill of rights asserting, and securing from encroachment, the essential and unalienable rights of the people, in some such manner as the following:" Included in this section was the following:



The other section was entitled merely AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION. Included in this section was the following:



What one would have to think if our youtube expert is to believed is that Virginia proposed two completely seperate amendments to the Constitution to accomplish exactly the same thing... and one of those two was put into a category entitled " a declaration or bill of rights asserting, and securing from encroachment, the essential and unalienable rights of the people".

Such a conclusion defies all rules of statutory construction... but there is more. The Mason Master Draft did NOT contain the provision which provided for the power of the state to organize, arm, and discipline its own militia. Mason quote from our youtube expert is the VERY FIRST instance in the historical record that such a defect in the constitution was made, and simultaneously with making that objection, Mason proposes a solution, which solution is copied almost verbatim in the proposed amendment # 11.

And guess what folks, at the time Mason made those comments, well two weeks had passed from the date he wrote the Master Draft.

QED, your youtube expert is a hack.

It's almost like you're saying I'm SUPPORTING this **** when you say, "your youtube expert". I'm just being open minded.

With all due respect, I give the link to his account, you can debate him yourself. I'm not educated enough.

 

[legaleagle_45]

It's almost like you're saying I'm SUPPORTING this **** when you say, "your youtube expert". I'm just being open minded.

Sorry, I got over excited while responding, please accept my apologies. My disdain is not directed at you, but at the youtube expert.

I give the link to his account, you can debate him yourself

Might just do that.

Sorry, just tried to post over there what I posted here. I need a youtube account, which I do not have and to get one, it tells me that I need to sign out of my google account. Since I do not have a google account to sign out of, I am at a loss.

 

[CoRoMo]

I already hate debating the gun owners here who champion gun control laws, so I don't want to debate an out&out anti of the Constitution.

 

[KodiakBeer]

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.

Throughout the Constitution, the government has POWERS, while people and states have RIGHTS. So, right off the top you can eliminate any federal gun control since it's clearly talking about states or peoples RIGHTS.

Now let's differentiate between the people and the state. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...
OK, a militia (National Guard or otherwise) is necessary to the state.
the right of the people [/B]to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
OK, we're talking about the people (individuals) within the state. If they just meant the state could have it's own militia, they don't need the second part of the sentence. The 2nd Amendment would simply read: A militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the state shall have the power to raise and arm a militia.

 

[ConstitutionCowboy]

Right off the bat:

PEOPLE: "A state; as, the people of the state of New York; a nation in it's collective and political capacity."

"People" is not used in this context in the Constitution. "People" as used in the Constitution is the plural of person. "People" equals "persons".

Woody

 

[rondog]

so there is this guy on YouTube

I didn't need to read any more than that right there.

 

[bskillet]

First, here are a couple of parallel quotes that should be considered:

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
--Thomas Jefferson

"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."
--Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

The first quote says the reason for people to maintain the right to firearms is "to protect themselves against tyranny in government." The second quote explains the right to keep and bear arms by stating that it is "necessary for the security of a free state."

So here is the problem with that guy's analysis: The founders saw the Constitution as a pact amongst sovereign states to unite in a single national government. In their eyes, most of the power would still be retained by the individual states. The national government would almost entirely be focused on national defense and international affairs (the Federalist Papers say this explicitly).

The existence of state militias, alluded to in the first clause of the 2A, would thus allow the individual states to defend themselves, even to the point of defending against an over-reaching national government. The 2A foresees a scenario where the federal government could counter-act the ability of states to defend themselves against a despotic federal government. To do this, the federal government might simply outlaw firearms ownership by all individual who are not part of the federal military. Thus, state militias, composed of non-federal individuals, would be disarmed. This would make it impossible for states to have their own militias independent of the federal government. That is why the explanatory clause of the 2A says, "A well-regulated militia" is "necessary to the security of a free state."

Many liberals argue that state national guards are the modern militias. This is not the case, since national guards can be federalized by Presidential edict. Rather, the grammatic text of the Second Amendment reveals the exact reason the Founding Fathers said private citizens must be allowed to own firearms: To use them, as a last resort, to dismantle a tyrannical government. While this idea seems extreme in our modern limp-wristed culture, the Founders had in fact done exactly such a thing only about a decade early by overthrowing British rule in the colonies. Had they agreed with the liberals' interpretation of the 2A, they never would have rebelled against Britain.


This country got its start precisely because private citizens refused to give up their right to own firearms in the face of a government edict that they disarm: The states had militias composed of private citizens (this was their definition of a militia - it was not a standing army like the national guards). The Redcoats decided to disarm the Massachussettes state militia by seizing their weapons. Private citizens, armed with muskets and rifles, were called up as the militia to oppose the Redcoats. They met the Brits at Lexington and the rest is history...

In this context, the 2A cannot be understood as anything other than what it is: An ammendment protecting private, individual ownership of firearms in order to ensure that free citizens have the power, as a last resort, to defend themselves against a tyrannical federal government. That may not be politically correct to talk about anymore, but it is precisely the reason the Founder's wrote the Second Amendment, a fact about which they were explicitly clear.

 

[ConservativeMetalhead]

I didn't need to read any more than that right there.

That's not a very valid reason.

 

[ConservativeMetalhead]

Right off the bat:



"People" is not used in this context in the Constitution. "People" as used in the Constitution is the plural of person. "People" equals "persons".

Woody

I mean no disrespect, but did you read the whole thing?

 

[Librarian]

The discussion is beating a dead horse.

See the case filings for Heller; there's a couple of days worth of reading for comprehension there.

 

[unspellable]

The debate

During the first fifty or hundred years of the US there was a great deal of debate over the exact function and powers of the state and local militias. Today some of these arguments have been used by the antis in an attempt to prove the 2A does not apply to individuals. Such usage is inappropriate since those arguments applied only to the debate over the role of the militia and not the individual right to keep and bear arms. During the time these debates were going on no one questioned the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. Many of the anti arguments you hear today can be traced back to those debates. But that's a standard technique, when your position is in the wrong you fall back on misuse of previous arguments if you're not using outright base falsehoods.

 

[basicblur]

Even after Heller, some folks just refuse to give up the militia thing, don’t they?
‘Course, most of us in here aren’t surprised-what was it Lenin said…a lie told often enough becomes the truth?
Somebody just the other day posted a link to How Justice Stevens May Have Saved Our Gun Laws. Don’t waste your time-it’s Dennis Henigan on a Brady Blog still trying to deny the 2nd refers to an individual right.

There is at least one out there who regularly made the rounds preaching gun control, the 2nd refers to the militia etc, who had the honesty to finally admit the 2nd says what it says, despite what some want to read into it:

From Eugene Robinson
"The big problem, for me, is the clarity of the Second Amendment's guarantee of the "right of the people to keep and bear arms." The traditional argument in favor of gun control has been that this is a collective right, accorded to state militias. This has always struck me as a real stretch, if not a total dodge."
I've never been able to understand why the Founders would stick a collective right into the middle of the greatest charter of individual rights and freedoms ever written -- and give it such pride of place -- the No. 2 position, right behind such bedrock freedoms as speech and religion."

'Course, we don't have to go that far...let's just look at the wordz boyz & gurlz!
For that, I'll defer to Dr. Nelson Lund, of George Mason University (perhaps our foremost Constitutional scholar on the Second Amendment.)

"Another very significant grammatical feature of the Second Amendment is that the operative clause ("...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed") is a command. Because nothing in that command is grammatically qualified by the prefatory assertion, the operative clause has the same meaning that it would have had if the preamble had been omitted or even if the preamble were demonstrably false."
"Consider a simple example. Suppose that a college dean announces: "The teacher being ill, class is cancelled." Nothing about the dean's prefatory statement, including its truth or falsity, can qualify or modify the operative command. If the teacher called in sick to watch a ball game, the cancellation of the class remains unaffected. If someone misunderstood a phone message and inadvertently misled the dean into thinking the teacher would be absent, the dean's order is not thereby modified."

For more of Dr. Lund's writings, visit:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/wm1851.cfm
(You can download multiple articles, court briefs and filings (all in PDF format) at this site.)

At least Eugene Robinson finally had the honesty to "fess up"-folks like Henigan, The Brady Bunch, and your YouTube expert do not.

 

[rbohm]

one thing that no one has pointed out, that i can see, is that the supreme court has consistently held that when the constitution uses the word "people" that they mean the individual person, not a state, not a group of people, etc. thus the last part of the second amendment;

the right of the people to keep and bear arms shal not be infringed

means that the individual citizen of this country can carry a weapon at any time, and unless their constitutional rights have been suspended, the states and the federal government cannot infringe on that right, basically meaning that technically all gun controls laws are unconstitutional, though many have been upheld by the supreme court over the years.

 

[bskillet]

The traditional argument in favor of gun control has been that this is a collective right

The problem with the traditional gun-grabber argument is that the Founders did not see rights as collectively owned by groups, but as inherent and intrinsic to the individual. Thus, the idea that the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" was collective would not be in keeping with what the Founders meant by "rights."

 

[natman]

"Held:
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home."

Supreme Court of the US, DC v Heller, 2008, page 1 [emphasis added]

There's no point in arguing it any more, it's been decided.

 

[gc70]

I didn't need to read any more than that right there.

That's not a very valid reason.

I generally share rondog's reaction and for very valid reasons. Most of the political commentary on YouTube is shallow in the extreme. I gave up listening to most of the uninformed rantings on YouTube when I realized that YouTube was probably preferred over a print medium because the majority of the speakers were incapable of cogent written expression. Nearly all of the balance of the political commentary on YouTube is simply slick propaganda. In the case of TheYoungTurks, they are quite capable of reading and understanding the Heller decision, but continue to put out blatantly inaccurate and misleading trash. Thus, I don't waste my time listening to the uninformed or to propagandists.

 

[ConstitutionCowboy]

I mean no disrespect, but did you read the whole thing?

Yes. There are other improper/out-of-context definitions and spurious trains of logic as well.

Woody

 

[jonmerritt]

the right to bear arms, sounds like the utube "know it all" skipped the right to keep them for some reason

 

[FTSESQ]

Yeah...

PEOPLE: "A state; as, the people of the state of New York; a nation in it's collective and political capacity."

If this guy's definition of "people" is accurate, then the 4th amendment gives a state the right to be secure in its persons, houses, papers, and effects, etc? I don't think so. That is not how the founders used the word "people". That is a modern usage of the word.

The 4th Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

But the 10th makes it perfectly clear:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

US = Federal
State = State
People = persons