We came dangerously close to wide-scale open sedition, because the right sees us as being incapable of stopping them.

"The security of a free state" is our responsibility as citizens, and the National guard is infested with those who see us as enemies.

"Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised." - Machiavelli

to be “well regulated” or we end up with more ass hole with guns. Regulation means list of every gun owner and their weapons. Just like the NG does.

to defend our nation. Relying on the National Guard is foolhardy:

FBI vetting Guard troops in DC amid fears of insider attack

It meant exactly what it said. That includes the first sentence. “Well regulated”.

The States are allowed to set their own detailed regulation on firearms. For individuals they can set their own regulations that only apply within the individual States.

that runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution, the 2nd Amendment, to be precise. McDonald case. Heller case.

And, how do you propose to "clean up" the NG? Kick anybody out that doesn't agree with you? I have a feeling that the NG will become pretty impotent with so many gone...

That’s why the Second Amendment clearly states that the right of the militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The unorganized militia is all males ages 17-45 that are not in the National Guard.

So... Only men aged 17-45 can own guns?

Same group that faced the draft.

krispos: 10 United States Code section 246...
The unorganized militia is all males ages 17-45 that are not in the National Guard.
So... Only men aged 17-45 can own guns?

Faulty dialectic reasoning. For one thing the 'unorganized militia' fails the 2nd amendment litmus test, which calls for a well regulated militia, and by definition an unorganized militia is not well regulated.

The unorganized militia was created circa 1903 under Teddy Roosevelt to replace the militia act of 1792 which roosevelt called obsolete and worthless, ergo the unorganized militia has absolutely nowt to do with the intentions of the 2nd amendment to the bill of rights of 1791, which was delineated 5 months after enactment by the militia act of 1792.

The unorganized militia is a JOKE. Most americans do not even realize they were in it after they turn 45. Nor do most people realize the ARE in it when they are 17 - 45. Where did you drill? what was your rate? draw any pay from the Unorg'd militia? any benefits? you cannot get into Veterans hospitals if you claim you are or were in the unorg'd militia, without actual military service or spousal etc.. Who was your commanding officer, where was your mobilization point? Did you get a retirement party, or a gift for your years of unorganized service?

I like how the anti-gun people keep tying gun ownership to militia service despite the fact that the text of the amendment CLEARLY says the opposite. There are exactly three entities in the 2nd Amendment text: the (well-regulated) Militia, the States, and the People, and only one of them has the right to keep and bear arms.

But then I point out that all males 17-45 are in the militia, and the response is "yeah, but that's not militia enough!"

The unorganized militia is exactly as regulated as Congress requires it to be. Not that is really matters, because people, not militia members, have the right to keep and bear arms.

States, as a sovereign governing organization, already have the right to have armed forces (e.g., a militia or the National Guard) and armed agents (police officers). Saying the 2nd Amendment is about "giving" states the right to have armed forces is simply incorrect.

I don't think the target audience of the repetition is the RKBA folk. Just an opinion.

K: .. tying gun ownership to militia service despite the fact that the text of the amendment CLEARLY says the opposite.

Clearly? If the meaning had been clear, there would've been no debate the past 200 years.
If meaning were 'clear', why did the 1939 supreme court put this in the Miller decision, which was unanimous 8-0, for the militia interpreation:
... "In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 in in length" at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.
.... With obvious purpose to assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of such {militia} forces the declaration and guarantee of the Second Amendment were made. It must be interpreted and applied with that end in view https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1172&pid=210877

The 1938 Dept of Justice cited Adams in amicus brief to the 1938/39 supreme court: The second amendment to the Constitution, providing, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," has no application to this act. The Constitution does not grant the privilege to racketeers and desperadoes to carry weapons of the character dealt with in the act. It refers to the militia, a protective force of government; to the collective body and not individual rights. https://guncite.com/miller-brief.htm

So far the relevant supreme court justices have ruled 12 - 5 for the militia interpretation.

K: There are exactly three entities in the 2nd Amendment text: the (well-regulated) Militia, the States, and the People, and only one of them has the right to keep and bear arms.

Sure, the people whlle in militia duty have that right, and congress cannot infringe on that right.
Glad to see you agree that 'state' refers to the 13 states (then), rather than the 'State' writ large, as in the nation. Which gun gurus support that hypothesis? I know there's a few.

K: The unorganized militia is exactly as regulated as Congress requires it to be.

Laissez faire policy is not regulation; the unorganized militia is not regulated, it is unorganized.

K: Saying the 2nd Amendment is about "giving" states the right to have armed forces is simply incorrect.

True but specious; the 2ndA gives people the right to bear arms while in a well regulated militia, which congress cannot infringe upon.
At least that was the original intent.
Today there is NO well regulated citizens militia, and THAT entity is what IS CLEARLY written in the 2nd amendment, and described in detail 5 months later in the militia act of 1792. The unorganized militia developed circa 1830 due to scofflaws wanting to shirk their militia duty and claim they (some) had an individual rkba.

What's that I hear about Heller?

Oh, yeah, 70 years later this was said:

So, to summarize: the unorganized militia is still the militia, but it doesn't matter because militia service of any kind is not required for the right to keep and bear arms by individuals for their own personal and lawful use. And since this decision is 70 years newer, it wins.

And since the gun-controllers decided to wage a war against rifles with protruding pistol grips for the last 30-plus years they've managed to get the courts packed full of Republican-appointed federal judges that are unlikely to supersede the Heller decision.

Last edited Sat Aug 21, 2021, 08:50 PM - Edit history (2)

I am well aware of heller and macdonald, but they are modern day interpretations of 2ndA inspired by a malicious far right gun culture which flourished in the nra's heyday of the 1970's thru their current bankruptcy.
Heller and MacDonald do not represent 2ndA original intent, despite Scalia's subversion of it. Original intent can better be found in 1876 cruikshank and 1939 miller decisions, both of which established stare decisis regarding 2ndA, the unfair verdict to blacks notwithstanding. Stare decisis which the almighty con artist scalia disregarded with specious sophistry.

K: to summarize: the unorganized militia is still the militia, but it doesn't matter because militia service of any kind is not required for the right to keep and bear arms by individuals for their own personal and lawful use. And since this decision is 70 years newer, it wins.

Yes it wins, but you don't.
Heller does not represent 2ndA original intent. It represents the corruption of a malicious far right gun culture.

K: And since the gun-controllers decided to wage a war against rifles with protruding pistol grips for the last 30-plus years they've managed to get the courts packed full of Republican-appointed federal judges that are unlikely to supersede the Heller decision

Gun controllers have won the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections. The abhorrent electoral college scheme is the way the courts got packed with republican appointed federal judges and supreme court justices. It was the gun control side which had the majority support of the people of the united states, not far right wing republicans.
Gun control support is not the reason the courts are packed with republicans, the asinine electoral college is.
(on edit) Not to forget as I momentarily did, that the political punks in the republican party schemed and cheated using duplicitous methods to steal two supreme court seats, mitch mcconnell be damned.

...which requires, as previously discussed, tying militia membership to the right to own guns. Of course this is ridiculous; if I'm in an organized militia then the government will ISSUE ME a rifle! So I don't need the right to own private guns to be in an organized militia because they'll throw an M-16 (or a machine gun, or a rocket launcher, or a grenade launcher, or whatever) at me when I show up for duty.

Welcome to the modern world of guns. As the country becomes increasingly urban and suburban and less rural, and as technology advances, the purposes of and types of guns that are sold shift. Walnut-stocked bolt-action rifles for hunting have been overtaken by plastic-stocked semi-automatics for self-defense. Iron sights and fixed-magnification scopes have been replaced by variable-zoom scopes and red-dot sights. Attaching lights to guns is now common to the point that guns have built-in attachment points for them, replacing a Mag-Lite and a couple of hose clamps.

And I'd like to note that you're upset that the 2nd Amendment is being interpreted for the modern era. I'm pretty sure that here on DU we've spend a lot of time being pissed at Originalist Supreme Court justices like Alito and Scalia.

It's beautifully ironic that the gun-controllers are now "conservatives" in the non-political sense, trying desperately to stand in the way of advancement and longing for the "good old days".

Yeah, except that's not how elections are won, sadly. Both sides know this going into it. And if the rules were different (say, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact gets put into effect) they they would have campaigned differently. Different strategies for media, door-knocking, rallies, etc.

Gore lost in 2000 by 537 fucking votes in Florida and he lost his HOME state, largely on how Third-Way Democrats pandered to the Democratic base by starting a culture war about "assault weapons" and related hysteria. If 270 Floridians had voted for Gore instead of Bush the Least, we probably wouldn't have had the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Afghanistan invasion and occupation, or the Iraq invasion and occupation. This would have saved tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani lives.

But no, your side had to make a giant fucking production over pistol grips being on rifles because reasons and such.

Dolt45 won in 2016 (304-227 EV) because of this:

Mango Mussolini won Michigan by 10,704 votes (16 EV)
Donnie Two-Scoops won Wisconsin by 22,748 votes (10 EV
Fanta Menace won Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes (20 EV)

That's 77,744 votes that made 46 EV for Dotard.

So if a mere 38,875 people had voted the other way the election goes 258-273 and we have President Clinton in her second fucking term and HER three picks for the Supreme Court!

38,875 people out of 13,940,912 votes cast. That's 0.28%. Is it entirely beyond possibility that the hysterical falsehoods, pandering, and demonization that makes up the signature gun-control effort of the gun-control movement over the last 30 years convinced 0.28% of people in those critical states to pull the lever for Donald-Fucking-Trump?

And let's not forget the losses of the House and Senate in 1994, and how it's been a seesaw since. Or the state legislatures!

Here's some nice graphs for you to look at. Point to me how gun-control is moving Democratic into positions of power at the state level. because you can't!



And there's a graph on here I can't link to:

https://ballotpedia.org/Historical_partisan_composition_of_state_legislatures

Let me give you a clue about the signature gun-control effort your side keeps pushing, because you need one.

It's bullshit. 5% of gun-related murders are done with rifles. All rifles. ALL RIFLES. The "assault weapons" you want to ban are a subset of "all rifles". So, the dreaded "assault weapon" rifles are used for... 1%? 2%? 3%? 4%? of all gun-related murders. That means that even if you passed the fucking ban that is so near and dear to your heart the POTENTIAL lives you save are statistical fluctuations.

And that's making the impossible assumption that the people that were going to buy an "assault weapon" just went home and pouted on Freeperville instead of buying a non-assault-weapon AR-15.

And that also has to take into account that there are already millions of "assault weapons" already privately owned. Because guns are durable goods. So stopping the flow of new "assault weapons" into circulation a) doesn't affect the ones already owned, and b) doesn't affect the buying of "almost assault weapons" that are already selling well in states that have an AWB in effect.

But I want you to pat yourself on the back, because while you're political priorities aren't doing a thing to stop either crime or the root causes of crime, the Republicans that are in power because of your political priorities have managed to kill more people in 18 months from Covid than all the people murdered with rifles in the the US since 1900.

Gun control does not address the root social problems that cause crime, but it does keep progressives from being anything about them. Which was probably the intent of the DLC and their supporters: keep the rich rich and the poor poor but in a new way that won't work but that we can bamboozle people into thinking it will.

Back in the late 60s and early 70s, progressives were able to give women control over their reproduction by making the IUD, the birth-control pill, and abortion cheap, easy, and widely available. And they removed lead from a whole bunch of consumer products, including gasoline. By making fewer unwanted children and not giving people lead poisoning, a generation later the crime rate dropped by half. HALF. Robbery. Rape. Murder. Home invasions. Car jacking. Assault.

HALF!!!

By addressing the root cause of social problems, we controlled crime far more effectively than any gun-control bill or crime bill or police crackdown or War on Drugs.

But we've stalled on this issue, because REPUBLICANS are in charge. And why are they in charge?

Hmmm... perhaps it's because when gun-control advocates make up shit that sounds good to the non-gun-owning liberal base, the gun-owners can see through the misinformation. I know it's shocking to contemplate but people that actually OWN, USE, and READ ABOUT guns don't believe that a protruding pistol grip is something that makes a gun so deadly that needs to be banned. And even more shocking, they get pissed and vote Republican when Democrats pass laws based on bullshit.

k ...which requires, as previously discussed, tying militia membership to the right to own guns. Of course this is ridiculous; if I'm in an organized militia then the government will ISSUE ME a rifle!

I am not talking about you or now, I am referring to the original intent of the 2ndA in 1791.
By the way, in 1792 militia gatherings the govt did not issue firearms to the militia, it was incumbent upon the member to supply & bring a firearm, powder & ball. Only 45% of militia members had a firearm, 1803 militia census.

k: So if a mere 38,875 people had voted the other way the election goes 258-273 and we have President Clinton..

Conventional wisdom put the onus on hillary for not visiting wisconsin and michigan near election, while wasting time in arizona. As well as voter apathy. You are the first one I have heard link gun control efforts for hillary's loss.

k: while {your} political priorities aren't doing a thing to stop either crime or the root causes of crime, the Republicans that are in power because of your political priorities have managed to kill more people in 18 months from Covid than all the people murdered with rifles in the the US since 1900.

No idea what you are driving at. And correlation does not prove causation.
Crime cannot be stopped, it can only be hindered and reduced (nationally). Background checks, ammo limits, waiting periods, one gun/month laws generally had marginal reducing effects on violent crime. A marginal improvement is about all we can expect to get, from a rampant gun culture based upon a 230 year old ambiguously worded 2ndA, and the subversion which scalia perpetrated.

k: 5% of gun-related murders are done with rifles. All rifles. ALL RIFLES. The "assault weapons" you want to ban are a subset of "all rifles"

I know, I agree. But when used for mass shootings they can wreak awful carnage. The more they become, the more they will. Assault rifles also are not what was intended to be allowed in 1791 - predominantly single shot musquettes. Back then attached bayonets were not allowed in most towns during peacetime, that was a restriction for the time. Founding fathers could never have foreseen such sophisticated firearms as exist today, what with hermetically sealed gunpowder as well. A person can defend their homes for most all intents and purposes with one single shot rifle or handgun, or two or three. Do not need overkill assault rifle.

k: REPUBLICANS are in charge. And why are they in charge?... perhaps it's because when gun-control advocates make up shit that sounds good to the non-gun-owning liberal base, the gun-owners can see through the misinformation.

Personally I do not think gun control makes much difference in politics, at least not decisively as you suggest. And of course correlation does not prove causation.
I will point out a correlation: violent crime rates and gun crime rates fell about 35% under clinton from 1992 - 2000, then leveled out under bush. During that same time period 1992 - 2000, the gun ownership rate also fell about 35%, from approx 35% personal gun ownership rate to 25% (corroborated by pew, gallup, gss, cbs) as well as 'gun in home' rates; Correlation does not prove causation but it does not disprove it either. It might hold it might not.
Less gun ownership rates = less violent crime rate = a correlation, 1992 - 2000.
(clinton crime initiative enacted 1993, first data 1994 also likely contributed to crime rate decline, which began in 1992 data).

Not just Clinton's loss; a general edging of voters to Republicanism. Look at the graphs I linked to. First off, like I said, the gun-owners see through the AWB bullshit that is the first and foremost Democratic response to gun control. It makes them motivated to vote Republican because what they see is Democrats making up excuses to advance making gun ownership a privilege extended by the government instead of a right protected by the government. After all, handguns are used in 90% of gun-related murders and 50% of all murders annually, yet they're focusing on banning "military-style" weapons. They also get pissed at being blamed every time somebody is murdered with a gun. So they vote Republican. You ever wonder why poor rural white people with chronic health issues keeps pulling that Republican lever? Because they figure if the Democrats will bullshit so openly about things that are demonstrably false, they figure that Democrats are also full of shit about concepts that are less tangible and more abstract, like the importance of education, universal health care, labor unions, etc.

Yeah, there are other reasons, like evangelical Christianity and the load of con men and bullshit artists that get them voting against their best interests. But guns are a real, tangible thing that they can take apart, customize, practice with, and use, and when you tell people that they can't own an AR-15 with a pistol grip AND a telescoping stock anymore because it's "too dangerous", they discredit you as an ignorant person determined to stay that way because you don't like guns, gun rights, or gun owners. And they can be very single-issue on this.

Remember, if Gore can won his HOME STATE, or if 269 Florida gun owners hadn't felt threatened by Gore's (and the Democrat's in general) position on guns, he would have been the 43rd president, and not Bush the Leastest.

Also, I've posted about this before in other threads over the last few years. Some aspects of gun control I support, like universal background checks. But those ALWAYS get back-burnered to a new AWB and a magazine-capacity ban. It doesn't turn out anti-gun voters because anti-gun voters don't really care if there are limits and restrictions on a product they will never buy, but the gun-owners sure as hell will get motivated.



If we had President Clinton in 2016 and a comfortably Democratic Senate and House after the 2018 elections, would the Covid-19 pandemic in the US have been as bad? As I type this the national Covid count death count is 645,000. How many lives would President Clinton been able to save by responding an order of magnitude more effectively than Dump? How about Clinton and a supportive Democratic House and Senate? Half? A quarter? A third? That's between 161,000 and 232,000 people. So far.

Between 1985 and 2017, a total of 15,545 people were murdered with a rifle. Now, the actual number is almost certainly somewhat higher, because the Federal statistics record that there were 42,398 people murdered with "firearm, type not stated". But of the known types, 20,401 were with shotguns, 15,545 with rifles, and 254,507 with handguns. Of the known types, that's 5.4% with a rifle. So if you extrapolate it to cover the "not stated" guns in the same proportion, you get ~17,102 people murdered with rifles. Over 33 years. That's about 518 a year, on average, and not adjusted for population growth.

And of course, because the AR-15 and AK-47 and Mini-14 are subset of rifles, and "assault weapon" rifles are a subset of the AR-15 and AK-47 and the Mini-14, the number of people actually murdered with an "assault weapon" rifle is a lot lower than the 518 number.

Getting cleaner air saves far more lives than 518 a year. Getting better health care saves far more than 518 lives a year. Making birth control and abortion readily available... well, that probably saves more than 518 people I year. I don't know that for a fact but I do know we rank poorly in maternity deaths and infant mortality, and that one hospital in 7 is owned by the Catholics and they won't do a lot of reproductive rights procedures for religious reasons.

That 17,102 number represents 33 years of rifle deaths, or the last 3 weeks of Covid deaths. Like I've been saying, it's a lot of politics and political capital for very very little positive gain, IF AT ALL.

We can get more than "marginal" results by addressing the root causes of violent crime. We did a couple of big ones back in the 70s but even now we are seeing the crime rates creep up in the Republican states as their multi-decade war on birth control and abortion means more kids are coming to adulthood in crappy situations where violent crime is a way of life.

We need to get back in charge to make the social changes that nip crime in the bud: women's rights, education, clean air, food, and water, less poverty, better jobs, probably some kind of UBI. But we have to be in charge first!



Mass shootings are deadly because of the determination of the shooter and the location of the shooting. Taking away pistol grips and limiting magazine capacity isn't going to change the outcome, nor will it discourage the people that do that kind of thing. You have some sort of random insane person opening up at random time in a random place with an intention of killing random people. The place is usually some sort of retail location, which is basically a box with a limited number of doors. Unless a very brave person is in the right location to do exactly the right thing at exactly the right time, there's going to be a lot of injured and dead people until either the shooter flees, kills himself, or the cops engage him.

I don't pretend there's a solution to this problem. It's a problem that, formally, was virtually literally unthinkable. But starting in the late 80s when a mass shooting happened it started getting a lot more media coverage. Cable TV, satellite communications, the 24-hour news cycle, all this make a local event a national event. And then it gets discussed and analyzed and talked about until it's normalized. The internet and social media makes it worse because now the "lone wolfs" can connect in an ideologically bubble across a geographically huge area, and people can find others to talk about them long after their physical circle of friends and family have moved on from such discussions. What was unthinkable was now thought about and discussed... a lot.

But as I've proven above, a mass shooting may be a high-casualty incident but it pales in comparison to the number of people killed annually. About 400 people are killed per year with a rifle; that's about one every 22 hours. But somebody is killed with a handgun every 1.25 hours and with a non-gun weapon every 2 hours.

The Founding Fathers couldn't conceive of a lot of things, which is why we have to be flexible in applying the Constitution. For example, the 4th Amendment has been expanded to electronic media, and the 1st Amendment to blogs. A strict interpretation of the 4th Amendment would not protect the contents of my computer because the data isn't on paper!

And I'd really like to pick for myself what I think I need to defend myself, and not have you tell me, thankyouverymuch.



In our winner-take-all system and with gerrymandering, a relatively small number of votes can tip races. The Republicans are slowing shrinking in numbers but they keep slicing districts finer and finer to give themselves a bare majority, but part of winnings means TURNOUT. And the Democrats have handed the Republicans multiple clubs to be beaten with at the polls, all for policies that are at best marginally effective but will drive that extra 1 or 1 percent of Republicans to the polls to vote out the "gun grabber Demon-crat".

Regarding crime, non-gun crime fell as well, as well as non-violent crime. As I stated in a previous reply, the anti-pollution and pro-woman policies enacted around 1970 began paying off in about 1989 or so. Statistics indicate that most violent criminals are between the ages of 15-24. We stopped poisoning our kids with airborne lead from gasoline in the early 70s and as a result, when they grew up they were far less likely to be violent, dumb, and short-sighted (symptoms of lead poisoning). And when women stopped having to be broodmares, they were more likely to have children when they were mentally, emotionally, and financially ready to. So the pool of kids that were likely to become violent teenage criminals shrank sharply starting in the late 1980s and we saw a drop in violent crime as a result. I doubt it was planned or foreseen, but simply by doing the right thing, by recognizing women as sovereign over their bodies and trying to reduce pollution, we reaped massive benefits a generation later.

I doubt gun ownership fell that much, to be honest. It seems more likely that people stopped admitting to anonymous voices on the phone that they had guns in the house. Remember, some states required that "assault weapons" and "high-capacity" magazines be registered and a lot of gun owners are suspect of such lists. Gun sales have generally been increasing over the last couple of decades, even accounting for the nation's population.







Guns are also durable goods. If a person no longer owns a gun... where did it go? Stolen? Sold? Destroyed? New guns sales are up despite, supposedly, sizeable quantities of used guns flooding the gun shops.

What's the truth? I have no idea.

K: I doubt gun ownership fell that much, to be honest. It seems more likely that people stopped admitting to anonymous voices on the phone that they had guns in the house.

That might be true for a percentage point or two, but would not account for a ~35% drop in home gun ownership rates (gallup) - which is ~15 percentage points (48 - 33), not to be confused with % loss of 35%.
Technically you are half correct, it was more like a 25% decline for personal gun ownership - 28% rate, declining to 22% rate. I was approximating from memory.


march 2013: The Pew Research Center has tracked gun ownership since 1993, and our surveys largely confirm the General Social Survey trend. In our December 1993 survey, 45% reported having a gun in their household; in early 1994, the GSS found 44% saying they had a gun in their home. A January 2013 Pew Research Center survey found 33% saying they had a gun, rifle or pistol in their home, as did 34% in the 2012 wave of the General Social Survey.

The Gallup Organization has been tracking gun ownership in their surveys over this time period as well, but their trend suggests no consistent decline. A Gallup survey in May 1972 found 43% reporting having a gun in their home. The percentage subsequently fluctuated a great deal, reaching a high of 51% in 1993 and a low of 34% in 1999 – but the percentage saying they had a gun in their home last year was the same as it was 40 years earlier (43%).
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2013/03/12/section-3-gun-ownership-trends-and-demographics/

I recall they have to do a lot of massaging to phone polling numbers for elections because many people don't answer their phones (call screening) or they've gone over entirely to cell phones.

If Gallup isn't doing it for their polling, that might explain the numbers.



Dunno. All I know that new gun sales are brisk and used guns are supposedly harder to find, at least stuff used for personal defense like handguns.

I know a gun magazine recently did an article on lesser-known gun brands for self-defense because many of the popular brands are hard to find in stores.

U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876) Cruikshank was the first Second Amendment case to reach the Supreme Court. Among the counts against Cruikshank et. al, were charges to deprive two blacks of their First and Second Amendment rights.

... regarding the Second Amendment violations the supreme court wrote:
1 The second [count of indictment] avers an intent to hinder and prevent the exercise by the same [2 black] persons of the 'right to keep and bear arms for a lawful purpose.'
2 The right there specified is that of "bearing arms for a lawful purpose."This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow-citizens of the rights it recognizes, to what is called..."internal police."

Repeat excerpt above: The right there specified is that of "bearing arms for a lawful purpose." This is not a right granted by the Constitution.

So tell me chaps, how is it that 'bearing arms for a lawful purpose', is not a right granted by the constitution/bill of rights, per the 1876 supreme court. Isn't that what the individual right interpretation perpetrated by scalia, is essentially supposed to mean? An individual right to bear arms for a lawful purpose?
I believe this decision was also unanimous, 9 - 0. Anyone know for sure?

Cruikshank has been cited for over a century by supporters of restrictive state and local gun control laws such as the Sullivan Act.

While cruikshank decision was white power inspired to, inter alia, hinder blacks voting, the above wording provides their interpretation of 2ndA in 1876.

The Cruikshank ruling allowed groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to flourish and continue to use paramilitary force to suppress black voting. As white Democrats dominated the Southern legislatures, they turned a blind eye on the violence. They refused to allow African Americans any right to bear arms. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/92/542.html#

The Supreme Court settled this back in 2008 with the Heller decision.

Never has been. You know that.

...what the less charitable would term 'pious frauds'.

"the National Guard is the only militia" is an old one.

Another is: "The Second Amendment was passed to ensure slave-catchers could be armed"

The newest one I've spotted in the wild is:

"Eugene Stoner was opposed to civilian ownership of AR-type rifles"

Two problems with that one:

1) Civilian versions of the AR were sold for the last 34 years of his life,
and no one as yet has produced any empirical evidence of any such obections by him.

2) He co-founded Knight's Armament Company in 1982, known for their AR based rifles and carbines.
They've sold civilian versions of their guns from the beginning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_Armament_Company

You gun rights people sure were quiet when the most dangerous, authoritarian regime in our nation's history was in power.

To quote another DUer:

"How about you just spit the mealies out of your mouth, and tell us what you really mean by that?"

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1172205349#post4




https://www.democraticunderground.com/1172205349#post10



The disinterested reader will note that the question was studiously ignored back then,
so I'll ask again:


Were we supposed to start an armed rebellion, or is this just another complaint disguised as a question
about people you don't like?

Second, liberal gun owners don't generally seem to be owning guns with an eye for either a rebellion or a race war.

I don't own guns to overthrow the government, I own guns for self defense against attackers, and for recreation.

I own, and routinely carry, firearms to protect myself from anyone who would wish to do me, or my loved ones, harm. I don't differentiate between those acting under the color of authority and those who are simply out to take what is mine. I don't hunt, and I don't walk around with my firearm exposed for everyone to see. It is for defense purposes only. (OK, I'll admit it....it's fun to shoot targets at the range.)

I have no intention of overthrowing any government, at least not by force, and I refuse to support anyone who would try to do so. Take 'em out at the ballot box. Also, I have no intention of engaging in a race war, or any other war for that matter. Polling suggests that about 1/3 of Americans (110,000,000?) admit to owning a gun. I don't personally know any gun owners who own A gun. Three seems to be about the low end, in my experience. I can't imagine that all 120,000,000 of those people are so-called right wing nut jobs. I suspect the majority of them are much like you and me. People that want to make an fair wage doing an honest job, provide for their families, and be left alone by the government, to live as they see fit.

I am quite certain that, should a government ever propose mandatory gun turn in/confiscation, the "right wing nut jobs" are gonna be the last ones to comply. Are those the people you want to be armed if you have given up your guns?

I have no problem with owning guns and supporting strict gun ownership requirements.

Rick: Polling suggests that about 1/3 of Americans (110,000,000?) admit to owning a gun. I don't personally know any gun owners who own A gun.

Nah that's too high Rick, it's 1/3 of adults who personally own a gun.
your link: Thirty-two percent of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun, while a larger percentage, 44%, report living in a gun household https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx

So would be more like 1/3 of ~260 million (last I checked a year back), so about 90 million own a gun.
The good news is, 170 million of us do not own any.
Having one in the house though, is enough of a danger.

It's settled law. We (the country) have to move on, now.

...regardless of how one defines well-regulated.