06-28-2008, 03:46 PM
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#132
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The urban Jane Goodall
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Florida
Posts: 3,012
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Quote:
Originally Posted by glatt
Activist judges aren't just of the liberal variety.
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From AR15.com
Quote:
Originally Posted By badfish274:
Justice Scalia then turns to the prefatory clause – “A well regulated militia.”
First, the militia clauses do not give the power to create a militia, as DC argued. The militia clauses of the constitution give Congress the ability “to call forth the militia,” and not to create it. The militia pre-dates the Constitution, for it is merely all able-bodied men who are capable of bearing arms. Justice Scalia then does exactly what I was hoping he would do:
Quote:
Finally, the adjective “well-regulated” implies nothing
more than the imposition of proper discipline and training.
See Johnson 1619 (“Regulate”: “To adjust by rule or
method”); Rawle 121–122; cf. Va. Declaration of Rights
§13 (1776), in 7 Thorpe 3812, 3814 (referring to “a well regulated
militia, composed of the body of the people,
trained to arms”).
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Ah yes, victory. “Well regulated” means disciplined and trained, not federally regulated.
The dissenters both in this case and in the lower court believe that “the security of a free state” meant States in the sense of Florida, Alaksa, etc. Justice Scalia corrects them. “The security of a free state” means “the security of a free polity” – a free nation, etc. Not individual American states.
He also throws a bone to the keyboard revolutionaries amongst us.
Quote:
Third, when the able-bodied men of
a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are
better able to resist tyranny.
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All this being said, Justice Scalia wraps up his analysis of the textual interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.
Quote:
We reach the question, then: Does the preface fit with
an operative clause that creates an individual right to
keep and bear arms? It fits perfectly, once one knows the
history that the founding generation knew and that we
have described above. That history showed that the way
tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the ablebodied
men was not by banning the militia but simply by
taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or
standing army to suppress political opponents. This is
what had occurred in England that prompted codification
of the right to have arms in the English Bill of Rights.
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__________________
I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. - Aristotle
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