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The history of 2nd ammendment

2K views 34 replies 16 participants last post by  ccw9mm 
#1 ·
It was not quite what I expected. A few quotes:

Articles: The Real Second Amendment

We must first understand that we did not invent the 2nd Amendment; we inherited it. The justification of the 2nd Amendment is rooted in late 12th and early 13th century England with the innovation of the Welsh; later called English, longbow

They entered London on June 15, 1215 with their militias and forced King John to submit to the rule of law prescribed by the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta subordinated the king to the rule of law based on Henry I's Charter and the notion of common law throughout the realm, and it set England on the path to developing representative parliamentary democracy.

The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was derived from our understanding of the British experience that militias were necessary to curb the tyrannical powers of the king

Furthermore, like the militias of the English barons, these state militias were formed ad hoc from the populace as needed on short notice and therefore depended on the populace being already proficient in the art of arms. The only way the Founders of America could guarantee this capability was to encourage civil proficiency in arms and make private ownership and use of arms a tenet of the constitution establishing the government

Limiting the power of the federal government to subjugate the populace is the primary purpose of the 2nd Amendment

What we do with guns is the subject of existing criminal law, but having them is not
 
#2 ·
And look where all that history has gotten the Brits today--unarmed.
 
#3 ·
That is a fantasy interpretation that is inconsistent with our own early and actual history.
As with many things, there are pieces of truth in the article, but allowing for the populace to
revolt was not one of the intentions of the writers, or the BOR. In fact, they would have perceived no
need for such given the representative political system they created.

Several incidents of rebellion and challenge to state or federal authority (both from the civilian population and by
military units) occurred between 1775 and
the end of Thomas Jefferson's administration, about 35 years later. They didn't end well for those
who thought they could challenge the lawful authorities. Most were lucky that President Washington tended to be a
generous and forgiving man who saved them from the noose.

What really gets to me is the persistent assertions by a few participants that somehow our government
is tyrannical. You don't like it, there is nothing whatsoever to stop you from doing your part to bring about
change, including running for elected office at the local level. If you are a success, you can go higher.

Instead, too many come on to this board and speak like they have some sacred right to turn us into
a chaotic bloody country as so frequently seen in other parts of the world. That is not a desirable end.
No thank you. And btw, that "rebel" argument is one that turns many people off and is ultimately
counter productive to gaining gun laws more favorable to us.
 
#7 ·
That is a fantasy interpretation that is inconsistent with our own early and actual history.

Instead, too many come on to this board and speak like they have some sacred right to turn us into
a chaotic bloody country as so frequently seen in other parts of the world.
Disagree.

IMO, it's not about wishing to create bloody chaos. Rather, it's about retaining every right and ability to resist it. In large part, it's why those who escaped England came to the colonies in the first place, why they refused the oppressive rule, and why an armed populace was enshrined in the 2A as an unassailable right of the people.
 
#4 ·
The "Whiskey Rebellion" for one.

I gave up the fight after signing on for the Army of the "Conch Republic."
 
#6 · (Edited)
Hopyard, IDK if I fully agree with the way you are representing your ideas


This is how/why I believe it(the 2nd amendment) is in place, and how it is interpreted.


Noah Webster believed that having an armed public would prevent the government from becoming corrupted because the people would have more power than the government itself. He wrote:

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. 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 pretence, raised in the United States."


AND
After all, Thomas Jefferson had written in the Declaration of Independence that if a government failed to protect its citizens and instead became the enemy, the citizens had the right to overthrow it! So one reason the citizens wanted to be armed was not just for defense against external enemies. They wanted protection from their own government!



Read more: 2nd Amendment
 
#9 · (Edited)
I hate when folks try to tie our Constitution or our Bill Of Rights with English common law. We threw off our English oppressors and we created a completely new form of government. Our Bill Of Rights is completely unlike anything else in the world.

To claim that our Republic is based on English common law is a willful distortion of the truth. We WERE English as a colony so SOME of our ideas were brought forth from existing English paradigms, but the Constitution was a completely new idea. The freedoms it promises are as different as night and day from English law. It's time people realize that OUR law starts with OUR Constitution and the revolutionary ideas it contained.
 
#10 ·
I hate when folks try to tie our Constitution or our bill of rights with English common law. We threw off our English oppressors and we created a completely new form of government. Our bill Of Rights is completely unlike anything else in the world.

To claim that our laws are based on English common law is a willful distortion of the truth. We WERE English as a colony so SOME of our ideas were brought forth from existing English paradigms, but the Constitution was a completely new idea. The freedoms it promises are as different as night and day from English law. It's time people realize that OUR law starts with OUR Constitution and the revolutionary ideas it contained.
Me too. I also hate Brussels sprouts.
 
#16 ·
So Hop, what exactly do you think the purpose of the 2A is, if not security from a tyranical government? While many of our laws have their roots in english common law, those English common laws now have no bearing in our system. If it was truly derived from english common law, I think justice Sotomayor would like it a lot more. Our laws are our own, pulled together from the best of the rest.

The writtings of our founders tell us about what they intended in writting the laws and constitution. The way I interpret their writtings is that the 2A was for the security of a free state. Secure against domestic individuals, natural dangers, and governmental dangers, foreign and domestic. It is the best way of ensuring that the power stays with the people, and the people take responsibility for thier own security.
 
#17 ·
I think it had two purposes, both poorly articulated.

1) Was for the states to be able to maintain
regulated militias-- what we call the National Guard today; keeping in mind that Uncle didn't keep a standing
army worth anything at the git-go or the money to put an army together. Uncle didn't even have
a means for effectively bringing money to the treasury through taxation.

2) For ordinary people to be able to be armed for hunting and for self-defense; perhaps for dueling even.
I doubt those sons of Puritans thought much about sport shooting. "Fun" wasn't in the vocabulary
of people who by and large lived such precarious lives.

I don't for one second believe the framers and the authors of the BOR had any expectation that
there would be a need for "the people" to deal with a tyrannical government, given the structure of
our constitution.

P.S. There is a huge difference between tyranny and being hacked off at some rules or laws.
We get lots of participants who can't seem to figure out that just because they hate some provision
of --oh let's say the FAA regulations, doesn't mean they are suffering under tyranny. Did I wake you up
Tim? :smile:
 
#20 ·
...I don't for one second believe the framers and the authors of the BOR had any expectation that
there would be a need for "the people" to deal with a tyrannical government, given the structure of
our constitution...
You can't possibly be talking about the same framers who just got finished dealing with a tyrannical government.

Because those intelligent men most certainly knew that they must do everything they could possibly do to make sure that the people had the best chance possible if they were to ever face a tyrannical government again. The framers wanted it to be hard, if not impossible, for a tyrannical government to establish itself and they wanted it to be as easy as possible for the people to prevent it from becoming established and they wanted the people to be able to do what they did...fight to get rid of the tyrannical government. So the framers did expect that the people may one day need to deal with a tyrannical government.
 
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#18 ·
I agree that they may not have envisioned needing to overthrow a tyranical government, but they probably also didn't envision how much of their documents would be disregarded and outright violated. Or maybe they did, and that is why they made such clear declarations. I am not saying we are there yet, but that does not negate this as a primary purpose.

But I would dissagree that it was not well articulated. There was much discussion about how specific to be, and they left it intentionally open ended to prevent future generations from saying it is only meant for specific purposes and thereby restrict the general rights.
 
#19 · (Edited)
The Constitution's Article I Section 8 does grant power to the Congress to suppress insurrections. The Civil War and various insurrections/rebellions since 1789 pretty much showed what Congress is prepared to do to suppress them, as some have pointed out.

The Declaration's recognition of legitimate circumstances for throwing off the yoke of oppression not achievable by other means was described fairly succinctly and forcefully: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it."

And the Constitution's 9th Amendment made clear that enumeration of certain rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

None of which speaks to the sanity, wisdom or likelihood of success of such a path. Nonetheless, IMO it does remain a right of the People to pursue such a path if they so choose.

Example: Battle of Athens TN, 1946, though admittedly that was much more of bringing criminals to heel as opposed to abolishing or altering the "form" of their community's government.

Useful books, on the subject:

  • The Origin of the Second Amendment: A Documentary History of the Bill of Rights in Commentaries on Liberty, Free Government and an Armed Populace, 1787-1792, by David Young (ed). An exploration of the meaning of the 2A at the time of founding.

  • The Founders' View of the Right to Bear Arms: A Definitive History of the Second Amendment, by David Young. A review of the intended, envisioned purpose of the 2A.

  • That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right, by Stephen Halbrook. It analyzes the 2A, where it came from, the debates in the original Congress, and it seeks to make sense of it all. This book blasts many myths out of the water.

  • Supreme Court Gun Cases: Two Centuries of Gun Rights Revealed. It contains text and interpretation from every gun-related case in the history of this country, up to just the last few years.


An excerpt, from the Halbrook work:


That Every Man Be Armed: Evolution of a Constitutional Right (Ch 3, p 55):

The American Revolution and the Second Amendment:

'Strongly influenced by the philosophical classics and vigorously insisting on their common-law rights, the Americans who participated in the Revolution of 1776 and adopted the Bill of Rights held the individual right to use arms against tyranny to be fundamental. British firearms control policies that had been originally established to disarm and thereby conquer Indians came to be applied against the settlers themselves ...'

'After the armed populace had won the Revolution and the Constitution had been proposed, the Federalists promised that the new government would have no power to disarm the people. The anti-Federalists predicted that a standing army and select militia would come to overpower the people. In 1791, the American federal Bill of Rights was ratified, in part, as a formal recognition that private individuals would never be disarmed.
'​
 
#24 ·
The Constitution's Article I Section 8 does grant power to the Congress to suppress insurrections. The Civil War and various insurrections/rebellions since 1789 pretty much showed what Congress is prepared to do to suppress them, as some have pointed out.

The Declaration's recognition of legitimate circumstances for throwing off the yoke of oppression not achievable by other means was described fairly succinctly and forcefully: "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it."

And the Constitution's 9th Amendment made clear that enumeration of certain rights "shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

None of which speaks to the sanity, wisdom or likelihood of success of such a path. Nonetheless, IMO it does remain a right of the People to pursue such a path if they so choose.
EXCELLENT: A constitution with this in it, "The Congress shall have the power: "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;"

This was not written by men who countenanced breaking the law by insurrection.

Regarding the wise comment: "none of this speaks to the sanity...of such a path," indeed. It is not a sane path in today's world. And because it is not a sane path in today's world we harm our own interests every time one of us uses the argument
that 2A legitimizes insurrection or rebellion or armed resistance to the law, in some way.



The Declaration of Independence is not law, and was written for a very specific set of circumstances. And it was written
not by individual citizens conspiring to rebel, but by elected representatives from the various colonies. That is a far cry from
what many participants here seem to believe occurred or seem to think 2A allows for.
 
#27 ·
There is mention in several places of the Federalist Papers that the government cannot become tyrannical because the populace is better armed than the army is. It's in there, and no amount of fantasizing about what was written back then changes it. Does that mean we have gone so far down the path of tyranny now that we need an armed revolution to fix it? I highly doubt it. It also doesn't mean that many, if any, of the founders viewed that as the preferred path. However, to pretend that doesn't exist in the context of the 2A is to completely ignore the writings of the time that are available for anyone to find at the local book store.
 
#29 ·
Keep in mind that The Federalist Papers were written mostly by one man as editorial commentary to promote
ratification of the new constitution. The words in there are neither law nor reflections of broad opinion of the day on
every matter. And, Hamilton was for an extremely powerful Federal government and was accused therefore of being
a monarchist. The Federalists were often accused of being monarchists. You have to take individual quotes from the context
of the time and their purpose and the rest of the document and history.

What the framers put in Article 1 Section 8 was precisely their intentions and well worded. 2A is controversial precisely because
the language is so unclear that we are able to argue about it incessantly.
 
#32 ·
Authorized to attack a foreign navy during a period of war, yes. The authorization did not pertain to their possession of said vessels of war. Your argument quickly falls on its face if that's the track you're taking. Letters of Marque and Reprisal are in the Constitution because of the existence of such privately owned vessels, not to magically authorize them into existence.

Back to relatively cheaper matters, the army had muskets, and the people had muskets and some even had fancy new weapons with greater range and accuracy. They were called "rifles". Some people even had cannons, obviously the artillery of the day. If you want a full-auto M16, M4, grenade launcher (with grenades), whatever, there is no reason whatsoever that you should not be allowed to have it. There is no historical evidence that the founders would have endorsed anything like Class III, NFA registration or any of this other idiotic nonsense. There is nothing in the text of the Constitution that authorizes such schemes, or even allows something like the ATF to exist. The 10A, which is completely disregarded these days, expressly prohibits the federal government from doing anything the Constitution doesn't spell out for it. If the cops and military can have it, YOU absolutely should be able to have it. There is no authority to change the meaning to "not unduly infringed" or any other imaginary crap.
 
#33 ·
The first three objectives for Obama to complete his change to socialism was to: make the masses dependent on the government(42M presently on welfare and growing), remove all means of resistance from the masses(UN weapons treaty, stacked the Supreme Court Judges) have an organized strong armed civilian force(TSA, ICE, FEMA, BATF to name just a few) two of these objectives have been met, guns are next. After he has these objectives in place the rest will be easy. the "Big O" is taking us down the same path as Hitler did in Germany.
 
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