From time to time I meet shooters who have formed or joined some sort of private military organization or club. Nor is it the view of the U. Supreme Court. In the words of both the framers and the court, the militia is the whole of the people, with arms that they provide themselves, ready to be called from their regular, non-military occupations to serve as a defensive military force. In countless documents of the Revolutionary and Constitutional eras, the framers made it clear that they had no use for a standing army.
Why should we not provide against the danger of having our militia, our real and natural armed strength, destroyed? The general government ought, at the same time, to have some such power. But we need not give them power to abolish our militia. If they neglect to arm them, and prescribe proper discipline, they will be of no use.
Mason was not talking about taking guns that people purchased themselves away, but rather about not providing them with arms, training and discipline, as is necessary for a military unit to function. Mason may well have believed in a personal right to arms outside the function of a militia, he may have even believed that the right to have arms in order to overthrow the government. That is not at all what he was talking about in either of these quotes—or, frankly, in anything else he wrote or has been quoted as saying.
It is important to know that, at the time the constitution was signed, there was significant opposition to having a standing army, and state militias were supposed to fill that gap. The state, in turn, was supposed to arm and train them. They were there to suppress insurrections— specifically slave insurrections and anti-tax insurrections like the Whiskey Rebellion, and to fight Native Americans who, god forbid, wanted to continue living where they were living—not to start them.
So yes—guns for certain individuals. But individuals that were trained and disciplined, and not all that free. George Mason played an important role in this committee, serving as chairman. One aspect of colonial authority that George Mason monitored as chairman was the militia.
Under British rule, militia officers were selected by their rank and the length of their service. Mason felt that the system should be more democratic, primarily by having officers elected by members of the militia. When George Mason expressed his belief that militia officers should be elected annually, he showed his support for the democratic process. The document was heavily reproduced and distributed, making a large impact across the American colonies.
The Fairfax Resolves included many revolutionary statements, such as the outward rejection of the claim that British parliament had supreme authority over the colonies. Mason also presented other influential ideas, such as consent of the governed, meaning that people must agree to their government and its laws in order for that government to have authority.
Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Plan Your Visit. Lund claimed that there are nearly 2 million cases of guns being used in self-defense every year but that instances are largely unreported. He summed up the general public view as "that the Second Amendment is good and the gun control laws we have do not really infringe on it.
The real question now, Lund said was whether the law would continue to develop in the direction taken by the Fifth Circuit.
Asked to give a response to Lund, Professor Richard Bonnie said Lund may be right in his view of the Amendment as securing people's rights individually, but if so then certain public safety questions are pertinent, among them the licensing of gun owners and the registration of their guns as with cars , the personalization of guns through technology so that only their owners may use them, gun security in homes, and the control of the secondary market for guns, such as gun shows.
He also called for more scientific study of available data, noting that Lott's conclusions have been contested, as have figures on defensive gun use. He noted that 30, Americans commit suicide every year with the majority using guns, acts that might be averted but for the finality of the trigger.
Lund answered that Lott has made all his copious data available and that nobody has yet pointed out any significant flaws in his analysis. In response to a questioner who noted the apparently absolute prohibition in the text of the Second Amendment, Lund said that a balancing test for the gun right will have to be established because "no court will ever find that you have a personal right to a 'suitcase' nuclear bomb or a stinger missile," even though both are "arms" small enough to carried by an individual.
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