Governor Grisham is a fine example of the blatant fascism that exists within the Democratic Party.

@Graylight I would argue the Supreme Court ignores the constitution on the subject of guns and makes shit up so why should anyone else be subject to a law the highest court in the land pretends is not in writing.

Just an outside perspective.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow It's more nuanced than that. We have a strangely punctuated sentence to begin with, one which even scholars of the era can't elucidate on. Then we have two major ways of interpreting our Constitution; one is the broader interpretation that would apply to current times, offering more fluidity to 250-year-old principles. The others is the originalist view, which asserts all statements in the Constitution must be interpreted based on the original understanding. Kind of like Fundamental Christians, and only 6 Supreme Court justices of more than 100 have taken that originalist approach. Five of them sit on the current Supreme Court. The right to bear arms wasn't even taken up by the Supreme Court until 2008, when the court said the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to possess firearms independent of service in a state militia and to use firearms for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home. 235 years until a definitive ruling. So this is all new and irregular; the future is likely to change with regard to this issue, as it should.

@Graylight The thing is though in this case it is very plainly stated and backed by stacks of contemporary documents from the period making it crystal clear what was intended.

Yet the highest court of the land comes down with an official ruling that a well regulated militia means "me, myself, and I". And that is not even getting into the fact that this entire discussion came about as replacement for a standing army.

Instead you have people pretending this issue is a mystery and interpret it along the lines of what would be more appropriate for mystical experiences.

I am sorry but there is no creative interpretation of the English language or law where a military unit equals any random idiot with money.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow "The thing is though in this case it is very plainly stated and backed by stacks of contemporary documents from the period making it crystal clear what was intended" is only one view. The amendment, as written, defies English grammar and absolutely does not clearly state anything. That's what the argument's always been about. The Supreme Court does not legislate or prosecute; it merely interprets the Constitution. For instance: https://daily.jstor.org/revisiting-messy-language-second-amendment/

I'm, I think, with you on the gun thing. We simply don't need them. But bear in mind there's the originalist interpretation and a more fluid application to modern day. So right off the bat there are different legal interpretations. There's a reason why Constitutional Law is taught as an entire course, not just a reading assignment. Nothing is black & white.

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.
Two commas that render this passage so confusing. And if all the justices who've ruled on it had similar difficulty, then I have no reason to think regular high school and college grads don't have the answer, either.

@Graylight My point is you don't have to do much interpretation when you have tons of supporting documentation that provides clarification. The entire point of the legal system is to rule on law as it exists not as we wish it aught to be.

And with that supporting documentation being present written by a bunch of men who were kind of famous for writing their ideas down in such detail that in some cases they revealed themselves to be hardly the noble wise men they were going for.

And I don't think that can be handwaved away by difference in 18th century grammar while ignoring all the supporting documentation that makes their intentions much more clear.

You are right some peculiarities of 18th century grammar would be a problem if we existed in a world where that short statement was the only documentation on the subject to go off of.

It becomes particularly problematic when the Supreme Court in the US seems to have no conflict of interest regulations of any meaningful kind and their current interpretation just happens to line up with the narrative of a firearms lobby group and not one grounded in law or history.


To be clear I am not going after you here. I just see as an outsider an entire industry that benefits politically from deliberately pretending certain issues are more opaque than they actually are and a court that is hopelessly compromised by that industry.

I also think Americans need to remember that even their own constitution was intended to be a living document that changed with the country and is not some holy scripture.

Constitutions are only meant to remain in place for as long as they are useful and relevant to the current world and are created by flawed human men and women.

I mean the UK has existed since 1066 without a formal codified constitution and France is on their 5th or 6th since the founding of the USA.

Heck Canada didn't really have a codified constitution till 1982 and ironically since we have had that constitution it has in some cases made it even harder to do away with some of the worst aspects of Canadian law going back centuries (see Meech Lake accords if interested) like the Indian Act.


And is the constitution really that sacred when it is blatantly ignored whenever convenient. Like bombing 8 different countries while claiming not to be at war because well they just didn't bother to declare it a war. And that would require oversight.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow I don't disagree with you in the least, except to say there are tons of supporting evidence is something you should offer examples of. Anything cited would have to have been written in the same time period. As it is written, which is the only thing the Supreme Court rules on, it is a confusing and vague statement. That leaves it up to us to interpret, and I think this is where you and I land on the same page. There's simply far too much evidence that the gun lobby is broken and firearms are a far greater danger than boon to society,

@Graylight Sorry. I forget not everyone reads dusty history books for fun. Most of what is relevant is in the constitutional convention documents and correspondences between the various parties.

The overall idea was to have a (modern) European style conscript army made up of small militias that could be called up when needed. This was important because many of the individuals at the time looked at how in Europe standing armies of the day had a nasty habit of overthrowing the government during peace time. The logic being you can't have a military coup without a standing army.

Eventually the fight to not have a standing army was lost but the amendment intended to create an alternative military framework remained.

There is also bits about fights in the south over wording to maintain the slave patrols so there was also that.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Yes, I get that. I've read the papers and studied Jefferson's ideologies, principles and writing in particular. I read the Constitution the same way you do. However, there are (obviously) different interpretations. There is no time restriction placed on the nation to stop the right to bear arms once a standing army was created. It might've been the intention, but they left no instructions.

It's not about the SCOTUS ignoring or ruling with malice. In fact, It's the phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" that's as hotly contested. And it has been since its inception. Implicit in the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists were two shared assumptions. First, that the proposed new Constitution gave the federal government almost total legal authority over the army and militia. Secondly, that the federal government should not have any authority at all to disarm the citizenry. They disagreed only about whether an armed populace could adequately deter federal oppression. It was much more about keeping states' rights from being usurped by the federal government.

A 5–4 majority ruled that the language and history of the Second Amendment showed that it protects a private right of individuals to have arms for their own defense, not a right of the states to maintain a militia. And so that is the standing ruling in the US. Yes, I think it's wrong, I absolutely think we have a conservative panel and that common sense and a basic sense of humanity would halt a problem that's killing so many people. I also think the US Constitution should be revisited and made relevant for today, of which 80% is still perfectly valid.

Disarming this nation - or setting up one single regulation law with teeth - will take far more than a SCOTUS ruling. It would take the majority of the government to do so, and not one single GOP member is going to play that game. They can't even admit Trump's got 91 felony charges against him. And as long as we've got people screaming for their 2nd amendment freedoms while never even intending on touching a gun, there will too much resistance to change. You can see we're not so well-behaved with our leaders.

Even as the GOP disregards and wants to dismantle the Constitution, that's the one single clause they'd keep. For now.

@Graylight

I think we agree on most of it. And I don't actually think a simple change in a ruling will solve much at this point anyway because it is not the biggest issue. But this here is an example of what I mean with the problem of SCOTUS rulings influenced by conflicts of interest.



The problem with this is where are they getting this idea that the Second Amendment had anything to do with personal defense or "defending against tyranny of the government" as is often cited.

The only place I have ever seen evidence for this interpretation is NRA literature and relatively recent literature (1960-70s).

If you have a court that is so compromised they can claim a narrative cooked up by a lobby group is historical and rule based on it you have an issue.

I mean this is as much a problem because if this can happen than there is no reason the constitution's wording on declaration of war for example could be interpreted according to Lockheed Martin or environmental policy through the Heartland Foundation.


But the biggest issue ultimately is the bizarre American right wing gun culture that teaches that a gun is a status symbol and a symbol of manhood. That being a man or being strong is determined by how many guns and ammos you have.

And out of that same culture my parents mentioned once it was not till they moved to Colorado that they met people who thought solving personal conflicts with bullets was acceptable behavior.

Up here in Canada we largely see guns as dangerous tools for a specific job. Something you need proper training on like a chop saw.

And since we see guns are largely tools to most Canadians the "right to bear arms" is like obsessing about a right to bear hammers. It is kind of weird on it's face.