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Are you suggesting that there are no limits to the second amendment? Because there are limits to our freedom of speech. You cannot shout fire in a crowded theater, or threaten the lives of others.
Post #13 of this thread:
Quote:
Originally Posted by PedroMartinez
You chose a fairly crappy way to bring up a very valid question.
Let's discuss.
First, we know that the Bill Of Rights is not absolute.
The First gives you freedom of speech; however, the government can sanction me if I called up a potential employer you were interviewing with and told them you were a convicted pedophile when I knew that was not the case. It also give freedom to exercise religion, but you can't commit human sacrifices.
If you point a gun and start shooting at a FBI agent, you aren't going to be afforded any due process under the Fifth when that agent of government returns fire and takes your life.
Essentially, your rights end when your actions infringe upon the freedoms and liberties of others.
I'd argue that the nature of a nuclear weapon in terms of the danger it poses, even untouched, is such that it infringes on the rights and freedoms of others. Unlike a stray bullet that has the possibility of negatively impacting bystanders, radiation released into the atmosphere will have an impact on others. If a bullet gets buried in the dirt and left for a hundred years, it will most likely become inert while if you buried a nuclear weapon in the dirt, it will eventually become a serious and lethal hazard.
When a crazy survivalist dies in his cave with a stock pile of automatic weapons and a tank and is not found for a century, nothing ever happens. If he has a nuclear weapon, something very bad will eventually happen if it is left untouched.
Therefore, I think the nature of a nuclear bomb precludes it from being acceptable under the Second.
Government (State or Federal) has the right to regulate militia. If citizens are the militia, then government can tell them what kind of weapons they can keep.
Scalia argued in the Heller case that the weapons can be regulated.
The whole collective arms interpretation argument is dead, and was never valid anyway. The purpose of the second amendment is an individual right to bear arms (what type of arms is to be determined).
Actually, it's not. It's already determined. Can we agree that the purpose of the Second Amendment was so that the people would have the means to defend themselves against oppressors and attackers?
If we can agree on that, than it is easy to conclude that the 2A was enshrined to protect the Right of the people to keep and bear the same type of "arms" as those kept and bared by their oppressors. What kind of defense could a militia armed with single-shot .22's provide against a regime armed with M16's or AK47's?
Quote:
Originally Posted by chicagogeorge
^^
Government (State or Federal) has the right to regulate militia. If citizens
are the militia, then government can tell them what kind of weapons they can
keep.
Well first of all, let's be clear about something...... The government doesn't have "Rights", it has powers, given to it through the consent of the people. To imply the government has inherent Rights, would be to imply that the government has authority to do things absent the consent of the governed, and it doesn't. The government doesn't even have the Right to EXIST without the consent of the governed.
Second of all, you are right that the government has the power to regulate the militia all it wants. That power includes things like appointing officers, training, drilling, assembling, calling them up for service, assigning them objectives, etc. But the "Right to keep and bear arms" exists outside of the scope of the militia. The 2A doesn't say "the Right of the militia to keep and bear arms, it says "the Right of the people to keep and bear arms...... So, that Right doesn't fall within the governments regulatory powers of the militia.
Think about it. If the founders intent was to ensure that the people would have the arms necessary to defend themselves from oppression, even if their oppressors were their own government, does it make a lick of logical sense to say that the founders would have wanted the very government who was oppressing the people to have the ability to decide what weapons the people could defend themselves with?
Quote:
Scalia argued in the Heller case that the weapons can be regulated
I'm not interested in what the Supreme Court has said for the purposes of this discussion. This is a philosophical debate about the intents and purposes of the Second Amendment from the founders perspective in their era, not Scalia's. But even if we do take the Heller ruling in to account, that ruling explicitly states that the weapons that are protected are those that are commonly used by Americans for lawful purposes, which in and of itself severely limits the power of the government to regulate the type of arms that can be possessed by the people under the 2nd. Things like Assault Weapons bans, which aim to ban the most popular rifle in America, are unconstitutional under Heller.
Are you suggesting that there are no limits to the second amendment? Because there are limits to our freedom of speech. You cannot shout fire in a crowded theater, or threaten the lives of others.
So many people use that example but so few understand it's implications or it's history....
You can't just think something is a good idea and use that as a basis to put a restriction on someone's Rights. There's a very good reason you can't shout fire in a crowded movie theater ( provided there's no fire....... ) When that example was first used in the Schenck decision, the justices on the court said it was because:
(1) the person knows that his words will cause immediate harm
(2) the person uses his speech solely to cause harm
(3) that the end result is predictable
So, that's a very narrow set of criteria to work within. For a good read on what it might look like when we apply this same criteria to Second Amendment Rights, click the following link.
In short though, limiting the types of weapons a law-abiding person can own doesn't fall within this narrow criteria. Even in the yelling fire in a theater example, the person who does it, retains all of his Speech Rights up to the point he/she abuses them, don't they? You can't curb or infringe on someone's Rights just because there is the prospect that they might abuse them. So in other words, limiting the type of weapon one could own, let's say, because it holds more bullets than other types, would be tantamount to putting a muzzle on everyone before they walked in to a crowded theater.
What Teabaggers want to call for any civilian being able to own nuclear ICBMs? By their interpretation that they are allowed to own any arm, that should be permissible. Low intelligence conservatives don't understand the most powerful weapon you could own at the time of the Constitution was a cannon
Low intelligence conservatives don't understand the most powerful weapon
you could own at the time of the Constitution was a cannon
And the most effective means of exercising free speech was an old printing press. So by your logic, we don't have the Right to speak freely on the internet, telephone, on TV, etc, so if you want to exercise your Right to free speech, I suggest you buy an old printing press, or find a soap box to stand on. Nor are you entitled to 4th Amendment protections ( that's search and seizure, in case you don't know ) when it comes to your vehicle, your computer..... anything that didn't exist in 1791 isn't covered.
Make sense? Sorry, but your logic doesn't hold up to the scrutiny of intellectual thought.
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