Thanks to all who have chimed in. Whether I agree or disagree, I have handed out Lurve to all. I asked for opinions, and thank you for giving them.
Now to my opinion.
@wundayatta Checking the definition of “militia” in Merriam Webster, I find this:
1 a : a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in
emergency
b : a body of citizens organized for military service
2 : the whole body of able-bodied male citizens declared by law as being subject to call to military service
I see nothing in that definition suggesting that a single person is a well regulated militia. If every single individual person is a “well regulated militia” then the gunman who murdered the police officer on the Virginia Tech campus yesterday simply because the officer was doing his job was a well regulated militia. Pushing that idea is an extremely hard sell. By that standard, known homicidal maniacs are well regulated militias and must be allowed to carry loaded weapons wherever they wish. They cannot be intefered with in any way till they actually open fire on innocent people.
@john65pennington I tend to think that’s what the Framers were really getting at. In the late 1700s, it is likely that many citizens walked about with a sidearm. It was necessary to survival. But I am confident that the Framers, if aware of today’s complex, contentions and often insane society, would not want rouge maniacs able to pack heat legally; and only subject to censure after they start randomly killing people.
@Dutchess_III There is certainly truth to that. Paranoid schizophrenics are likely to be the first in line to carry a loaded weapon at all times, certain that their lives are in imminent threat of destruction form all the dark forces (in their tortured minds) conspiring against them
@zenvelo I don’t think we have a Supreme Court any longer. We instead have a Supreme Corporatocracy that decides cases strictly on the basis of what’s best for the corporate interests that paid so much to pack the court. The gun lobby clearly wants to sell as many weapons as possible. They would love an arms race where each American tried to outdo the firepower of everyone else. The Supreme Corporatocracy’s job is to find some wild rationale whereby, with generous spin. the Constitution justifies what they want to do for the profit of their benefactors. The Constitution itself be damned.
@Coloma Well said. Those examples hardly sound like a “well regulated militia”.
@Blackberry The Virginia Tech shooting is certainly a sore point right now. What @john65pennington said would have not allowed that nut-case to legally have a loaded firearm in his car. That’s not to say that a criminal would never break the law—just that when they break reasonable gun control regulations and get caught, they are stopped before killing a bunch of innocent people.
@Dutchess_III I would be armed in the country too, but not to pack heat everywhere I went. I’d go for a 5-shot repeating shotgun. For home defense, it’s second only to a full-automatic assault rifle or machine gun.
@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard I understand full well what you are saying. I do not agree that almost all able bodied males are sane and cool headed enough to carry a loaded weapon and pose no threat except to those who directly threaten them. Yes, with restrictions, criminals can carry weapons into controlled zones and oepn fire. It happens—as it has twice now at Virginia Tech. But far more often they are caught with an illegal weapon and stopped before they are able to kill with it.
And what ever happened to your committeemen to only post one thought? :-)
@wonderingwhy That’s a pretty good synopsis of the debate. Thanks
@LuckyGuy Why concealed when you are in the woods?
@Hypocrisy_Central The question is not about what you want the Constitution to say, it is about what it * actually* says. We can selectively roll out anecdotes to prove both sides of the debate. But that, again, isn’t the question. The question is what is meant by the actual wording of the 2nd Amendment.
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