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Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: Our militias could definitely stand to be regulated better [View all]safeinOhio
(34,100 posts)43. Here is a great explanation of the NRA changing the Constitution.
https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment
How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment
Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weaponand courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.
* * *
Cue the National Rifle Association. We all know of the organizations considerable power over the ballot box and legislation. Bill Clinton groused in 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House. Just last year, it managed to foster a successful filibuster of even a modest background-check proposal in the U.S. Senate, despite 90 percent public approval of the measure.
What is less knownand perhaps more significantis its rising sway over constitutional law.
Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRAs annual meeting that year the Revolt at Cincinnati. After the organizations leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organizations leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power.
How the NRA Rewrote the Second Amendment
Though state militias eventually dissolved, for two centuries we had guns (plenty!) and we had gun laws in towns and states, governing everything from where gunpowder could be stored to who could carry a weaponand courts overwhelmingly upheld these restrictions. Gun rights and gun control were seen as going hand in hand. Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia. As the Tennessee Supreme Court put it in 1840, A man in the pursuit of deer, elk, and buffaloes might carry his rifle every day for forty years, and yet it would never be said of him that he had borne arms; much less could it be said that a private citizen bears arms because he has a dirk or pistol concealed under his clothes, or a spear in a cane.
* * *
Cue the National Rifle Association. We all know of the organizations considerable power over the ballot box and legislation. Bill Clinton groused in 1994 after the Democrats lost their congressional majority, The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House. Just last year, it managed to foster a successful filibuster of even a modest background-check proposal in the U.S. Senate, despite 90 percent public approval of the measure.
What is less knownand perhaps more significantis its rising sway over constitutional law.
Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRAs annual meeting that year the Revolt at Cincinnati. After the organizations leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organizations leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power.
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The government sometimes squelches seditious speech but that doesn't abrogate the 1A.
Nuclear Unicorn
Jan 2016
#10
Neither Shay's nor Washington's actions hold any bearing on others or the context of the 2A
Nuclear Unicorn
Jan 2016
#12
The 1958 and 1993 amendments do not strike the provisions of the unorganized militia --
Nuclear Unicorn
Jan 2016
#29
My neighbor's cat and I can call ourselves a "militia," like fundy bundy. Doesn't make it so.
Eleanors38
Jan 2016
#17
America's gunslinger mentality makes us look like fools to the rest of the world. n/t
Binkie The Clown
Jan 2016
#51
"Open carry nuts insist this stuff never happens." Feh- mere Colonism on your part:
friendly_iconoclast
Jan 2016
#63