Re: Kiddie exercises his right to bear arms

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 23:49:30 -0800, cor wrote:
>Koc77 wrote:
>> "cor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>...
>> The second amendment states that "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."  When the constitution was written, all able
>> bodied males were the militia.  If  "the people"  in the first, fourth,
>> ninth, and tenth amendments means the common people, how is it that "the
>> people" in the second amendment means the state?
>> Have a good one man.
>
>May be you are right. may be "People" can not have two meanings there. On
>the other hand in those days "arms" meant something different. In those
>days they had no automatic weapons, 

        Google for 'Puckles Defence' (spelled like that), for which a patent
was issued by the Brits in 1718. That this was not accepted by the British
Army is not the point. Rather it's the existance of such a device.

>no cesium 137 bombs, no Napalm, no tanks, no bombers, no cluster bombs, no
>home-made anthrax powder, no genetically modified camel-pox, no AK-47
>dealers selling to gangs and no IRscopes with laser guides. In those days
>they did not even have the nut cases that the wars of today seem to
>generate. No Malvos, No Timothy McVeighs, maybe not even war-traumatized
>militia comming back home to beat and gun down their own wife and kids.
>Maybe some things have to change, some definitions cleared.

        There is a real problem with the reasoning that, when the 2nd was
adopted, napalm, nukes, helicopter gunships, smart bombs, and all the rest
of it had not been thought of yet, let alone invented, ergo the 2nd is no
longer valid; and that is that xerox machines, telephones, cameras, tape
recorders, DVDs, motion pictures, television and radio, lithograph printing,
CAD/CAM programs and computers, modems, 3.5" floppies, heck, BIC ballpoint
pens, also had not been thought off or invented when the *1st* was adopted,
does this mean it no longer applies to the topic of free speech?

        You see, the same essentially destructive reasoning, if accepted as
valid, can be applied to more than one case. 

-- 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 

"Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the
Constitution by claiming that it's not an individual right or that it's too
much of a safety hazard don't see the danger of the big picture. They're
courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate
portions of the Constitution they don't like."
       --Alan Dershowitz, famous liberal attorney