[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
…What federal government could operate knowing it had a “rival” who could intimidate it any point at the point of a gun? [/quote]
A constitutionally limited one.
[/quote]
Limited, not hamstrung.
I know we’re well past the original topic, but I still find it hilarious what Costas said. I didn’t think there were people who actually thought that stuff. Someone needs to talk to him about Hannibal and the Battle of Cannae. Not a shot was fired. How on earth did those tens of thousands of people die? The world may never know.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
You’re confusing the aforementioned rebellions with 2nd Amendment concerns about legitimate rebellion against tyrannical governments. Rebelling over a tax on whiskey is obviously not what the Founders had in mind.[/quote]
Who decides which rebellions are legitimate?
No, it’s relevant, because the idea that the Second Amendment is built on the idea that the Founders wanted an armed populace to “rival” the government is refuted by the history of rebellions in the Founding era and the subsequent changes in the law (i.e., from Articles to Constitution).
Quote away, but that isn’t the issue. The Second Amendment wasn’t intended by the Founders to support a universal right to have any arm a private citizen wanted. If they did, they would have had the Second Amendment extend to the states. They didn’t, not originally.
And I never said the Second Amendment was purely limited to a hunting rifle.
Try again. I am not advocating a Hamiltonian view, and in fact, the quote I’ve mainly relied on were from Madison, not Hamilton, in any event.
I’m not here to say the Second Amendment doesn’t protect a right to keep and bear arms - it does - but this libertarian revision fantasy about “what the Founders thought” as support for their idea of an unalloyed right to own an Apache helicopter is flatly incorrect.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]Legionary wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Now, what if the grievance was so popular and severe that the militias themselves were the rebellion?[/quote]
You mean like mad enough to avoid the draft and refuse to participate in the federalized militia? Then they get in trouble and get arrested and court-martialed, and enough citziens wind up participating anyway in obeyance of the law - you know, just like they did in the events surrounding the Whiskey Rebellion, where there was draft evasion and protests. C’mon, read a history book.
If the “grievance was so popular” that the vast bulk of armed men refuse to fight on the side of the federal government, well, the effect would be no different with a standing army armed with “federal” weapons. Irrelevant.[/quote]
Not true. Federal arms in a federal armory are different than ones in households legally bought and owned by an individual. And, if there is no difference, you should not object to all arms being privately owned.[/quote]
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding concerning 18th century small arms and modern 21st century weapon systems. You absolutely cannot equivocate the two.
[/quote]
Irrelevant to the point. New technology doesn’t change intent. Nor does it change what’s written.
Additionally, I’ve pointed out multiple times on this thread and gotten no response. The founding fathers intended warships and artillery to be privately owned. And a couple dozen 30 pound cannons are far more formidable than an MP5.
[/quote]
Is it absolutely relevant. Do you think Tom who lives over by the airport should be able to own a FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missile system? If you say yes, you are fucking delusional.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
The presumption is your presumption.
You continue to be the stripper hanging and twirling on the pole of the Rebellion clause.
You gotta look at things in context, my friend.[/quote]
Nope, it’s the presumption of the Constitution, including the Supremacy Clause itself.
Ironically, you are missing the context. The Constitution was ratified to give greater power to the federal government, including the right to suppress Rebellions and Insurrections.
It makes absolutely no sense to give the federal government the right to to quash Rebellions if the “mission” of the Constitution was that Rebellions were to be tolerated in the goal of having Rebellions “check” or “thwart” the federal government. That makes no sense, no sense at all. The Constition isn’t silent on the issue, and it sides with my point, not yours.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
If there had been a simultaneous Whiskey Rebellion in NY, CT, MA, RI, DE, VA, NC, SC, VT, GA, VA, NJ, MD and NH or a majority of those states you can bet your sweet lovin fanny that George Washington would have thought twice of mounting a federal attack on a large proportion of the citizenry. He was smart enough to have realized he had a major problem on his hands not a localized outcry against a new tax in a small obscure area of the young country.[/quote]
Though twice? Probably. But he had the authority of federal law to conscript an army, and in fact, the army Washington summoned under the Militia Act to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion was bigger (at times) than the one he had during the Revolutionary War. So, maybe not.
In any event, your point is a non-sequitur - you are talking about a practical problem. That isn’t the issue - the issue is: what does the Constitution and history actually say in the debate on these Rebellions that the Constitution is purportedly supposed to tacitly support (so the people can “thwart” the government)?
The Constitution says - uh, nope. And Washington answered that question when it first arose.
So, this idea that throughout the “Constitution!” is some spirit or theme or inkling that the federal government is supposed to be checked by armed Rebellions just isn’t supported. The check against the federal government, according to the Constitution, is not with bullets, but with ballots.
And again - if this was the prevailing view at the Founding (to the extreme our resident libertarian revisionists insist), there would not have been any restrictions on arms at the federal or state levels. We know there were. So the historical record doesn’t support this extreme view.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
But that is most certainly what it says in plain English.[/quote]
No, it doesn’t. If the Second Amendment was there to insure that the people “rivaled” the federal government, followed to its logical conclusion, that means if the federal government has a missile, then the Second Amendment guarantees and entitles a private citizen (or group of private citizens) to ownership of a missile in order to give effect to the Second Amendment’s “mission” to keep the people “rivaling” the federal government.
That’s hogwash. That is not and never has been the mission of the Second Amendment. You made it up out of whole cloth. Just concede the point.[/quote]
A militia that can resist government tyranny. How does that work without comparable arms?
There were no missiles when it was written. The fact that you (and others) continuously refer to logistical concerns isolated to modern weaponry that, because of the nature of time, could not possibly have effected the writing of the second amendment proves my point.
Even your siting of the whiskey rebellion is laughable. The federal government behaved exactly in the confines of what I have laid out, and exactly the opposite of your modern revisionist interpretation. The fed had no weapons and relied on average folks with their own arms to act on it’s behalf.
But again, I’ve posed numerous questions to you and others and gotten no answers. Chiefly, what does the second amendment say? An armed militia comprised of regular citizens are necessary to keep a state free from tyranny. I’m asking you, how does that work?
I also asked why, if there is no difference between citizen ownership and federal ownership of arms, one way is ludicrous and one is sensible.
[quote]Legionary wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]Legionary wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Now, what if the grievance was so popular and severe that the militias themselves were the rebellion?[/quote]
You mean like mad enough to avoid the draft and refuse to participate in the federalized militia? Then they get in trouble and get arrested and court-martialed, and enough citziens wind up participating anyway in obeyance of the law - you know, just like they did in the events surrounding the Whiskey Rebellion, where there was draft evasion and protests. C’mon, read a history book.
If the “grievance was so popular” that the vast bulk of armed men refuse to fight on the side of the federal government, well, the effect would be no different with a standing army armed with “federal” weapons. Irrelevant.[/quote]
Not true. Federal arms in a federal armory are different than ones in households legally bought and owned by an individual. And, if there is no difference, you should not object to all arms being privately owned.[/quote]
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding concerning 18th century small arms and modern 21st century weapon systems. You absolutely cannot equivocate the two.
[/quote]
Irrelevant to the point. New technology doesn’t change intent. Nor does it change what’s written.
Additionally, I’ve pointed out multiple times on this thread and gotten no response. The founding fathers intended warships and artillery to be privately owned. And a couple dozen 30 pound cannons are far more formidable than an MP5.
[/quote]
Is it absolutely relevant. Do you think Tom who lives over by the airport should be able to own a FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missile system? If you say yes, you are fucking delusional. [/quote]
You need to go re-read my posts. I never said any such thing. And it’s irrelevant because we are talking about what the constitution says. I assure you it doesn’t say, you can have arms except FIM-92 stinger systems because you could shoot down an airliner. I assure you, the founding fathers never included that in any way into the writing of the second amendment.