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The
Below Comments Relate to this Newslink:
The United States of the NRA: Armed and afraid
Submitted by:
Mark A. Taff
Website: www.marktaff.com
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None of the countries that have endured mass shootings and taken immediate, meaningful action to collect guns from the populace and/or restrict the purchase of firearms has anything like the hurdle the Second Amendment forces us to jump. The Second Amendment has only 27 words: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Gun rights advocates can quote the last 14 words from memory but seem unable to choke down the first 13. It seems counterintuitive that AR-style rifles should be available for the asking when the Constitution seems to give Congress the authority to restrict the sale and possession of those military arms. |
| Comment by:
PP9
(5/19/2023)
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No, we don't forget the first clause of the Second Amendment. It's just that the first clause has no actual governing power. It's the explanatory clause that was common in eighteenth century legislation... it gives the reason for the operative clause, the part that does the governing.
But since you mentioned it... the modern translation for the first clause would be "Since it is necessary for the security of a free state that the populace be well-practiced and disciplined with military arms."...
"Militia" is all of us. We're all in the militia. It's not the national guard. It's us. "Regulated" means practiced and disciplined in 1700s English.
But like I mentioned, that's just an explanation for the bit that matters, the second clause.
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TO REMEMBER |
| There are other things so clearly out of the power of Congress, that the bare recital of them is sufficient, I mean the "...rights of bearing arms for defence, or for killing game..." These things seem to have been inserted among their objections, merely to induce the ignorant to believe that Congress would have a power over such objects and to infer from their being refused a place in the Constitution, their intention to exercise that power to the oppression of the people. —ALEXANDER WHITE (1787) |
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