LRS Scout <lrssc...@gmail.com> wrote: > > the federal government. So a plain reading of the 2nd amendment, taking > into account placement of commas and treating them as non-dependent > clauses, the 2nd amendment is to me at least clearly an individual right. > Reading the founders only reenforces this opinion. >
See, I think the opposite ... Here's how I get there. Reading the founders it seems to me they had one big concern (relative to arms): the ability to quickly spin up national defense *locally*. In this day that might seem odd, but consider that it was during a time when we had a lot of rural communities with poor communication. Paul Revere is great but if there are no "arms" then there's not a lot to be done. Boston needs to be able to repel vikings on its own (militia) and - here's the key - the federal government should not be able to prevent Boston from arming itself. So, the founders said, we must prevent the federal government from telling Boston what to do. And not only on arms, but we need to prevent the federal government from legislating away all kind of things. Said another way, the Bill of Rights was written to be curbs on the power of the federal government. That's it. In other words it was not written for individual citizens, it was written for the federal government. I think using the due process clause (not written for this purpose) from an amendment written 100 years later to "back-date" federal curbs to the states is the real shredding of the Constitution. I'm fine with guns, I just don't think the Constitution gives you a right to them. What it does do is prevent the Feds from preventing you from having them ... but it says nothing about what your State can do. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:358508 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
