17 November 2005

just for the sake of argument

Amendment II
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.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
mi·li·tia
1 a : a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency
b : a body of citizens organized for military service
2: the whole body of able-bodied male citizens declared by law as being subject to call to military service
state
1 a : a politically organized body of people usually occupying a definite territory; especially : one that is sovereign
b : the political organization of such a body of people
c : a government or politically organized society having a particular character, a police state
2 : the operations or concerns of the government of a country
3 : one of the constituent units of a nation having a federal government
4 : the territory of a state

Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary
militia
a military force which only operates for some of the time and whose members often have other jobs
state
1 a country or its government
POLITICAL UNIT
2 a part of a large country with its own government, such as in Germany, Australia or the US

what do you guys think? do american's have a constitutional right to bear arms?

6 comments:

FantasticAlice said...

Granted, I am not by any means politically minded, but I do think that states have more control over that amendment now that what the federal government does. True?

caprice said...

I am not sure. This one is hard to determine. It's the whole letter versus essence thing.
Does the essence of the ammendment deal with property rights and an individual's right to protect them or does it actually refer to the need for militia that protects the state.
i don't think states should ever "control" an amendment. it is a federal amendment and therefor all states should abide by the federal interpretation.
but that is why i put it up. to see what other people thought! thanks for your comment!

faircity tales said...

since at the time they'd no army, and no funds to raise one, i interpret it as people have the right to bear arms, as a well-regulated militia. i think it was definitely an amendment of its time. the constitutionality of carrying a concealed weapon?

Unknown said...

Personally I've always felt the Second Amendment to be very poorly written. I think it is based upon the assumption, much more valid on the eighteenth century Appalachian frontier than it is now, that the whole adult male populace is going to be called up once a month or so to drill on the village common so they can be prepared in case of Indian raid or French invasion.

Of course, with that interpretation, it becomes a man's obligation to the state to bear arms, so that he is fit to serve in the militia; it seems rather odd that the Amendment would treat the bearing of arms as a right that needs to be protected from the state. It seems to me that the most logical conclusion is that the framers of the Second Amendment--and let's remember their past political history here--were actually protecting the population's ability to rise up and make war upon an unjust government (of course, just the free population; it's perfectly valid for rich white men to start a revolution rather than obey the tax code, but the idea of slaves resorting to violence to alter their state of human servitude--which I suppose they just might misguidedly conclude to be a heinous injustice--would of course be totally unacceptable). The whole bit about the militia then becomes just a convenient cover story to ensure that Americans can always own guns.

So I am forced to conclude, against my better judgement, that Americans do indeed have the right to bear arms. Personally, I am strongly in favour of gun control--by which I mean that I believe that private individuals should under no circumstances be permitted to own guns.

caprice said...

I personally beieve in control as well. I am not against private individuals owning guns which they have a permit for. AND that they went through an extensive background application that they paid for and waited AT LEAST 30 days to buy.
But I can think of absolutley NO justification for ANYONE to own a shoulder mounted anti aircraft missle launcher, which it is legal to buy in this country.
and i do not think the constitution guarantees the right to purchase one either!

Unknown said...

The more I look at it, the more I dislike the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary definition of state. Large? What the heck do they mean by that? Quite apart from the fact that two of their three examples aren't large--Australia has a population about the same size as Britain's, and Germany has a land area about ... well ... the same size as Britain's (actually a little larger, but still nothing compared to Kazakhstan ... or even Sweden).

A state is a self-governing part of a country with a federal government--to me, the term state implies permanence to internal division (i.e., the central government can't just redraw state lines at will), not a minimum size for the country as a whole.

I'd also consider touching upon the fact that the state implies a consensual union of sovereign components ... for instance, in American constitutional theory, the Union was formed by actual independent countries (that is, states) who pooled their sovereignty as a trade-off for stability and prosperity. And the German states were all, 150 years ago, actual independent states. (Australian provinces are named states, I assume, in emulation of the United States.)

Sorry, just feeling querulous.