[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]infinite_shore wrote:
I never went deeply into the issue but can’t really come up with a good reason for giving the average Joe the right to arm himself.
[/quote]
Well thankfully our Constitution was not drafted by people like you. [/quote]
Actually, it was drafted by people like him, specifically James Madison.
The original intent of the 2nd Amendment was simply to allow for public armories that could arm a militia in the event of invasion or something along those lines. It was not intended to allow for every citizen to privately arm himself against other citizens. Madison knew that many anti-Federalists would be suspicious at best of a large, federal standing army, so the 2nd Amendment provided for each state to have an armory that could arm the populace in times of insurrection.
Up until about the 1960’s or 1970’s even gun rights advocates and the NRA did not fight to allow automatic or semiautomatic assault weapons into the hands of citizens. The NRA didn’t lobby against the ban of automatic weapons early in the 20th century, nor did they fight against banning carrying concealed weapons. Shit, carrying concealed weapons was outlawed throughout most of the country even as far back as the early 19th century, including today’s ardent gun-control-opposed states like Texas, Alabama and Kentucky.
And up until the early 1970’s people rarely, if ever, challenged the 2nd Amendment’s language. In U.S. v. Miller the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the 2nd Amendment did not apply to private citizens but only to the right of the public to provide for individual states’ protection in the form of a well-regulated militia or other such armed forces.
In the 1970’s, as a reaction to the liberalizing times, people’s individual rights became a large political issue. Turning the 2nd Amendment into a matter of private gun ownership rights distorted the actual intent of the Amendment and turned it into a political issue that conservatives could hang their hats on, since liberals seemed to have monopolized most of the other individual rights issues.
It’s the conservative version of judicial activism, in a way. The language of the first section of the 14th Amendment, along with some other areas of the Constitution, has been liberally interpreted to mean that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” somehow confers upon women the right to abort children. In much the same way, the language of the 2nd Amendment has been liberally interpreted to mean that “a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state” confers upon people the right to own any and all sorts of assault weapons for recreational purposes.
I love guns. I own three 12 gauge shotguns (Weatherby, Remington and Browning), a S&W .500 Magnum (instant erection when that big fucker comes out of its case) and an old snubnosed S&W .357 Magnum. I like shooting them, a lot. It’s one of the simplest, purest forms of recreation there is.
But at some point we need to ask ourselves if this sort of fun is a right or a privilege. I think in light of this latest tragedy it’s an entirely appropriate time to examine the issue further. And clearly, a conservative interpretation of the Constitution reveals that we have never really had the “right” to privately arm ourselves for recreational purposes. I prefer a more liberal interpretation, but liberal interpretations can go too far, as I feel the Court went with Roe v. Wade and now with its protection of expanded gun rights. Because that IS what has happened. Our gun ownership rights have been liberally interpreted and have expanded every decade, with little lasting contraction, since the 1970’s.
And let’s not forget that guns aren’t the final factor here. Crazy, disillusioned, maladjusted cowards are the REAL problem here. But you know what? A disillusioned coward with mommy and daddy issues with a knife or a baseball bat who is hellbent on killing a lot of people simply aren’t going to kill as many people as a disillusioned coward with two handguns and two 20-round clips or a fucking assault rifle.[/quote]
No, they’ll use homemade explosives.
Anyway that was a nice essay. So are you suggesting the drafters of our Constitution envisioned general restrictions upon the individual possession of firearms?