first, thanks everyone for remaining civil. It makes discussion of an obviously hot topic much easier and ensures that opinions on the issue are heard, not just blasting a one another unnecessarily. Kudos for that accomplishment, it's not always an easy thing to do :)
To the subject of enumerating natural laws - I agree, to an extent. I agree that the framers viewed these rights as things that should just be. I also agree that the culture of the times was a religious one, however I do not believe that religion begets morality. I feel that a person is moral or immoral, good or bad, based one their character not their religion. It is purely coincidental that they were religious. There is a wealth of examples that support what I'm saying there... no need to quote them here, they're so easy to find. I believe that the framers had pure intentions and motivation in their enumeration of these rights. That said, I still believe that they were put to paper for a good reason. The framers wanted to ensure that these values carried on in their new union. They wanted to ensure that their new government provided these rights to their citizens.
srothstein wrote:I hope you don't see this as a flame, but I broke out some points of yours that I disagreed with. Some are just clarifications and I think we might be disagreeing on the meanings of some terms. Others are basic philosophy questions that we may or may not ever come to agreement on. After all, reasonable men can disagree on basic philosophy and still respect each other and work together.
This is certainly not a flame. I applaud your civility :)
srothstein wrote:djjoshuad wrote:I know that a lot of people believe that the word "unconditionally" is implied with each of the bill of rights. I don't know where that comes from.
I agree with you for almost all of the amendments, but definitely not for the Second. When you read the other amendments, almost all of them have some wording limiting the right. Note that int he first, the amendment does not state that the rights are unlimited, and solely mentions Congress making no law. Int he Fourth, the right is against unreasonable searches and seizures, not all searches.
I would argue that the wording is poorly chosen, but we must respect it as it is written. I believe that if the authors' intentions were as you stated, they would have been at least a bit more verbose. There is, of course, no way to know for sure. We can infer intention based on other documents from the same authors, which do seem to support your theory. That said, I still refer back to the cultural differences between then and now. Disarming citizens was practically inconceivable to the people of that time, unless it was done with malice in an attempt to gain an unfair advantage. Consider the preceding wars and the general environment. In that context, I read this as prevention of tyranny (like Hoi Polloi said) in a time where the people had *very* recently been ruled by a tyrannical monarchy. It was a union of states that had just fought the bloodiest war of their lifetimes and declared independence from Britain. I believe that because of this, the intent of the 2A was to provide for regulated militias AND to keep citizens armed. I don't think it has any application to the public arena in today's society.
srothstein wrote:They were used to men carrying firearms and swords openly visible, so I cannot believe they intended to only allow concealed or just around your own property. As late as the reconstruction period, men who carried concealed weapons were generally looked down upon, while carrying openly was accepted as normal. That was also the period when men in the large cities started going unarmed and relying on police forces, so there might be some tie in to that point. Before then, there were no police forces and everyone carried when they felt it was needed.
This furthers what I was trying to say above. People of that time carried weapons all the time because it was absolutely necessary. Not being armed wasn't just a little risky, like it is today. Not being armed in that time meant certain vulnerability and likely harm to your person. A man carrying a weapon openly, walking down main street USA, was normal and no cause for alarm. Today is a much different society. A man doing the same thing today would cause great alarm - right or wrong, it's how society has evolved. At this point, it will take "corrective" action to get society to feel differently.
srothstein wrote:This is why I believe open carry can be called constitutional carry. But to be fair, we use the term constitutional carry to mean more than just OC, but the removal of the laws on requiring permits or any restrictions. Well, that is how I understand the term.
I did not mean to imply that OC = "constitutional carry". I hold that it means "unregulated" in this context. I think we have the same definition for it. I disagree, however, that unregulated carry is actually constitutional.
srothstein wrote:Also, the constitution of the united states is not about enumerating rights granted by any particular god (the word "god" is not written once in the constitution). It's about rights granted by the government to its citizens.
This is really a philosophy of law question, and you are welcome to believe it. But if you hold that position, I would ask how you justify the 9th Amendment's protection of other rights not listed but retained by the people. To me, that implies that the list given is a guarantee of certain rights being respected, and not a granting of rights at all.
To me, the 9th amendment is as vague as any statement of law can get. I read it as "hey, just in case we missed somethin'..." I don't think that answers your question though. For that, I reaffirm what I said earlier - I believe it is an enumeration of moral rights that should be bestowed upon any human by any governing body. They put it to paper to ensure that their new union respected these core values and did not become tyrannical. I do not believe that religion has anything to do with it. Many of the framers were coincidentally religious, but the rights are human rights, not religious ones.
srothstein wrote:The 2A even uses the term "well regulated"... unregulated open carry seems to go against the 2nd amendment, not with it. Calling unregulated carry "constitutional" is not only incorrect, I believe it is irresponsible.
In addition to my above answer on OC, I would point out that the well-regulated referred to the militia and not the carrying of firearms. A militia, or any military, must be well regulated in order to work. The Roman Legion proved this - a small disciplined (or well regulated) military group can defeat a much larger undisciplined mob.
I contend that the statement is a whole, not two parts. If you separate the first half from the second, it has no place in law - it is just a statement of opinion about hypothetical militias. The second half can stand on its own, but I don't think it was meant to. The "well regulated" part *does* refer to the militia, but the keeping and bearing of arms does as well. Therefore, so does the regulation in my opinion. Again, this is poorly worded at best... If the FF had any idea what debate this wording would cause for the centuries following their writing, they surely would have worded it differently :)
srothstein wrote:One of the things I have always loved about our Constitution, and admired in it, is the very vagueness which makes it so frustrating to apply sometimes. As you say, our world has changed tremendously since the Constitution was written, and we have really needed very few changes in it. Some were necessary to correct flaws (like allowing women to vote and counting all people equally) but most of the changes were not really necessary and could be seen as minor improvements (like the way we elect senators). There were a couple that were wrong to make (and one - prohibition - was later repealed as wrong).
So, I think the current Constitution needs very little changes to keep it working. The beauty of it is that we can apply the general concepts written into it for the new technology and situations and it will continue to work. For example, we applied the term "press" very liberally when radio and TV were invented and the protection guaranteeing freedom of the press apply to these unforeseen technologies also. As general attitudes change, we change the definitions of some of the other terms to keep the intent going, such as not executing minors because it might be cruel and unusual punishment.
my point was that the constitution has proven fallible. Many people put it on a pedestal and insist that (usually their interpretation of it) is perfect and not open to question or revision. I argue that this sentiment isn't true, as evidenced by 27 amendments. While I agree that many were minor and at least one was flat-out wrong, I believe the rest uphold my opinion.
srothstein wrote:But the one point where I strongly disagree with you is on what the Second was intended to protect. It was not intended to grant protection from raiders, or even local criminals. To me, those are side benefits of it. It was intended to protect the people's right to restructure the government when it became necessary. I see the primary purpose of the Second as being to allow every person the means to defend himself against a tyrannical government. And the mention of militias in the amendment is because we keep hoping that neighbors will protect each other. And yes, to me that certainly means that the worst infringements of our rights are assault weapons bans and the ban on any non-governmental militia that we currently have in Texas.
I'm not sure that you and I are going to find a lot of common ground on this point, however I do agree that a ban on non-governmental militia is in direct conflict with the 2nd amendment. In my opinion, most of the bill of rights is a "sins of our fathers" sort of thing - they wanted to ensure that life under the new union did not become what life was under the old monarchy. 2A strengthens that - the government should not be the only legally armed entity. I still stand by my previous assertions. The disarming of the public in 1776 (well, 1791 since we're talking bill of rights) would have meant certain death for that public. By the hands of raiders, animals, or other do-badders. There simply was not enough law enforcement to prevent it. I'm not suggesting that the FF thought "well, we will let them have guns until we get enough cops." I'm trying to suggest that the way of life for them was an openly armed way of life. There was no feasible or forseeable alternative. Today there is. It is no longer necessary for one to be armed in order to survive daily life. Threats do still exist, even ones that are outside the reasonable protection of local law enforcement. For that reason, I believe that citizens should arm themselves. But we also live in drastically closer quarters than we did back then. We have new drugs and abnormalities that did not exist or were not as prevalent back then. Your average citizen has access to others on a scale that would have stupefied any of the founding fathers. We have a lot more "idle hands" than ever before... regulation of firearms is paramount.
For the same reasons I support regulation of firearms, I support campus carry and the employer parking lot bills. I (cautiously) support open carry. I want the good guys to have guns. I know that the bad guys will get them, regardless of the laws, but I want to make it tougher for them, and for them to be more heavily punished when they do break the laws. Unregulated ownership and carrying of firearms threatens our ability to do that. But... I digress. This is about OC, not about gun control. BTW - go mavs :)
