"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, This phrase is a dependent clause in the sentence. and as such can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence. Just as in this example: Like most girls, Ellen plays with dolls."
You may shriek all you wish, but the grammatical fact remains that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is independent of the dependent clause. "People" means exactly what it does in the First, Fourth and Tenth Amendments.
Your understanding of American History is flawed as well. The event that finally sparked the American Revolution was the attempted seizure of an 'armory' of guns and powder held by the state militia at Lexington. Like your modern day totalitarians, the Brits wanted to collect the guns and ammo to prevent freedom.
I make no corrections or additions of my own to the above anon statement, but simply like what I had found.
Yes. My knowledge of the history of firearms is shaky, but I try to remember that the "People's right to bear arms" phrase was written at a time when what the People had was a musket, which took at least a minute to load. There was no mention of the People's right to bear a bazooka...I think George Washington would have been shocked.
ReplyDeleteOr the other way to look at it is that when it was written the people had access to own arms equal to the military, which is not what I would argue for in the current day.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I see no reason for a bazooka and I believe that they are illegal to own as are the vast majority of military grade weapons.
Guns save more people than they kill, cars kill more people than they save. Cars, cigarettes, alcohol, and many other things kill far more people everyday than guns - and the number of legal guns and legal gun owners that harm no-one is over 99%. It is the criminal that makes a gun look bad and the criminal never asks to own one or seeks to own one through legal means.
It may surprise some folks, but I own guns and always have. I think it keeps a lot of people honest, because they never know who is an who isn't armed...
ReplyDeleteI may have picked this up from my lovely mother, who ALWAYS carried a handgun in her purse.
I'm a proud owner of a firearm, and hate the discrimination we have to rage against.
ReplyDelete