The Constitution is a Living Document

[Dan]

yeah. We know that

Obviously you don't, given your assertion that individuals don't have a right to keep and bear arms under the Constitution.

[1965hawks]

1965hawks says the Second Amendment is the only part of the "Bill of Rights" that doesn't apply to the people!

Stop ying, D2Dumbitch! That's what you keep saying, you DUMB little bitch.

"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."

It doesn't say the right of the Militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed!

I  know, D2D. It actually says the right of the people to keep and bear arms (as active members of a governmentally regulated militia) shall not be infringed.

It doesn't say the right of the State to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed!

And the Second Amendment doesn't say that private ownership of firearms shall not be regulated by governmental authority. And, of course, it doesn't say that the people have a right to raise and maintain so-called citizen militias either. Does it?

You're still a DUMB little bitch, D2

[D2D]

1965hawks says the Second Amendment is the only part of the "Bill of Rights" that doesn't apply to the people!

"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."

It doesn't say the right of the Militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed!

It doesn't say the right of the State to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed!

[sweetwater5s9]

You can always try to have our citizen militia outlawed through a Constitutional amendment.   Good luck... 

The USSC 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, domestic and foreign, not a right of the states to maintain a government militia.   The Court concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state infringement the same individual right that is protected from federal infringement by the Second Amendment.

The only legal process you anti-gun and anti-citizen militia nuts have is a Constitutional amendment.  Get on it.  Good luck.

[1965hawks]

sweetwter5s9: The USSC ruled that  The Court concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state infringement the same individual right that is protected from federal infringement by the Second Amendment.

sweetwater5s9,

Scalia's flawed thinking and judicial activism in Heller was  noted, roundl, criticized, and ridiculed, even by conservative judges.

"Yesterday, the NY Times highlighted the fact that two conservative federal judges, Richard Posner and J. Harvie Wilkinson III, have recently and strongly criticized Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller for being overly “activist” – a bitter insult to the proudly conservative Justice Scalia."

https://theusconstitution.org/text-history/439

According to the majority opinion in Heller (written by Scalia) the language and history of the Second Amendment showed that it protects a private right of individuals to have arms for their own defense, domestic and foreign, not a right of the states to maintain a government militia. 

How could Scalia come to the conclusion that the founders of this Republic relied on ordinary civilians to provide for national defense and domestic tranquility?

Of course, the assertion is both illogical and historically inaccurate. The Framers' Constitution allowed the states to retain and maintain their respective militias, just as they had done under the first constitution--The Articles of Confederation. But the Framers' also realised that the Colonies had won their independence in spite of, not because of the Militia. And for that reason the Framers had the good sense to provide for a standing army to be the primary defenders the nation and allowed Congress to call out state militias and place them under the control of the president in an emergency . The Framers would ha considered it an incredibly absurd notion to trust the defense of the Republic to ad hoc mobs of untrained and unorganised civilians(!) armed only with a hodge-podge collection of personal small arms ill-suited for warfare. Whoever wrote that bullshit sweetwater5s9 cited obviously didn't know what the hell he or she was talking about--just like my misinformed gun-nut opponents here in this forum.

 

[sweetwater5s9]

If African Americans were citizens, observed Chief Justice Taney in Dred Scott v. Sandford,[1] "it would give to persons of the negro race ... the full liberty of speech ...; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."[2] If this interpretation ignores that Articles I and II of the Bill of Rights designate the respective freedoms guaranteed therein to "the people" and not simply the citizens (much less a select group of orators or militia), contrariwise Dred Scott followed antebellum judicial thought in recognizing keeping and bearing arms as an individual right[3] protected from both federal and state infringement.[4] The exception to this interpretation were cases holding that the Second Amendment only protected citizens[5] from federal, not state,[6] infringement of the right to keep and bear arms, to provide judicial approval of laws disarming black freemen and slaves.

Since the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to overrule Dred Scott by extending individual constitutional rights to black Americans and by providing protection thereof against state infringement,[7] the question arises whether the framers of Amendment XIV and related enforcement legislation recognized keeping and bearing arms as an individual right on which no state could infringe. The congressional intent in respect to the Fourteenth Amendment is revealed in the debates over both Amendments XIII and XIV as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Anti-KKK Act of 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

[ Originally published as Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, 68-82 (1982) ("Other Views"). Reproduced in the 1982 Senate Report, pg. 68-82. Dr. Halbrook is the author of
Freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866-1876
which may be obtained from amazon.com]

[1965hawks]

If African Americans were citizens, observed Chief Justice Taney in Dred Scott v. Sandford,[1] "it would give blah blah blah blah....

The Constitution is a living. If the Constitution were not a living document as the so-called constitutional expert Scalia had argued , then involuntary servitude would still be the Law of the Land, because the Constitution (a dead document) could not had been amended to abolish slavery.
Since the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to overrule Dred Scott by extending individual constitutional rights to black Americans and by providing protection thereof against state infringement,[7] the question arises whether the framers of Amendment XIV and related enforcement legislation recognized keeping and bearing arms as an individual right on which no state could infringe. The congressional intent in respect to the Fourteenth Amendment is revealed in the debates over both Amendments XIII and XIV as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Anti-KKK Act of 1871, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.


The obvious flaw in that argument is the false analogy of comparing slave laws with gun laws. A slave law is a blatant infringement of the inalienable right of liberty, a gun law that bans handguns within the limits of a certain city can hardly be called an infringement of liberty. Again, comparing chattel slavery with a gun law is a classic example of a false analogy, the two have nothing in common. Take what Halbrook says with a grain of salt.   

[D2D]

1965hawks says the Second Amendment is the only part of the "Bill of Rights" that doesn't apply to the people!

"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."

It doesn't say the right of the Militia to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed!

It doesn't say the right of the State to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed!

                                                                                                                                       

[duke_john]

hawkiepoop says blah blah blah.  Again.

[KensanIV]

Now you've upset little hawkiepooh.

[1965hawks]

I've just completed reading all the post in this thread, beginning with Bill Whittle's error-filled and opinionated video that started this thread. In that video, Whittle made the preposterous claim that the Constitution of the United States of America is not a living document. (The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made a similar claim, declaring the Constitution "Dead. Dead. Dead.")

In addition to them, our forum's "moderator" jim , who evidently believes every lie Bill Whittle pulls out his ass, and several other of our forum's right-wingers, apparently agree with Whittle's illogical claim. T reached that conclusion based on the fact that I read no objection to Whittle's historically inaccurate claim from any discussant on this forum's right. Instead, their only contribution to this discussion was the usual nonsensical right-wingnut talking points and meaningless gibberishthey evidently believe can be substituted for intelligent discourse.

In fact, no one from our forum's right offered a logical explanation of why they believe our Constitution is not a living document, so I call on all this thread's right-leaning discussants to give their final assessment of why they believe the Constitution of the United States of America is a dead document rather than a living one. I suspect this will be our last chance to discuss this topic before jim does  what he usually does--pull the plug--when he see's his right-wingers  losing the argument. So chuck_curtis, Dan, duke_john, D2D, flgirl, jim, kensanIV, omiaqt, and sweetwater5s9 you have the floor. Explain why you agree with Bill Whittle's claim that the Constitution is not a living document.   

[chuck_curtis]

There's a lot of flawed thinking from the SCOTUS.   Yes, it's past time to fix its many and various flawed interpretations with amendments to Constitution.  Until then, the Constitution is a dead letter.  The rulings don't square with the words on paper and the thinking behind them.  Until then, it's government by contemporary whim, not supreme law and reason.

One now has to go to case law to understand where we are at and how we got here.   The Constitution reads as if it is foreign to practice.