Wow! No More Criminals!

[DesertBerean]

Stop it you're making me cry with laughter..

[rogue06]

No, but the Second Amendment is written relatively broadly. I interpret it to refer to protecting the general right of gun ownership and not necessarily of each individual citizen, so I believe that current laws restricting felon ownership still are compatible with the spirit of the Constitution. I'd restrict it to violent felons, though. There's no reason somebody convicted of felony fraud shouldn't be able to have a gun.

That would make it the only "collective right" in the Bill of Rights -- a view that that wasn't even dreamed up until the 20th century.

[Ben Zwycky]

"Public opinion of being murdered is at an all-time low! What do we do?"

"I know, we'll call it 'having all their problems solved'. Problem solved!"

[Raphael]

thief = unlicensed borrower

We used to call it affirmative shopping in South Africa

[KingsGambit]

That would make it the only "collective right" in the Bill of Rights -- a view that that wasn't even dreamed up until the 20th century.

It seems to be in the spirit of the amendment, which mentioned a formal militia for the greater good. Either way, I would argue we have strayed from the original intention.

[rogue06]

It seems to be in the spirit of the amendment, which mentioned a formal militia for the greater good. Either way, I would argue we have strayed from the original intention.

The Founding Fathers, who wrote it, made it clear that the people are the militia. They weren't talking about forming the National Guard.

For instance, George Mason, who co-authored the Second Amendment:

"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people

"That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power." -- Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776

Richard Henry Lee wrote in Letters From the Federal Farmer to the RepublicanCommentaries, in 1803, to which he added explanations of how it related to American law, including the new Constitution. Soon after became nearly universally regarded as being the leading American authority on both Blackstone and American law.

Tucker addressed the Second Amendment at several points, clearly stating that it protected the individual, natural right of self-defense. After quoting the amendment he wrote:

"This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty... The right of self defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."

View of the Constitution of the United States of America in 1825 with a second edition printed in 1829. In it, especially in the second edition, he made it clear that the right to keep and bear arms belonged to the ordinary citizen, writing that

"No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to congress a power to disarm the people."

This same view can again be seen in the highly influential 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States by Supreme Court Justice and law professor Joseph Story, as well as in his later Familiar Exposition of the Constitution. By paraphrasing the "right of the people" as the "right of the citizens" -- not of States or members of a militia -- Story left no doubt that he meant the right to belong to individuals. He unequivocally stated that

"the right of the citizens to keep, and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic."

Story was even more direct in his [i]Familiar Exposition[/u] when he wrote:

"One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is by disarming the people and making it an offense to keep arms."

Though less prominent than his father Henry Tucker (son of St. George) shared the view of the Second Amendment as securing an individual right. In an 1831 commentary he exclaimed:

"The right of bearing arms ... is practically enjoyed by every citizen, and is among his most valuable privileges."

And this view was the one expressed after the Civil War as well (Woods 1886, Black 1895) as well as in how the Freeman Bureau Act of 1866, referred to the rights of the people included

"the constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and enjoyed by all the citizens of such State or district without respect to race or color, or previous conditions of slavery."

purchased by state or local legislatures, or supplied by the King. Throughout the colonial period it was the private ownership of guns that was compulsory or encouraged. When the British tried to take the local stock of powder, shot and arms at Concord the local "Minute Men" already had their own firearms and ammo in their homes.

So, as an examination of the writings of the Founding Fathers^[2], any pre-1900 case or commentary shows that none of them thought of the Second Amendment was established to preserve a collective right or right of the states. IOW, while the Second Amendment was meant to preserve and guarantee an individual right for a collective purpose that does not in any way suddenly somehow transform that right into a collective right. There is no contrary evidence from the writings of the Founding Fathers, early American legal commentators, or pre-20th century Supreme Court decisions, indicating that the Second Amendment was intended to apply solely to members of well-regulated militias. The "collective right only" theory is exclusively an invention of the 20th century "gun control" debate.

Now, in our time, in his 400-page The Bill of Rights: Creation & Reconstruction

And when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 32 year long ban on handguns in Washington D.C., in June 2008 (District of Columbia v. Heller) in a 5-4 decision. It was "an inevitable ruling," explained George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley

"Even though I'm an advocate of gun control, it's very hard to read the Second Amendment and not see an individual right."

Finally, the fact is that the Founding Fathers loathed the concept of a standing army in the control of the federal government. They considered it a threat to freedom.

For instant during the Constitutional Convention back in 1787 James Madison, long considered the "Father of the Constitution," warned against the dangers of a permanent army stating that, "A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty." He added that, "Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people."

Madison's Vice President, Elbridge Gerry (one of only three attendees to the Constitutional convention who refused to sign the U. S. Constitution because it did not then include a Bill of Rights) described standing armies as "the bane of liberty" and that the purpose of state militias was to make them unnecessary.

Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist Paper no. 8 described a standing army as being an institution that was "unfriendly to liberty."

Samuel Adams wrote in 1776 that a standing army was, "always dangerous to the Liberties of the People." He argued that professional soldiers were likely to consider themselves separate from the populace, to become more attached to their officers than their government, and to be conditioned to obey commands unthinkingly^[1].

The fact of the matter is that standing armies terrified them. Thomas Jefferson called them "engines of tyranny" and considered them to be "dangerous to our liberties."

These men were influenced not only by their experiences with the British army who many of them saw as being comprised of ruffians and drunken thugs and thus predisposed toward a citizen army, but also by the writings of folks like the Scottish writer Thomas Gordon who wrote under the pseudonym "Cato" in the 1720s and was an adamant opponent of standing armies, viewing them as a key method of undermining ancient English liberties as can be seen his Discourse of 1722:









1. Adams also said during the debates of the Massachusetts Convention on February 6, 1788

"and that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms"

2.

[Sparko]

Affirmatively appropriated from rogue's post in another thread....

San Francisco Changes Term 'Convicted Felons' To More Politically Correct 'Elected Officials'https://babylonbee.com/news/san-fran...cted-officials

[Cow Poke]

Can we just call a bank robbery a "surprise withdrawal"?

An undocumented transaction.

[Sparko]

Getting carjacked would be an "involuntary ride share"

[Cow Poke]

And if such an attorney would try to argue this crap in front of a conservative judge, that's when the bovine fecal material will REALLY come forcefully into contact with the high speed air circulation apparatus!

[Cow Poke]

This creative use of the English language reminds me of how preachers lie without lying.

Pastor Bob: Did you have a good crowd for services Sunday morning?
Pastor Jim: (still lamenting over the low attendance) Well, yes, praise God, we had a YUGE crowd, ministerially speaking.

[rogue06]

Kidnapping a child will now be called a surprise adoption.

[rogue06]

And it isn't just San Fran. From 2016:

Source: Justice Department program to no longer use 'disparaging' terms 'felons' and 'convicts'

Source

© Copyright Original Source

[*Story continues at included link*]


And from 2015:

Source: Names Do Hurt: The Case Against Using Derogatory Language to Describe People in Prison

Source

© Copyright Original Source

[*Story continues at included link*]

[Sparko]

So what they are saying is that they want to trick employers into hiring convicted felons by disguising the language?

How would that change anything on the application they filled out? If it asks "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" You can't just say "no" because the politicians want to call you a "justice involved person"

[rogue06]

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