The purpose of the second amendment

[FN1910]

I disagree about self defense not being a part of the 2A. I feel it is a very integral component hidden in the 2A wording; "The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed upon." The simple word "Bear" in "to keep and bear arms", to me. means to be able to defend yourself or your family using a firearm...

I can agree with this for the most part especially when you say hidden in there. If we go back to 1780 or so we have to take into consideration several things. What did they consider arms and what did they think about self-defense. First we automatically assume that arms means guns or similar but arms would be anything that you use to defend yourself, your family or your country. I really don't think that they just meant handguns or rifles or any other device that used gunpowder. They made it very broad for a reason.

Second the discussion of self-defense was somewhat different that what we may think of it today. They did not have police, FBI, CIA, Interpol, armies of even governments to help them defend themselves. Self-defense to them meant defense from BG's, Indians, wild animals, witches or anythng else they came across and it was you had to daily defend yourself from some danger. Self Protection was a given that you had to do it and there was no question about that as there wasn't a lot of help for it. That was not even a question and in some areas it was required that you take such actions as carrying a gun with you whle traveling. If someone would have said that you have to keep your gun locked away while traveling through New Jersey they would have been carried off to the asylum or locked in a dark room of the house. I don't know that they could have envisioned a time when someone would even question self-defense. That is my comment about 2A not being written with personal self-defense in mind rather defense of a greater purpose.

[Nightmare45]

If you want to control a population remove their ability for self defense.

[BC1]

Looks like most got the right answer. All freedom exists at the end of a gun.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.

[Peregrine Falcon]

Lots of good well thought-out comments; we do have to be careful though. Wrapped up in the whole question is the question of how we interpret the Constitution. If we enable the Constitution to be interpreted as a "living breathing document" even to benefit us then what's to stop someone else from interpreting it that way to our harm. That was already attempted with the 2nd ammendment (at least once) when someone tried to say that it only applied to the maintenance of a militia so it was no longer valid. Thankfully the SC took a different view.

The whole discussion of whether or not SD was a part of the 2nd ammendment is important first and foremost because of this. If there is any possibility that we are reading something into the 2nd ammendment when we include SD then we shouldn't do it no matter how applicable it is to us today. Once we "mold" the constitution to fit modern times we open the door for someone we don't agree with to do it back to us.

Good poll though, the outcome is encouraging; I'm glad enough of "us" understand the history behind the constitution to have this type of discussion.

[fudo]

I can't vote for any. I don't think the 2A was written to cover SD at all. I think it's main point was to keep the populace as well armed as the government. Protection from invasion was secondary and SD was off the map.

Happily, Many of us can read and understand English. Treo is absolutely right. A big Bravo Zulu for Treo.