[Vision2020] Crabtree and the NRA

[Andreas Schou]

The problem is that a standing army, though necessary, is
constitutionally discouraged. State-based compulsory military service,
though predicted by the Constitution, doesn't actually exist. It's the
only constitutional amendment that predicts a future America that
didn't actually happen.

It seems fairly clear that the 2nd Amendment is intended to
counterbalance the threat of a standing army with a citizen militia.
Not to put too fine a point on it, it's to to make sure that members
of state militias could fire on and kill US soldiers who were
threatening democracy. However, at some point this century, we decided
that (notwithstanding the Constitution) maintaining a standing army is
a good idea and violent insurrection isn't. This leaves us tying
ourselves in knots over the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.

The Supreme Court can't, for practical reasons, ratify the 2nd
Amendment as being about violent revolution, despite the fact that
violent revolution is self-evidentily what it's about. So, on the
theory that a well-armed populace is better-equipped to defend its own
democratic rights, weapons are available to Americans for all other
purposes.

If I were writing the Constitution today, alone, I'm sure I wouldn't
write the 2nd Amendment using exactly the language the founders did,
if for no other reason that the amendment is syntactically bizarre. As
written, however, the amendment appears to intend that civilians
possess military-grade ordnance. The way to fix that is by amendment,
not by pretending that the 2nd Amendment says something that it
doesn't (or nothing at all).

-- ACS


On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 9:57 PM, Ralph Nielsen <nielsen at uidaho.edu> wrote:
> Yes, at least five members of the Supreme Court are certainly changing the
> original intent of the writers of the Constitution, aren't they? And they
> claim they are the conservatives.
> Ralph
> On Nov 7, 2010, at 8:19 PM, keely emerinemix wrote:
>
> And I find that frightening.
>
> Keely
> www.keely-prevailingwinds.com
>
> ________________________________
> To: Vision2020 at moscow.com
> From: nielsen at uidaho.edu
>
> It seems to me that according to the latest ruling by the US Supreme Court
> every citizen of the United States is now a member of a "well regulated
> militia" and therefore has a right to keep and bear arms.
> Ralph
>
>
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