What the 2nd amendment is really about

[mekender]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 7893819675

i know its old, but its a good reminder

[D5CAV]

It's funny how many pro-2nd Amendment people try to hide from the 'Militia Clause'. I tell them to embrace the 'Militia Clause'. Every word of the Constitution was carefully crafted by people who cared about the English language and about clarity. The 2nd Amendment is no different.

The 'Militia Clause' is not some extra words put in for fun. It was put there because that is the primary purpose of the 2nd Amendment. Militia - as in military-style firearms - as in machine guns - as in assault rifles.

The 2nd Amendment is not about 'sporting purposes'. To think that our founding fathers would trifle to protect a sport in the most important document of the country? Ludicrous!

The 2nd Amendment is not about 'hunting' as interpreted by Clinton, Kerry, Obama, et. al.

The 2nd Amendment is not about 'personal protection' as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the "Heller" case.

The 2nd Amendment is about the 'Militia'. "A well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." What the 2nd Amendment specifically protects are military-style arms.

If you read the text of the "Miller" case where the BATF 'won' the right to regulate machine guns, the reason why they won is because the BATF claimed that sawed-off shotguns (what Miller was charged with possessing) were not commonly used as military arms (clearly false, but there was no-one presenting a counter argument). If Miller had a machine gun, it would have been a farce for the BATF to claim that these were not military weapons. On that narrow ruling -- that Miller didn't have a military-style weapon -- is what the BATF enforcement stands on! Even the FDR-packed court didn't have the doublespeak to rule against what is clearly a protection of military weapons.

The other good video to see if by Penn & Teller on the 2nd Amendment. For those who claim the 'Militia Clause' is for the protection of the Federal Government to have an Army, as Penn so eloquently put it, "It's funny how this is the only place they can find where those illiterate hacks who wrote the Constitution f*****-up so badly."

[Windy Wilson]

Well, then how did the BATFE-men manage to make the jump from, "we can ban civilian ownership of sawed-off shotguns because no one says they have a military use", to "we can ban civilian ownership of machine guns" based on Miller? As you say, the military use reasoning in Miller should have made the second assertion, which is BATFE's current stance, patently absurd. It would seem that it would be a similar jump to use Heller to leap from, "the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for militia purposes", to "we can ban handguns since there is no militia purposefor handguns; militias use rifles."

[Combat Controller]

Actually, I think it was Congress that banned Machine Guns, in an ironically named law.

[mekender]

the justices in Heller acknowledged that Miller was flawed... namely because all it did was order the lower court to re-examine the issue. the lower court never ruled because by the time it could, Miller was dead.

[Fender Ketchup]

Every time I watch that video, I can't wait till I turn 21, so I can get a handgun and carry it.

Now for the re-rail. I've thought about the Miller case before. After the ruling, the feds(was the ATF around back then?) seemed to just restrict everything they wanted to restrict, not just sawed-off's. It wreaks of BS, for some of the stuff, like machine guns. Even though I'm sure the .gov wanted to restrict machine guns because of Prohibition-era mafias, getting them because of a ruling about "military purpose" is laughable.

[mekender]

no... miller was the case that tested the newly passed 1934 NFA... so the bans came before miller

[drice]

She's well spoken, persuasive...

And HOT!!!

Damn.

[mekender]

She's well spoken, persuasive...

And HOT!!!

Damn.

she is also the reason that CCH laws exist in many states in the US