Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What restrictions on 2nd amendment to you consider reasonable or unreasonable?

Rob, it helps is you start with the correct legal standard.

The other huge problem is that the Second Amendment originally acted as a prohibition only against the Federal government, not the States. Under an originalist interpretation, States were free to completely ban firearm ownership, if they wanted to. Only after the incorporation of the Bill of Rights did the Bill of Rights become operable against the States.

Its a tangled issue for sure.

Not really

Not at all.

The OP way of thinking is as a large part of 2nd Amendment rights loss as the brady bunch. All the while thinking he is part of resistance and doing the right thing.
Sad, where this country has gone, and is continuing to go, with thought processes such as these.

I am about interpreting the Constitution as it was originally intended. Its a simple fact that under the 2nd, prior to the 14th the States could completely ban firearms ownership and the Feds could regulate it (Read Scalia in the Heller opinion). The most libertarian legal scholars all agree that a correct originalist interpretation means some restrictions are Constitutionally valid (see Randy Barnett and Richard Epstein for two examples).

The thought processes which are problematic are the ones who are so incredibly ignorant as to deny actual historical truth. A supposed conservative who denies the actual truth to permit himself to pour his subjective meaning into the Constitution to reach his desired ends is no different than a liberal who does the same thing. So who is really damaging the Constitution?

The second amendments rights loss has derived primarily from the refusal of the courts to interpret the amendment as protecting an individual right. That changed with Heller, but even Heller is tepid: it does not recognize the 2nd as protecting a right of revolution per se. The individual rights interpretation is correct because it is consonant with the historical truth. You cannot accept historical, constitutional truths when it suits you and then deny them when it doesn't.

The reasonable regulations of firearms ownership which are Constitutionally permitted are actually quite tepid, if we understand them correctly. We would be far, far better off arguing for the historical truth, then denying it and losing all credibility.

You sir are part of the problem.

Really. If the FED authority to restrict the possession of firearms was so clear, then why was the as of '34 set up as a tax?

Exactly!

Shall not be infringed - sounds pretty definitive to me.

What's "unreasonable" is the consistent failure to read the English language. What's to be "well regulated" is the "militia",
meaning an army of citizens, which is what the US military is.
The need for the militia to be regulated-controlled and directed
by a standard or principle or rule- is what the amendment addresses.
The peoples' right to have & carry arms is to control/direct the
military-type actions, both by providing personnel to the militia, and resisting, if necessary.
Regulating the right isn't the issue at all. Regulating the government's actions, or potential mis-actions, is the issue.

Randy nailed it.

In that case, so is Stephen Halbrook, Randy Barnett, Richard Epstein, Antonin Scalia, Clarance Thomas, Eugene Volokh and virtually every single libertarian and conservative Constitutional scholar out there, because, examining the historical record, all of them agree that the Framers intended some regulation of firearms ownership to be permissible. Gawd, the level of constitutional and historical ignorance in this thread is appalling. Hell, the Framers intended for the States to have the right to ban firearms ownership outright because they intended the Bill of Rights to be applicable to the Federal government only. Do you all realize that?

The only reason the Court (any federal court) has even been able to address state infringement on firearms rights is because of the incorporation and the Bill of Rights. Thank heaven for that, but those are events which occurred nearly a 100 years after ratification of the original Constitution.

You still haven't answered my question.

Why was the Act of '34 set up as a tax?

Don't know anything about the act of 34. Edumicate me.

I think that was the Tommy Gun thingy.

You claim to teach us about the legal history of gun laws in this country and you are not familiar with the National Firearms Act of 1934, and why it was set up as a tax? (hint, the only way 0care was declared constitutional is because it was declared a tax.)

While you are at it, you should also study the history of the Sullivan Act, who got it passed, and who it was intended to protect, and the history of race based gun laws passed in the South following the Civil War.

In addition, if you are going to quote from the Heller decision, I suggest you quote from Scalia's majority opinion, and not Breyer's dissenting opinion.

You also need to study Wickard v. Filburn, how it expanded the scope of the Commerce Clause and enabled the GCA of '68.

In a sense this is correct, but in light of the actual history it's a little off the mark. That's because all the states already recognized it as a fundamental right of free men, codified in the various state constitutions. Their concern was that the new Federal Government would some day seek to interfere with that fundamental right, thus the states all demanded a Second Amendment be placed in the Bill of Rights to prevent that from happening.

The Federalists tried to explain to those concerned about this issue that the new Federal Government was not being delegated any power over such matters to start with, and never would be in the future, so didn't need an explicit protection of this right. But while those concerned about this question agreed with that premise, they felt they could never be completely sure how the US Constitution might be disingenuously "interpreted" in the future, so they demanded this extra measure just to be sure.

We have LET the gov't "infringe" for so long now, that have become a nation that is conditioned to liberalism propaganda.

I wonder if you start "infringing" on the rest of the amendments as has been done on the 2nd, how long it would take to see that viewed as unconstitutional?

The Constitution is clear enough already.

Most of the rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights have been regularly infringed upon for a very long time now. If the Fourth Amendment, for example, were applied as written and intended, most of what cops routinely do today would be illegal.

what a stupid question. There are NO restrictions to the Second Amendment that are 'reasonable'. Period.
That we have restrictions just shows how many traitors have been elected through the years.