[bitwize]

Well, sure, anything is debatable if you take the Humpty Dumpty stance. But if English words mean things the language in the Constitution will hamper gun control efforts in the USA.

These articles are examples of what I call "sneaking repeal under the wire". Just because an article comes from a scholarly source doesn't mean it stands up to scrutiny: Michael Bellesiles landed himself in hot water attempting to argue this very issue, that the right to personal arms is a recent invention. The first tell I found in the sources you cited was when Toobin called the amendment text "ungrammatical"; it's perfectly grammatical, just not rendered in modern style.

A more modern restatement of the amendment would be: "Since a well-trained militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to own and carry weapons shall not be infringed." The thinking of the time -- and this is all in the freakin' Wikipedia article on the Second Amendment should you care to look -- was that the right to self-defense and to defense against tyranny were of paramount importance -- thinking that predates the Constitution and has its roots in English law. To raise a defense force from among the people it was thought necessary to protect their right to own, train with, and carry weapons.

Now you may say that this right is trumped by others' right to live peaceably without fear of being shot. I won't disagree. But what you should be agitating for is repeal of the second amendment, whose language is very plain once you parse it; not for the courts to obfuscate and reinterpret the meaning. That way does lie tyranny, for the next step is for the courts to interpret away your right to not be searched without a warrant, your right not to be punished for a crime without due process, etc. Because hey, the Constitution is a living document; that means its meaning in times of old has nothing to do with today.

(My belief is that the Constitution was intended as a living document and that's why it has a well specified amendment process of which we should avail ourselves.)

[ScottBurson]

I will admit that I have mixed feelings about the Second Amendment. As does the Supreme Court; Heller was a 5-4 decision, in which the minority disagreed with the interpretation of the text that you claim is plain and indisputable. Furthermore, "Four times between 1876 and 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule that the Second Amendment protected individual gun ownership outside the context of a militia." [0] You could argue, I suppose, that the true meaning of the amendment was forgotten and has been recovered, but then I think you should attempt to explain why that happened.

> Now you may say that this right is trumped by others' right to live peaceably without fear of being shot. I won't disagree.

Okay -- we agree on something :-)

> But what you should be agitating for is repeal of the second amendment

This doesn't follow. We all know about restrictions on speech that are seen as legitimate -- yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater, etc.; the examples are familiar -- yet the arguments for these restrictions are not taken as arguments for repealing the First Amendment altogether.

I certainly think that my right to live peaceably, as you say, without fear of being shot, is worthy of some protection and needs to be balanced against gun ownership rights.

I also wonder how well even armed citizens can defend themselves against a tyrannical government in this era of militarized police, modern weapons, and SWAT teams. 240 years ago, the arms technology race had only barely started; now it is in full swing. We know how arms races end: the side with the most money wins. Even if the Second Amendment came to be read to permit citizens to own tanks, drones, etc., people can't afford them.

Personally I think the right to communicate with my fellow citizens unmonitored is more important, and in the end more likely to be decisive.

[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/how-nra-rewrote-secon...

[Pyxl101]

> I also wonder how well even armed citizens can defend themselves against a tyrannical government in this era of militarized police, modern weapons, and SWAT teams.

Citizens have proven very capable of defending themselves in Iraq, Ukraine, Syria.

It's true that a government willing to firebomb entire cities and murder literally everyone could overcome that resistance. However, in the modern era a government that did that would quickly see the entire world turning against them.

It's also worth keeping in mind that even large, powerful, and well-armed militaries are only a fraction of the populace. In the US, something like 1/100 people are in the military. So if the US military turned against the population, and the population resisted, they'd have to fight a force that's potentially 100 times their number. Unless they were willing to firebomb their own cities and murder innocent civilians (as opposed to guerrilla fighters), they'd quickly be overcome.

[koide]

That's awfully naive. That 1/100 number includes babies, the elderly and people not able or interested in actual fighting.

[maratd]

Even if it's 1/10, the point still stands.

[koide]

Nope it doesn't. A highly trained and armed soldier can easily overcome ten or more untrained but armed people

[hga]

I will admit that I have mixed feelings about the Second Amendment. As does the Supreme Court; Heller was a 5-4 decision, in which the minority disagreed with the interpretation of the text that you claim is plain and indisputable.

Wrong. All 9 Supremes interpreted it as an individual right, they could hardly do else so given the written history of all this and the plain language of the Bill of Rights (which amendments, after all, confer a collective vs. individual right?). What they split 5-4 on what did that really mean anything in practice, or, ultimately, could D.C. freeze its registration, and require to you keep your guns unloaded and disassembled until an intruder entered the room you were in.

A set of laws I'll note were often nullified by sympathetic juries. Since Heller and McDonald, a majority of the court clearly holds that you only have a right to keep and bear arms in your home, they've denied cert on all relevant appeals since McDonald.

[ScottBurson]

> All 9 Supremes interpreted it as an individual right

No. There were two dissents, one by Stevens, one by Breyer. From Wikipedia [0]:

The Stevens dissent seems to rest on four main points of disagreement: that the Founders would have made the individual right aspect of the Second Amendment express if that was what was intended; that the "militia" preamble and exact phrase "to keep and bear arms" demands the conclusion that the Second Amendment touches on state militia service only; that many lower courts' later "collective-right" reading of the Miller decision constitutes stare decisis, which may only be overturned at great peril; and that the Court has not considered gun-control laws (e.g., the National Firearms Act) unconstitutional. The dissent concludes, "The Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.... I could not possibly conclude that the Framers made such a choice."

Justice Stevens' dissent was joined by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.

Justice Breyer filed a separate dissenting opinion, joined by the same dissenting Justices, which sought to demonstrate that, starting from the premise of an individual-rights view, the District of Columbia's handgun ban and trigger lock requirement would nevertheless be permissible limitations on the right.

You must be thinking of the Breyer dissent. Even that does not stipulate that the right is individual, but just argues that even if it is, the DC law was permissible.

Even people who agree with you on the issue recognize that the Stevens dissent does not support an individual right [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller...

[1] https://reason.com/blog/2010/06/28/justice-john-paul-stevens...

[hga]

What you quoted from Wikipedia does not support your contention, nor what the Reason article quoted from Stevens' dissent. You might be right, but we'd have to read the whole dissent and we obviously interpret these words slightly differently. Certainly Stevens does not believe in the standard individual right interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, but he's also not shown to accept the conventional "collective right" interpretation, a logical nullity that cuts against every other use in the Bill of Rights, except as stare dicesis, and the latter is telling unless contradicted by something more specific.

Or to restate, it is my understanding that the dissents accept an "individual right" interpretation in some abstract sense before interpreting the whole as meaning nothing for individuals. Which I'll admit is a fine distinction, but this is from the group that finds a right to what they claim is privacy from the "penumbras" and "emanations" of explicit constitutional rights. So making find distinctions like I think I'm seeing, which don't really make any sense anyway is par for the course.

[ScottBurson]

> What you quoted from Wikipedia does not support your contention

Specifically why not? It seems pretty clear to me. Let's take it point by point.

() the Founders would have made the individual right aspect of the Second Amendment express if that was what was intended

Isn't that pretty clearly an argument that it's not an individual right? I'm sure you disagree with it; I'm sure you think that the individual right aspect is clearly expressed; but given the militia clause and the use of the collective term "the people", someone else might not read it that way. I'm not asking whether you agree with the reading, I'm asking whether you can see that, given that reading, the fact that the framers chose this wording is an argument that they didn't intend an individual right. If not, why not?

() that the "militia" preamble and exact phrase "to keep and bear arms" demands the conclusion that the Second Amendment touches on state militia service only

This seems pretty clear too.

I'll skip the next two points and come to this:

() The dissent concludes, "The Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.... I could not possibly conclude that the Framers made such a choice."

Again, I understand that you think that is exactly the choice the Framers made. Does this very point not show you the depth of the disagreement here?

As for the Reason article, again you claim it does not support my contention. And again, I ask you to explain. The author, Damon Root, senior editor of Reason, clearly thinks it does; see the second sentence.

Look, I don't always have a lot of respect for the Justices either. I think Scalia is an arrogant windbag, and don't even get me started on Thomas. But I would never go around thinking that they don't actually disagree with me.

[walshemj]

Common law from which US law descends has the right to self defence which is why until after a panic over the general strike the UK had fairly liberal laws around gun ownership.