Can you be a Progressive Democrat and still the support the Second Amendment?

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

185. You seem reluctant to address this point

You claim that "...the Founders of this new country made no provision for a standing army." In Article II Section 2 of the Constitution the President is designated as the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. That was in 1787. In 1789 on September 29, Congress passed an act which designated the military force inherited from the Articles of Confederation as the US Army. A bit over 26 months later the Bill of Rights was ratified. Many of those same Founders were members of the Congress which passed that act.
>>How can you believe that your 'Founders made no provision' statement?<<

At the time of the creation, adoption and passage of the Second Amendment, the US HAD an Army. In laws and writings contemporaneous with these which founded the US, the militia was established with limits to who were mandated for participation. In 1903 the militia was divided into the National Guard and the unorganized militia.

The Founders, in the Constitution, left open the options for the People, via their representatives in Congress, to determine specifics about the military.

Basically the 2A, like the rest of the BoR, expresses an individual right and names a reason for protecting it at the federal level.

It is important, now and always as it was then, that a significant portion of the population be familiar with the use and regular maintenance of firearms.

From Federalist #46 by James Madison:

Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.

From George Mason, Founder:

"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials."

A RIGHT is a RIGHT. I find it reprehensible that you suggest that within the same piece of legislation a word, so important and central to the Bill as to be included in the name of the Bill, would have a different meaning in various places throughout.