Are gun regulations “infringement”?
I’ve pondered this a lot over the years, since I was a kid, in fact. I’ve been a longtime shooter, hunter and home/self defense person. I’ve even worked in the gun industry — editing a national gun magazine and also running a gun show booth.
But I’ve noticed a sea-change in the gun industry. Tactical weapons were maybe a 5% market segment 30 yrs ago. Today they seem like 75% — and needed for the industry to survive. Yet for non-military people, such weapons are sold only for psychotic fantasy reasons. And so I watched the audiences at gun shows change from a wide range of savvy enthusiasts to being mostly “deplorables” wearing psychotic t-shirts who have zero knowledge of guns and who only want “high tech, high capacity black plastic.” These sales are needed for thousands of Americans to keep their jobs. But also if these sales go through America will be destabilized because a certain percent of these psychotic ppl are going to act on their fantasies. Any of the old-guard enthusiasts who still remain are left looking around wondering who has been sucked into the lunacy. Everyone wonders if everyone else is normal or if they’re a kook. The scene changed. It got ugly, dumb and dangerous. So I quit.
There is also now more fetishizing of the 2nd Amendment than ever before. It has gotten carried away. Bible fetishizing has spread across to the Constitution. Leaders are applying bizarre interpretations (to make money) and followers suck it up (and vote crazy and some kill their neighbors).
What does the second amendment really mean?
I think there’s solid leverage for gun-control to be found in the “well regulated militia” clause! Sure, a lotta ppl have gone over this already, and there’s precedent and all, but let’s see why gun-control ppl might think they have traction…
We don’t have militias anymore, so… Do we even need the 2nd A?
Here it is:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The concepts of the amendment are all tied together — and depend on the militia. …Which no longer exists. So? How does it relate to a standing military?
Since the militias of our young nation no longer exist it cd be said that their supports are irrelevant! If we stretch it, “militia” might be applied to National Guards. We could maybe declare that only people who are members of a state’s Natl Guards could hold and use guns! But really that doesn’t fit, either.
It had nothing to do with squirrel guns, since everyone had those already.
Here’s another big thing: it doesn’t say anything about owning or shopping for guns. It has nothing to do with disgruntled dudes, or those who feel psychologically insecure, shopping down for tactical weapons as they please. It only says keep and bear. And both in the sense of the military.
That is, for the Natl Guards to be secure enough to preserve a free state, their members need the right to hold and use guns. So that gun rights are completely dependent on the need for a militia — which means an orderly army — which doesn’t need citizens to do anything except enlist.
Does “people” in the sense of militia have to be read as individuals? Today, militaries (like the British had back then) require machine guns, explosives, anti-tank/air weapons. How would the people of a well-regulated militia keep such arms? If we had militias they’d be kept in an armory, duh. And when could the well trained soldiers (since militia members no longer exist) bear them? …During and on their way to and from drills and military actions.
