MAGA 'Till I Die...

[Wrathbringer]

Interestingly enough, the 2nd Amendment wasn't interpreted to provide a guarantee for individuals to bear arms until long after it had been passed (literally until 2008). If you look at the wording of the Amendment, it was never intended to give a proactive right to bear arms to individuals, it was intended to prevent Congress from restricting a state's formal militias from bearing arms with the intention of preventing the state from being able to defend itself:

In fact in 1875 the Supreme Court explicitly ruled that the right of people to keep and bear arms...


And that makes sense when you look at the actual wording of the 2nd Amendment:




In 2021, we tend to think of "Free State" as a conceptual notion of a free society, but it very literally meant Congress can't tell the States what to do as far as gun control goes in the context of its own militias. The one exception, according to SCOTUS in Presser (1886), was if a State was actively passing gun control legislation with the express purpose of depriving the United States of the ability to have its own militia/army. (i.e. a State couldn't say that no one was allowed to have any guns in an effort to legally prevent the US Federal Government from having its army within State lines)


And the Court continued to hold that the 2nd Amendment literally only applied to regulated militias.

In 1939, SCOTUS unanimously ruled that the US Federal Government was absolutely allowed to outlaw personal use of sawed off shotguns because personal use of sawed off shotguns had nothing to do with maintaining a well regulated militia. Quite literally ruled it was okay to prohibit their use because they weren't military grade weapons.

None of that really changed until 2008 in the Heller case when SCOTUS, for the first time since the 2nd Amendment was passed, ruled 5-4 that the 2nd Amendment applied to situations of self-defense (though still only holding it applicable to Federal law). Then in 2010 it decided that the right to bear arms for personal self-defense was also applicable to state law.

So the irony of the gun control debate we're having these days is that it's revisionist history that is the polar opposite of a strict constructionism argument. Gun control has never been as lax in this country as it is right now. Heck Tombstone, AZ during the Wild West days had more gun control restrictions than Phoenix, AZ has today.

It sounds like you probably choose not to own a weapon. That's fine. It's your business. The problem is that you can't retroactively make everyone's guns disappear, or prevent new ones from being made and distributed, whether via 3D printing or someone's home metal shop. We could ban guns, like we did alcohol during prohibition, but then only the criminals have guns, just like only the criminals had booze back then. What did that do to the value of alcohol on the black market? It skyrocketed and created the mob, who became extremely wealthy and powerful, draining valuable police/investigative man-power (oops! Person-power. Sorry. ) and resources to play a never ending and losing game of whack-a-mole trying to police the ban. Once alcohol skyrocketed in value, you then saw many regular citizens decide to produce and sell bathtub gin. Prohibition did nothing intended and many negative things unintended. So, I'm curious... How would you, personally, implement "gun control" in a way that addresses these potential issues if you had the power?

Edit: Since you mentioned the sawed-off shotgun ruling, let me give you an example of how that ruling accomplished nothing, besides the example of them still existing as home defense weapons after the ruling (they didn't magically disappear). You can go online now and buy a Mossberg Shockwave 590 or a Remington 870 TAC-14 for $300. These are 14" barrel pump shotguns with an overall length of about 26". This is functionally identical to a sawed-off, just as easily concealed, just as deadly.

"Featuring a 14 3/8 – inch barrel, pistol grip, and an overall length of 26.5-inches, the 590 Shockwave does not fall under the purview of the National Firearms Act and does not require additional paperwork or the payment of a tax stamp for transfers* (learn why)."

So what good did that ruling actually accomplish?

[time4fun]

I'll just say that you're completely wrong in your assertions, and not bother arguing with a complete idiot like yourself. Plenty of legal scholars have opined exactly the opposite of what you just said.

So, in short, shut the fuck up, t4bhaalizmo.

I'm sorry, but what do legal scholars have to do with settled law? It seems like you're making two implicit arguments here:

1) That those Supreme Court decisions never happened (they literally did, and I gave you the specific cases so you can go look this up yourself)

2) Legal scholars arguing something supersedes the Supreme Court


But really you're just angry at the facts and don't want to deal with them.

[time4fun]

Now, now... you know there was never less gun control as there is right now...

I'm not sure how much dumber Andraste could possibly get.

I wonder if you recognize that this is just you seeing a set of facts that call into question your view on gun control and actively working to pretend they don't exist.

Or did you have some counter evidence to the history of the SCOTUS decisions that says otherwise?

[Bhaalizmo]

shut the fuck up, t4bhaalizmo.

Shut the fuck up Parkbandit.

[time4fun]

It sounds like you probably choose not to own a weapon. That's fine. It's your business. The problem is that you can't retroactively make everyone's guns disappear, or prevent new ones from being made and distributed, whether via 3D printing or someone's home metal shop. We could ban guns, like we did alcohol during prohibition, but then only the criminals have guns, just like only the criminals had booze back then. What did that do to the value of alcohol on the black market? It skyrocketed and created the mob, who became extremely wealthy and powerful, draining valuable police/investigative man-power (oops! Person-power. Sorry. ) and resources to play a never ending and losing game of whack-a-mole trying to police the ban. Once alcohol skyrocketed in value, you then saw many regular citizens decide to produce and sell bathtub gin. Prohibition did nothing intended and many negative things unintended. So, I'm curious... How would you, personally, implement "gun control" in a way that addresses these potential issues if you had the power?

Edit: Since you mentioned the sawed-off shotgun ruling, let me give you an example of how that ruling accomplished nothing, besides the example of them still existing as home defense weapons after the ruling (they didn't magically disappear). You can go online now and buy a Mossberg Shockwave 590 or a Remington 870 TAC-14 for $300. These are 14" barrel pump shotguns with an overall length of about 26". This is functionally identical to a sawed-off, just as easily concealed, just as deadly.

"Featuring a 14 3/8 – inch barrel, pistol grip, and an overall length of 26.5-inches, the 590 Shockwave does not fall under the purview of the National Firearms Act and does not require additional paperwork or the payment of a tax stamp for transfers* (learn why)."

So what good did that ruling actually accomplish?

I actually own a rifle (albeit a gift from my dead grandfather, not one I willingly bought), and I come from a VERY pro-gun family. I grew up surrounded by them, for what it's worth.


But I'm not making an argument either way about what things should be right now. I'm just correcting a really common misconception about the history of the 2nd Amendment and gun control in this country. I'm a progressive- I obviously have no problem with us treating the Constitution as a living document and correcting precedent I feel was wrongly held. (and if people are honest with themselves- EVERYONE feels that way when it comes to at least some issues)

One of my professors once said something that has stuck with me ever since: The past is a political tool of the present.

The narrative that the 2nd Amendment has always been held as protecting individual rights to bear arms, and that people arguing that it was never intended to guarantee individuals to bear whatever arms they want is brand new is factually incorrect. It turns out that arguing the 2nd Amendment was intended to provide a Constitutional guarantee for individuals to have their own weapons is a really a VERY recent understanding of its text.

But it's a really common narrative strategy in American politics and identity. You invent a past and then argue you're just trying to get back to it as a way naturalize (and consequently normalize) something new.

[~Rocktar~]

I actually own a rifle (albeit a gift from my dead grandfather, not one I willingly bought), and I come from a VERY pro-gun family. I grew up surrounded by them, for what it's worth.


But I'm not making an argument either way about what things should be right now. I'm just correcting a really common misconception about the history of the 2nd Amendment and gun control in this country. I'm a progressive- I obviously have no problem with us treating the Constitution as a living document and correcting precedent I feel was wrongly held. (and if people are honest with themselves- EVERYONE feels that way when it comes to at least some issues)

One of my professors once said something that has stuck with me ever since: The past is a political tool of the present.

The narrative that the 2nd Amendment has always been held as protecting individual rights to bear arms, and that people arguing that it was never intended to guarantee individuals to bear whatever arms they want is brand new is factually incorrect. It turns out that arguing the 2nd Amendment was intended to provide a Constitutional guarantee for individuals to have their own weapons is a really a VERY recent understanding of its text.

But it's a really common narrative strategy in American politics and identity. You invent a past and then argue you're just trying to get back to it as a way naturalize (and consequently normalize) something new.

Your argument about not being for people to own anything is in fact, wrong. No surprise. The only issue with it being "something new" is the evolution or perhaps I should say de-evolution of the understanding of English. Previously, people understood that the militia clause was a dependent clause to explain the primary sentence. Only in the past 100 years or so have idiots come along to argue that it meant the military only. Somehow along the way, with the progressive push to redefine words and push verbal fascism, the meaning has been corrupted.

Now go ahead and tell me how I am wrong because of your invented PhD in English Linguistics.

OH, and BTW, just because the SCOTUS ruled one way or another on a law doesn't make them right. They did, after all, uphold Dreed Scott and the 3/5ths compromise along with Jim Crow and others. Keep arguing for their infallibility there. You like them when they support your case and ignore them when they don't all the while spouting off about it which makes you a hypocrite.

[time4fun]

Your argument about not being for people to own anything is in fact, wrong. No surprise. The only issue with it being "something new" is the evolution or perhaps I should say de-evolution of the understanding of English. Previously, people understood that the militia clause was a dependent clause to explain the primary sentence. Only in the past 100 years or so have idiots come along to argue that it meant the military only. Somehow along the way, with the progressive push to redefine words and push verbal fascism, the meaning has been corrupted.

Now go ahead and tell me how I am wrong because of your invented PhD in English Linguistics.

OH, and BTW, just because the SCOTUS ruled one way or another on a law doesn't make them right. They did, after all, uphold Dreed Scott and the 3/5ths compromise along with Jim Crow and others. Keep arguing for their infallibility there. You like them when they support your case and ignore them when they don't all the while spouting off about it which makes you a hypocrite.

Honestly it's really weird that you made up the idea that I claimed to have more than the two degrees I have. It's even weirder that you've started to believe it. If you want a post to be taken seriously- why would you start it off with misinformation?

To the point though, the only argument I made was that the current understanding of the 2nd Amendment is a new interpretation, as far as the Courts are concerned. That's it. I didn't make any argument about whether or not people should be allowed to own guns. So I'm not really sure where you got that from.

Your claim about it being the last 100 years that people decided the 2nd Amendment was about militias is literally contradicted by the SCOTUS decisions I quoted to you. I genuinely don't understand why you would say something like that when you've been presented with Supreme Court decisions from the late 1800s through roughly the first half of the 20th century that clearly state otherwise. At minimum you should have had actual counterevidence. Facts do matter.

Your point about grammar is also, candidly, odd. First, the people who were closer to the time when the amendment was written are far more likely to have an accurate understanding of the intention of it than those of us who come along a few centuries later. In fact, terminology and rules of grammar for English were both quite different in the late 1700s when the 2nd Amendment was written than they are today So any arguments about "new grammatical understanding" that shows that the people who were around when it was actually written just didn't understand what it meant are kind of laughable.

Finally I never argued what was right or wrong as far as interpretation goes Mr Reflexive Defensive. I'm just pointing out that until about 13/15 years ago, the 2nd Amendment wasn't deemed applicable to personal gun ownership in contexts outside of being a part of a well organized militia. And up until 11 years ago it wasn't deemed to be applicable to State gun control laws (aside from the exception carved out in 1886 in the Presser case)

The 14th Amendment wasn't interpreted to cover sexual orientation up until last year. That doesn't mean I think it's wrong just because it's a new judicial interpretation. But it would be wrong to pretend like the 14th Amendment had always been interpreted to cover sexual orientation as part of an argument for why it should be covered today. And people advocating for this new interpretation of the 2nd Amendment often do just that.

[Methais]

Hopefully, the SCOTUS will hear arguments for the 2nd Amendment and when they rule in favor of individuals having the uninfringed rights to bear firearms. I'm sure you will agree, since the SCOTUS will rule upon it... right?

Would this be before or after they pack the court?

[Bhaalizmo]

Would this be before or after they pack the court?

Alot of good that did the other guy.

[Parkbandit]

Alot of good that did the other guy.

That was your side that claimed Trump is packing the court to {insert retarded reason here} instead of just doing his job when the opening presented itself...