Now I gotta pick some nits....
On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, Dean Forster wrote:
>
> > DEAN WROTE:
> > > Well Dan, it looks like you've got the courts and
> > the
> > > gun control advocates behind you and i've got
> > > everybody else. Your interpretation is incorrect
> > to
> > > anyone you'd care to ask who studies the
> > constitution
> > > and the bill of rights impartially
What exactly is the definition of "impartially" here? Impartial =
"they agree with me?" Everybody who makes a job of studying the 2nd
amendment has an agenda; that, or they're hired by people who do. I guess
you can make an exception for the casually curious bystander who
doesn't care one way or the other what the amendment means, but I'm
wondering who all these impartial experts are, if they are not the Supreme
Court (especially if, as Dan pointed out, the Supreme Court has a
consistent record on the issue for over a century).
> Right, so if their opinions are so valid, then why in
> almost 200 years haven't the non-lawyers in the
> government started a drive to repeal the 2nd
> amendment?
By non-lawyers, who do you mean? File clerks? Those Congresspersons who
happen not to be lawyers? Janitors? Who?
> The Constitution itself provides for the
> common defense, so why have something cluttering up
> the bill of rights if it's redundant and it only
> serves to let the gun toting wackos have their way
> sometimes?
My best attempt to understand the 2nd Amendment, oddly worded as it is,
comes down to this:
When the Constitution was being ratified, lots of states were terrified
that if the federal goverment were allowed both to control the militias
and to raise a full-blown army, then that would give the Congress and the
Executive the power to tyrranize the states. The Federalists argued that,
no, there are sufficient checks and balances built into the militia system
itself to prevent the feds from ever using a mass militia to tyrranize the
states, but the anti-Federalists didn't buy the argument.
Therefore, as a concession to the anti-Federalist-leaning states (i.e.
anti-Constitution states, in this context), the 2nd Amendment was added to
the Bill of Rights to prevent the federal goverment from ever unilaterally
passing a law that would disarm the state militias.
It's my theory that, in accordance with a longstanding tradtion where
touchy political compromises are concerned, our dear founders crafted some
waffly language designed to prevent the federal govt from disallowing a
state's right and ability to raise a militia without actually granting any
state the right to independently raise and arm a militia.
> as is discounting the opinion of all of the people who
> make it their profession to interpret those crusty old
> documents laying around in DC. people who seek the
> truth without a political agenda.
Who the heck are all these legal experts in DC who have no political
agenda? And while I don't much like the current makeup of the Supreme
Court, why can't they be considered as impartial as it's possible to get,
us being fallible frail humans and all? After all, their jobs don't
depend on lobbyists' money or the continued approval of the president or
Congress....
> <sweeping statement backpedal mode ON>
>
> heh, well who else but lawyers with an agenda* and
> people who don't like guns, after looking at the
> second amendment and the rest of the bill of rights
> say that it doesn't guarantee a freedom of the people?
> it's so simple.
Because, as an instance of English grammar, the 2nd Amendement is an
abomination against clarity of thought.
I actually agree with you somewhat about the portentious comma that
matters so much to Dan. Comma or no comma, I can't see how that sentence
can be read in any other way except with the central meaning being that
"the people's right...shall not be infringed." There is no other
subject-verb combination that can be the heart of the sentence.
I'd argue, however, that one can't simply ignore the other words, either.
The question in my mind is how and to what degree do they circumscribe the
right being granted. This is a question that goes beyond grammar and can
only be answered by referring to context and history, which is what I
think all those Supreme Court decisions Dan cited try to do. After all,
the second Amendement does NOT begin, "The right of armed self defense,
being essential to the liberty of a free individual...."
That context and legal history is important to what a law means, and is
why we have a Supreme Court made of lawyers, not grammarians.
As for why no significant legislative faction has attempted to repeal the
2nd Amendment, the answer is simple--because it's too risky. Too many
people are in love with the popular perception of the amendment's
meaning--that it somehow confers a nearly limitless individual right to
own and use weapons--for such a stance to work politically. And nobody is
going to endanger their careers to take on a fight they can't win, not
until they figure out a way to frame the debate in a winnable fashion.
Likewise, the gun lobby (not that you're a member, so relax!) doesn't
want to push for a unilateral ruling of *their* interpretation of the law
because losing--and there are precedents for losing just that argument, as
Dan cited--would be a devastating loss. Much better for them to have the
2nd Amendment as a rallying point, rather than to risk seeing its genuine
ambiguity resolved in a manner not in their own favor.
After all, on both sides they all have their own agendas to pursue which
have very little to do with how well the right to bear arms is defined.
The right to self-defense is secondary to the gun lobby's chief goal,
which is to make sure gun manufacturers can sell more and more guns. I'm
pretty sure they've figured out that people buy more guns if they're
nervous about some nebulously defined commie-liberal plot to take them
away. If people were secure in their right to bear arms, they wouldn't be
able to use scare tactics to raise money & support, and people wouldn't
buy nearly as many guns because they'd be free to think, "Oh well, I can
always go get a gun later if I want too. This month I think I'll put that
$500 in Junior's college fund instead."
Meanwhile, legislators sympathetic to gun control have a lot of other
issues to fight for as well, and most legislators prefer to pick fights
they have a chance of winning, and thus get themselves re-elected.
Because of course the real debate isn't over the 2nd Amendment as such;
it's about the proper role of violence--and potential violence--in a free
society. As long as *that* debate is unresolved, hell, not even clearly
articulated, quibbling over the 2nd Amendment is largely academic.
Marvin Long
Austin, Texas
