Reply #217: Pointless second amendment? [View All]

[robre]

If the second amendment grants no individual rights then why was it even written down?

I guess you think the second amendment grants rights to the individual states and only applies to the national guard?

Is this because you believe the founding fathers used their insane psychic powers to predict that a century later we would have a "national guard" which we would use only as reserves in our wars of imperial conquest?

Maybe you just don't understand the way the people that wrote this Bill of Rights thought.

There is no such thing as a community right. The idea behind our republican form of government is that all rights are inherit in individuals and that they surrender some of them to the government in the form of priviledges. Some things we have defined as out of the realm of control by governmental legislation, such as the right to keep and wear arms, or the right to free speech. Note that these are not the only rights that we have, but they are the ones the people that founded this nation felt that we should have.

Here is the preamble to the bill of rights, which you have probably never read:

PREAMBLE
The conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution.