The agreed to "Original Intent" is - to coin a phrase - self-evident.
Had the people that founded this country wished for the fruitcake revisionist version of the 2nd Amendment, they coulda/woulda/shoulda have had it.
They could read, write, and speak in English. Ergo, if they had meant to establish laws against the private ownership of the "Brown Bess" (or any other weapon) -
the state of the art weapon of its time - they would have done so.
There isn't one place in the Constitution, or its various and sundry amendments, that filthy leftists dispute the meaning of "the people", by arguing that what is really meant is "the state(s)". Don't believe me? Listen to a leftist bleat about the 1st Amendment sometime.
In other words, had the 2nd A been a
collective right, they (the founders) would have taken all other weapons, except for the rusty shotguns and squirrel rifles, away from
the PEOPLE* and placed them in National Guard Armorys.
Then again, the founders of this country weren't a bunch of sniveling-knee-jerk-commie-pinko-bedwetting idiots, as are our good friends the antis. And of course there is that little nagging problem that the National Guard wasn't in existence for another 120 years+/-
after ratification of the BOR. Details, details, details...
*From another thread (abridged):
The High Road > Social Situations > Legal and Political > Official sponsored anti gun propaganda???
brookstexas
Member
Registered: May 2003
Location:
Posts: 86
Official sponsered anti gun propaganda???
This is from their website
www.constitutioncenter.org search for "guns".
This is the new tourist center much touted in the press. A writer named Linda Monk has the job of translating the Constitution for those who can't read evidently-
"The American Revolution was fought by minutemen, ready with their guns at a moment’s notice. Early Americans believed that a militia, composed of citizen-soldiers, was a better safeguard of their liberties than a standing or permanent army. Today the militia consists of the National Guard, drilling in state units. Does the Second Amendment protect only the right of the states to have militias, or does it give individuals a right to bear arms for self-defense as well as national defense? That question is at the heart of the debate over the Second Amendment and gun control."
This is so far from historical truth it is just propaganda, please write and complain. By the way, where is the NRA????
Spike
--
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be lead to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
--H. L. Mencken
Don, what do you and Dick think about doing that Mencken thing?
-G.W. Bush
Duncan Idaho
Member
Registered: Jun 2003
Location: The early years of WWIII
Posts: 69
quote:
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Does the Second Amendment protect only the right of the states to have militias, or does it give individuals a right to bear arms for self-defense as well as national defense?
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It supports the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
The founders said "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."
Ascribing the right being discussed to THE PEOPLE, rather than to the state(s), just as they did in amendments 1, (2), 4, 5, 9, and as they implied in amendments 3, 6, 7, & 8.
Had they wished to ascribe the right to both the state(s) and the people, they could have done so as they did in Amendment 10.
quote:
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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.
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So, as anyone can plainly see, the founders possessed sufficient skill with the English language to clearly assign rights to individuals as well as states. In the case of the 2nd Amendment, they clearly chose the former.
One other thing. If the modern National Guard did indeed mimic the Minutemen, or the founder's vision of citizen-soldiers, then said National Guardsmen/women would secure their M-16s, M9s, M249s, etc... at home, or at their place of work, or on their persons, as the Minutemen did.
Linda Monk translator? Leftist revisionist blissninny is nearer the mark.
God I hate liberals.