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Well that depends, States rights are defined in the Constitution as everything not covered by everything else nor prohibited to them.
However in the Bill or Rights, you have the 2nd (the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed) it doesn't define scope, thus the assumption would be global, because if it was the right of Chris Christie to change the right to bear arms in New Jersey and only Chris Christie they would have written the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed except by Chris Christie. However as it does not the safe legal assumption is that it applies to all government (since people are not bound by the constitution).
However the 10th Amendment states...
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Well if the 2nd is globally scoped, then the states under the 10th Amendment are prohibited from infringing the 2nd in exactly the same way as the Federal Government. Regardless of the 14th Amendment, or McDonald, if you want to take an originalist's view. The 10th doesn't give license to states to enact a powers against something that is explicitly prohibited from them acting against.
If that were the case, there would not have been a need for Miranda v Arizona to go to the Supreme Court. In fact, there would not have been a need for the Civil War.
But that's not what the 10th Amendment does. In the Constitution and its amendments, the federal government has "powers"--not rights--but people and states have both "powers" and "rights." The 10th Amendment was not intended in any way to restrict the states. The Bill of Rights was totally and utterly intended only to restrict the powers of the federal government.
Not a single one of the original states would have accepted a federal government that restricted the power of the states to manage its own internal social order. It was the Civil War that changed that relationship and only after the Civil War were there both amendments and Supreme Court judgments that ruled over internal state affairs.
This was born out by both Barren v Baltimore (1833) and Scott v Sandford (1857) in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights was not applicable to the states.
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Barron v. Baltimore (1833) (5th Amendment - just compensation) Interpretation of the Constitution as non-incorporation. The Constitution of the United States was established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual states. .... If these propositions be correct, the fifth amendment must be understood as restraining the power of the general government, not as applicable to the states.
The last of the Founding Fathers had just recently died back then, so people didn't even have to study hard to know what they meant to say in the Constitution.
Last edited by Ralph_Kirk; 12-17-2013 at 08:08 PM..
Wow. If you sincerely mean that then my time here has not been wasted and it's all been worth it.
I do like to think about things for myself and I'm not so much a part of the giant echo-chamber on this website.
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Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper 88
Well, it's only the foundation for one of the worlds greatest superpowers.
How much longer will we be a superpower?
Quote:
Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper 88
I don't find it ambiguous at all as far as the Second Amendment is concerned. Admittedly, the 2A would have been far better off divided in to two sentences instead of one.
SCOTUS ruled in either the Heller decision of 2008 or the McDonald decision of 2010 that the Second Amendment protects weapons that are commonly owned by US citizens and are practical for use in lawful purposes like self defense or hunting. That doesn't describe a nuclear warhead. You are free to research these Decisions on your own and find out how they came to their conclusions.
Does the Second Amendment allow for restricting gun use for convicted felons or the mentally disabled? I know the Supreme Court exists to sort through this ambiguity but I don't see a need for ambiguity in the first place.
This is what I'm saying: since 1791, gun violence has skyrocketed and the class of things we can call "arms" has vastly expanded, yet the American Constitution out of every single one in the world is the most resistant to change. We are then left with two unsatisfactory options: Allow for de facto Constitutional changes by arbitrarily-appointed individuals (SCOTUS), or give in to the people who think America should never change and be run by the American government's second draft from 1787 for the rest of eternity even as great weaknesses in our frozen government become evident (read: US government shutdown) while other nations without the same limitations (i.e. China) are able to come out ahead and eventually reduce our country to second-tier status.
This is what I'm saying: since 1791, gun violence has skyrocketed and the class of things we can call "arms" has vastly expanded, yet the American Constitution out of every single one in the world is the most resistant to change. We are then left with two unsatisfactory options: Allow for de facto Constitutional changes by arbitrarily-appointed individuals (SCOTUS), or give in to the people who think America should never change and be run by the American government's second draft from 1787 for the rest of eternity even as great weaknesses in our frozen government become evident (read: US government shutdown) while other nations without the same limitations (i.e. China) are able to come out ahead and eventually reduce our country to second-tier status.
Really? The US Constitution was last amended in 1992. When was the Magna Carta last changed?
Oh, and as a courtesy to the readers of the forum, could you please use the quote system properly? Simply copying what someone wrote and pasting it in bold text doesn't properly attribute the quote to the author, and denies the readers the opportunity to find the original text to read it in full context. Thanks.
So, could Oppenheimer's Law be expanded to say that any pro-2nd amendment person who compares guns to cars is also completely discredited and loses the debate, or does that not help the agenda?
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Does the Second Amendment allow for restricting gun use for convicted felons
or the mentally disabled? I know the Supreme Court exists to sort through this
ambiguity but I don't see a need for ambiguity in the first place.
We have quotes from the founders to sort through some of the ambiguity of all things Constitutional. The founders didn't support felons being allowed to use firearms. There are quotes that support this. They believed that peaceable citizens should be allowed to posses their own arms. Felons aren't peaceful citizens.
I don't believe the SCOTUS has made an official ruling as to whether restricting gun Rights for felons and the mentally ill is Constitutional or not. They have only made the statement that their rulings in McDonald and Heller should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions.
Quote:
This is what I'm saying: since 1791, gun violence has skyrocketed and the
class of things we can call "arms" has vastly expanded
Not really. Gun violence has been on the decline for the last twenty years. Perhaps coincidentally {or perhaps not} gun ownership has skyrocketed in the same time period.
Also, the class of things we consider arms has not vastly expanded. There haven't really been any new major technological achievements made to firearms since the early 1900's.
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yet the American Constitution out of every single one in the world is
the most resistant to change
Changing the Constitution should not be any easy task imo. It should be difficult.
Last edited by WhipperSnapper 88; 12-17-2013 at 11:19 PM..
I want to be clear on my stance of the wording of the 2A. We shouldn't just ignore the first part of the amendment which states "A well regulated militia being necessary to a free state"..... Back in the days of the founders, the militia was made up of the people themselves. According to them, a militia is necessary to secure a free state, and that is why the Right of the people to own arms cannot be infringed.
This is how I interpret the 2A after reading the wording.
This thread really exemplifies what an incoherent piece of garbage the constitution is.
Hmmmm..... funny isn't it? That the Constitution is what protects your Right to make such an ignorant comment?
Last edited by WhipperSnapper 88; 12-18-2013 at 02:30 AM..
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