I’m going to compile an informational thread about why membership in a militia was never a requirement to keep and bear arms. I know LLM won’t bother to read it and learn anything, but if y’all help spread it around, it’ll reach more reasonable and rational people!
We’ll start with the words of the founders themselves explaining why they meant the 2A to be an individual right rather than a collective right.
"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
- Samuel Adams, Ratifying Convention, 1788
"I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers."
- George Mason
“A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves…and include.., all men capable of bearing arms… "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
- RH Lee
"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed." - Thomas Jefferson
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Unfortunately nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force you are ruined. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun." - Patrick Henry
“Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American...The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but...in the hands of the people.”
- Tench Coxe, Rep. for Penn., 1788-89
"Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defence, the militia, is put in the hands of Congress?" PATRICK HENRY, 3 Elliot Debates at 48.
Now let’s look to the scholars, the experts: Thomas M. Cooley, one of the leading legal minds of the 19th century and Chief Justice of Michigan’s Supreme Court from 1864 to 1885, wrote definitively about the Second Amendment. In his 1898 book The General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United States of America, Cooley not only addressed but ultimately dismissed the suggestion the amendment protected only a “militia right.”
“It may be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent[…],” he wrote. “The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms, and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose.”
“First, there is no question that “bear arms” was used during the founding period to describe carrying weapons in individual and civilian contexts, outside of service in an organized militia or other military unit.”
firearmslaw.duke.edu/2021/07/legal-…
“the Second Amendment accordingly guarantees the right to carry weapons “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,”
-SCOTUS, Caetano v Massachusetts
“...the States cannot...prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government.”
-SCOTUS, Presser v Illinois (1886)
“The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes”
- SCOTUS, DC vs Heller
Feel free to add on to this and I’ll link those tweets into the overall thread!
We don’t have to guess what the founders meant. We can actually look at their words.
People like LLM don’t want to do this tho bc the narrative is more important to them than the truth.
They cannot simply accept this truth and adjust the way they advocate for gun control. That would be entirely too rational.
I muted the previous conversation when I realized that LLM is not intellectually honest enough to discuss this rationally and in good faith.
Maybe this thread will reach a gun control advocate who is.
@RBottowski @robertvitiello4 In any case, CA already proved that UBGCs don’t reduce gun crimes. Why would we implement an ineffective law? How would this even be enforced without a national gun registry, which is unconstitutional?
fee.org/articles/calif…
@RBottowski @robertvitiello4 In fact, California as a whole can be used to dismantle gun control.
California is a gun controller’s wet dream, as far as laws go.
And California is the mass shooting capital of the US.
@RBottowski @robertvitiello4 I was perfectly civil lol
@JDTomba @SandmanSlim02 @RBottowski @robertvitiello4 Even then, this would only let them know who went thru an FFL dealer to purchase a gun. No way to keep track of private sales.
Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of."
- James Madison, Federalist No. 46, January 29, 1788
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