The meaning of the Second Amendment (One Perspective)

[jimmy the one]

92. semantics

dscntnt: The point has been made numerous times that the BoR "confers" nothing. The BoR .. was passed by popular demand of the individual states to protect preexisting human rights. The BoR operates as a restriction on government to the benefit of individuals.

Scalia in heller: The 2nd Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to {kba}..

This is semantics then, for a bill of rights, by definition, generally lists individual rights, & whether the US bor confers rights or protects existing rights, it's moot semantics for this argument between individual interp vs militia.

dscntnt:Saying that the English BoR of 1689 is a predecessor of the US BoR does not imbue into a successor the same meanings intended for and later ascribed to that predecessor.

Unless scalia explicitly says it does: Scalia, heller: "This {english 1689 'have arms'} right has long been understood to be the predecessor to our 2nd Amendment."... "It was clearly an individual right, having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia. To be sure, it was an individual right not available to the whole population, given that it was restricted to Protestants, and.. was held only against the Crown, not Parliament."

The British Consortium of Scholars disagreed with scalia: The Supreme Court correctly found that the English right to “have arms” was an expression of the same right that has “long been understood to be the predecessor to our Second Amendment.”
Where the Court erred was by interpreting the quoted terms in a manner divorced from their historical context, reading “individual” to mean “private,” “defence” to mean “defense against harm by private individuals acting for private purposes” and equating “self-preservation” with the modern usage of the term “self-defense.” In doing so, the Court relied heavily on the scholarship of Joyce Lee Malcolm. The overwhelming consensus among leading English historians, however, is that Malcolm’s work is flawed on this point.
.. The origins of the 2nd Amendment in the English right to “have arms” demonstrate that this right of self-preservation/self-defense gives individuals the right to collectively defend their public interests against organized assault or tyranny..
.. Moreover, the right of “self-preservation” was to be exercised not by individuals acting privately or independently, but as a militia organized by their elected representatives, whether Parliament, the Boston Town Council, or otherwise.
.. the “self” referred to by these speakers was the public “self”{collectively}.. Thus, the word “people” was also frequently used interchangeably with “Parliament"
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dscntnt: A militia is, as well as I can discern, is a group formed to affect the protection of a its members or a super set of them and to prepare for such eventual protection.

Haha, thanks for demonstrating what a joke the unorganized militia is! Unless you're 17 or younger, you dscntnt don't know what a militia is, yet you've been part of an american militia since you were 17 yrs old!