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"The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun."
Patrick Henry
Shall we place it in context?
"Our militia shall have two sets of arms, double sets of regimentals, &c.; and thus, at a very great cost, we shall he doubly armed. The great object is that every man be armed. But can the people afford to pay for double sets of arms, &c? Every one who is able may have a gun. But we have learned, by experience, that, necessary as it is to have arms, and though our Assembly has, by a succession of laws for many years, endeavored to have the militia completely armed, it is still far from being the case."
When you read the quote, you realize that he is talking about arming the militia at public expense (with arms that would presumably be "kept" with the other militia stores, it is highly doubtful that the assembly is funding private hunting weapons.)
This quote also has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. He is objecting to Article 1, Section 8, this particular provision:
"To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; "
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3 comments:
You're just going to piss off anonymous with that kind of logic, Pete. Don't you know that the founding fathers wanted each of us to glue guns to the hands of newborns to make sure they could overthrow the government when they invaded Iraq without any justification?
from U.S. v. Emerson:
I concur in the opinion except for Section V. I choose not to join Section V, which concludes that the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment is an individual right, because it is dicta and is therefore not binding on us or on any other court. The determination whether the rights bestowed by the Second Amendment are collective or individual is entirely unnecessary to resolve this case and has no bearing on the judgment we dictate by this opinion. The fact that the 84 pages of dicta contained in Section V are interesting, scholarly, and well written does not change the fact that they are dicta and amount to at best an advisory treatise on this long-running debate......If the majority was only filling the Federal Reporter with page after page of non-binding dicta there would be no need for me to write separately. As I have said, nothing in this case turns on the original meaning of the Second Amendment, so no court need follow what the majority has said in that regard. Unfortunately, however, the majority's exposition pertains to one of the most hotly-contested issues of the day. By overreaching in the area of Second Amendment law, the majority stirs this controversy without necessity when prudence and respect for stare decisis calls for it to say nothing at all. See CASS R. SUNSTEIN, ONE CASE AT A TIME: JUDICIAL MINIMALISM AND THE SUPREME COURT 5 (1999)("[A] minimalist path usually--not always, but usually--makes a good deal of sense when the Court is dealing with a constitutional issue of high complexity about which many people feel deeply and on which the nation is divided (on moral or other grounds).") (italics in original). Indeed, in the end, the majority today may have done more harm than good for those who embrace a right to gunownership.
Please explain how (or why) Justice Scalia and others of his way of thinking believe the constitution (and, I suppose, by extention, the bill of rights) are not living documents. Does this manner of thought apply to the reasons we suffer (or will be suffering) by such conservative thinkers?
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