(February 10, 2017 at 9:47 pm)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:In that case much of the evidence presented in support of an individual right was commentary from the time the Bill of Rights was written by the people involved. People who would have known what the original intent was.
You're correct, Pap. Except the Constitution was the follow-up to the Articles of Confederation which, in Article VI, specifically lays out the responsibilities of the states: but every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of filed pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.
So indeed they knew quite well that they did not mean every shithead with a gun when they wrote the phrase "well-regulated militia." A bunch of shitheads with guns is a mob not a militia.
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Samuel Adams, George Washington, Tench Coxe, Albert Gallatin, Elbridge Gerry, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, Thomas Paine and Noah Webster among others are on record disagreeing with your assessment of the intent of the second amendment, Min. What makes you a better judge of what they meant than they were?
"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people 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 article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." - Tench Coxe in ‘Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution' in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789
Save a life. Adopt a greyhound.