Zackey Rahimi, the Texas criminal defendant challenging a federal gun law before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, said this summer that he no longer wanted to own firearms and expressed remorse for his actions that got him in trouble with the law.
“I will make sure for sure this time that when I finish my time being incarcerated to stay the faithful, righteous person I am this day, to stay away from all drugs at all times, do probation & parole rightfully, to go to school & have a great career, have a great manufacturing engineering job, to never break any law again, to stay away from the wrong circle, to stay away from all firearms & weapons, & to never be away from my family again,” Rahimi, who is being held at a Fort Worth jail, said in a handwritten letter dated July 25.
He continued: “I had firearms for the right reason in our place to be able to protect my family at all times especially for what we’ve went through in the past but I’ll make sure to do whatever it takes to be able to do everything the right pathway & to be able to come home fast as I can to take care of my family at all times.”
That’s the justification, not the right. The right is to bear arms. The militia is everyone able-bodied in the US.
Whether you personally think that’s the correct interpretation, if you’re intellectually honest you should at least be able to admit, as many conservative legal scholars themselves admit, that the wording is ambiguous.
I’ll buy that when one these “conservative legal scholars” aka moron federalists can produce a single primary source document that uses the phrase bear arms outside of a strictly military context involving uniformed, regimented troops, and instead refers expressly to an individual right of self defense.
Otherwise, it’s not ambiguous.
I was curious about this, so I looked into it. According to the Duke center for Firearms Law, one study found that “nearly 95 percent of all uses of “bear arms” conveyed the idiomatic sense relating serving in the military”. Another found usage to be 66% military, 21% both military and civilian, and 13% ambiguous. But it sounds like there are a lot of primary sources uses of non-military contexts, especially directly preceding the war for independence.
I’m on your side and I think this is an interesting point, but personally, I’m not convinced this is the strongest argument. We should be able to regulate firearms, even if “bear arms” means “carry arms for private use”.
Well he’s right about the able bodied bit at least. Under the legal definition of militia in the US every able bodied male age 17-45 is actively part of the militia. One could make the argument that women (outside the NG), disabled people, and old people shouldn’t have the right to guns with this I suppose but that feels sexist, ableist, and ageist (is that still a thing?)
“(a)The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.” https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246#:~:text=(a)The,the National Guard.
The wording while ambiguous to some seems fairly clear to me tbh too, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” is the only part that on its own makes a complete sentance, the prescriptive clause simply explaining that the reason “the people” have the right to keep and bear arms is because “the militia” as defined above is important. “Well regulated” is the only bit one could quibble over, however as “the militia” is defined, it seems clear to be intending “well maintained” as per historical definitions of “well regulated,” though historically it was used both as that and how we’d use it today.
https://www.oed.com/search/advanced/Quotations?textTermText0=Well+regulated&textTermOpt0=QuotText
Furthermore, from other historical papers that might offer context, we have quotes like these:
I think it’s pretty clear what they intended. Not to say you can’t disagree with their intentions themselves, but it does seem pretty clear what they did intend.
Cool citations for things said after the amendment was passed. Curious why the convention voted down unanimously an amendment that included an express individual right.
Any citations from before 1776 describing an individual right to bear arms in the common law?
The bill of rights does not add any new right which did not already then exist at common law.
Those things are from the year or the years shortly following, they are by far more historically relevant than the 2023 usage.
So I stopped when you claimed the definition of militia was males 17-45. That definition came WELL AFTER the passage of the 2nd Amendment. Considering you started with something incorrect, I’m not so sure I put much stock in the rest of your gish gallop.
That is the CURRENT legal definition, like it or not, and if you’d continued reading it would’ve provided more context yet you remain willfully ignorant. This is your choice and you are free to make it.
This is always a bizarre argument. Okay sure, it means “well maintained”. Now explain how “well maintained” means “full of morbidly obese men who have zero combat training, wouldn’t follow orders and can’t prove they can even safely handle a gun, let alone do anything useful with it and also they might be suicidal, psychotic or eager to kill a room full of children”.
No army in the world would indiscriminately accept American gun owners just for being American gun owners. Not even shitty militant groups fighting in the lowest GDP countries.
Well I don’t think “no guns for fatties” is a good look tbh, and it seems to be simply mean rather than something “effective” or “useful.” Besides, the militia back then was mostly made up of farmers without military training, but yes, they weren’t “fatties.”
Neither is 70% of mass shooters being legal gun owners or legal gun owners murdering their partners but hey, not hurting their feelings is important too.
So militaries having minimum health requirements is just them being big meanies?
And they were almost entirely worthless until they were rounded up and given that training, which the founding fathers were absolutely aware of when the amendment was written.
Anyway, whatever definition you go with, gun owners are meeting neither.
How many gun owners become mass shooters? Lets see, 333,287,557 people, 50% (generous, it isn’t quite 50 but for easy math) ownership for 166,643,778.5 people owning guns, and I’ll be generous and include gang shootings (because I know the number) at 547 for the year, turns out, 547 is 0.00032824507756826% of 166643778.5, meaning 0.00032824507756826% of gun owners are likely to pull off a mass shooting in any given year. Sure seems like they aren’t the problem to me.
You can’t ban rights from people for physical maladies or differences. Well, you can, or could, before the 13th ammendment but it is a commonly held belief that that was “bad.” Turns out “banning the (blank)” from say “voting,” or “free speech” is “wrong” and so “no guns for cripples and fatties” is also “wrong.” “The military” doesn’t have to take you but they also can’t just kill you for being fat.
Well, Thomas Jefferson is directly quoted as contradicting your opinion, so I’m gonna say he knew better than you the parlance and attitudes of whiskey brewers that just overthrew a government in the 1700s.
Preventable deaths are preventable deaths and the gun laws you fawn over have caused tens of thousands.
Oh, you mean the guy who owned over 600 slaves? What were his thoughts on who should vote and have free speech?
Well I didn’t realize you were one of those “no guns for the blacks” types…
It is far from ambiguous. The first half tells you why the right exists and only part of why. The second half is the right itself, which is the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
The whole question is whether the beginning is a merely “prefatory clause” that has no effect on the application of the second half. The other interpretation is that the beginning is not just idle small talk: People have the right to keep and bear arms insofar as it’s conducive to a well-regulated militia.
Now, you may disagree with that interpretation, but the existence of at least two rival interpretations is the very definition of ambiguity.
It’s only unclear if you have an ulterior motive.
Then I guess there are a lot of pro-gun conservatives who have an ulterior motive! The sentence isn’t even grammatical according to the rules of modern English because the controversial comma separates a subject from its predicate.
A metric by which no other amendment is interpreted, otherwise we could insist completely dumb shit like “soldiers must remain homeless for the duration of their service”.
The justification is actually to “protect state security.” It’s right there in the text.
Security of a free state.
Sounds like you need to start executing politicians for the tyranny of “food safety standards” then because the only metric by which America is more “free” than comparable countries is “guns sold to idiots, extremists and domestic terrorists”.
Most non violent prisoners of any country to ever exist, as a whole population, and per capita. free lol.
By justification, you mean the spirit of the law right?
By justification I mean the reason for the right. The right being the right to bear arms.
That sounds like well regulated militia is the spirit of the law. The reason for it, the intention, however you want to word it.
It says right in the text the purpose is to protect the security of the state.
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,…”
It follows that the state is what may regulate the militia.
The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.
Important parts in bold.
Stick your fingers in your ears and yell as loud as you want, its not gonna make the well regulated portion go away.
Not even beginning to mention the founders intentions of the constitution evolving over time, as the lethality, proliferation, and criminal usage of guns has skyrocketed since that amendment was written.
At least some of the founders had the intention of the second amendment allowing the population to overthrow tyrannical rulers.
Yeah i dont think guns are gonna get you very far with that.
Arms, not guns. Also, tell that to the Vietnamese, and Afghanis.
Something the second amendment has accomplished exactly zero times.
The reason for the law is because the militia was used to defend the US. That changed very quickly when the founders figured out that loosely organized militias were no match to even fight Natives in the Northwest Territory. So the justification is moot now since militias play almost no part in the defense of the US.
I saw a YouTube video or maybe a website article years ago stating that the U.S. can never be conquered, that if an organized foreign military defeated the organized U.S. military they will have a hard time with the millions upon millions of guns in the country.
I mean, if they defeated the military what can a militia do?
I’d say it is more down to the size of the US. There are 330 million people in a country nearly the size of Europe. A country could definitely get a chunk of the US. That would definitely require fully defeating our military which is pretty unlikely. Insurgency can definitely gum things up a bit for foreign invaders but it really takes outside support to actually accomplish much.