The example I used concerning Benjamin Franklin, was of him raising and arming a militia as a private citizen before any federal gov't existed, against the expressed wishes of the colonial gov't.
You didn't mention that. It is an obscure point, but I get what you're saying. That doesn't change my position. It points out a motive for enacting the 2nd. Because of Franklin's experience the politicians realized there was an issue. That supports my position that the purpose of the 2nd is to prevent a state from encroaching on the ability of the feds to raise a militia.
Exactly what part of "the right of the people" do you find so difficult to understand????
None at all. We are interpreting legislation. What is at issue is what the law actually says and how the courts have interpreted it. The rights any person might want are irrelevant unless they can be supported by those two factors. Your analysis points out that a state interfering with the raising of a militia had happened before the 2nd was written. It is logical that steps would be taken to prevent that issue from repeating itself.
Once again, don't be obtuse....the weapons protected are weapons for personal use, that the bearer uses and trains himself to use with skill (which, btw, is the meaning of "well regulated" in the parlance of the day) Nukes are not personal weapons, and by definition one does not practice and learn skills with them.....
You can argue that, but nukes aren’t the issue. I used them as an example that there is no absolute right to own weapons. To say that authorities cannot regulate military weapons is contrary to what the SCOTUS has said.
SCOTUS does not grant rights, if SCOTUS tomorrow ruled there was no right to bear arms, or to freedom of religion, or to free speech.....they would simply be wrong. The rights would still exist.
That position is pure Republican philosophical mumbo-jumbo. We are Canadians. We don’t have to get stuck in US ideological pitfalls, we can discuss reality. We have no constitutional right to “bear arms” in Canada and we live just fine. If authorities ruled we could no longer own them we could sneak them around, but we could not legally possess them. The same would happen in America
The SCOTUS in DC v Heller said (quoting directly from the judgment and the words of Mr. Justice Scalia) that
2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54–56.
The case has been commented on by US experts, of course. See http://loc.gov/law/help/second-amendment.php, from the US Library of Congress. Amongst other things the following was said:
The Court stated that the right to keep and bear arms is subject to regulation, such as concealed weapons prohibitions, limits on the rights of felons and the mentally ill, laws forbidding the carrying of weapons in certain locations, laws imposing conditions on commercial sales, and prohibitions on the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. It stated that this was not an exhaustive list of the regulatory measures that would be presumptively permissible under the Second Amendment.
Let’s face reality. No government is going to say that its citizens can possess any weapon of any type anywhere. In pages 56 and 57 of DC v Heller, Justice Scalia refers specifically to an M1 Garand and says that the 2nd does not include the right to own one, under the dangerous and unusual weapons principle. That doesn’t mean you can’t own an M1 Garand in America – lots of people do, it just means that the right to do so is not constitutionally protected by the 2nd Amendment. The Heller case did not refer to the current US debate about assault rifles, but obviously the writing is on the wall.