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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jttmab who wrote (4875)	7/14/2001 7:27:08 AM
From: The Street	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS -------- R E P O R T OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY UNITED STATES SENATE NINETY-SEVENTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION FEBRUARY 1982 Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary ---- U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 88-618 O WASHINGTON : 1982 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402(p.II) COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY Finally, the individual rights interpretation gives full meaning to the words chosen by the first Congress to reflect the right to keep and bear arms. The framers of the Bill of Rights consistently used the words "right of the people" to reflect individual rights--as when these words were used to recognize the "right of the people" to peaceably assemble, and the "right of the people" against unreasonable searches and seizures. They distinguished between the rights of the people and of the state in the Tenth Amendment. As discussed earlier, the "militia" itself referred to a concept of a universally armed people, not to any specifically organized unit. When the framers referred to the equivalent of our National Guard, they uniformly used the term "select militia" and distinguished this from "militia". Indeed, the debates over the Constitution constantly referred to organized militia units as a threat to freedom comparable to that of a standing army, and stressed that such organized units did not constitute, and indeed were philosophically opposed to, the concept of a militia. That the National Guard is not the "Militia" referred to in the second amendment is even clearer today. Congress has organized the National Guard under its power to "raise and support armies" and not its power to "Provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia".[65] This Congress chose to do in the interests of organizing reserve military units which were not limited in deployment by the strictures of our power over the constitutional militia, which can be called forth only "to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions." The modern National Guard was specifically intended to avoid status as the constitutional militia, a distinction recognized by 10 U.S.C. Sec 311(a).(p.12) The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner. 2ndlawlib.org

To: jttmab who wrote (4875)	7/15/2001 2:07:51 AM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

All things considered Miller is considered a favorable decision to RKBA. Guns should be subsidized!;) I am also tempted to teach the Second Amendment in the context of the free speech provisions of the First Amendment, given my own view that the two should be read together as protections for dissenters. I have not, however, actually done so, though I commend those, like Scot Powe, who have. Finally, I bring up the Second Amendment in my second-year course on the constitution and the welfare state, within the context of affirmative rights. That is, if one views the right to possess arms as a "fundamental right" -- and if it isn't, what is it doing in the Bill of Rights? -- then does this imply any duty of the state to make firearms available to those who cannot afford to purchase them through the market? The issue of affirmative rights is, after all, presented by such cases as Gideon v. Wainwright, involving the supply of legal services to the indigent, or Maher v. Roe, in which several Justices (and many students) argue that the Constitution requires subsidized abortions for women who cannot otherwise afford them. So why not subsidized guns? The question also can resonate in regard to the DeShaney case: If one views guns as a practical way of protecting oneself from criminal violence, and if, as a practical matter, one cannot always rely on public police forces to offer such protection, then why doesn't the state have a duty to provide this form of protection to those who would otherwise remain vulnerable, such as those honest citizens unfortunate enough to be living in high-crime areas who are too poor to buy firearms? I confess that most students laugh when I present such an argument, though I'm not sure why this is a laughing matter, whatever one's views are about the overall legitimacy of widespread availability of guns. In any event, I hope all this makes clear why I find the Second Amendment useful for a variety of important exercises in constitutional exegesis. law.ucla.edu