Independents' thread for discussing gun issues

Hmmm. Maybe Glenn Beck can help me with the correct translations of late 18th century speech, instead? Certainly, this guy has it wrong. Right, rights?

Who here has alluded to this quote?

I have seen it "elsewhere".
We have seen several other quotes appearing "elsewhere" being repeated here.
So, when I debate "elsewhere", I tend to share the same information here.

ok, just trying to clarify the point you are trying to make.

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108505 Words from "conservative intelligentsia member" William F. Buckley, Jr.

William F. Buckley, Jr.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/w...20020410.shtml
April 10, 2002

Exit gun control

News stories from around the nation identifying gun control as a trip-wire issue dividing conservatives and liberals don't surprise. The events of Sept. 11 have heightened the resolution of the "individual rights" interpreters of the Second Amendment. These are distinguished from the "collective rights" faction. The former stare the language in the face and come away with a reading different from the collective crowd.

At issue is the interpretation of a single sentence: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Opponents of comprehensive gun-control laws view this as a constitutional guarantee of the right of Americans to own guns. An easy way to put it is that they view the amendment as if the initial clause were irrelevant, leaving us simply with a guarantee against federal gun control that challenges the right of citizens to own weapons.


By contrast, of course, there are those (roughly speaking, the nation's intelligentsia) who insist that the Second Amendment goes no further than to say that Congress may not legislate against the right of individual states to organize militias of arms-bearing citizens.


The learned arguments go on and on. The gun-control lobby has suffered two severe blows in the recent period. One of them is that professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard, much esteemed by American liberals in part because of his enthusiasm for abortion rights, having examined the historical documents, opines that indeed the people who framed the Bill of Rights intended to guarantee individual, not merely collective, gun-ownership rights. And the 5th Circuit ruled in the same direction in United States v. Emerson.


As with other contentions requiring constitutional interpretation, the division over gun control is only one part historical: What did the framers intend? Another, more significant part, is political: What does the American public want? But it's better, and safer, to ask the question: What do the American people reasonably want?


It probably could be established by polling that the American people would be happy to hang anybody who burns the U.S. flag, but such sentiments are not likely to be codified. It's more fruitful to argue reasonable limitations on gun ownership. A comic routine in Las Vegas in 1980 featured a debate between presidential contenders Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter on the matter of gun control, Walter Cronkite presiding.


"What about atom bombs, Governor Reagan? Do you believe the Constitution guarantees the right of individuals to have atom bombs?"


"Well, Mr. Cronkite," the comedian answered pensively, "just small atom bombs."


The assertion of a right at ridiculous lengths -- the absolutization of it, in the manner of the American Civil Liberties Union -- is a way of undermining it. If the Constitution says you can say anything you want under any circumstances, then you can shout "fire" in a crowded movie theater. If you have the right to remain silent in all circumstances, then you can decline to give testimony vital to another citizen's freedom and rights. If you insist that a citizen has the right to own a machine gun, you discredit his right to own a pistol or a rifle.


What ripened in the aftermath of Sept. 11 was a sensibility of the individual citizen's dependence, at the margin, on his own resources. George Will put it pithily (as ever), when he asked, Call for a cop, an ambulance and a pizza, and ask which is likelier to get to you first. A rifle in the closet wouldn't have been useful against the swooping 767s that struck the Twin Towers. But a sense of the implications of chaos and anarchy was sharpened. An analyst 20 years ago remarked that an 82-year-old couple living in an apartment in the Bronx, after twice being assaulted, found it possible to sleep at night only after acquiring a pistol and advertising its presence on a note pinned to the outside door.


Both sides will find it useful to temper extreme expressions of their positions. But it is certainly true that at this moment it is likelier that members of Congress running for election or re-election in November will not press the collective interpretation of the Second Amendment.


William F. Buckley, Jr. is editor of National Review, a TownHall.com member group.

It is NOT in any of his addresses.

I withdraw the quote.

I thank you for the correction.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government"

-- Thomas Jefferson

This IS a correct quote and wording. It is verifiable.

"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good"

-- George Washington

This IS a correct quote and wording. It is verifiable.

At issue is the interpretation of a single sentence: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

it is certainly true that at this moment it is likelier that members of Congress running for election or re-election in November will not press the collective interpretation of the Second Amendment

Federalist #46 quotes:

..

These gentlemen (adversaries of the Constitution) must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments (federal and state), whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other.

...

If, therefore, as has been elsewhere remarked, the people should in future become more partial to the federal than to the State governments, the change can only result from such manifest and irresistible proofs of a better administration, as will overcome all their antecedent propensities. And in that case, the people ought not surely to be precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover it to be most due; but even in that case the State governments could have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously administered.

...

But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other.

...

The argument under the present head may be put into a very concise form, which appears altogether conclusive. Either the mode in which the federal government is to be constructed will render it sufficiently dependent on the people, or it will not. On the first supposition, it will be restrained by that dependence from forming schemes obnoxious to their constituents. On the other supposition, it will not possess the confidence of the people, and its schemes of usurpation will be easily defeated by the State governments, who will be supported by the people.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government , and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

I reckon we'll see if they try to take them away. LOL!

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Militia

Minutemen

Law is based on intent---only. Nothing else matters.

If law is based on emotion, it is not intent.

If a judge interjects his biased opinion on a subject and their personality is interjected into a law, we have breach of contract.

If example they base law in international law, this is a breach of contract with our own rule of law the U.S. Constitution.

If law is based on opinion the opinion varies and after time, as we have now, intent is truly lost in time.

So, the plural would be in this case--Minutemen

That dictionary is second generation founder.

You also ignore that INTENT is LAW. The ONLY way we find intent is to look to the founders. As I said if we don't intent is lost in time. To do less is MAKING UP LAW along the way and a breach of contract, that contract being "The United States Constitution."

Well regulated.

Let me ask you statists something.

Why do we need city, county and state governments if we have a federal government?

(Careful, it's a trick question. No matter how you answer it, I'll have you verbally cornered.)