POLL: 65% See Gun Rights As Protection Against Tyranny

[Yssup Rider]

I wish they'd have specified arms and LEGS!

[Sidewinder]

Actually, Speed, for most of the history of the United States of America, there was no doubt whatsoever that the 2nd Amendment protected just about all arms, and there was no doubt whatsoever that it protected an individual right.

A Congressional committee looked into it, in detail, a few decades ago. They went back about a thousand years, and discovered, to nobody's particular surprise, that the right to keep and bear arms had ALWAYS been considered an individual right.

It is only relatively recently, well into the 20th century, that the anti-gun folks started writing laws that tried to take all guns away from law-abiding citizens. That's what started those lawsuits.

I invite you to observe that it is STILL for all practical purposes 100% illegal to own a firearm in Chicago, DESPITE the Supreme Court ruling otherwise two years ago.

I invite you to observe that New York has just passed an anti-gun law that will disarm the NYPD. (They say they're working to get it amended.) It seems nobody told the idiots in Albany that the NYPD standard issue sidearm is a semiautomatic pistol with a 15-round magazine, which is now 100% illegal in the Great State of New York.

[budman33]

The amendment came to be at a time when America had no standing army. it was an AMENDMENT to the Constitution, not part of the original. as such it can be AMENDED.

this is more an NRA lobbiest argument than a constitutional argument. Common sense is not allowed to prevail in this age.

I can't own a machine gun right? assault weapons are not such a leap in difference.

[threepeckeredbillygoat]

Originally Posted by budman33

The amendment came to be at a time when America had no standing army. it was an AMENDMENT to the Constitution, not part of the original. as such it can be AMENDED.

this is more an NRA lobbiest argument than a constitutional argument. Common sense is not allowed to prevail in this age.

I can't own a machine gun right? assault weapons are not such a leap in difference.

Wrong. You can own a machine gun in a lot of places. All you have to do is pay for the license. Just like you can own a silencer, if you pay for it.

And if you think a machine gun isn't that much different from an assault rifle you know just as much about guns as know about what someone can own.

Just because somebody puts a corvette body on a kia that doesn't make it almost a corvette.

Your ignorance on the subject makes it obvious you are one of the many who have been fed the gun grabbers bullshit, and believed every word. What a fool.... SMH

[Chica Chaser]

Originally Posted by i'va biggen

there are probably as many gun owning, hunting ,sport shooting liberals as conservatives

I have no doubt about that opinion.

[Chica Chaser]

Originally Posted by Sidewinder

I invite you to observe that New York has just passed an anti-gun law that will disarm the NYPD. (They say they're working to get it amended.) It seems nobody told the idiots in Albany that the NYPD standard issue sidearm is a semiautomatic pistol with a 15-round magazine, which is now 100% illegal in the Great State of New York.

I heard that today and that is one of the most hilarious things I've heard in a long time. NY was in such a hurry to "DO SOMETHING" and show the public how tough they are, no one ever thought to check the unintended consequences. Or do the due-diligence of even consulting the largest police force in the country before...umm...pulling the trigger!

Dumbass motherfuckers up there.

[SpeedRacerXXX]

Originally Posted by Sidewinder

Actually, Speed, for most of the history of the United States of America, there was no doubt whatsoever that the 2nd Amendment protected just about all arms, and there was no doubt whatsoever that it protected an individual right.

A Congressional committee looked into it, in detail, a few decades ago. They went back about a thousand years, and discovered, to nobody's particular surprise, that the right to keep and bear arms had ALWAYS been considered an individual right.

It is only relatively recently, well into the 20th century, that the anti-gun folks started writing laws that tried to take all guns away from law-abiding citizens. That's what started those lawsuits.

I invite you to observe that it is STILL for all practical purposes 100% illegal to own a firearm in Chicago, DESPITE the Supreme Court ruling otherwise two years ago.

I invite you to observe that New York has just passed an anti-gun law that will disarm the NYPD. (They say they're working to get it amended.) It seems nobody told the idiots in Albany that the NYPD standard issue sidearm is a semiautomatic pistol with a 15-round magazine, which is now 100% illegal in the Great State of New York.

Running short on time but here is an article from "The New Yorker" Dated 12/16/1012. Pretty much disagrees with your interpretation.

For more than a hundred years, the answer was clear, even if the words of the amendment itself were not. The text of the amendment is divided into two clauses and is, as a whole, ungrammatical: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The courts had found that the first part, the “militia clause,” trumped the second part, the “bear arms” clause. In other words, according to the Supreme Court, and the lower courts as well, the amendment conferred on state militias a right to bear arms—but did not give individuals a right to own or carry a weapon.

Enter the modern National Rifle Association. Before the nineteen-seventies, the N.R.A. had been devoted mostly to non-political issues, like gun safety. But a coup d’état at the group’s annual convention in 1977 brought a group of committed political conservatives to power—as part of the leading edge of the new, more rightward-leaning Republican Party. (Jill Lepore recounted this history in a recent piece for The New Yorker.) The new group pushed for a novel interpretation of the Second Amendment, one that gave individuals, not just militias, the right to bear arms. It was an uphill struggle. At first, their views were widely scorned. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, who was no liberal, mocked the individual-rights theory of the amendment as “a fraud.”
But the N.R.A. kept pushing—and there’s a lesson here. Conservatives often embrace “originalism,” the idea that the meaning of the Constitution was fixed when it was ratified, in 1787. They mock the so-called liberal idea of a “living” constitution, whose meaning changes with the values of the country at large. But there is no better example of the living Constitution than the conservative re-casting of the Second Amendment in the last few decades of the twentieth century. (Reva Siegel, of Yale Law School, elaborates on this point in a brilliant article.)

The re-interpretation of the Second Amendment was an elaborate and brilliantly executed political operation, inside and outside of government. Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 brought a gun-rights enthusiast to the White House. At the same time, Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, became chairman of an important subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he commissioned a report that claimed to find “clear—and long lost—proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms.” The N.R.A. began commissioning academic studies aimed at proving the same conclusion. An outré constitutional theory, rejected even by the establishment of the Republican Party, evolved, through brute political force, into the conservative conventional wisdom.

And so, eventually, this theory became the law of the land. In District of Columbia v. Heller, decided in 2008, the Supreme Court embraced the individual-rights view of the Second Amendment. It was a triumph above all for Justice Antonin Scalia, the author of the opinion, but it required him to craft a thoroughly political compromise. In the eighteenth century, militias were proto-military operations, and their members had to obtain the best military hardware of the day. But Scalia could not create, in the twenty-first century, an individual right to contemporary military weapons—like tanks and Stinger missiles. In light of this, Scalia conjured a rule that said D.C. could not ban handguns because “handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.”

So the government cannot ban handguns, but it can ban other weapons—like, say, an assault rifle—or so it appears. The full meaning of the court’s Heller opinion is still up for grabs. But it is clear that the scope of the Second Amendment will be determined as much by politics as by the law. The courts will respond to public pressure—as they did by moving to the right on gun control in the last thirty years. And if legislators, responding to their constituents, sense a mandate for new restrictions on guns, the courts will find a way to uphold them. The battle over gun control is not just one of individual votes in Congress, but of a continuing clash of ideas, backed by political power. In other words, the law of the Second Amendment is not settled; no law, not even the Constitution, ever is.



Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...#ixzz2IOFmHpXw

[awl4knot]

Man, I never knew that there were so many traitors in this country. Every traitor claims he's fighting tyranny in order justify his treason, but the claims are never true.

If 65% of Americans believe that the Second Amendment was intended to allow individuals to wage armed insurrections, Antonin Scalia, that silver tongued darling of conservatives, says they are wrong. He and four of his colleagues on the SCOTUS ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the individual right to bear arms was limited to traditional purposes as self-defense and hunting. The militia clause referred to the rights of the states to maintain armed militias and did not create an individual right to possess military type weapons.

So 65% of Americans don't know buttkus about the Second Amendment. Nor does the seditious OP.

[CuteOldGuy]

The New Yorker was in print in 1012? That was even before the Normans invaded England.

Originally Posted by budman33

The amendment came to be at a time when America had no standing army. it was an AMENDMENT to the Constitution, not part of the original. as such it can be AMENDED.

this is more an NRA lobbiest argument than a constitutional argument. Common sense is not allowed to prevail in this age.

I can't own a machine gun right? assault weapons are not such a leap in difference.

Uh, Buddy. Any part of the Constitution can be amended, whether it's in the original document or an amendment. And once amended, it is as if the amendment was part of the original Constitution. An amendment is no less the law of the land because it is an amendment. There is no difference in the legal effect of an amendment once it is adopted.

You want to amend the 2nd Amendment, go ahead. At least it's an honest approach to the problem, instead of all the backroom wheeling and dealing and exploitation of children going on.

[Laz]

Originally Posted by budman33

assault weapons are not such a leap in difference.

Assault weapons is a made up term to make them sound worse than they are. What they are calling assault weapons are simply semi automatic rifles that look fancy or like other military weapons. They are NOT the same as the weapons used in the military even if they look that way. The most frustrating thing to see is all of the time spent focusing on them since even if they succeed it will not make a difference. Criminals will simply use something else that in some cases would be more deadly. How bad do you think it would have been at that school if that lunatic was using a shotgun with buckshot.

[Yssup Rider]

Originally Posted by Laz

Assault weapons is a made up term to make them sound worse than they are. What they are calling assault weapons are simply semi automatic rifles that look fancy or like other military weapons. They are NOT the same as the weapons used in the military even if they look that way. The most frustrating thing to see is all of the time spent focusing on them since even if they succeed it will not make a difference. Criminals will simply use something else that in some cases would be more deadly. How bad do you think it would have been at that school if that lunatic was using a shotgun with buckshot.

Automatic weapons are not made for self defense (unless up you're in Fallujah) or hinting. They're made for shredding human bodies.

Get real or STFU!

you gun suckers still don't get it!

you should quit while you're still armed enough to blow up a school...

Yeah, I said the. Based on your posts, I'd say at least 47% of you fuckers are Ticking time bombs!

[CuteOldGuy]

Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

Yeah, I said the. Based on your posts, I'd say at least 47% of you fuckers are Ticking time bombs!

Yes, Assup. You are our role model for stability and rationality. That's why you are our . . .


DIPSHIT OF THE YEAR 2013

ASSUP!!!

[threepeckeredbillygoat]

Originally Posted by awl4knot

the individual right to bear arms was limited to traditional purposes as self-defense and hunting. The militia clause referred to the rights of the states to maintain armed militias and did not create an individual right to possess military type weapons.

So 65% of Americans don't know buttkus about the Second Amendment. Nor does the seditious OP.

You are so uninformed its pathetic. Thomas Jefferson (who just happens to be one of our founding fathers in case your ignorant ass didn't know that either) himself said, and I quote

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." Thomas Jefferson

Read something real every now and then and quit allowing yourself to be spoon fed bullshit and made a fool of.

And here is a little tid bit from ole Benny Franklin (another one of our founding fathers in case you are ignorant to that fact as well) that might pertain to those of you with no backbone and a brainwashed mind. And again I quote

"He who would trade liberty for some temporary security deserves neither liberty or security". Ben Franklin

So SHUT YOUR LYING WHORE MOUTH about what they meant when they wrote the second ammendment. Read what THEY said then and NOT what PEOPLE WITH AGENDAS now say that they meant.

According to Benny you don't deserve any of the libertys they fought and died for when they fought and won our independence that you are so willing to give up. You don't even deserve the right to speak freely.

[CJ7]

Originally Posted by threepeckeredbillygoat

Wrong. You can own a machine gun in a lot of places. All you have to do is pay for the license. Just like you can own a silencer, if you pay for it.

And if you think a machine gun isn't that much different from an assault rifle you know just as much about guns as know about what someone can own.

Just because somebody puts a corvette body on a kia that doesn't make it almost a corvette.

Your ignorance on the subject makes it obvious you are one of the many who have been fed the gun grabbers bullshit, and believed every word. What a fool.... SMH

btw, a belated thumbs up

[Sidewinder]

Originally Posted by SpeedRacerXXX

Running short on time but here is an article from "The New Yorker" Dated 12/16/1012. Pretty much disagrees with your interpretation.

[LEFT][COLOR=#000000]For more than a hundred years, the answer was clear, even if the words of the amendment itself were not. The text of the amendment is divided into two clauses and is, as a whole, ungrammatical: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The courts had found that the first part, the “militia clause,” trumped the second part, the “bear arms” clause. In other words, according to the Supreme Court, and the lower courts as well, the amendment conferred on state militias a right to bear arms—but did not give individuals a right to own or carry a weapon.

Before you cite a New Yorker article that pooh-poohs a Congressional subcommittee report, you should probably read the subcommittee report in question. THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, the REPORT OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, UNITED STATES SENATE, NINETY-SEVENTH CONGRESS, FEBRUARY 1982.

Unlike the New Yorker piece, the subcommittee report cites case law, in detail, and runs down the history of the right to keep and bear arms, going back to Alfred the Great, who ascended to the English throne in 872 AD.

From the Appendix in the report, which runs down the case law: "The United States Supreme Court has only three times commented upon the meaning of the second amendment to our constitution. The first comment, in Dred Scott, indicated strongly that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right; the Court noted that, were it to hold free blacks to be entitled to equality of citizenship, they would be entitled to keep and carry arms wherever they went. The second, in Miller, indicated that a court cannot take judicial notice that a short-barrelled shotgun is covered by the second amendment--but the Court did not indicate that National Guard status is in any way required for protection by that amendment, and indeed defined "militia" to include all citizens able to bear arms. The third, a footnote in Lewis v. United States, indicated only that "these legislative restrictions on the use of firearms"--a ban on possession by felons--were permissable. But since felons may constitutionally be deprived of many of the rights of citizens, including that of voting, this dicta reveals little. These three comments constitute all significant explanations of the scope of the second amendment advanced by our Supreme Court. The case of Adam v. Williams has been cited as contrary to the principle that the second amendment is an individual right. In fact, that reading of the opinion comes only in Justice Douglas's dissent from the majority ruling of the Court."

The report was done in 1982. At that time, the Supreme Court of the United States had never ruled directly on the question of whether the Second Amendment protected an individual right. There had never been any need to do so.

As the report points out, the Dred Scott decision (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)) makes it quite clear, in passing, the Court's view of the right to keep and bear arms, at least as of 1857. "It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went." (Emphasis added.) The 1857 Court quite clearly viewed the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right of citizens, given their statement that granting blacks the rights of citizenship would specifically include giving them the unquestioned right to keep and bear arms.

The Court finally addressed the "individual right" question head-on in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). The Court's answer to the question is well-known, and was reaffirmed two years later, in McDonald v. Chicago, 561 US 3025 (2010), which applied Heller to the several States.