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With a little editorial freedom, I think there's some clarification possible. The Second Amendment is not written in the lol-speak of our day.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state [of being], [which is, after all] the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
'Regulated' doesn't necessarily mean limited by government. 'Regulator' clocks were so named to suggest they ran precisely. When a printer gets the colors properly aligned in a four color print, he says the colors are properly 'registered'. He doesn't mean the colors have been reported to the government for oversight.
The militia is just plain folks, not the military. The founders wanted them armed. Above all they wanted a good, regular militia. Well regulated, in fact, and the right the militia represents shall not be infringed.
To me it's an issue that for whatever reason seems to always put the test to political philosophy. Like poor old Justice Stevens, I found his dissent to the decision, and in his dissenting opinion he actually says the right to petition the government, as guaranteed in the First Amendment, is primarily a collective right.
That's crazy, and counter to our way of life and government.
I pray for a nonviolent society but unlike the line in Big Rock Candy Mountain, the bulldogs don't all have rubber teeth.
Our government puts limits on my right to live, by the way. There are also lawful and constitutional limits on free speech as well as on my right to keep and bear arms. I do not argue otherwise, but I do ask lawmakers that the example given in the Second Amendment, the need for an armed militia, not be ignored.
It's a very ugly thing when the government ignores civil rights. If we want to ban guns, the first thing to do is make that legal by repealing the Second Amendment.
I would oppose that, even though I may never fire a gun again. Or I might, as a recreational pursuit it just doesn't mean that much one way or the other.
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