The Second Amendment Has Nothing to Do with Gun Ownership [View all]

[liberal N proud]

The Gun Lobby's interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies - the militia - would be maintained for the defense of the state. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.

Retired Chief Justice Warren Burger, "The Right to Bear Arms," Parade Magazine, January 14, 1990.
In 2008, this fraud was furthered by Mr. Scalia, joined by his fellow ideologues Thomas, Alito, Roberts and Kennedy. Yet five zealots in black robes cannot change the historical record. Writing something down on paper or pushing the send button to the internet doesn't make it so. Scalia and gang, in ganging together to pen District of Columbia v. Heller, cannot change history, anymore than a Truther diary about how the 9-11 hijackers were Republican ideologues giving their lives for Bush and Cheney, makes such idiocy so.

In its 2002 decision Silveira v. Lockyer, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals provided a very detailed, extensive, and well researched examination of the historical record surrounding the adoption of the Second Amendment. Although Silveira v. Lockyer would overturned by Messrs. Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy in 2008, the 9th Circuit's outstanding research surpasses both Scalia's NRA talking points that passes for a Supreme Court decision, as well as Justice Stevens' far more persuasive dissent. This diary provides a summary of the Ninth Circuit's research that led to that court's conclusion that the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of the states to form militias, and was not intended to allow anyone and everyone without restriction to buy whatever guns may be on the market. I hope, in a future diary, to analyze Scalia's Heller opinion and illustrate why Scalia is wrong and a hypocrite to claim that he is governed by original intent.

The Second Amendment states:

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.

"he original intent of the Second Amendment was to protect the right of the states to form and maintain state militias"


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/25/1171716/-The-Second-Amendment-Has-Nothing-to-Do-with-Gun-Ownership#

State Militias = National Guard!

Well regulated could be restrictions on certain types of weapons.