From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: 2nd Amendment Myths
Date: 1 Sep 92 22:43:07 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology

I want to thank those of you who responded by private email to my 
challenges.  It is getting a little hard to respond to everyone, but
that is not unusual, given the numbers of pro-control people willing
to post on t.p.g.  Say one little peep against the established views
on RKBA, and you get blasted with both barrels.  ;-)

Anyway, I'm not going to belabor these issues much longer, unless 
people want to (and I have the time).  So far, nobody has been able
to supply me with a shred of evidence in favor of the "well-regulated"
interpretation as "well-trained".  Someone mentioned that Andy Freeman
cited a quote from the OED, but Andy did not care to respond to my
linguistic challenge.  There is some evidence in the OED for the "well-
trained" interpretation, but nothing to sustain the view that it held
that now-obsolete meaning for the original framers of the 2nd.  

Here is a suggestion for those who wish to uncover evidence.  (Lack of
evidence is no proof one way or the other.)  If you have old texts
online, and can obtain a concordance generator, you can look at all the
lines in a given text that contain specific words.  I suspect that you'll
find most, if not all usages of "well-regulated" in the writings of the
framers and ratifiers referred to "governed" or "controlled" organizations.
I'd really be interested in knowing the facts.

On the more difficult "original intent" issue, I suspect that many who
defend the RKBA "personal right" interpretation cannot go too far in
support of "original intent" lest they trip over court rulings that 
extend other liberties.  This is especially true of libertarians, who
have opposed "original intent" when it suited them--cf. the Stephen
Macedo book The New Right v. the Constitution.

My own view of the 2nd is the following:  The "personal right" interpreta-
tion is valid.  The "collective right" interpretation, which seems to
be favored by the courts is valid.  Other interpretations of the 2nd may
also be valid.  No single person wrote the amendment, and there is no
evidence that everyone had the same understanding as to how the wording
would be interpreted.  So the courts retain the right and the duty to
say what the amendment means in the current context.  It doesn't look
like now, even with an extremely conservative court, that they are 
willing to uphold the "personal right" doctrine, although there have been
times in the past when they made noises in that direction.  So there is
no reason why anyone who favors gun control should want or need to amend
the Constitution as it now stands.  Those who favor the "personal right"
interpretation could try to amend the language of the 2nd to remove the
"militia" reference, but the chances of passage are even less than those
of getting a favorable court review.

-----
Disclaimer:  Opinions expressed above are not those of my employer.

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
Xref: sparky talk.politics.guns:20382 alt.society.civil-disob:86