The 2nd Amendment is my carry permit.. Although I have a CCW for several States. This is where I think the Government is over stepping there authority. The 2nd Amendment is very clear.
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.
I understand what the laws say, but they are laws created by people not following the Constitution.
I actually disagree with your reading of it. By that logic,it applies ONLY to militia as that's what its talking about. The supreme court feels otherwise and has ruled that its a personal right to self defense. However,if we are just looking at an exact reading of it,its about militias.
Consider this statement as an analogy. "The right to be secure in ones person being necessary to a free and just society,the right to use deadly force shall not be infringed." Sweet,that means that if this were in the constitution I could go randomly shooting and killing people right? Of course not. You cant just choose the part of the statement you like. One person might read that as being a right to be secure in ones person and say it only means that that security must be provided. They might say that the right to use deadly force is obsolete and that the police will do that for me. By the same logic you use,someone trying to beat a murder charge could say it provides them a right to kill indiscriminately (clearly that is absurd). I'm not comparing the right to carry guns to the right to kill people of course,only that the logical structure of the two statements is identical,and my statement is made to demonstrate how the logic is flawed by highlighting the absurdity.
The full statement however is reasonable. It posits that its acceptable to kill to protect yourself. The two parts MUST be taken together. If you insist upon a LITERAL exact reading of the constitution,then you are incorrect and the 2nd Amendment ONLY gives you the right to carry guns insofar as it furthers the goal of having a militia. It could be argued that you have a personal right to small arms so that you can form a millitia,or that you have a personal right to them so that you will be skilled in their use should the time come that the millitia needs to be called up. Your right to carry those arms would similarly be restricted to the millitia. It would be perfectly acceptable to say that they had to be locked up and disassembled so that they could not readily be used for self defense. Its not plausible that seconds or minutes could count when the militia was called up. 15 minutes to unlock and assemble your weapon would be fine to stop an invading army. A right to carry a handgun for self defense has NOTHING whatsoever to do with a militia.
Consider,if the 2nd amendment is about a personal right to self defense,then why does it even mention the militia. If we read only the second part,then what does the first part mean?
The reality is,Heller was as much of a "activist" court decision as Roe vs Wade was. If you feel that the Supreme Court should interpret the Constitution exactly as written with no room for interpretation of intent,then the decision in Dc vs Heller was wrong. In short,the personal right to self defense is really considered to be implicit in the 2nd amendment the same way a right to privacy is considered implicit in the constitution. All the 2nd Amendment guarantees in its literal wording is that the Federal Government cannot deny you the weapons that you need to form a militia. Ironically,the Supreme Court very clearly ruled that it CAN in fact deny you those weapons. The rest,self defense,concealed carry,hunting any any other use of guns,if they are to be protected by the constitution must be "read into it" in the same manner that the very people that want these rights affirmed complain about when its done with issues they oppose.
I personally am all for personal rights to own and carry guns,just as it seems you are,but my views on firearms rights are not in conflict with my views on the constitution.
In this case we agree on WHAT and even agree the constitution should protect it,but disagree on WHY and HOW the constitution protects it.
WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is simple, nothing to read into! I am not just picking out a part of it, the whole thing is plain as the nose on your face.. I am not going to debate what the second amendment means to you or the courts. It was the intent of our founding fathers to let the Government know, they are not to control the peoples right to keep and bare arms.... END OF STORY!!! The Federal and State Governments have over stepped there rights out lined by the Constitution of the United States.. It is not up for the Judicial system to interpret the Constitution.. That is the problem with everyone, they are allowing the Judicial system to interpret the Constitution.. That is NOT there job, they are only there to enforce LAWS not to change or intrepid the Construction to fit there AGENDA!
So why then,if they mean to say ONLY "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" did they instead say "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."
The other amendments are not written like this. The first amendment is not qualified. It simply states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." that's very strait forward. The only questions arise when for instance your free speech rights conflict with mine or for instance of you go into an unruly crowd and incite them to riot or cause injury or property damage. In other words when you use your free speech to infringe upon other peoples rights.
Similarly the tenth amendment says "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." and in fact,this is pretty straightforward. The arguments that fall under this amendment are not about what it means by "powers" or "prohibited" but whether some text in the constitution grants or prohibits the action in question.
The second amendment though is qualified. It absolutely does not state "The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed". It qualifies that statement by saying that it is BECAUSE of the necessity of a militia that it must not be. YOU personally are interpreting the constitution as per your agenda by ignoring the entire first clause the amendment and the supreme court did the same when they decided that a statement referring to arms in general and militias in specific,but not mentioning self defense at all created a personal right to use deadly force for self defense. Perhaps it does,and perhaps that's what was intended,and in fact,many of the documents at the time seem to support this. What does NOT support (or contradict for that matter) this is the text of the 2nd Amendment itself.
If we are to take a literal reading of the Constitution,then the real question is whether the first amendment is a right given to the states,or the people. I would say by that literal reading it is of course a right given to the states,which will insure that the states have the tools at hand to organize militias whether they want those tools or not.(because militias were organized at the state level,then delegated to the local level) Perhaps it DOES mean that the federal government cannot infringe on the right to keep and bear arms at all. Still,that has nothing to do with a personal right to self defense. Furthermore,the phrase "Keep and bear arms" was typically used in a military context. To keep and bear arms was likely meant in the context of being part of the militia. If that is the case,then it would probably prevent the federal government for instance from restricting the use of arms during militia training or perhaps even personal training. In other words,they cant stop you from getting together and training,or carrying them to or from the training site etc. (all very real ways they have tried to ban guns in some jurisdictions) Really,any personal right to self defense would stem from the constitutions silence on the matter and the question of whether such a right exists at all. No where in the constitution does it mention a right to self defense,yet most rational people will believe we have one.
Furthermore,the right to self defense is only tangentially related to "arms". If there were no weapons at all,we would still have this right. Its a fairly straightforward argument that if someone tries to for instance push me off a building and in defending myself I push him off as well,I was exercising my right to defend myself. Picking up a stick or grabbing a utility knife is no different. The argument that I should be able to carry a weapon intended for this purpose follows rather naturally as if I cannot be armed,then I am being deprived of the opportunity to defend myself should a situation arise where I have an opportunity to exercise that right.
In short,if I have a right to defend my life using deadly force,of which there is a long standing tradition going back to the beginnings of civilization,then the personal right to have a weapon (not just a gun,but any appropriate weapon) to defend myself with stems from that,not from the second amendment.
Similarly the right to privacy that many jurists hold we have,could be argued to be implicit in the constitution. The 4th amendment for instance,protecting us from illegal search and seizure is simply a reflection of this. This is certainly consistent with the fact that the framers felt that the these amendments were unnecessary and only added them as a compromise to those states that wanted certain rights spelled out. They felt that spelling them out would cause exactly the problem that it has. They felt ,and wrote as such,that if they spelled out certain rights,then it might be claimed that ONLY those rights were given. The 10th amendment says otherwise. Its rather explicit that we have other rights NOT spelled out explicitly in the constitution and it states that those rights belong to the states or the people. So the question then is who determines what those rights are. Someone has to or else we really don't have them. What are the? The implicit right to privacy the courts hold that we have, is one such example. Nowhere is it explicitly mentioned,except that the 10th amendment is very clear that such un-named implicit things exist.
Similarly the personal right to self defense stems from this,NOT the 2nd amendment. In fact there is a good argument to be made that the framers felt that the rights granted by the 2nd amendment were so,regardless of whether or not the amendment was added. Again,it was a compromise to get some states to sign on. The argument of the framers of the constitution was that these rights and countless many others existed REGARDLESS of the constitution and that the constitution simply delegated certain of these powers to the federal government. (such as the right to regulate interstate commerce). The constitution seems to presuppose many rights,and then spell out a few which are delegated to states or the Federal Government. The 10th amendment along with the necessary and proper clause COULD however be construed as giving the government authority to decide if certain rights exist as the 10 amendment gives the constitution jurisdiction to ensure that those rights are protected and its not plausible to do so if its not determined what those rights are.
