Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), is a landmark[1] decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that determined whether the Second Amendment applies to the individual states. The Court held that the right of an individual to "keep and bear arms" protected by the Second Amendment is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and applies to the states. The decision cleared up the uncertainty left in the wake of District of Columbia v. Heller as to the scope of gun rights in regard to the states.
Initially the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit had upheld a Chicago ordinance banning the possession of handguns as well as other gun regulations affecting rifles and shotguns, citing United States v. Cruikshank, Presser v. Illinois, and Miller v. Texas.[2] The petition for certiorari was filed by Alan Gura, the attorney who had successfully argued Heller, and Chicago-area attorney David G. Sigale.[3] The Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association sponsored the litigation on behalf of several Chicago residents, including retiree Otis McDonald.

I find this a calm thread, relaxing. Very zen.

"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."

How did the Supreme Court let that pass? Let's say that you own a gun and that you're not in a "well regulated militia."

The answer?

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states: "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." The reference to a "well regulated" militia, probably conjures up a connotation at odds with the meaning intended by the Framers. In today's English, the term "well regulated" probably implies heavy and intense government regulation. However, that conclusion is erroneous.

The words "well regulated" had a far different meaning at the time the Second Amendment was drafted. In the context of the Constitution's provisions for Congressional power over certain aspects of the militia, and in the context of the Framers' definition of "militia," government regulation was not the intended meaning. Rather, the term meant only what it says, that the necessary militia be well regulated, but not by the national government.

To determine the meaning of the Constitution, one must start with the words of the Constitution itself. If the meaning is plain, that meaning controls. To ascertain the meaning of the term "well regulated" as it was used in the Second Amendment, it is necessary to begin with the purpose of the Second Amendment itself. The overriding purpose of the Framers in guaranteeing the right of the people to keep and bear arms was as a check on the standing army, which the Constitution gave the Congress the power to "raise and support."

As Noah Webster put it in a pamphlet urging ratification of the Constitution, "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe." George Mason remarked to his Virginia delegates regarding the colonies' recent experience with Britain, in which the Monarch's goal had been "to disarm the people; that [that] . . . was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." A widely reprinted article by Tench Coxe, an ally and correspondent of James Madison, described the Second Amendment's overriding goal as a check upon the national government's standing army: As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

Thus, the well regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state was a militia that might someday fight against a standing army raised and supported by a tyrannical national government. Obviously, for that reason, the Framers did not say "A Militia well regulated by the Congress, being necessary to the security of a free State" -- because a militia so regulated might not be separate enough from, or free enough from, the national government, in the sense of both physical and operational control, to preserve the "security of a free State."

It is also helpful to contemplate the overriding purpose and object of the Bill of Rights in general. To secure ratification of the Constitution, the Federalists, urging passage of the Constitution by the States had committed themselves to the addition of the Bill of Rights, to serve as "further guards for private rights." In that regard, the first ten amendments to the Constitution were designed to be a series of "shall nots," telling the new national government again, in no uncertain terms, where it could not tread.

It would be incongruous to suppose or suggest the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, which were proscriptions on the powers of the national government, simultaneously acted as a grant of power to the national government. Similarly, as to the term "well regulated," it would make no sense to suggest this referred to a grant of "regulation" power to the government (national or state), when the entire purpose of the Bill of Rights was to both declare individual rights and tell the national government where the scope of its enumerated powers ended.

In keeping with the intent and purpose of the Bill of Rights both of declaring individual rights and proscribing the powers of the national government, the use and meaning of the term "Militia" in the Second Amendment, which needs to be "well regulated," helps explain what "well regulated" meant. When the Constitution was ratified, the Framers unanimously believed that the "militia" included all of the people capable of bearing arms.

George Mason, one of the Virginians who refused to sign the Constitution because it lacked a Bill of Rights, said: "Who are the Militia? They consist now of the whole people." Likewise, the Federal Farmer, one of the most important Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution, referred to a "militia, when properly formed, [as] in fact the people themselves." The list goes on and on.

By contrast, nowhere is to be found a contemporaneous definition of the militia, by any of the Framers, as anything other than the "whole body of the people." Indeed, as one commentator said, the notion that the Framers intended the Second Amendment to protect the "collective" right of the states to maintain militias rather than the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms, "remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis."

Furthermore, returning to the text of the Second Amendment itself, the right to keep and bear arms is expressly retained by "the people," not the states. Recently the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed this view, finding that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right held by the "people," -- a "term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution," specifically the Preamble and the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Thus, the term "well regulated" ought to be considered in the context of the noun it modifies, the people themselves, the militia(s).

The above analysis leads us finally to the term "well regulated." What did these two words mean at the time of ratification? Were they commonly used to refer to a governmental bureaucracy as we know it today, with countless rules and regulations and inspectors, or something quite different? We begin this analysis by examining how the term "regulate" was used elsewhere in the Constitution. In every other instance where the term "regulate" is used, or regulations are referred to, the Constitution specifies who is to do the regulating and what is being "regulated." However, in the Second Amendment, the Framers chose only to use the term "well regulated" to describe a militia and chose not to define who or what would regulate it.

It is also important to note that the Framers' chose to use the indefinite article "a" to refer to the militia, rather than the definite article "the." This choice suggests that the Framers were not referring to any particular well regulated militia but, instead, only to the concept that well regulated militias, made up of citizens bearing arms, were necessary to secure a free State. Thus, the Framers chose not to explicitly define who, or what, would regulate the militias, nor what such regulation would consist of, nor how the regulation was to be accomplished.

This comparison of the Framers' use of the term "well regulated" in the Second Amendment, and the words "regulate" and "regulation" elsewhere in the Constitution, clarifies the meaning of that term in reference to its object, namely, the Militia. There is no doubt the Framers understood that the term "militia" had multiple meanings. First, the Framers understood all of the people to be part of the unorganized militia. The unorganized militia members, "the people," had the right to keep and bear arms. They could, individually, or in concert, "well regulate" themselves; that is, they could train to shoot accurately and to learn the basics of military tactics.

This interpretation is in keeping with English usage of the time, which included within the meaning of the verb "regulate" the concept of self- regulation or self-control (as it does still to this day). The concept that the people retained the right to self-regulate their local militia groups (or regulate themselves as individual militia members) is entirely consistent with the Framers' use of the indefinite article "a" in the phrase "A well regulated Militia."

This concept of the people's self-regulation, that is, non-governmental regulation, is also in keeping with the limited grant of power to Congress "for calling forth" the militia for only certain, limited purposes, to "provide for" the militia only certain limited control and equipment, and the limited grant of power to the President regarding the militia, who only serves as Commander in Chief of that portion of the militia called into the actual service of the nation. The "well regula[tion]" of the militia set forth in the Second Amendment was apart from that control over the militia exercised by Congress and the President, which extended only to that part of the militia called into actual service of the Union. Thus, "well regula[tion]" referred to something else. Since the fundamental purpose of the militia was to serve as a check upon a standing army, it would seem the words "well regulated" referred to the necessity that the armed citizens making up the militia(s) have the level of equipment and training necessary to be an effective and formidable check upon the national government's standing army.

This view is confirmed by Alexander Hamilton's observation, in The Federalist, No. 29, regarding the people's militias ability to be a match for a standing army: " . . . but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights . . . ."

It is an absolute truism that law-abiding, armed citizens pose no threat to other law-abiding citizens. The Framers' writings show they also believed this. As we have seen, the Framers understood that "well regulated" militias, that is, armed citizens, ready to form militias that would be well trained, self-regulated and disciplined, would pose no threat to their fellow citizens, but would, indeed, help to "insure domestic Tranquility" and "provide for the common defense."

"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."

this and that and something else

An 18-year-old German man has been arrested after an elderly woman and a cyclist were shot dead near the town of Ansbach, police have said.
The suspect fired at them from his car, killing both at the scene, officials said. He also shot at two others who escaped unharmed.

and if you DID join an organized group

A California lawmaker wants to allow military recruiters to carry firearms to help protect them from extremist attacks like the one in Tennessee on Thursday.

Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter, who served in the Marine Corps and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, plans to introduce legislation as early as Friday that would allow troops manning recruiting stations to carry weapons, or to mandate other military security arrangements for those facilities..........continued

         

Following an attack at a recruiting center and reserve station in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last week that left five people dead, residents across the country are taking it upon themselves to do what they can to protect the servicemen and women working at these facilities.

Although federal law prohibits the carrying of firearms on military installations and state facilities, at least half a dozen governors issued executive orders over the weekend authorizing select members of their state National Guard to carry weapons as a means of protection for themselves and others working at the facilities. But some citizens simply aren’t waiting for those orders to take effect before taking action.......continued

his silly fear of guns is best left to the girl-y men of Scotland!

For the better part of a century, the machine most likely to kill an American has been the automobile.

Car crashes killed 33,561 people in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Firearms killed 32,251 people in the United States in 2011, the most recent year for which the Centers for Disease Control has data.

Firearms killed 32,251 people in the United States in 2011, the most recent year for which the Centers for Disease Control has data.

........Here's another one. "Last year, handguns killed 48 people in Japan, 8 in Great Britain, 34 in Switzerland, 52 in Canada, 58 in Israel, 21 in Sweden, 42 in West Germany and 10,728 in the United States."
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/jan/24/fact-checking-claims-guns-and-gun-violence/

Statistics are great for helping form opinions. Not so great at actually representing the conditions.

BTW.......How many of those 10,728 were actually criminal homicides, where the deaths were not ruled as justifiable, or as self-inflicted gunshot?

The raw numbers of overall shootings tell you zip.

.........Not one handgun killed anybody. Not one. A handgun, left to its own devices, can do nothing except sit there............

Why does it matter? Dead is dead.