Re: Clearest and Most Lucid Explanation I Have Found...
He's flat out wrong.
There never was any "absolute" right to gun ownership. And nobody's saying that "people shouldn't have the right to bear arms in today's world." (Well, at least I'm not.) What I'm saying is that the 2nd amendment does not address the individual right to have arms outside of a militia context.
He's wrong about "the people." The people were the miltia. Elbridge Gerry said "whenever government means to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia." That's why the 2nd amendment addressed people's concerns about the militia. That's why the preamble refers to a militia, to explain what the main clause it talking about. Nobody who reads the debates about the Constitution can come to any other conclusion.
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