Sat, 12 May 2007 00:23:00
Fred Thompson on the Second Amendment
From the enactment of the Bill of Rights in 1791 until the 20th century, no one seriously argued that the Second Amendment dealt with anything but an individual right — along with all other nine original amendments. Kates writes that not one court or commentator denied it was a right of individual gun owners until the last century. Judges and commentators in the 18th and 19th century routinely described the Second Amendment as a right of individuals. And they expressly compared it to the other rights such as speech, religion, and jury trial.
The Times has simply replayed theories invented by the 20th-century gun-control movement. Their painting of the individual-right interpretation as a minority view is equally fanciful.
The Second Amendment as a collective right is a fancy created by modern gun control advocates. It isn’t - and never was - reality. The courts are waking up to that fact every day.
Posted by JimK at 12:23 AM on May 12, 2007
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#2 Posted by Harley W Daugherty 
on 05/12 at 06:19 PM -
and they said ARMS, not rifles and pistols...........
Cannon.. and other such devices have to be included.
#3 Posted by Buzzion on 05/13 at 02:46 AM -
I believe there’s a difference between arms and ordnance.
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#1 Posted by Drumwaster
on 05/12 at 01:24 PM -
I find it amusing that those who claim that the word “people” in (a) the Declaration of Independence, (b) the Preamble, (c) Article I, and (d) the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments refer to individuals, but assert that the Second Amendment uses it as “only specifically selected agents of the government, and no others”.
And one other thing… The Second Amendment means only flintlocks and muzzle loaders in exactly the same way that the First Amendment means only quill pens and hand-cranked printing presses.