[Sonart]

.

Quote by: TRIGGER I think you should read it again. I see no mention of state Militias. It talks of "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation",

Oh goodie... so it's a disorganized armed rabble that's going to defeat the United States military and overthrow the government. Yeah, I believe that's gonna happen.

Quote by: TRIGGER Hamilton -- "This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.''

Ok... and so? Is this what we have today? No, not even the National Guard... it's a part the U.S. Army.

And ALL of this, Trigger, fits NOT into the individual right argument, but into the Miller, collective right argument, that the founders distrusted a standing Federal army and so intended for citizens to be armed, not because they had a right to own guns for the sake of owning them, but FOR THE PURPOSE OF MAINTAINING A WELL REGULATED MILITIA!

Read Hamilton again...

"But though the scheme of disciplining the whole nation must be abandoned as mischievous or impracticable; yet it is a matter of the utmost importance that a well-digested plan should, as soon as possible, be adopted for the proper establishment of the militia."

By thus circumscribing the plan, it will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia, ready to take the field whenever the defense of the State shall require it."

(A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state,)

This, on the otherhand...

"This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, 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 the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens.

...is simply a libertarian wet dream. "LIttle, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms," That sound like your armed rabble? Little, if at all, inferior to the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps? To say nothing of just the nations various SWAT teams.

Completely absurd!

Quote by: TRIGGER Noah Webster -- "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."

Since our founding, name ONE armed insurrection against the Federal Government that has succeeded. Just name one!

The ONLY resistance that has succeeded in reforming unjust laws has been PEACEFUL civil disobedience, in the model of Gandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote by: TRIGGER You see the people had just finished fighting a bloody war to throw off a tyrannical government.

EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!

They had just succeeded in an armed rebellion, therefore armed rebellion was, fresh in their minds, very justifiable. But who among the founders, when it became THEIR TURN TO GOVERN -- Washington, Adams, Jeffereson, Madison, etc. -- would have allowed an armed rebellion to succeed against THEIR governments on THEIR watch? None of them. Because, for all their romantic embracing of their glorious revolution, no legitimate government can allow an armed rebellion to succeed against them.

The ever popular...

Toranaga: - "There is no mitigating factor for rebellion against your liege lord."

Blackthorne: - "Unless you win."

Toranaga: - (stares at Blackthorne for a moment, and then laughs) "Very well, you may have named the one mitigating factor."

Quote by: TRIGGER In the first 10 amendments of the constitution are the affirmation of the rights of the people. The militia in the second amendment is the whole people as Mason stated in his debate on ratification.

No, it's not... it's the "Well-Regulated Militia" as defined by the Constitution and by Hamilton...

"But though the scheme of disciplining the whole nation must be abandoned as mischievous or impracticable; yet it is a matter of the utmost importance that a well-digested plan should, as soon as possible, be adopted for the proper establishment of the militia. The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate extent, upon such principles as will really fit them for service in case of need."

How clear does it have to be???

Quote by: TRIGGER Slavery was acceptable when the constitution was ratified. Some of the Fathers didn’t agree with it.

So? It's still right there in the Constitution.

Quote by: TRIGGER although the words slave and slavery are not found anywhere in the document.

Oh please, don't play semantics with me... the Nazis didn't use the terms "murder" or "extermination" in their memos either, but there was no mistaking what they meant, any more than we don't understand what the Constitution meant by "other persons".

Quote by: TRIGGER Since slaves were considered property the fathers by leaving out the words slave and slavery from the language of the constitution didn’t condemn them to stay slaves but were allowing for their inevitable assention from it.

Really? Based on what? Let's not forget Article IV, Section 2.

"No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

They're talking about escaped slaves, Trigger.

Quote by: TRIGGER If nothing else as a deterrent to tyranny. Besides you don’t have to have a responsible use for anything else you would possess, do you?

If it's only reason for existing is to cause massive injury and death, you bet your frigging ass I'd need a responsible reason for it.

Beyond that, after 200 years, the U.S. is no closer to tyranny than any of dozens of other successful, modern, peaceful and gun-controlled democracies around the world. The difference is that WE are by far the most violent of all of them. So the only thing our proliferation of deadly weapons has done is turn us into a sick, murderous society which, despite supposedly being armed just for that purpose, couldn't defeat the mightiest standing army in the world -- the U.S. military -- if it wanted to.

Not quite what the founders had in mind, methinks.

Quote by: TRIGGER But don’t for get that the people are the masters of this house not the government.

Not by force of arms we're not. By the power of the vote.

.