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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (36687)	3/3/1999 3:04:00 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

<<The point is that "the right to bear arms" meant something at the time, but may not be relevant today. I doubt very seriously it meant "people should be allowed to carry assault weapons to the grocery store" for example.>> At one time it meant that we should be able to maintain state of the art defense weaponry that we could deploy in a minutes notice (minute man). That we had the right to do this in defiance of a government that was over reaching its authorized role, or as a matter of self defense. It never meant that we could join marading gangs of looters to attack the local grocery store in history or in modern times. Your example is irrelevant.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (36687)	3/3/1999 3:27:00 PM
From: Pat W.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

We just had a debate on whether lying about sex was a "high crime and misdemeanor". It certainly is NOT a high crime in today's world, now is it? Hi Michelle I think most will agree with you on that. I hate to drag this out again, but the relevant debate was whether perjury and obstruction of justice would be considered high crimes and misdemeanors.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (36687)	3/3/1999 6:51:00 PM
From: nuke44	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Michelle, your attempts to tie Clinton's crimes into the long running debate over the 2nd amendment are meaningless. One doesn't have anything to do with another. For one thing, Clinton was not charged with "lying about sex". He was charged with perjury in a civil rights lawsuit. How the hell you expect to tie that into an argument over the Bill of Rights is beyond me. To begin with, in spite of whatever arcane and byzantine interpretations that anyone tries to assign to the 2nd amendment, it is really straight forward. It requires no translation. It is is not necessary for us to read tea leaves or hold seances to try to learn what the "Founding Fathers" intended when they framed this particular article of the Bill of Rights. You only have to understand why the Bill of Rights was written in the first place. During debate on the adoption of the Constitution, it's opponents repeatedly charged that the Constitution as drafted would open the way to tyranny by the central government. Before they would allow a vote on the Constitution they demanded a "bill of rights" that would spell out the "immunities of individual citizens". On Sept. 25, 1789, the first Congress of the United States presented 12 amendments, "guaranteeing the immunity of the individual citizen" to the state legislatures. The first two amendments, concerning the number of constituents for each Representative and the compensation of Congressmen were not ratified. The remaining amendments, 3 through 12, were ratified and constitute the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, otherwise known as the Bill of Rights. So no matter what spin the antigun lobby tries to put on the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, all you need to understand is the stated purpose of the Bill of Rights, which is, "to guarantee the immunities of the individual citizen" to the central government. The 2nd amendment means exactly what it says, "the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed". Having said that, I would be quite happy if everyone except for myself and other like minded individuals were totally banned from possessing firearms. To paraphrase some past wit who's name escapes me "While I feel totally justified in owning an anti-tank gun, I wouldn't trust most of these goobers with anything more potent than a slingshot". But I guess that's one of the beauties of the Bill of Rights. That kind of decision is not up to me.