Up until 2008, your interpretation was not the one the USSC assiged to the second amendment. And never was YOUR interpretation the one the USSC assigned to the 2nd amendment. Not even when it was adopted in 1791.
Excuse me but its not just my interpretation............its been a pretty consistent interpretation.......esp in the 20th century for very good reason. Its only under the winger court in the 21st century that the individual rts model has been upheld............and many of us disagree with that ruling:
Late 20th century commentary
In the latter half of the 20th century there was considerable debate over whether the Second Amendment protected an individual right or a collective right. [124] The debate centered on whether the prefatory clause (“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State”) declared the amendment’s only purpose or merely announced a purpose to introduce the operative clause (“the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”).
Three basic competing models were offered to interpret the Second Amendment: [125]
The first, known as the "states' rights" or "collective rights" model, was that the Second Amendment did not apply to individuals; rather, it recognized the right of a state to arm its militia.
Judicial reluctance to consider seriously whether the Fourteenth Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms from state infringement perhaps reflects a tendency to view the Second Amendment, with its apparent guarantee of gun ownership, as embarrassing and politically incorrect. Under the twentieth-century “State’s rights” view, “the people” have no right to keep or bear arms, but the states have a collective right to have the National Guard. [126]
The second, known as the "sophisticated collective rights model", held that the Second Amendment recognized some limited individual right. However, this individual right could only be exercised by members of a functioning, organized state militia while actively participating in the organized militia’s activities.
Indeed, the fact that the collective right theory was once so confidently advanced by gun control enthusiasts is on its way down the collective memory hole as though it had never been asserted. With its demise, the intellectual debate over the original meaning of the second Amendment has turned in a different direction. Although now conceding that the right to keep and bear arms indeed belongs to individuals rather than to states, almost without missing a beat, gun control enthusiasts now claim with equal assurance that the individual right to bear arms was somehow "conditioned" in its exercise on participation in an organized militia. [127]
The third, known as the "standard model", was that the Second Amendment recognized the personal right of individuals to keep and bear arms.
However, the weight of serious scholarship supports the historical intent of the Second Amendment to protect individual rights and to deter governmental tyranny. From the Federalist Papers to explanations when the Bill of Rights was introduced, it is clear that the purpose of the Second Amendment was to protect individual rights. [126]
Under both of the collective rights models, the opening phrase was considered essential as a pre-condition for the main clause. [128] These interpretations held that this was a grammar structure that was common during that era [129] and that this grammar dictated that the Second Amendment protected a collective right to firearms to the extent necessary for militia duty. [130]
Under the standard model, the opening phrase was believed to be prefatory or amplifying to the operative clause. The opening phrase was meant as a non-exclusive example—one of many reasons for the amendment. [29] This interpretation was consistent with the position that the Second Amendment protects a modified individual right. [131]
The question of a collective rights versus an individual right was progressively resolved with the 2001 Fifth Circuit ruling in United States v. Emerson, in the 2008 Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, and in the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in McDonald v. Chicago. These rulings upheld the individual rights model when interpreting the Second Amendment. In Heller, the Supreme Court upheld the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right. [132] Although the Second Amendment is the only Constitutional amendment with a prefatory clause, such constructions were widely used elsewhere. [133] |
