Featured Do You Have the Right to Bear Arms?

15th Amendment
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

19th amendment
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

26th Amendment
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

"The right of the citizens ....to vote." What am I missing?

 

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Everything, specifically and precisely which I bolded in our quotes. These serve to create certain parameters.....not to establish a "right" itself.....Consider one thing....The SCOTUS held this opinion in Bush V Gore.....They held it unanimously....imagine....Antonin Scalia :saint: and David Hackett Souter walking arm in arm :1_grouphug: in a 9-0 decision

 

Show me. Provide a link.

 

Not strange at all. The majority also had slaves. Yet they wrote loftily and, for the most part, correctly on the freedoms of man. They also did not allow their wives to vote, let alone others that were not in their rarefied status. (John Adams, influenced by his wife Abigail, was able to see woman suffrage, but it lasted only a few years.)

Lets not forget the point of the OP: Do we have the constitutional right to have firearms. The OP is not about the inconsistencies (which they themselves felt) of the original framers.

Neither am I necessarily totally arguing against us having firearms. I am just saying it is not a constitutionally given right.

 

This is an oft-quoted hypothetical. Experience has shown that guns do much more inadvertent harm than timely protection.

I don't like the way the argument is phrased as if the one against the proliferation of guns is somehow not manly, not willing to protect his family. As Christians we should also know that we have God to protect us (just waiting for responses on that one).

When Ezra, as part of the post-exile return to Israel, went back with his entourage to the Jerusalem he was ashamed to ask from the Persian king armed protection, because he had said that God was with them. Instead they prayed to God.

I believe there is an application here that Christians should consider.

 

Hi Luke,

My time is short now, but let me just answer that last part for now. Yes, we are not specifically forbidden to have firearms. But this is getting away from the original OP question.

More later. Today promises to be busy, but I hope to come back to some other points you raised.

Take care.

 

What evidence do you have that the constitution was not originally intended for personal ownership and carrying of firearms? Also did you look at the link I gave?

 

Yes, I did look at it. Right now I just don't have time to delve too deeply into this. I did read the contention at this link that the founders intended most of the populace to b armed. I have problems with that for several reasons. One is the impression I had from reading the Federalist Papers, which, much more than a document from just 30 years ago, gives us a more accurate appraisal as to just what was on their minds when they wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Besides this is the more important issue, at least to my thinking, and that is: What should a Christian's view of firearms be? This is not quite the same as: What rights do we have as citizens.

 

Your question about Christians has nothing to do with the OP. You made a claim and I would like to see your evidence to that claim.
You mentioned the federalist papers and nether do they agree with your statement. The bearing of arms was so the people could rise up against the government if needed.
Here is a link to those papers;
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/quotes/arms.html



Here is just two quotes;

• If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual State. In a single State, if the persons entrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair.
  -- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28

• "That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms ... "
  -- Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Pierce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850)

So again can you shed some light on your claim?

 

Nope. Not now anyways. I just don't have time. I have too many irons on the fire. If I can get time later I will revisit this. I have a publishing deadline that I must meet, as well as my teaching load.

I do appreciate your writing what you wrote, except for the seeming heat (no pun intended) in your response. I took note of some things. Believe me, I have no horses in this race, and am quite willing to modify my position on the Constitutional part of it. But I am more convinced on the Christian aspect. If I do write more, I believe it will be n this "take a sword" aspect. To me, that is more important, even, than the Constitution.

 

Absolutely.

 

But this is not about what we should do but rather what is our rights.

 

Second Amendment - Bearing Arms
Amendment Text | Annotations

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

2nd Amendment Annotations
Prior to the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller,1 the courts had yet to definitively state what right the Second Amendment protected. The opposing theories, perhaps oversimplified, were (1) an "individual rights" approach, whereby the Amendment protected individuals' rights to firearm ownership, possession, and transportation; and (2) a "states' rights" approach, under which the Amendment only protected the right to keep and bear arms in connection with organized state militia units.2 Moreover, it was generally believed that the Amendment was only a bar to federal action, not to state or municipal restraints.3

However, the Supreme Court has now definitively held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that weapon for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Moreover, this right applies not just to the federal government, but to states and municipalities as well.

In Heller, the Court held that (1) the District of Columbia's total ban on handgun possession in the home amounted to a prohibition on an entire class of "arms" that Americans overwhelmingly chose for the lawful purpose of self-defense, and thus violated the Second Amendment; and (2) the District's requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock also violated the Second Amendment, because the law made it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense.

The Court reasoned that the Amendment's prefatory clause, i.e., "[a] well regulated

Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," announced the Amendment's purpose, but did not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause, i.e., "the

right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Moreover, the prefatory clause's history comported with the Court's interpretation, because the prefatory clause stemmed from the Anti-Federalists' concern that the federal government would disarm the people in order to disable the citizens' militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule.

Further, the Court distinguished United States v.Miller,4 in which the Court upheld a statute requiring registration under the National Firearms Act of sawed-off shotguns, on the ground that Miller limited the type of weapon to which the Second Amendment right applied to those in common use for lawful purposes.

In McDonald v. Chicago,5 the Court struck down laws enacted by Chicago and the village of Oak Park effectively banning handgun possession by almost all private citizens, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Second Amendment right, recognized in Heller, to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense.

The Court reasoned that this right is fundamental to the nation's scheme of ordered liberty, given that self-defense was a basic right recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present, and Heller held that individual self-defense was "the central component" of the Second Amendment right. Moreover, a survey of the contemporaneous history also demonstrated clearly that the Fourteenth Amendment's Framers and ratifiers counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to the Nation's system of ordered liberty.



Footnotes
554 U.S. ____ (2008).

A sampling of the diverse literature in which the same historical, linguistic, and case law background is the basis for strikingly different conclusions includes: Staff of Subcomm. on the Constitution, Senate Comm. on the Judiciary, 97th Congress, 2d Sess., The Right to Keep and Bear Arms (Comm. Print 1982); Don B. Kates, Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment (1984); Gun Control and the Constitution: Sources and Explorations on the Second Amendment (Robert J. Cottrol, ed. 1993); Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right (1984); Symposium, Gun Control, 49 Law & Contemp. Probs. 1 (1986); Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637 (1989).

SeePresser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265 (1886); see also Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535 (1894); Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275, 281-282 (1897).

307 U.S. 174 (1939).

This is one of the best articles I have seen explaining the relationship of the 2nd and 14th Amendments. The Constitution gives citizens as individuals the right to bear arms, and the limitations imposed by the Federal, state, and local governments have been held Constitutional, except when the law totally renders the firearm useless, as in the case the of the DC law passed.

I have never been a fan of guns, and do not care do own my own personal arsenal. That gives me no right to tell others what to do. My family's use of guns is limited to home and automobile protection in a manner my home state allows. It seems to me a couple of pistols and a shot gun accomplishes that goal. As explained earlier, crossing state borders sometimes (like the KY-IL border) changes the rules totally, so I do not even bother to try and figure out all the ends and outs. The gun stays at home the few times I travel there. States to the south and west are generally ok.

It seems the latest fad is getting a concealed weapons license, which is nothing more than sitting through a short class and hitting a target a blind person could hit. It is a great way for the state and whoever wants to teach the course to make extra income. The license does not signify firearms expertise. One gets the impression most are more interested in being James Bond than protecting their family. Guns are not a toy, nor an ego booster.

Debating the right to bear arms is one thing, the intent of the heart is quite another.