A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes to immediate living environments, Americans’ views on gun control may be less divided than the polarized national debate suggests.
The research was conducted against a backdrop of increasing gun violence and polarization on gun policy in the United States. The United States has over 350 million civilian firearms and gun-related incidents, including accidents and mass shootings, have become a leading cause of death in the country. Despite political divides, the new study aimed to explore whether there’s common ground among Americans in their immediate living environments, focusing on neighborhood preferences related to gun ownership and storage.
The Constitution says nothing about AR weaponry. It actually doesn’t even say every single person should be allowed to purchase and keep a firearm
“Bear Arms” is simply too vague. I feel like I should be able to have a SAM installation according to that.
The “well-regulated militia” part afterwards isn’t vague, but gets ignored by self-proclaimed “originalists”.
That is because the “well regulated militia” part is neither the subject of the sentence, nor a qualifier for the rest of the sentence. It’s pretty straight forward English sentence structure. It explains a primary reason why the individual right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed” is important, and like a comment line in computer code it doesn’t “do” anything to the rest of the program.
The federalist papers and the militia acts back up that “originalist” interpretation.
Correct that it isn’t vague. It means “well functioning” as they would have used it. A contemporary would have said a clock that keeps time accurately is “well-regulated”. It doesn’t refer to bureaucratic regulation in the slightest, as you can compare how those topics were talked about in the same documents of the constitutional convention and the Federalist Papers etc. and the verbiage used is completely different.
People in those days used flowery language such as Washington’s quote “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.” He isn’t talking about wrenching a bicycle.
It also takes deliberate ignorance to read a list of 10 individual rights and construe that one in particular is somehow collectivized and handcuffed by a footnote about its justification.
Sign me up! Can I get one that’s sized to work on starlings? Or maybe a little tiny one that’ll do mosquitos…
I’m not sure if I’ve got this right, but from the rest of the buzz on the internet I think the 2nd amendment means I’m allowed to keep bear arms to make women feel safe?
What is literally written in the constitution isn’t always as important as how those words have been interpreted by congress and the courts.
Unfortunately that leads to a sliding scale. One court says you can’t remove something because it’s in the Constitution, the next court allows that same entry to be bypassed by interpreting it in a way that isn’t in the Constitution, the third interprets it completely differently.
“A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” --The full and complete text of the 2nd Amendment.
Who’s the people? Is it individuals? Is it the town council?
That’s been interpreted 10 different ways over the last 200 years.
“Collective rights” are obviously and effectively useless. Imagine someone claiming you must be silenced but your First Amendment rights weren’t violated because somebody else somewhere gets to speak after he did the appropriate paperwork. The Bill of Rights has been construed to broadly protect individual rights for this reason. It takes mental gymnastics to apply different reasoning to certain of the 10 listed items in order to align it to a desired political outcome.
You just described that actual state of the first amendment. You don’t need to imagine that because that’s exactly what’s happening. Complete with police brutality and arrests to discourage future speech.