Any military organization is regulated as to the firearms it has. Ergo, given the Congress regulates the militia, it can regulate which firearms can and can't be owned. The First Amendment has no qualifying clause in it but speech is still regulated: in most places you'd need a permit to hold a demonstration, for instance. You can buy a gun with less regulation than what it takes to hold a demonstration.
Obama will lose the Senate over this in 2014. And Republicans will pick up seats on this. Boehner said that the Congress would be happy to take up any legistlation coming out of the Senate regarding the President's proposals on firearms. He said that because seven Democratic Senators will have to vote "NO" in order to keep their own seats.
Yes that's why I said it. I thought there were some history buffs here who could add to or refute the historical account in the article. I guess I was wrong.
This laughable article is the first I've ever heard of such a premise for the 2nd amendment. But then since I'm more conservative than you, you'll simply dismiss my comment. Which begs the question, why ask in the first place?
Well the headline is somewhat inaccurate in that the North wanted it too. The article is addressing the bit about the word state rather than country being used in it, which is interesting, but the amendment would have been there in some form regardless. If you want I can post the background. Let me know. It won't convince anyone on either side, in my experience, as neither side seems to know why it's actually there, and neither side cares. But it is an interesting bit of historical trivia if nothing else. Maybe someday it will be more than that, but I doubt it.
We all know that they already 'regulate' our constitutional rights, the question is: are they supposed to? I think your post is reasonable, but consider this, the police and civilian govt agencies are armed with weapons illegal for peaceable private citizens to own.. that's hypocrisy in action. If the population in general is considered the militia, then we should all have the same guns. A ban on 'assault weapons' is subjective won't solve a damn thing. A ban on semi-auto's is virtually an outright gun ban. The real offense talk are the calls for confiscation, which is insane and has to be considered both impractical and illegal by any American that values their rights. You can't be a criminal now for not turning in something you own legally.
It was refuted, by 3 posters now. The 2nd was NOT included to protect slave owners from slave rebellions.
In merry old England, where this whole militia thing came from, the monarch mandated that citizens had to have some minimum level of arms based on what they would have had the ability to purchase. Obviously if you can mandate what a person has to own you can mandate what they can't as well: the majority of every demographic polled on this thinks limiting magazine capacity is a reasonable thing, for instance. And you can mandate who can own what. That gets us into the devilish detail of how you'd take a gun away from someone found to be dangerously nuts, but that's a headache for the legislators. The point here is that in principle there's nothing against it. There's certainly no argument anyone can make against background checks at point of purchase.
=========== Another addition as big arrow requested. I am not partisan, as many are, so this is no skin off my nose. Most of American history show its the Democrats that voted against civil rights.Source David Barton original docs.