Thirdly, "the militia" now is the "unorganized militia" which is every male from a certain age to a certain age, and the National Guard. The "unorganized militia" exists as a non-entity to stop people demanding their right to "bear arms", otherwise known as the right to be in the militia.
This is the area that interests me. The 2nd Amendment seems pretty clear:
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.
Okay. So, a couple of points:
First, it doesn't say "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
AND the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." It's saying
the people can join an actual militia to protect their security.
You are right, it does not say that so one wonders why you even bring it up as it is not relevant in any way.
What it CLEARLY and UNEQUIVOCALLY states is that the
right of the people. Not the right of the state, not the right of the government, not the power of a state, not anything other than the right of the people. Period. End of story. ESDG
The second is clearly an individual right as are EVERY SINGLE OTHER RIGHT mentioned in the BoR. The BoR is, was and forever will be limitations on what the federal government can do. EVERY. SINGLE. AMENDMENT. All of them in the BoR are limitations on the feds in respect to the people. They are not prescriptions on powers the feds have which is exactly what you are making this out to be - a power that the feds or the state has rather than a right the people have.
That the AND is missing from the amendment does not mean the right of the people does not exist. Rather it directly contradicts your statement, if the and had existed THEN you might have a point in claiming you have the 'right' to join a militia however it does not. Even then it would be take pretzel logic to make that key point go away, that the amendment directly states the right of the people. The prefatory clause is clearly outlining the purpose of the right: Well regulated militias are important for a free state as the founders knew because the 'well regulated' militia was key in making the US a free state. Because the militia is made up of the people, they must both be armed and in well regulated order. That is exactly what Miller found:
" The
Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose. The Amendment could be rephrased, “Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” See J. Tiffany, A Treatise on Government and Constitutional Law §585, p. 394 (1867); Brief for Professors of Linguistics and English as
Amici Curiae 3 (hereinafter Linguists’ Brief). Although this structure of the
Second Amendment is unique in our Constitution, other legal documents of the founding era, particularly individual-rights provisions of state constitutions, commonly included a prefatory statement of purpose. See generally Volokh, The Commonplace
Second Amendment , 73 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 793, 814–821 (1998). "
Heller also covers the idea that you 'can join' a militia as something you are simply interjecting into the meaning. The militia is, essentially, everyone.
"Petitioners take a seemingly narrower view of the militia, stating that “[m]ilitias are the state- and congressionally-regulated military forces described in the Militia Clauses (art. I, §8, cls. 15–16).” Brief for Petitioners 12. Although we agree with petitioners’ interpretive assumption that “militia” means the same thing in Article I and the
Second Amendment , we believe that petitioners identify the wrong thing, namely, the organized militia. Unlike armies and navies, which Congress is given the power to create (“to raise … Armies”; “to provide … a Navy,” Art. I, §8, cls. 12–13), the militia is assumed by Article I already to be
in existence. Congress is given the power to “provide for calling forth the militia,” §8, cl. 15; and the power not to create, but to “organiz[e]” it—and not to organize “a” militia, which is what one would expect if the militia were to be a federal creation, but to organize “the” militia, connoting a body already in existence,
ibid., cl. 16. This is fully consistent with the ordinary definition of the militia as all able-bodied men."
Second, it's pretty clear when it says "well regulated". That means that the governing authority can regulate militias as it sees fit, just as it can regulate an army as it sees fit. So those who join the militia must submit to regulations.
Well, no and Heller addressed that as well:
Finally, the adjective “well-regulated” implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training. See Johnson 1619 (“Regulate”: “To adjust by rule or method”); Rawle 121–122; cf. Va. Declaration of Rights §13 (1776), in 7 Thorpe 3812, 3814 (referring to “a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms”).
Which has actually been used in the past but fell out of traditional use pretty quickly after the nation was established. Either way, the prefatory statement not only does not remove the individual right but it would be rather nonsensical to demand that the necessity of a well trained militia being necessary for a free state would somehow equate to removing the right that such a well regulated force would require to exist at all. It is an illogical conclusion to draw.
Nowhere does it infer that individuals can be running around like Yosemite Sam.
Nope, it never says we can run around like Yosemite Sam but no one anywhere is advocating for that so your straw man is pointless. You start out stating that the meaning of the second is pretty clear, make a statement about what it does not say and then go on to utterly and unequivocally ignore the text of the second applying what you want it to mean.
Here is the bottom line - it is a simple fact that the second protects your individual right to bear arms that are both in common use throughout the nation and in military use, period. Trying to read that out of the amendment is simply not possible while being honest with its intent or wording. I get it that many think the amendment is outdated and incorrect in a modern society considering the changes that have happened to arms in the intervening 2 centuries. However, it requires an amendment to change the second and nothing less will do. The left has been trying to pretend basic terminology means something it does not because they know that bar is high but that is simply not going to work. Stop trying to reinterpret the second to something it is not.
