Reply #342: You're taking a rather ridiculous position with that as well. [View All]

[Raskolnik]

Until today, the Second Amendment was always understood to mean what it plainly said, that the right to bear arms was tied to the maintenance of a well-regulated militia. No one's ever had a problem with militias or their contemporary successors in the National Guard keeping and bearing firearms. The problem enters in when you a cherry picked group of ultra right-wing justices conclude that the Framers were on crack when they wrote the Constitution and really didn't intend to include the language about a well-regulated milita - that bit just somehow was slipped in by accident but nobody ever really intended for it to be there - and extend to every Tom, Dick, and Harry a new right which never existed. But that's not the Second Amendment's fault - the Second Amendment has always been quite clear - that's purely the fault of right-wingers trying to give a veneer of legality to the achievement of their Wild West wet dream by attributing their homicidal aspirations to the Second Amendment.

You may think that the Court got it wrong, but to try and argue tha the 2A "was always understood" as a collective right and that today's interpretation somehow pulled a "new right" out of thin air is just rubbish. There have been good-faith arguments on both sides of the issue, and I think we are beeter off because the more persuasive arguments carried the day at the Court.