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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (74680)	7/3/2008 5:25:45 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543198

Tim - Thanks for doing all that research. Hamilton's words are always enlightening. At the time the Amendments to the Constitution were being drafted, there were State Militias, and I think other more local militias as well. As you say, Hamilton was talking about organized militias that were engaged in regular disciplined training, and this would appear to be what he, and his contemporaries, meant by calling them well regulated. What I don't quite get is how you conclude that this need for well regulated militias, used as justification for the idea that the government must not infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms, leads to the conclusion that anybody who wants a gun has an intrinsic right to own it. I'm not saying they don't have the right, but I'm finding that the information you've provided to support your argument that this is what the Framers meant by the Second Amendment - that they definitely didn't mean that the right to keep and bear arms was a collective one - is actually starting to convince me of the opposite. Individuals who own guns, who don't participate in regular training exercises as part of a militia, would not seem to be justified as being "necessary to the security of a free state", as that first clause says. - Allen