The US supreme court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in a case which gun and domestic violence prevention groups are warning could be a matter of life and death for thousands of abuse victims and their families.
Tuesday’s hearing on United States v Rahimi is seen as one of the most consequential cases with which the nine justices will grapple this term. At stake is how far the new hard-right supermajority of the court will go in unraveling the US’s already lax gun laws, even as the country reels from a spate of devastating mass shootings.
Also at stake, say experts, are the lives of thousands of Americans, overwhelmingly women, threatened with gun violence at the hands of their current or former intimate partners.
That gun ownership is just presumed to be a given, without any actual responsibility attached to it seems like a purposeful misreading of that amendment. “Well-Regulated Militia” seems to be the main point and requirement of gun ownership. The intent at the time seemed to be, “We don’t have (or want) a standing army, but we need people to own guns in case some shit goes down.” They expected they would need to call upon citizens in a crisis situation and it was a BYOG (Bring Your Own Gun) arrangement.
Well, we have a standing army now and if a citizen wants to volunteer to protect their nation, there’s the National Guard. The whole point behind the 2nd Amendment is gone now. Nothing in the 2nd Amendment talks about owning a gun because you’re a hobbyist and you just like playing around with high-powered rifles. There’s more restrictions around owning/driving cars than there seems to be around owning a gun.
You realize that this is still the case though, right? When someone is actively trying to kick your front door down, how long do you think that it’s going to take the cops to respond? I can tell from personal experience that if you live near Douglas Park in Chicago, the answer is “never”, even after three calls to 911. If you’re not white and call the cops, you’re likely to end up dead.
It should be pointed out that the ‘well-regulated militia’ during the time the nation was founded consisted of regular white men with guns that could be called up on a moment’s notice to fight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minutemen
I’m not sure how regulated they were, but their structure likely influenced the drafting of the second amendment.
One historical review I read before linked the Second Amendment to a popular uprising that had happened not too long before the drafting of the Constitution, the Regulator movement. It was a series of popular uprisings against corruption that happened before the founding of the country, and there was apparently some trouble in assembling an army to put it down. So the Second Amendment was, in effect, a way to help make it easier to put down revolts in the future, which runs completely counter to the narrative that Second amendment supporters give now that the reason they’re supposed to own guns is to protect themselves from a tyrannical government, it was the opposite intent if anything.
Well, what do you think makes more sense?
Even with the most generous reading of the amendment, the word “regulated” is literally in there.
Regulated in the 1780s regulated meant equipped not controlled. Language changes, but intent does not.
It still meant disciplined and organized. Random citizen having weapons for personal use was not the intent of the amendment. A modern regulation is a way to ensure order, so still in keeping with the meaning if you’re an originalist.
Discipline and organization yes. However guns were private property that you were expected to supply yourself. That is how the recient revolution got weapons.