Quote:
Originally Posted by JET
You seem to be getting hung up on the "well regulated" portion. Please go look and see what well regulated meant at their time. The militia was made up of farm boys that were called up THEN they were trained, not before. They also used their own guns, hence the reason for the 2nd amendment to talk about both things. They were not talking about an organized militia being able to have guns, it is the people that would potentially make up that militia. Basically they wanted the people to be able to fight back if the government became oppressive.
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I've probably overstated the well regulated point a bit. Maintaining good focus on this discussion is hard. I'm trying to remain as objective and level headed as possible while being emotionally driven. Ultimately I want to end up understanding the truth of the matter whether I'm right or not. That's what's most important to me.
I do believe we are finally getting down to the heart of the matter though with the issue of whether the bill of rights were initially meant as a declaration of individual rights, trumping all other forms of government or just for restricting the federal government. All evidence I've found suggests the latter and that has big implications on the interpretation of the 2nd. This is all information I've come across while researching for posting on this thread and is all new to me, so I'm not defending a long held position here.
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