Opinion: What America’s gun fanatics won’t tell you

[safeinOhio]

Can we please stop pretending that the Second Amendment contains an unfettered right for everyone to buy a gun? It doesn’t, and it never has. The claims made by the small number of extremists, before and after the Orlando, Fla., massacre, are based on a deliberate lie.

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution doesn’t just say Congress shall not infringe the right to “keep and bear arms.” It specifically says that right exists in order to maintain “a well-regulated militia.” Even the late conservative Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia admitted those words weren’t in there by accident. Oh, and the Constitution doesn’t just say a “militia.” It says a “well-regulated” militia.

What did the Founding Fathers mean by that? We don’t have to guess because they told us. In Federalist No. 29 of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton explained at great length precisely what a “well-regulated militia” was, why the Founding Fathers thought we needed one, and why they wanted to protect it from being disarmed by the federal government.


The Second Amendment is an instrument of government. It’s not about hunting or gun collecting or carrying your pistol into the saloon.
And there’s a reason absolutely no gun extremist will ever direct you to that 1788 essay because it blows their baloney into a million pieces.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-americas-gun-fanatics-wont-tell-you-2016-06-14

[DawgHouse]

1. Very good article.

Thanks for sharing!

[billh58]

2. The Second Amendment was interpreted

correctly right up until the right-wing John Birch Society and the NRA, with the help of ALEC and the ILA developed the marketing strategy to use fear to sell more guns for the manufacturers. The gullible public bought it hook, line, and sinker and now we have 300 million guns (or more) in our neighborhoods contributing to 30,000 deaths and 100,000 injuries per year.

It is past time to reverse this travesty, and elect Democrats who will honestly address the public health menace that guns have become, and not be afraid of the right-wing gun lobby while fixing the problem.

[safeinOhio]

3. It has to be looked at in the terms

of the late 18th Century, as all of the document does. For 200 years it was a community right and not an individual right and as the article says, they left it up to the states to decide personal rights. The gun rights folks always say we must judge the US Constitution by looking at what states wrote in their Constitutions, when it is the other way around.

[Paladin]

4. Scalia did his best to do away with that "well regulated militia" clause, in the Heller decision.

You remember Scalia, don't you? Mr. Originalist, famed for interpreting the law as if it were still 1789---except on those many occasions when it suited him to do otherwise, like in Heller. The world is a better place without him.

[jmg257]

5. Interesting - they do know that Hamilton's proposition was NOT used when organizing the militia?

Federalist #29 is used quite often to show what was meant by "well-regulated" - nothing wrong there.

But the congress, in the Militia Act of 1792, indeed went with the existing practices (each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States) for composing the state militias, contrary to Hamilton's "select corps" notions. Rules of discipline/training were also mandated to ensure that they were trained/well-regulated.


Of course this did all change with the Dick Act, and the recreation of the State militias into the federal NG. That was over 100 years later.

Wholeheartedly agree the state militias are(were) govt entities, and should be well regulated (the NG today), and are NOT Bubba and his AK running around the woods.


ETA: after re-reading, that article isn't really so far off with regards to the state of the militias today, and the reduced importance of the 2nd because of it.

[Mendocino]

6. Buying guns, ammo or belonging to the NRA

aids, abets and subsidizes the right.