7 dead, 7 wounded in Santa Barbara shooting rampage

Do you really think that's a good argument? That they are both under the category of "check on government" and therefore must be equally effective, equally socially valuable and equally important?

Honestly. Do you feel comfortable saying that is an argument you are making?

 

Guns are necessary for a well-regulated militia. What well-regulated militias do all of these shooters belong to?

 

This is a commonly proffered argument, but my understanding is that it holds very little water among Constitutional scholars. What is known as "The Standard Model" of the Second Amendment (current journos ... what is the style there ... 2nd Amendment, Second Amendment ...?) dismisses the treatment of its justification clause ("A well-regulated ...) as an enabler of its operative clause ("..., the right to keep and bear arms ...). Put another way, just because the Framers felt it necessary to provide a justification clause for the individual right to keep and bear arms doesn't mean that they intended to condition said right on the necessity/presence of a militia.

Check out these links (web versions of academic articles) if you're interested:

http://www.guncite.com/journals/reycrit.html

http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/common.htm

And @RickStain, like it or not that was the mindset of the drafters of the Second.

 

Oh, the hell he isn't. "Why" is one of the first questions we ask.

 

You are absolutely right. The semantic "well-regulated militia" argument just doesn't hold up, as far as I'm concerned. The clause is declarative and the right is listed out pretty unambiguously, regardless of the reasoning listed before it. It doesn't say "The right of the people to keep and bear arms as part of a well-regulated militia shall not be infringed." And the founders clearly didn't mean it that way.

Fortunately, I don't give two craps what some outdated document says or what people whose grandchildren are all dead meant. Guns are harming our society, and if the governing document of our society prevents us from fixing that harm, then it is the document that is in err. And it's not as if we don't have a long history of radically reinterpreting it or ignoring it as our needs evolve.

 

I am not for revoking the 2nd Amendment, but it matters not what the framers intended beyond their willingness to allow the document to be amended.

 

And some small, small part of the answer is "because of the way it is reported."

 

I don't think all 141 pages needed to be released to the public before the bodies were even laid to rest.
I have read a lot of tedious crap in my life, but nothing- anything- quite like that.

 

So, in other words, somebody like say, Lee Harvey Oswald, could kill the president and claim that they are merely executing their constitutional right to rebel against a repressive government?

 

Disagree. That it was reported at all is a bigger factor than how, IMO.

Which is to say, never report killers and bad things.

 

How quaint.

 

Ain't it?