Interesting little article

[KenpoTex]

good stuff.

http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=851dde32-0f65-4b20-9831-412d28e18a0d


Before Banning Guns, Consider Those Behind 2nd Amendment

Picture in your mind the rough-and-tumble individualists who gave birth to this nation, men who had tamed a wilderness, fought Indian wars and successfully faced down the world's mightiest empire.

With the Supreme Court's decision to examine the constitutionality of Washington D.C.'s gun ban, the nation once again turns to an intense examination of the wording of the Second Amendment. One way to understand an amendment whose words have confused generations is to study its somewhat confusing text. But another way is to examine at whose request the amendment was written.

For example, if 200 years from now constitutional scholars are trying to determine whether the Smith Tax Act of 2008 increased or decreased the taxes Social Security recipients paid on their retirement income, knowing that the act came into being as the result of pressure from AARP would pretty much end that debate.

This, then, is a vital question when seeking to understand the Second Amendment. For if you know the context in which the Amendment was written, if you know for whom it was written, if you know who was clamoring for it and what were their concerns, then that can help settle any argument of individual rights versus collective rights.

The Bill of Rights was written by Congressman James Madison to fulfill a promise made to the Anti-Federalists after pressure from that group had cost him a Senate seat — pressure brought to bear because of his opposition to amending the Constitution with a bill of rights. The Bill of Rights, then, as any history book will confirm, came into being to satisfy the single most suspicious, vociferous, and relentless foes of the new federal government.

That is the all-important context in which the Bill of Rights was created. The Anti-Federalists, men filled to varying degrees with fear, mistrust, and loathing of the new federal government, insisted on a bill of rights as additional shackles imposed on that new government. Knowing that alone, knowing that the famous Bill came into existence only to please those most apprehensive of the new government, definitively ends any confusion or debate surrounding the meaning of the Second Amendment:

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

There is simply no way on Earth the Anti-Federalists would have surrendered to the new and mistrusted government the right to own any gun they wanted at any time they wanted in any number they wanted.

Picture in your mind for a moment the rough-and-tumble individualists who gave birth to this nation, men who had tamed a wilderness, fought Indian wars on and off for 180 years, and successfully faced down the world's mightiest empire. Hold a picture of those men in your head for a moment and then try to imagine them being told that this new federal government would have the power to regulate their ownership of firearms in any manner it saw fit, including imprisoning them for possession of any firearm for any reason at any time.

No honest or serious person could ever claim to believe that any part of the American electorate in the 1700s desired federal gun control, let alone the Anti-Federalists who forced the creation of the Bill of Rights.

 

[chinto]

yep.. just read any of the federalist papers or other papers of the founding fathers. they felt and I agree that a citizen of the US should be able to own any weapon they wish legally... and actually it was only in the mid 1930's that they started to try and regulate fire arms or any weapon federally .....