Reply #4: Why he is wrong, and knows it.

[Callisto32]

First, a corporation cannot have rights, only powers (edit) and privileges. Rights are reserved to natural persons.

Second:

The Constitution. There are some basic rules of statutory interpretation, and the Constitution is a statute:

You start with the plain language of the statute. "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." I don't think you need to have the plain meaning explained to you.

Statutes are interpreted as a whole, and words in statutes are given consistent definitions. Everywhere else in the constitution, the phrase "the people" refers to individual rights. There is no reason to believe, absent clear language to the contrary, that a different definition is used in the Second Amendment than anywhere else. Also, the people cannot mean a corporate right of the state due to the following language: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

This language indicates that the people are distinct entities from either the federal or state governments, thus "the people" in the Second Amendment must mean the individual people because of the rule that words in statutes are given consistent meanings throughout.

Therefore, you are wrong when you say that the view that the Second Amendment preserves an individual right to keep and bear arms is "insurrectionist and extreme" in the way you seem to mean. It may be insurrectionist, given that the people that wrote it were....GASP....insurrectionists. It may be extreme, but only compared with the authoritarian bent in much of the world. But to use those words to suggest that the NRA's view of the document is somehow incorrect is absurd on its face, given the language of the Constitution.


Edit: This is a copy of something I posted elsewhere, and the last paragraph refers to a different post, but the principles still apply.