Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: This message was self-deleted by its author [View all]tortoise1956
(671 posts)There is no article 8. (I know it's quibbling, but sometimes I just can't resist. I know, I know, try harder...)
Two things:
1. Nothing in section 8 talks about restricting weapons to militia members only, and
2. Even if there was verbiage in section 8 restricting gun ownership, it wouldn't matter. The Bill of Rights are amendments to the original constitution, and as such take precedence over anything prior.
I would have thought that Rawle's simple declarative paragraph stating that gun ownership was conceived to be a personal right would have been good enough to carry the day- after all, he was writing this contemporaneously with some of the original founders and authors of the constitution and the BoR. However, since it didn't, I give you these other historical views of the second amendment:
http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1421&context=wmborj
Trench Coxe was adamant that the purpose of the 2nd amendment was to ensure that private citizens could arm themselves if they wished to.
http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1161&context=nulr_online
George Tucker published, in an edition of Blackstone's Commentaries his opinion that the second amendment is indeed an individual right. This link is actually to a paper critical of that interpretation, but I believe that as you read this paper you will see that Justice Stevens' use of a comment Tucker wrote in his (unpublished) lecture notes was incorrect, since it neither jibes with his published works, but actually pre-dates it by 11 years. The real argument-killer, though, is that the comment Stevens quoted was written about section 8 and the militia powers given to Congress. The notes covering the 2nd amendment are in effect an almost exact copy of those published in his work on Blackstone. ( http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1148&context=nulr_online )
https://home.comcast.net/~dsmjd/tux/dsmjd/rkba/story.htm
Jposeph Story laments that Americans are not interested in a well-regulated militia (in the sense that they don't want to put in the time to make it a fully functional organization). He also mentions the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms.
There are other sources, but the are further removed from the founding era, and as such I don't think they are truly representative of the view prevalent when the constitution and BoR were written.
Here is the real question: now that I have provided contemporary sources directly confirming the right to bear arms as an individual right, can you provide even one citation, from the same time period, that directly confirms the 2nd amendment to be a collective right ONLY? I would be very interested in reading any source with that view, but so far I haven't found one that pre-dates the 20th century.
(edited to convert piss-poor typing to plain English...)