Comment by throw0112a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw0112a | Hacker News Reader

The ‘individual mandate’ of citizens having the right to firearms, when they’re not part of a state-level Militia, seems to be a recent phenomenon:

> The U.S. Supreme Court had never, until 2008, suggested even once that there was any such right. Warren Burger, the arch-conservative Supreme Court justice appointed by Richard Nixon, in an interview in 1991 described the then-new idea of an individual right to bear arms as “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

* http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/article28078752....

There's a book mentioned in the above article called "The Second Amendment: A Biography”, but haven’t had a chance to read it yet. The author, Michael Waldman, has some good interviews and talks online. It was released in 2014 and most of them are from then. These two are pretty good (about an hour each):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IopMFON6BNM

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxTOBh_AZJY

> The ‘individual mandate’ of citizens having the right to firearms, when they’re not part of a state-level Militia, seems to be a recent phenomenon

"No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own land or tenements]" -Thomas Jefferson's proposal of language to add to the Virginia Constitution

Also, there is a supreme court ruling from my home state which expresses a view of the origin of this right which goes back to England before the founding the United States:

Nunn vs Georgia (1846) "The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women, and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: The rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I, and his two wicked sons and successors, re-established by the revolution of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Manga Charta!"

Yes, there the words of Thomas Jefferson put it quite explicitly:

You have the right to have arms within your own house in order to potentially use it in a rebellion against an autocratic state in case it arrises. Nowhere it gives you the right to carry weapons around with you on the public place.

This makes it as clear as water really.

or in order to protect your household from robbers and thieves.

I suspect however that Jefferson would have extended his support for the right to cover ones stagecoach and personal property when traveling down the right of way..

> I suspect however that Jefferson would have extended his support for the right to cover ones stagecoach and personal property when traveling down the right of way..

I suspect however that Jefferson would not have ....

It's useless to speculate. We can all pull things out of thin air. What did he write down?

And the supreme court specifically called out in their rulings that they did not imply that it was a constitutional right to carry a concealed weapon.

That also doesn't mean it should be illegal... we've seen immense decrease in violent crimes over the past two decades -- we've also seen a dramatic shift in state laws allowing the right for people to conceal carry.

Correlation != causation and such, but science and numbers matter... They are really interesting when you review them.

I believe the question of legality when carrying a concealed weapon is an all different matter.

The reason you cannot make ilegal is that some people (read NRA loonies) keep trying to make look as carrying a concealed weapon is a constitutional right granted by the 2nd amendment. When it's clearly not.

> "No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own land or tenements]" -Thomas Jefferson's proposal of language to add to the Virginia Constitution

A proposal which was rejected AFAIK, and so all the others around him thought it inappropriate. What was actually passed:

> That a well-regulated Militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State; that Standing Armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

No mention of individual rights to "keep and bear arms". In the recorded debate there was no mention in the Virginia debates of individuals carrying arms, but rather the debate was in the context of whether the government would provide arms for the militia.

Also, the phrase "bear arms" was, grammatically in that time period, generally used to refer to military soldiers having weapons, not civilians. It is inappropriate to take the words individually, but rather the phrase must be taken as a whole.

>Nunn vs Georgia (1846) [...]

An in Alabama State vs Reid (1840) the 'court held that the law “to suppress the evil practice of carrying weapons secretly,” did not violate the Alabama constitution. While the legislature could not prevent the carrying of arms, it did retain the right “to enact laws in regard to the manner in which arms shall be borne.” Because the restriction on concealed carry was not a prohibition on the right, it was within the ambit of the legislature to restrict concealed carry.[10]'

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunn_v._Georgia

So open carry if fine (?), but concealed can be regulated.

Canada also comes with common law going back to England, and the Supreme Court there ruled that while the right to self-defence exists, the right to arms does not.

Dave Kopel wrote a thorough response to Burger's comments here:

http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Mags/crburger.htm

I can't find any indication that Saunders has any expertise in American law in general or firearms law in particular (his web page doesn't even mention any college degree), but statements like "Until 2002, every U.S. president (sic) and government had declared that the Constitution’s Second Amendment did not provide any individual right for ordinary citizens to own firearms" are categorically false (most Presidents and Congresses have been mute on the subject).

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