[Maursault]

> There have been only two amendments to the U.S. Constitution over the past 50+ years

Did you know the US Constitution and Bill of Rights was massively altered in 2008 without a two-thirds majority of Congress nor any majority of the States legislatures?[1] In fact, this is so, and it was done pretty much by one man ironically abandoning his own career-long ideology of strict constitutional interpretations with an argument entirely based on, figuratively speaking, bullshit. We know what the Founders intended because we have the minutes of the Constitutional Congress in which the Founders debated whether to include a right of self-defense in the 2nd, and this was intentionally left out. "Because most Americans believe something," is not a rational nor strictly legal means of altering the US Constitution, and, in fact, the notion floated then was not true. (Prior to 2008 most Americans did not believe the 2nd included an implicit right of self-defense... only the gunnutters pushed that garbage. Most Americans actually knew the truth, that the 2nd concerns militias.) Regardless of this mistake (or lie), this man somehow single-handedly changed the 2nd from a self-less right to protect one's neighbor from tyranny, to a selfish right to protect your television. This... after the (continuing) suspension of habeas corpus and the 5th earlier in that decade.

Changing the Constitution (what's left of it) is easy.[2]

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

[2] I may be cynical, but I'm also pretty angry about it, and it doesn't help that no one seems to care or notice that our beloved Constitution has been screwed with.

[quantumBerry]

>Prior to 2008 most Americans did not believe the 2nd included an implicit right of self-defense

Only gun nutters believe in the right to self defense?

Who has the right to keep and bear arms? Does the constitution say that the "right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed?" If you bear arms are you no longer entitled to self defense?

Do you know who the militia is in the United States? Are you aware every able bodied male citizen between 17 and 45 are considered militia [1]?

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246

[Maursault]

> Only gun nutters believe in the right to self defense?

No. Only gun nutters believe the source of their right to self-defense comes from the 2nd, while the rest of us have that right whether there is a 2nd Amendment or not.

> Do you know who the militia is in the United States? Are you aware every able bodied male citizen between 17 and 45 are considered militia?

Are you aware that the purpose of a militia is not self-defense? It is common defense. Big difference. The 2nd has been gutted, and the assault on the Constitution continues.

> Who has the right to keep and bear arms? Does the constitution say that the "right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed?" If you bear arms are you no longer entitled to self defense?

The right of self-defense is ancient, predating the rise of civilization and even the evolution of the human species, but if you'd like to point to a written source, how about the Magna Carta? Also, the 2nd does not say that at all unless you ignore the first three words, placed there, one could say, to underscore the importance of them. The 2nd certainly does not say, "the right of a person...." It is the right of The People. How it could be interpreted as an individual right is a bastardization and entirely against the clear intention of The Founders (and, again, we know this from the minutes of the Constitutional Congress... we know what they intended... because they debated whether to include self-defense and intentionally left it out, so we know they did not intend the 2nd to be any individual right).

Maybe the First Amendment means that all printed media should be free as in beer? Or that printing presses should be free as in beer? Or that religion and assembly should never cost anything? These interpretations would be the same kind of bastardization of The Founders' intent, grotesquely twisted from something noble and grand to something petty and cheap.

[quantumBerry]

>Only gun nutters believe the source of their right to self-defense comes from the 2nd, while the rest of us have that right whether there is a 2nd Amendment or not.

Arms are ubiquitous in modern times and the second amendment enshrines the ability for those such as the disabled and women to have a fighting chance against a violent attacker. So you're right, it only protects a certain form of self defense by virtue of allowing the implements to defend yourself (arms).

>It is the right of The People.

Did you purposefully turn "the people" into a proper noun? Do you not understand "the people" are made up of persons? "The people" of the United States are made up of persons. It does not say "the militia" may bear arms, but rather those people ( who are persons ) may bear arms.

>Maybe the First Amendment means that all printed media should be free as in beer?

Since we've gone off to the first amendment, do you believe "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" only applies to an organized militia and not individual people?

The protections of the bill of rights are protections against government, not private entities. You aren't owed something free from a private news company.

[Maursault]

> the second amendment enshrines the ability for those such as the disabled and women to have a fighting chance against a violent attacker

The 2nd Amendment never had anything to do with crime and self-defense prior to DC v. Heller 2008. Militias do not enforce law. It also, fwiw, has nothing to do with hunting. The sole original purpose of the 2nd was to be a check against tyranny. That is all it ever was until Justice Scalia invented the idea that the 2nd Amendment was a right of self-defense because most Americans (incorrectly) believed that it was... but it was not and is not true that most Americans believed a right of self-defense was included in the 2nd, only those repeating the false propaganda of the NRA.

> Since we've gone off to the first amendment, do you believe "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" only applies to an organized militia and not individual people?

You missed the point, but I'd like to see a single individual try to peacefully assemble.

[quantumBerry]

So which people are allowed to peaceably assemble? How about my wife and I? What if we also want to bear arms?

Having the ability to defend against tyranny with a weapon doesn't mean you drop your right to self defense. The 2nd amendment absolutely protects the right to bear arms as a check against tyranny. I don't understand your bone to pick as to why someone bearing arms couldn't defend themselves with them.

Edit: The bill of rights doesn't outright state a right to self defense. I'd like to see you argue why someone who bears arms (which is their right per 2A) shouldn't be able to defend their life with the arms that they have. If someone starts violently attacking my kid with a knife, do you seriously think I shouldn't be able to use arms to protect them because that's not the tyranny of the government? 2A doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms except in self defense. Fortunately for me, I'll be killed or imprisoned for life before someone like you takes my right to armed self defense away -- because that is the only way I'll ever stop keeping my means of self defense.

[Maursault]

So you believe that prior to 1788 no right of self-defense existed? Do you then believe that one can't defend oneself without a gun? Surely you mustn't.

Again, the 2nd only concerns tyranny, and prevents the government from disarming militias in order to have a check on tyranny.

If you'd like another reason why self-defense was not nor should be included in the 2nd, I see no right to breathe in the Bill of Rights. I guess we have no right to breathe and we better pass an amendment giving us that right before we pass out.

The Bill of Rights was not intended to limit rights to those enumerated in the BoR, and I would say a right of self-defense is already included under self-evident and inalienable rights along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

[int_19h]

That is a drastic oversimplification of the case. What happened in 2008 was a culmination of a long process that started long before then. I would argue that the starting point was the 1989 essay "The embarrassing 2nd Amendment" [1] by Sanford Levinson, who is not exactly known for his conservative views otherwise.

In general, as with every other Supreme Court case, I would recommend going to the primary source and reading the majority opinion and dissents [2], since they go over the various arguments in meticulous detail, and judge for yourself.

[1] https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refe...

[2] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf

[Maursault]

Your comment is a Straw Man. My intention was not to summarize the case. Changing the Founders intended meaning of the 2nd to include self-defense was really outrageously skew to the case itself, and entirely unnecessary and irrelevant to the case and the 2nd. It is brazenly false NRA propaganda from the early 20th Century come to fruition and provably not the Founders' intention. The case is incidental, because its effect on the 2nd that is relevant --because the subject was the "difficulty" in changing the US Constitution: it does not take 2/3rds majority of both houses of Congress and a majority of the States legislatures. All it takes is a senile gunnutter on the bench to go beyond the mandate of the highest court and the judicial branch of government: Judges do not legislate. Yet Scalia did, and that part of the decision came out of left field (the idiom would have worked better if it was right field, but that isn't the idiom). The 2nd had a purpose, the purpose was militias, whom the Founders were devoted to, to make a standing army unnecessary, to prevent the consolidation of executive power. But now as an individual right to be armed for the purposes of self-defense it leaves the nation with less and no protection against tyranny. But at least pride has been elevated from an indulgence to a virtue. The last proper exercise of the 2nd will be the Black Panthers at the Alameda County courthouse. That was how the Founders intended the 2nd to work, not as a way to say "don't touch my stuff," not as a source of paranoid mass-delusion.

[int_19h]

The "provably not the Founders' intention" part is the one where you're wrong, and the court opinion specifically discusses this, which is why I recommend that people read it before jumping to conclusions.

By the way, one thing that's often forgotten is that 2A itself was merely an adaptation of similar clauses in state constitutions at the time (many of which explicitly spelled out self-defense as a motivation). At the same time, the original Bill of Rights was all about limiting what the federal government can do, and didn't originally limit the states at all; it was assumed that the respective state constitutions would take care of that, presumably, by expressing the will of their citizens through their own democratic mechanisms. So it's no surprise that the discussion focused mostly on militia - that was the primary concern of the states wrt potential federal government overreach.

When 14A was ratified, and then BoR amendments gradually incorporated against the states, the courts had to reinterpret them accordingly. For example, 1A says that "Congress shall make no law ...", for the same exact reason: the people who wrote it were originally concerned specifically about the power of the federal government. But today, we interpret it as applying to state governments as well, and rather more expansively - and I would hope you'll agree that it's a good thing!

BTW, you seem to be unaware that pro-gun sentiment is alive and well outside of the radical right today - it didn't end with Black Panthers. Some prominent examples include John Brown Gun Club and Huey P. Newton Gun Club.

[Maursault]

> The "provably not the Founders' intention" part is the one where you're wrong, and the court opinion specifically discusses this, which is why I recommend that people read it before jumping to conclusions.

I am afraid not. The court may have had a historical review before discussion, but they did not examine the minutes of the Constitutional Congress, where it can be read plain as day that the Founders discussed at length and intentionally rejected including a right of self-defense in the 2nd. They talked about it and decided against it. To be plain, the Framers of the Constitution did want an armed citizenry, but only for the purposes of militia, and militia for the purposes of a check on tyranny, not for crime or hunting. Back then, pretty much everyone was armed, and they wanted the armed citizenry to form militia and they wanted to prevent the government from disarming the militia. The 2nd was never about about an individual's right of self-defense. Everyone has a right of self-defense, and we do not need the 2nd Amendment to have that right. The court's decision regarding the 2nd in that 2008 case was literally pulled out of thin air, and it will only stand until someone gets around to correcting it, and it may be a technicality, but it's wrong to include self-defense because it weakens the Amendment and reduces or eliminates any check on tyranny.

The point about the Black Panthers was simply to illustrate a proper exercise of the 2nd Amendment in that famous instance at he Alameda County courthouse. Just being a gun club is not an exercise of the 2nd (in its original intent) unless that club arms themselves and assembles in such a way to put themselves' in harms way to prevent tyranny from succeeding.

[int_19h]

"Gun club" is just a name; you should look up what those guys actually do, e.g.: https://psjbgc.org/