Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: The meaning of the Second Amendment (One Perspective) [View all]jimmy the one
(2,712 posts)discntnt: {Jos Story} is not an individual distant from the founders. This is someone with legal experience and credentials.
So far so good, you're spot on. You were terribly wrong tho, when you wrote this: It is plain that the founders intended the 2A to protect an individual RKBA.
discntnt cherry picks Justice Joseph Story, 1833: "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them..."
Here's Joseph Story's quote in fuller context: The importance of this {2ndA} article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
Note in the fuller context above, Story makes these two contentions:
1 The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers
2 The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
It's obvious he's speaking of the militia, since he praises the militia for the very same thing he praises 'the people' for, protection against the arbitrary or usurped power of rulers. Individuals couldn't do what a militia could.
Story's quote in really fuller context: The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
And yet, thought this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How is it practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights. US Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833)
Final Paragraph above: How could Story think 2ndA applied as an individual right, when he clearly thought that americans waning interest & indifference to militia service, was what would undermine all the protection intended by the 2ndAmendment?
Had he thought it an individual rkba unconnected with militia service, what difference would it have made that americans were indifferent to militia service & wanted to be rid of all regulations?
What discntnt has cited is simply out of context cherry picking, which is how 2ndAmendment Mythology handles this quotation by Justice Story, they have to subert it, just as scalia did in heller.