If the 2nd Amendment ONLY allows a militia the right to keep and bear arms...

[TomHansley]

IF the phrase "the right of the People to keep and bear Arms" only applies to a state militia and not to the individual citizen, then WHY do so many state constitutions SPECIFICALLY say that that the right to keep and bear arms is an INDIVIDUAL right?


Maine State constitution

Section 16. To keep and bear arms. Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms and this right shall never be questioned.

Connecticut State constitution

SEC. 15. Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state.

New Hampshire State constitution

2-a. All persons have the right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state.

Vermont State constitution

Article 16th.
That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State--and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

Pennsylvania State constitution

Right to Bear Arms
Section 21.
The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.

Washington State Constitution

SECTION 24 RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS. The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.

Utah State constitution

Article I, Section 6.
The individual right of the people to keep and bear arms for security and defense of self, family, others, property, or the state, as well as for other lawful purposes shall not be infringed; but nothing herein shall prevent the Legislature from defining the lawful use of arms.

Oregon State constitution

Section 27. Right to bear arms; military subordinate to civil power. The people shall have the right to bear arms for the defense of themselves, and the State, but the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power.

Forida State constitution

SECTION 8. Right to bear arms.--
(a) The right of the people to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves and of the lawful authority of the state shall not be infringed, except that the manner of bearing arms may be regulated by law.

Arizona State constitution

26. Bearing arms
Section 26. The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the state shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain, or employ an armed body of men.

Texas State constitution

Section 23 - RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS
Every citizen shall have the right to keep and bear arms in the lawful defense of himself or the State; but the Legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms, with a view to prevent crime.


You'd think since all the state constitutions are BASED off the US constitution, they wouldn't specifically allow individuals the right if it was originally meant to only apply to state militias!

[MannyGoldstein]

1. The Gun Thing Is A Mess - Needs To Be Sorted Out

by a constitutional amendment. It's not at all clear what the Founders meant. And, clearly, people shouldn't have the right to bear nukes. It's a big mess.

[TPaine7]

4. Not really.

Early on, the people and the Supreme Court agreed. There was no controversy, except over the status of blacks.

If you scrub away the racism, the Supreme Court was crystal clear that all citizens had the right to keep and carry arms, for lawful purposes, wherever they went.

The confusion is based on theories invented in the 20th century.

[Somawas]

5. You're terribly mistaken.

The language of the Second Amendment is no less clear than the language of the First.

And I can't think of any good reason that people shouldn't have the right to bear nukes. In fact, I can think of a number of rather salubrious effects of their doing so.

[krispos42]

11. I can think of an excellent reason why people can't bear nukes

Stricter regulation on non-discrimatory weapons like explosives and fully-automatic firearms is entirely consistant with things like making illegal and removing constitutional protections of free speech for the unwarranted shouting of "Fire!" in crowded theater.

This is opposed to "discrimatory" weapons, which only fire one shot and thus every shot is under the control of the shooter.

[Somawas]

17. On that theory, no one, including governments, should have nukes.

[SteveM]

20. Getting beyond questions of sovereignty, perhaps you are right...

But within a nation, like ours, regulations for owning arms other than those which are designed to be fired by one person is entirely appropriate due to the much more indiscriminate danger posed when used. You can own a tanks, B-17 ball turrets, etc., complete with armament, albeit highly regulated. Frankly, I haven't seen a problem with wide-spread ownership of tanks. There are more wise-acre comments about the right to own howitzers than there are about howitzers actually owned.

[SteveM]

19. Please see www.georgiacarry.org and scroll to Heller brief (nt)

[benEzra]

25. No one is arguing for the right to bear nukes.

The gun issue is about whether or not to continue to respect the existing right to own non-automatic, non-sound-suppressed civilian firearms under .51 caliber, which the gun-control lobby wants to sharply curtail.

[napi21]

2. If you look back to the time when the constitution was written, they

also said there shouldn't be a standing army. The malitia WAS the people! They could and would be called to duty to defend their rights.

I have a difficult time with this issue. I'm in total support for anyone to own guns if they want to do so, but our populated urban areas can't seem to do so responsibly. I honestly think it wrong to tell any law abiding citizen they CAN'T own a gun, but there doesn't seem to be any way to determine who the responsible citizens are. Someone who has no police record appears to be qualified...until they decide to rob, burglarize, or shoot someone!

[krispos42]

27. Welcome to real life

The fundamental problem is that you can't know what anybody is going to do with any given thing. The problem we have is that the thinking that bothers anti-gun people (what if they kill somebody?) does so until it seems the only reasonable answer is to ban the guns. "We cannot allow..." style arguments.

It's the same kind of thinking that convinced most Americans that we had to invade Iraq. The right wing got people thinking so much "what-if" stuff and let it gnaw on people's minds until it transformed people's thinking into "1% Doctrine"-style of thinking.

...our populated urban areas can't seem to do so responsibly.

This is partially because the people that can and would do so responsibly are strongly discouraged from doing so. There's an extensive legal process, as well as social stigma.

and due to the influence of gangs, you wind up having a greater percentage of irresponsible gun owners and a lesser percentage of responsible gun owners in our cities.

[sharesunited]

3. Maybe because gun love is a sickness throughout U.S. territorial history?

Front-loading single-shot weapons is all you should expect to be allowed to cling to.

[virginia mountainman]

8. Nice Logic...

Now Apply that "logic" to the REST of the US Bill of Rights...


Why Not?? You just applied it too the 2nd Amendment, lets apply it to say the first amendment...

[sharesunited]

9. Simple. Only the 2A has the power to take all your other rights away.

By killing your ass.

[TPaine7]

12. Do you think Hitler would have been more or less dangerous

if he had been given a machine gun and prevented from communicating?

"The pen is mightier than the sword."

[sharesunited]

13. I don't think that argument necessarily gets you anywhere.

He was communicating a message which was carried out at gunpoint.

Go invade the Sudetenland with words. Go round up the Jews with words.

[beevul]

15. He got every "good german" to support it, using words.

"He was communicating a message which was carried out at gunpoint."

He got every "good german" to support it, using words, and those words came first.

[DrCory]

18. Are you advocating...

that the state be disarmed? An end to all armed forces? Unless you are, your point is moot. The majority of those who carried out the atrocities of the Third Reich were uniformed personnel armed by the state, not private citizens. Therefore, the words are more powerful as they mobilized entities which are armed by definition and which most nations, regardless of political orientation, maintain. The Einsatzgruppen may have been ad hoc or task-specific units, but the were manned by uniformed personnel.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

16. It's also the only one with the ability to protect all your other rights.

Seems like that point is often lost.


David

[SteveM]

22. Have you forgotten? Only the government can take your rights away(nt)

[Irreverend IX]

24. You obviously don't understand the Bill of Rights...

You seem to be making the argument that people who are allowed to keep and bear arms can kill others, which "takes all their other rights away." But the BoR does not govern the actions of private citizens. The BoR doesn't give rights to the people, it restricts the power of the government. Each amendment forbids the government from violating a right of the people.

Your logic is much the same as that of people who complain that DU "violates their 1st amendment rights" by prohibiting the promotion of Republicans. DU can restrict speech however it wants, because it isn't the government. Constitutional rights do not protect citizens from the actions of other citizens; there are a plethora of other laws to do that. There is no constitutional basis for treating the 2A differently from other amendments.

[SteveM]

21. And you are at this moment using type-set & snail mail? (nt)

[smiley_glad_hands]

6. Jefferson wanted a highly armed population as a deterrent.

With no standing military.

[Ian David]

7. It was a typo. It was supposed to be, "The right to KEEP AND ARM BEARS."

[JDPriestly]

10. Silly question.

That state constitutions protect and recognize a right does not mean that the U.S. Constitution protects that right. The fact that state constitutions specifically recognize the individual's right to keep and bear arms, and does so in clear language that is not found in the United States Constitution supports the argument that the United States Constitution does not protect an individual right to bear arms. At least that is how lawyers are very likely but not definitely going to conclude based on your argument. The absence of language in a document may be interpreted as showing intent.

You have made an interesting observation, but probably not to helpful to your cause if you favor an interpretation of the United States Constitution that would guarantee an individual's right to bear arms.

I think there are arguments to be made for the idea that the U.S. Constitution protects the individual's right to bear arms, but this is not one of them.

And, you must remember, that, even if we have a right, the government has the right to regulate our exercise of that right within certain limits. Therefore, even the right to free speech and freedom of religion can be regulated. And those rights are our most fundamental rights (perhaps after habeas corpus which dates back a long, long, long time, probably to the 12th or 13th century).

[beevul]

14. There is no absence absence of language...

Only an absence of any idea where to look for that language that spells out intent, at least sometimes. I mean this, not directed at you, but as a general statement.

The First 10 Amendments to the
Constitution as Ratified by the States
December 15, 1791

Preamble

Congress OF THE United States
begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday
the Fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution

www.billofrights.org

A reading of the second amendment - with respect to the preamble - makes it crystal clear, that A2 is a restrictive clause, and spells out unambiguously what the intent of the amendment was.

Because the language does not appear unambiguously within the amendment itself, all kinds of people with agendas have taken it upon themselves to "educate" us all with the "collective rights" reading, when the amendment covers both collective an individual exercise of the right that shall not be infringed.

Thats my take, FWIW.

[SteveM]

23. The Fourteenth Amendment re-iterates the individual RKBA ...

That bulwark of civil rights legislation/rulings throughout the last half of the 20th Century was a "cornerstone" re-affirmation of the individual right to keep and bear arms. Stephen Halbrook, in his Freedmen, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866-1876, found that throughout the Reconstruction South, armed gangs and state-sanctioned militias were harassing, beating, stealing from and disarming newly-freed blacks. The 14th was preeminently about re-asserting the rights of citizens and protecting them from state action through the privileges and immunities clause.

The entire history of the Jim Crow South was about how to disarm blacks through state action. Read www.georgiacarry.org and scroll to Heller brief.

BTW, the overwhelming majority of political scientists, historians, legal scholars see the Second as protecting an individual right to keep and bear arms; so much so that the individual rights interpretation is referred to as the "Standard Model." See Laurence Tribe (once a militia-clause advocate), who changed over to the individual rights view after re-study.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution merely says that one of the reasons "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is so that they shall have the power to form "well-regulated" militias to defend the state(s). "Well-regulated" in those days meant being equipped with a firearm suitable for the times, and is mute testimony to the volume and quality of firearms in the hands of citizens, as opposed to the meager or non-existent caches kept by the various states.

[hansberrym]

26. What then do you make of the abscence of a qualifier such as "when in actual service"

or "who are enrolled" following the words "the right of the people" in 2A ?


If the right was meant to apply ONLY to those persons in actual service why is there no qualifier such as in the 5th amendment? (keep in mind that DC claims the RKBA is an individual right, but also claims that the right only applies to those persons on active duty in the militia)

The absence of such language restricting "the people" would naturally lead to an interpretion as showing the intent to protect a broad right to keep and bear arms that would apply equally to those in actual service of the militia and to those at large.





To your first point:
The right of the people to keep and bear arms is the right protected in 2A, several early state constitutions contain nearly the same wording to declare the right. I do agree with you that the meaning of those words is clear, but again I would add that there is no qualifier following "the people" in 2A that would restrict the meaning to something much less than protected in the state constitutions.

[Xenocrates]

28. Actually, the US Constitution is BASED on the Original Colonial Contitutions

When the Original Colonies separated from England in 1776, each colony drafted their own Constitutions, very similar yet very unique. Some didn't bother with mentioning the right to bear arms, while the ones mentioned in the OP were very specific in the bearing of arms. The US Constitution wasn't completed until 1787.

The Avalon Project ( http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/ ) has many of the original documents online. You can see many similarites between the older Colonial documents, and the US Constitution.

Of course, the newer state constitutions from the states that were created after 1787 are probably based upon the US constitution.

[S_B_Jackson]

29. Worth noting as well....

the former Confederate States were required to RE-WRITE their state's constitutions prior to re-admittance to the Union. All contained provisions STRONGLY stating the individual right of their citizens to own firearms. Had Congress found any of these provisions to be in conflict with THEIR OWN INTERPRETATION of the US Constitution and the 2nd Amendment, they would not have ratified the new state constitutions, and had no qualms about kicking them back to the states to correct any deficiencies...