devildog88 said:
You have misunderstood what I was trying to say. I teach American government and the arguement is being made that if we don't interpret the constitution then it is rather clear that the average joe is not given the right to bear arms. The second amendment clearly states that the right to bear arms is soley for a "well regulated militia" In most cases a "militia" does not exsist today. It has been replaced by the national Guard. Case in point is how the federal government delt with the "freedmen" in Montana. They went in and dismantled them. On another point you have mistakenly stereotyped me as a liberal when in fact I am a red blooded republican. I may not be as conservative as many of the GOP members but identify with the elephant I do! This is a great arguement that often recruits even the most reserved students and elicits a heated opinion.
I respect both your opinion and candor, but I do not agree with your logic. My high school Government/Civics teacher had a completely different interpretation of the second amendment as you, so you can't use your job title as an appeal to higher authority. That is one of the most common logical fallacies. You are saying that the government decided that because we now have a government paid and regulated National Guard, that the average American doesn't necessarily have the right to bare arms anymore.
I do not agree with that statement.
Firstly, "well regulated militia" is not equivalent to "national guard".
Because, a well regulated militia is not government regulated. If you look up the word "militia", Webster plainly explains exactly that.
A militia is a group of citizens organized to provide paramilitary service. The word can have four slightly different meanings:
An official reserve army, composed of
citizens
The national police forces in Russia, and other CIS countries, and the Soviet Union: Militia
The entire able-bodied population of a state, which can be called to arms against an invading enemy
A private,
non-government force, not necessarily directly supported or sanctioned by its government
The government does not have the authority to tell us that we can't start a militia. People today are pussies, and have let the government convince them that they can't, but the Bill of Rights, plainly states that we can.
This leads me to one of my all time personal grievances with Americans. When are we going to stop being pussy ass little bitches, and start telling our congressman, senators, and president that what they think doesn't fucking matter, and what the constitution says, and what we say does. We have let our representatives think that they have become more powerful than us. They are supposed to be representing us, but instead are telling us what to think. This makes me very sad and pissed off.
When the Bill of Rights was created, we had just fought our way out of oppression and unfair government control. As a safeguard to keep this from ever happening again, amendments such as the second were included into the constitution to allow citizens to have a way to fight back when they felt the government was getting over controlling.
I believe that the second amendment was put into place specifically for these days. I do not trust the government one fucking bit. Lately I have seen judges let child rapist go with out a day of jail time, I have seen our courts let white-collar criminal businessmen rape the financial future of every worker of their company without a fucking day of jail time, I have seen our courts send young adults to jail for 10 years or more for smoking something that grew out of the ground, I have seen our police beat the shit out of people for being the wrong color, I have seen politicians be indicated on charges of embezzlement and ethical violation just to only serve probation and then run for office again, and I have seen the middle class do the brunt of the work in this country so that the government and big business could work out deals to keep each other in power and take advantage of us every day of our lives.
The rest of Americans can trust them if they want to, and give their you guns with the rest of their civil liberties and rights. But as Charles Heston said, "from my cold dead hands".
