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The
Below Comments Relate to this Newslink:
The United States of the NRA: Armed and afraid
Submitted by:
Mark A. Taff
Website: www.marktaff.com
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None of the countries that have endured mass shootings and taken immediate, meaningful action to collect guns from the populace and/or restrict the purchase of firearms has anything like the hurdle the Second Amendment forces us to jump. The Second Amendment has only 27 words: “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.” Gun rights advocates can quote the last 14 words from memory but seem unable to choke down the first 13. It seems counterintuitive that AR-style rifles should be available for the asking when the Constitution seems to give Congress the authority to restrict the sale and possession of those military arms. |
| Comment by:
PP9
(5/19/2023)
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No, we don't forget the first clause of the Second Amendment. It's just that the first clause has no actual governing power. It's the explanatory clause that was common in eighteenth century legislation... it gives the reason for the operative clause, the part that does the governing.
But since you mentioned it... the modern translation for the first clause would be "Since it is necessary for the security of a free state that the populace be well-practiced and disciplined with military arms."...
"Militia" is all of us. We're all in the militia. It's not the national guard. It's us. "Regulated" means practiced and disciplined in 1700s English.
But like I mentioned, that's just an explanation for the bit that matters, the second clause.
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| QUOTES
TO REMEMBER |
| After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. — Alexis de Tocqueville |
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