A well regulated Militia

[Justin_Beach]

"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."

It seems to me that the way to do gun control is to put the focus on the first part of this, rather than the second (where it usually is).

If a well regulated Militia is necessary then there's a problem because right now the Militia is barely being regulated at all.

If gun owners comprise a "militia" and it needs to be "well regulated" then there should be a list of who is in the militia and what kind of weapons they have.

There should be regular counts taken of both, some kind of chain of command and (probably) regular training (especially for things like weapon maintenance and security.)

If the NRA wants to protect the second amendment then they should protect the whole thing and not just part of it, right?

[AldoLeopold]

1. You're on the button

but I've researched it, and a few, good DUers have researched it and the "well regulated" part really indicates that they are well trained and disciplined.

It was originally for national defense. See, the very fact that we have to interpret this stuff from 250 years ago means we need a new constitution and clear, unambiguous laws.

But...you know...Amurica.

[Decoy of Fenris]

2. Well, the problem is, you're wrong.

This is a preliminary write-up that I breezed off a month or two back. The argument in your OP is unfortunately flawed in that you assume the language is still the same as it was when the Constitution was written.

It isn't.



"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."

When read in established context of contemporary writings in English America, the tonal inference of the Second Amendment reads to the modern era:

"Establishing that a militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Contrary to some opinions, the primary word in this amendment seems to be "Being" as opposed to Militia. In colonial America, the use of the word "Being" most commonly established a secondary but often intertwined meaning between two thought processes, similar to how English uses the semicolon to divide yet follow related lines of thought. Likewise, the grammar associated with the contemporary use of the word "Being" tends to follow archaic grammar similar to an ungendered line of Spanish or to a lesser extent any Germanic language. The grammar structure of the colonial American "Being" applies across the entire sentence structure, not just to the lines of thought being conveyed. In the instance of the Second Amendment, the structural breakdown would be as follows:

"The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed, (because) the security of a free State necessitates a well-regulated Militia."


Now, before anyone jumps the gun (hehe...) on the use of the word Militia, might I offer up the linguistic evolution of the word? In the modern world, the notion of a Militia is an organized civilian group devoted to certain goals of a nation under either true or false pretense (see the border patrol militias as an example.) The issue with "Militia" is that, with all words in one way or another, it is a true polyseme, having morphed enough through history as to render a non-contemporary analysis moot, only allowing for a contemporary examination of historical predicate transfer morphology and to a lesser extent subjecting the word to lexical implication rules.

[elleng]

3. Tried it; Supremes didn't go for it.

In Scalia's view, the text and history of the amendment's operative clause (i.e., “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”) is controlling. “The people” refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset, such as the militia; the phrase to “keep and bear arms” means to have weapons and carry them, and not just in a military context; and “the right of the people” refers to a preexisting right. Scalia reasons that these textual elements show that the amendment “guarantee(s) the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation,” and that the amendment's text implicitly recognizes the preexistence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed” (Id., at 2790-2797). Congress merely codified a widely recognized right; it did not create a new right (Id., at 2797).

Prefatory Clause. According to Scalia, the prefatory clause (“well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”) comports with the meaning of the operative clause and refers to a well-trained citizen militia as being necessary to deny Congress the power to abridge the individual right to keep and bear arms. And while the reason for codifying the prefatory clause “was to ensure the preservation of a

well-regulated militia, this does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the right to bear arms; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting” (Id., at 2801).

Interpretation of the Second Amendment. Scalia argues that the individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment is supported by scholars, courts, and legislators. Also, none of the Supreme Court's precedents forecloses the Court's individual right interpretation

http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt/2008-R-0578.htm

I don't agree.

[Justin_Beach]

5. I don't agree either

given that most of the 'founding fathers' were opposed to the idea of a standing army, the intent seems clear - the people have to own (and know how to use) weapons in the event the country needs to raise an army.

[MonkeeRench]

11. well-regulated militia

Many founders were indeed against peacetime standing armies, such as Jefferson. But what existed, before and after the Revolution, were colony/state-based citizen militias for the protection of citizens at the local level. In the northern States, these were typically regulated with locked armory weapons under local control. In the southern, predominantly slave-holding States, the citizen militias were primarily purposed to react to and apprehend escaped slaves, and to violently put down any insurrection of escaped slaves. Of course, in those days, a 'citizen' was typically only a land-holding white male.

When the Federalist Constitution was adopted, much paranoia seized the southern States that their slave-control militias could be called out of state to put down rebellions such as the Shay's Rebellion against corrupt financial practices in Massachusetts. This would leave the control of slaves much in doubt, and the Second Amendment was meant to ensure that the States remained in control of militias, not the national government, which required that the word 'country' be replaced by 'state' in the Amendment. The widely-used phrase 'well-regulated' at the time (1780's) was meant to assure that ad hoc vigilante groups were not in charge of hunting down escaped slaves.

[LeftInTX]

7. Heavy duty stuff that goes way over my head

However, gun control was much stricter in the past. I wonder if Scalia thinks previous gun control was unconstitutional? Such as the Gun Control Act of 1968?

And state laws that banned concealed weapons in the 1800s were unconstitutional?

Geez

[patrice]

4. AND how can a militia, state or otherwise, be well regulated when concealed carry allows

anyone to subvert what ever minimal level or regulations we manage to create and carry illegally purchased, unregistered concealed weapons and doesn't that subversion pose a particularly serious problem to those who are intended to implement regulation, law enforcement officers, which danger can and will result in ever increasing subversion by concealment of weapons that would not be a problem to the law if they were not concealed.

[former-republican]

6. So have all gun owners start militias in the country

[LeftInTX]

8. There are fringe groups that have been trying to do this for years

[former-republican]

9. I know that man

I was being just a little sarcastic.



I don't think the OP thought this out well.

[Justin_Beach]

10. No ...

Do it for them - say "ok, just like the second amendment said - you're a militia now. We are going to need all of your names, a list of the firearms you own and you're going to have to attend regular meetings and annual training just to make sure that the militia is, in fact, well regulated."