ReadyontheRight
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http://www.startribune.com/561/story/695627.html
"...When this country was young, Cornell notes, the Second Amendment created a climate in which "gun ownership wasn't driven by antipathy toward the government or one's neighbors. It was part of an ethic that knit the community together and bound it to government...."
Maybe this "History Professor" somehow knows a lot more than me, but hadn't the writers of the Constitution just went to war with and overthrown their government?
And even if we disregard the Constitution, Federalist Papers, Letters, Speeches and other information we know about the Founding Fathers that flies in the face of this idiot's rhetoric...Why would any thinking person "bind" themselves to the government? Isn't the govenment merely a tool to bind the People together?
Sheesh.
Editorial: The Constitution's gun-control pledge
History lesson: Second Amendment requires regulation.
First, a calming caveat: Saul Cornell doesn't want to take away your guns. He's neither antigun nor progun. He really isn't a gun guy at all. His thing is history.
Cornell, a professor at Ohio State University, passed through town the other day with much to say about regulating guns. Yet his aim isn't to take sides in the modern gun-control debate -- a squabble he thinks has strayed rather off-topic. It's far more interesting, he thinks, to look back to learn what this country's founders actually thought about gun regulation.
They couldn't imagine life without it, says Cornell. That's the point of his new book, "A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America." In it, Cornell excavates the foundations of the Second Amendment and offers some startling conclusions.
"As long as we've had guns in America," says Cornell, "we've had gun regulation." In fact, the Second Amendment's chief purpose is to assure such regulation. Without it, the founders feared, anarchy might take hold.
The amendment was born of the founders' desire for "a well-regulated militia." Having opted against a standing army, the Constitution's cobblers determined that every able-bodied man would serve as a member of a local militia -- prepared to respond in unison against invasion.
"It would have been impossible to muster the militia without a scheme of regulation," says Cornell -- and the early Americans had one. "Muster rolls" kept track of militia members and their firearms. And every hamlet in the land had its own de facto gun registrar: the local gunsmith, who knew every gun and gun-owner in town.
There's one right the Second Amendment wasn't written to confer: an entitlement to take up arms against the government. "The founding fathers drew a distinction between a well-regulated militia, which operates under the authority of the state, and an armed mob," says Cornell. History couldn't be clearer about this point: "Once you have constitutional government," Cornell points out, "you have no right of revolution anymore."
Indeed, "All these things that the gun-rights community has championed in the name of the founding fathers -- opposition to registration, promotion of concealed-carry and stand-your-ground laws, the notion that individuals have a right to take up arms against their government -- are antithetical to the original understanding of the Second Amendment."
They also contradict today's legal understanding of the amendment. "The reason the high court hasn't heard a case regarding the meaning of the Second Amendment in so long," says Cornell, "is that it's considered one of the most settled issues in American law." In other words, laws meant to curb gun violence are usually ruled constitutional.
What Cornell wishes people would understand is that our tradition of gun ownership grew up alongside gun regulation. When this country was young, Cornell notes, the Second Amendment created a climate in which "gun ownership wasn't driven by antipathy toward the government or one's neighbors. It was part of an ethic that knit the community together and bound it to government."
Why, wonders the historian, can't Americans embrace that ethic today?
"...When this country was young, Cornell notes, the Second Amendment created a climate in which "gun ownership wasn't driven by antipathy toward the government or one's neighbors. It was part of an ethic that knit the community together and bound it to government...."
Maybe this "History Professor" somehow knows a lot more than me, but hadn't the writers of the Constitution just went to war with and overthrown their government?
And even if we disregard the Constitution, Federalist Papers, Letters, Speeches and other information we know about the Founding Fathers that flies in the face of this idiot's rhetoric...Why would any thinking person "bind" themselves to the government? Isn't the govenment merely a tool to bind the People together?
Sheesh.