From: PA142548@utkvm1.utk.edu (T. Archer)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: 2nd Amendment Myths
Date: 11 Sep 92 13:25:43 GMT
Organization: University of Tennessee

In article <82355@bcsaic.boeing.com> rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake) writes:
>Paul Swanson (PS) wrote:
>
>PS> If I were writing the Bill of Rights now, there wouldn't be any such
>PS> thing as the Second Amendment ... This has been subject to one of the
>PS> greatest pieces of fraud - I repeat the word fraud - on the American
>PS> public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.
>PS>                                  - Former Chief Justice Warren Burger
>
>PS> Here is someone who probably has a good idea about constitutional law
>PS> who apparently thinks the RKBA is a misinterpretation of the Second
>PS> Amendment.
>
>Yes, and he isn't alone in that interpretation.  
True enough.  Most people who fear the concept of a populace able to resist 
political oppression with force agree with him.

>I believe that most of the
>original debaters would have left it out if they could have foreseen the
>evolution of military defense.  
No, you are dead wrong.  They did foresee the evolution of military defense, 
and most has STRONG reservations about a standing army.  In peacetime a 
standing army sucks off resources and tempts you to meddle militarily where 
you have no business being and could not get a volunteer militia to go.

>Who would have dreamed of tanks or helicopter
>gunships?  
WHo would have dreamed of fax, television, or the telephone?  Yet these 
tools can wreak great harm to one's life.

Anyway, many, if not most, legal scholars seem to think that both
>the 2nd and the 3rd are anachronisms born out of conditions that responded to
>conditions local to the 18th century.  
Shall we then toss out the First Amendment protections as well, since new 
technology allows irresponsible people to do far greater harm than the 
founding fathers could ever have conceived of with thier hand printing 
presses?

>The King had tried to control the
>colonies by preventing them from arming themselves, and he forced colonists to
>quarter troops in their homes.  During the Antifederalist backlash against
>strong federal rule, the fear was that the strong federal government would
>serve to bring back the same tyranny.  
They were right.  Only the check provided by the Amendments you are striving 
to remove have prevented it.

>In the modern world, the federal
>government has gained almost total supremacy over the states, and the state
>militias have evolved into the National Guard.  
Which is now an arm of the federal military and no longer serves the 
function of a militia.

>Hence, the interpretation that
>the RKBA is really a "collective" right which the National Guard fulfills.
Why does "people" mean individual citizens in the First, Fourth, and Tenth 
Amendments, but suddenly mean "the States" in the Second?

>
>Frank Crary (FC) responds:
[snip]

>FC> It is also worth noting that Chief Justice Burger is a strong
>FC> supporter of judicial activism and, while on the bench, based his
>FC> opinions on how he thought the Constitution _should_ read, not what
>FC> it actually said.
>
>In fact, this only underscores my point that you guys are in the "original
>intent" camp, a method of legal interpretation that has been largely
>discredited.  
This is your opinion.  Original intent is alive and well in the school of 
legal scholarship.  Hence the reason the subject is changed whenever the 
Embarassing Second Amendment comes up at the cocktail parties.

>I again propose the works of the Constitutional scholar Leonard
>Levy for a detailed refutation of "original intent":  Original Intent and the
>Framer's Constitution.  Here is a passage from his writings (p. 341):  
He's not bad, but I prefer Stanford Levinson, myself.

[snip]
>After all, the whole point of this discussion is to justify gun
>ownership for the purpose of self defense, recreation, etc.  
Uh, no.  The whole point is to refuse to allow a fundamental and 
Constitutionally protected civil liberty to be tossed out because some 
people feel it to be politically incorrect.

>It wouldn't do to
>take the word "well-regulated militia" any more seriously than we need to in
>order to fulfill the real agenda.  Wink.  Wink.
What agenda is that?

-=-=-
T. Archer  PA142548@utkvm1.utk.edu
University of Tennessee
"Vote Dempublican, it's easier than thinking." -- Unknown
-=-=-
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns