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Originally posted by jude11
The purpose of the Second Amendment was to prevent the new Federal Government established in 1789 from disarming the state militias and replacing them with a Federal standing army.
With the rise of the Police State, it means more now then it ever did. These are the times and circumstances for which it was written.
Peace
Originally posted by Julie Washington
"There is thus no constitutional protection whatsoever for the semiautomatic rifle that killed the kids in Newtown."
The Second Amendment is a relic of the founding era more than two centuries ago. Its purpose is long past. As Justice John Paul Stevens argues persuasively, the amendment should not block the ability of society to keep itself safe through gun control legislation. That was never its intent. This amendment was about militias in the 1790s, and the fear of the anti-federalists of a federal army. Since that issue is long moot, we need not be governed in our national life by doctrines on now-extinct militias from the 18th century.
Source
This is an excellent article the explains the reasons the 2nd amendment was created, and how it's been used in the SCOTUS.
The purpose of the Second Amendment was to prevent the new Federal Government established in 1789 from disarming the state militias and replacing them with a Federal standing army. It was a concern that was relevant perhaps for a few years around the birth of the country. It is irrelevant today. Americans do not rely on state militias in 2012 for our freedom from the federal government
Now is the time to establish new gun control laws and perhaps an all out ban on all automatic and semi automatic weapons.
Originally posted by MentorsRiddle
This exact mode of thinking: "The old generation's ideas don't pertain to today," is a disgrace....
It goes against our bill of rights, and everything America stands for.
Irrelevant my white behind…
Shame on the writer of this, and anyone who supports it.
You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
Rahm Emanuel
Show us with any of the writings of our founding fathers, where they said that the second amendment only applied to "the militia." I don't want some guys opinion about the intentions of the founders. They wrote their thoughts down. Read them.
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.
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.
www.guncite.com...
III. DOES THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
INCORPORATE THE SECOND AMENDMENT?
The only mention by the United States Supreme Court of the right to keep and bear arms before the Fourteenth Amendment was passed found the right to be protected from any infringement, including the state slave codes. In the Dred Scott decision, Chief Justice Taney wrote that citizenship "would give to persons of the negro race .. the full liberty of speech ... and (the right) to keep and carry arms wherever they went." Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 417 (1857). In other words, if blacks were citizens, then the Second Amendment would invalidate state laws which prohibited firearms possession by such citizens.
The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to eradicate the black codes, under which "Negroes were not allowed to bear arms or to appear in all public places..." Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 247-48 &n.3 (1964) (Douglas, J., concurring). In his concurring opinion in Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 166-67 (1968), Justice Black recalled the following words of Senator Jacob M. Howard in introducing the amendment to the Senate in 1866: "The personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments of the Constitution; such as ... the right to keep and bear arms .... The great object of the first section of this amendment is, therefore, to restrain the power of the States and compel them at all times to respect these great fundamental guarantees."
The Supreme Court has never determined whether the Fourteenth Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms from state infringement. However, Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1,5 (1964) states: "The Court has not hesitated to reexamine past decisions according the Fourteenth Amendment a less central role in the preservation of basic liberties than that which was contemplated by its Framers when they added the Amendment to our constitutional scheme.''[14]
The same two-thirds of Congress which proposed the Fourteenth Amendment also passed an enactment declaring that the fundamental rights of "personal liberty" and "personal (p.17)security" include "the constitutional right to bear arms." Freedmen's Bureau Act, §14, 14 Stat. 176 (July 16, 1866). This Act, and the companion Civil Rights Act of 1866, sought to guarantee the same rights that the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to protect.