Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: Replacing white people to kill gun rights [View all]jimmy the one
(2,717 posts)surf guru: The "militia right" is a fantasy that exists only as a counter argument to those who claim an individual right to arms. No notice of it exists in discussions outside dismissing the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It has no presence in the legal history of militias, where one would expect the claimed action to have some effect . .
The fantasy & sophistry are all yours, as apparent from your mental gymnastics bending over backwards to present rightwing manipulations.
Benjamin Oliver, from Right of an American Citizen, 1832 (+emph): "The {2ndA} declares the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The reason is, because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.
. . . The provision of the Constitution declaring the right to keep and bear arms was probably intended to apply to the right to bear arms for such {militia related} purposes only, and not to prevent Congress or legislatures from enacting laws to prevent citizens from going armed. A different construction however has been given to it. (1832)
Justice Joseph Story, 1833: .. among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see.
There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendIIs10.html
Which clause was Story writing of in the last sentence? the militia clause of course.
If story believed there was an individual right to keep & bear arms disconnected from militia, his above sentence would be contradictory to that belief - 'the people' then could be 'duly armed' by simply owning guns with no militia obligation. But that is what story is worried about, that 'the people' simply owning guns outside militia would NOT be duly armed without some organization/militia.
Story cont'd: The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers.
.. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
Story, in the same paragraph, praised the militia and 'the people' for essentially the same thing, defense against - 'the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers'... more evidence in context he synonymously equated militia & 'the people'. The 'people' individually armed yet unorganized, would be no match for the 'arbitrary power of rulers' with tyranny in mind.
Wm Rawle, 1825: In the second article, it is declared, that a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free state; a proposition from which few will dissent.
The corollary, from the first position, is, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed http://www.constitution.org/wr/rawle_10.htm
A corollary is of course, is derived from a higher rule or law.
One wonders why you didn't include miller in your previous scotus list.