2nd Amendment was about the militia
...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed ~ 2nd Amendment, Bill of Rights
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 1987-04-19 |
| Left | Right |
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| For 200 years every legal scholar and ruling on the 2A was wrong, because gun-control activists in the 1960's figured out that the 2A was not an individual right, but only meant to protect people in the militia (National Guard). So the 2A doesn't protect people's right to bear arms at all, only the militias. | The National Guard" wasn't created until 1903, and founding fathers (and Supreme Court) defined (a) militia as all able body males able to defend the country (b) that well regulated just meant "in working order" (c) "the People" always meant individual rights (not the collective) (d) they got dependency backwards: militia was dependent on the individuals, not the other way around. The lefts linguistic gymnastics shows how desperate they are to circumvent and distort the legal rights/liberties the Constitution recognized. |
There are a few fallacies, invented by progressives in the 30’s and 60’s to try to enact gun control and pervert what the Constitution and 2nd Amendment means. When the left can't win the argument based on the logic and facts, they try to reframe it and change the meanings of words. So the constitution was part of a “living document” delusion, that you can change meanings by make-believe, without following the actual letter/intent of law. They prey on the ignorance of their base, and the lack of understanding in English, History, and the Constitution, to pretend that the 2nd doesn’t mean exactly what it meant for the first 200 years, and suddenly 150-200 years later, they found secrets that no other historians have ever found a scrap of evidence of :
- Well Regulated: they re-define the original meaning (in working order) to mean government controlled — it doesn’t.
- Militia: they try to re-interpret to mean National Guard/Reserves, which was created over 100 years later.
- Dependent clause reversal: they misinterpret English to assume that your right/liberty is dependent on being in the militia, instead of the truth that you have the right, so that you can be part of a militia (and that it is an obligation to own a gun, and do your duty).
- “the People”, which means “individuals” everywhere else in the Bill of Rights, is reinvented to mean “collective / state”.
But all those were not only not recognized for the first 150+ years, but they’re been completely refuted by Linguists, Historians, Legal Scholars, and common sense. Gun control laws can be argued and debated, but there is no real doubt as to what the Second Amendment meant. And those who repeat a false claim they heard once, are just being foolish (not researching because it fits their confirmation bias). Anyone that’s looked knows how discredited those theories are. Those who repeat them after knowing that (or deny it), are just liars.
I've heard many people try to distort the 2nd Amendment so that, "guns should only apply to those who are in the militia” or that it’s a people (plural) right and not an individual right, or other linguistic gymnastics, to proclaim that the 2nd doesn’t mean what English Scholars, Legal and Constitutional scholars, and the authors (in their own writings) intended.
Gun Quotes : Militia Meaning[edit source]
 Some people mistakenly think it means reserves or National Guard (established 1903, and subject to federal control) — but since those didn’t exist at the time of authoring, there is no way it could have been the type of body envisioned by the framers. Today’s legal definition is, the "militia" consists of "all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age”, with a few exclusions for medical, mental or job deferments (by their choice) (10 U.S.C. 311 and 32 U.S.C. 313). You don’t have to take my word for it, there are multiple Constitutional rulings and the words of the authors listed below — but they’re all variants of the following:
Quotes[edit | edit source]Supporting Opinions[edit | edit source] |
Gun Quotes : Militia Dependent[edit source]
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Another common wrong-headed argument is that "you’d have to be in the militia to qualify for the 2nd’s protections". But they’re failing at English and what many English scholars have said about that argument. The "well regulated militia" phrase is an "nominative absolute” phrase which can be ignored. It is merely explanatory (descriptive) and dependent on the rest of the sentence (not the rest of the sentence is a dependent clause on it). Since you ignore nominative/descriptive clauses, the 2nd can be read, "The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.” Or another example I use, is rewrite the 1A in the phrasing of the 2A. No one would read THAT as you have to be a well-schooled electorate in order to keep and read books. The right to keep and read books must not be infringed, so we can all participate in a well schooled electorate. Duh! Those arguing this are either dishonest, ignorant or being intentionally abtuse. "Shall not be infringed" is not the type of wording one puts in, when something is conditionally dependent on something else. Historical Context[edit | edit source]Remember the history: the colonists', war of independence was started when the British army marched on Lexington and Concord to try to enforce a recently-passed 'assault weapons' ban. Paul Revere's ride with "the British are coming”, doesn’t make sense out of context: the British Regulars had been in America all along. (We were British). The point of the cry was to warn everyone that, "the British military was coming to take away our guns!” The king had said we did not need our own arms, we must trust the king's army to protect us! (Which means the ability to defend ourselves, and self determine our own fates as free men). And that’s much of what started the revolutionary war (and the shot heard ‘round the world’). This nation was founded on freedoms (including gun freedoms), and to guaranteed no more encroachments on individual liberties. The founders felt that government/politicians would be less likely to infringe on the rights of individuals knowing that they might be shot for doing so, or that corrupt laws could be resisted if politicians passed them anyways. That’s why they didn’t create standing armies (in times of peace), but only armies in times of need. We may have evolved to allow standing armies later, but that doesn’t change the intent for individual liberty of self-defense, nor eliminate the rights of the people to have their own guns. What are the odds the 2nd protection of liberty that these folks write into the constitution, is going to say, "we just fought a war over protecting our right to self defense and determination, but in the future, we want people to only be able to own guns if they are part of our army/militia". It's not only a wrong argument, it's historically non-sensical. To remove any doubt of that, here's quotes that back up what they were thinking: Those don't sound like quotes from people likely to say "only those beholden to the State Military should be able to own guns". Separatists that had been driven out of England, then driven into war with England (the largest power in the world), were damn well not going to make the mistakes of becoming slaves/wards of their new government by saying only government drones could have guns. |
Gun Quotes : Individual Right[edit source]
| The problem is pesky history: the reason the bill of rights was created is because in the ratification of the Constitution there was fighting over the wording of the enumerated rights of individuals. So they agreed to ratify the constitution AND get the bill of rights to enumerate what the individual rights were. So the whole reason why the Bill of Rights (including the 2nd) was written was to protect the individuals rights from the government. The Framers understood the concept of a "right" to apply ONLY to individuals.
There was never any discussion about collective rights, there has never been any historical, legal or linguistically evidence that they were written to mean: “all these are individuals rights, except for the 2nd”. And if you claim that the Bill of Rights are not individual rights, then your right to free speech, protections from illegal search and seizure, are also dependent on the public whims of the collective. So while it’s popular to try to teach the "collective rights” fallacy in Colleges and places of lower learning, no Supreme Court decision has ever held a right to be “a collective right”. And you don’t have to take my word for it, there are multiple quotes, legal (Supreme Court) rulings, and the words of the authors and experts:
Quotes[edit | edit source]Supporting Opinions[edit | edit source] |
Gun Quotes : Well Regulated[edit source]
Well regulated means, "something being in proper working order”, well calibrated or functioning as expected. Even if we pretend that it means “government regulated”, it would still be irrelevant because it is part of a nominative/descriptive clause, and wouldn't change their right to bear arms ("shall not be infringed").
However the invention that "well regulated" might be a back door to inventing new restrictions on the 2nd, wasn’t first heard until the 1960’s. (This was after the first wave of gun control in the 20’s and 30’s had only increased our crimes and shootings). So what this argument is arrogantly proclaiming is that in the 1960's they discovered a word ambiguity that the Founding Fathers, and their progeny, never knew of. Thus for the first 200+ years of the country, every Historian, Linguist, Legal and Constitutional scholar or mind that had read these things, was too stupid to realize what the 2nd really meant, and thus we should ignore all that common sense and stare decisis (legal precedence, and history), because a few hippie progressives knew more than everyone else before them, combined. Does anyone really buy that? |
Militia and United Airlines Flight 93[edit source]
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Conclusion[edit | edit source]
Gun controllers may want to revise the Constitution, and fortunately for them, there are ways to do that (like Constitution Referendum, or an Amendment). They’re welcome to try. I’ll resist, and if they succeeded there would be civil war, but at least be honest about it.
If we value the Constitution and rule of law, then we have to respect and defend their intent, not distort them because some wished they meant something else. You can’t be for perverting the law, and then claim they support the rule of law when it suits you. So men of integrity must fight these vapid arguments, because if we allow the perversion of our laws for convenience, then our Constitution and Laws mean nothing (and the liars and bullies win).
Gun control laws can be argued and debated, but there is little doubt as to what the Second Amendment meant at the time. The folks that used a poisonous snake as their flag, saying “don’t tread on me”, in the context of fighting a war which was partly about their gun rights, put in a guarantee to that liberty. And no rational person believes their original intent (in that context) was to write something so vague, that a future bureaucrat could lawyer their rights away, or that you could only own guns if you were in the governments militia. This isn’t just my opinion. This has been ruled on by Linguists, Historians, Constitutional Scholars, the Supreme Court (6 times), and by the authors themselves. Thus there’s no intelligent ambiguity on these topics: any fuzziness was only invented in the 1960’s (≈200 years later), by the disingenuous hippies, and only repeated by uninformed gullible rubes. Repeating it once, makes them a fool. Repeating it after being schooled on it, makes them a fraud.
Show Video[edit | edit source]
Penn and Teller  |
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On meaning of 2A... |
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🔗 Links
- Expansive list of Gun Quotes
- Interactive Constitution: http://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-ii
- https://www.lectlaw.com/files/gun01.htm
Examples of Stupidity
Tags: History TBD Guns Laws 2A RGL
