Quote:
Originally Posted by ICU 812
Regarding the repeal of The Second Amendment:
The Constitution provides two mechanisms for adjusting our fundamental farmwork law through the amendment processes.
I would be in fsvor of making the DSecond Amendment more explicit by deleting the first part about the " . . .well-regulated militia". Others may wish to explicitly forbid private ownership of firearms altogether.
All this shucken-an-jiven over conflicting state laws and Executive Branch regulatory over reach could be eliminated through either one of the amendment processes provided for in The Constitution.
That the gun control movement does not propose this is telling.
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here's everything you need to know about the militia:
"10 U.S. Code § 246 - Militia: composition and classes
a)The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b)The classes of the militia are—
(1)the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2)the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
(Aug. 10, 1956)
according to Thomas, none of that matters.
One of the first tenets I learned in interpreting statutes, constitutions, etc. goes like this:
A basic principle of statutory interpretation is that courts should "give effect, if possible, to every clause and word of a statute, avoiding, if it may be, any construction which implies that the legislature was ignorant of the meaning of the language it employed." The modern variant is that statutes should be construed "so as to avoid rendering superfluous" any statutory language."
So if the framers wrote that whole clause about a well-regulated militia and the security of a free state, they weren't just kinda getting a little too verbose and letting their quill pens have just a bit too much fun, you know? Those words meant something. In fact, they serve as conditionals for the text that follows.
Here's what the framers actually wrote:
In order to have security in a free state, you need a "well regulated Militia"-notice they didn't say a bunch of clowns with guns, or a drunken rabble ready to lynch someone, or an angry 18 year old who plans to shoot a bunch of 3rd graders-they said you need a "well-regulated Militia." It's not a coincidence that Militia and military have the same Latin root, and that Militia is capitalized, no less. This is a state-based military-level organization to provide security for the state, and needs to have guns to do that. Who might this be in the modern lingo? Maybe the National Guard, maybe state troopers, maybe state law enforcement in general. But I can assure you that Hamilton or Madison or Jay or whoever wrote that clause would be quite clear in explaining that he didn't mean "clowns with guns" or "angry teenagers hellbent on mass slaughter of 10 year old children," because if he had meant to say that, he would have said so, and we wouldn't have to guess about it.
The truth about Originalists is that they are only Originalists until they don't like a particular outcome, and then they suddenly become "modernists" and "judicial activists," as they love accusing left-leaning judges of being. Alito and Thomas in particular have taken this to the level of a high art form.
