Originally posted by lazs2
we all speak english here and use it every day..
The USA today poll is saying that out of about half a million Americans who speak english and use it.... that 98% of em feel that the second is indeed a "right"... an individual right.
Is the supreme court gonna tell 98% of the population that they don't know what they are reading? I don't think so.. not to please the one percent like arlo and bingie that think it is some sort of non right... some sort of "collective right"
did the term "collective right" even exist before orwells book 1984? I doubt it.
No.. the second just says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed because we will always need to fight tyranny and an armed populace is always best for that..
from the government being cautious about stepping on rights to japan not even thinking about invasion against an armed populace to burglars in the US being more afraid of armed citizens than even cops to concealed carry making stopping assaults on people...
all forms of tyranny against the individual and the state.
lazs
No it dosnt laz, it says a well regulated militia 1st this insnt hebrew class. and you are just plain wrong.
Btw I like the way you latched on to that poll like it was gods word to you, it is about all you have.
The well-regulated militia referred to in the Second Amendment was, in fact, the 18th-century equivalent to the U.S. Armed Forces. Other than a small force of paid officers (primarily responsible for supervising civilian conscripts), the United States that existed at the time the Second Amendment was proposed had no professional, trained army. Instead it relied almost exclusively on civilian militias for self-defense--in other words, the rounding up of all available men between the ages of 18 and 50. In the event of foreign invasion, there would be no trained military force to hold back the British or the French. The United States relied on the power of its own citizens to defend the country against attack, and had committed to such an isolationist foreign policy that the chances of ever deploying forces overseas seemed remote at best.
This began to change with the presidency of John Adams, who established a professional navy to protect U.S.-bound trade vessels from privateers. Today, there is no military draft at all. The U.S. Army is made up of a mix of full-time and part-time professional soldiers who are trained well, and compensated for their service.
Furthermore, the U.S. Armed Forces have not fought a single battle on home soil since the end of the American Civil War in 1865. Clearly, a well-regulated civilian militia is no longer a military necessity. Does the second clause of the Second Amendment still apply even if the first clause, providing its rationale, is no longer meaningful?
The Gallup/NCC poll found that of the 68% of respondents who believed that the Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, 82% still believe that the government can regulate firearm ownership to at least some extent. Only 12% believe that the Second Amendment prevents the government from restricting ownership of firearms.
The same Gallup/NCC poll cited above also found that 28% of respondents believe that the Second Amendment was created to protect civilian militias, and does not guarantee the right to bear arms. Points in their favor:
While the Founding Fathers may have supported the ownership of slow, expensive powder-loaded rifles, it's doubtful that they would have been able to conceive of shotguns, assault rifles, handguns, and other contemporary weaponry.
The Second Amendment makes no sense without the prospect of civilian militias, as it is clearly a propositional statement.
If you really want to overthrow the government, bearing arms probably isn't enough in 2008. You'd need aircraft to take the skies, hundreds of tanks to defeat ground forces, and a full navy. The only way to reform a powerful government in this day and age is through nonviolent means.
What the majority of Americans believe about the Second Amendment is unsurprising, because a majority of Americans have been misinformed about what the Second Amendment accomplishes and how federal courts have traditionally collectivly interpreted it.
