Aguila Blanca
Member
I agree with CC. I get there by a somewhat different route, relying more on the language of the entire BOR and less on the writings of The Federalist Papers, but we get to the same place.ConstitutionCowboy said:I won't vote. This pole has no choice for the fact that the Second Amendment stands alone and is applicable across the board. All government is prohibited to infringe upon the right. There is precedent in the Federalist Papers indicating the authors of the Second Amendment intended the prohibition in the Amendment to apply to the several states as well as the Union.
There is a boat load of logic that supports that as well.
Courts and liberal judges notwithstanding, most sane people will acknowledge that the men who authored the BOR were intelligent men, among the brightest and best educated of their time; that they spent a certain amount of time and effort in writing the several amendments comprising the BOR; and that they generally knew how to write down what they intended to say.
Thus, in the 1st Amendment, in discussing what we have come to refer to as "freedom of religion," they wrote that "Congress" shall enact no law ...
"Congress." The Federal government. That's who the 1st Amendment restricted. It was VERY clear ... to anyone who is willing to read the words on the paper. The intention in the 1st Amendment was to limit the power of the Federal government to meddle in the states' affairs regarding religion. Remember, many of the original colonies began as religious colonies, started by people trying to escape religious persecution in their countries of origin. They not only did NOT want to risk creating the same mess they had just escaped, they also wanted to be sure their own religious leanings would not be invalidated by the new Fedral government. Far from wanting to ensure that everyone in every state could practice Zoroastrianism to their heart's content, what was really on their minds was the full knowledge that the founders of colonies such as Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts had very well-developed ideas of what they thought religion should be, and they didn't want the new government to muck it up.
But in the 2nd Amendment, there is no reference to "Congress" shall not infringe the RKBA. Nope ... no mention of Congress whatsoever. It says flat out that the RKBA "... shall not be infringed." That means not by anyone.
I have read, right here on the High Road, numerous posts stating that because the 1st Amendment limited the Congress, "of course" or "naturally" the 2nd Amendment also was intended to limit only the Congress. To that argument I reply, "Balderdash." The men who wrote the BOR were MUCH more intelligent than that. I respectfully submit that, had that been their intention, they would have done what any half-decent lawyer does to avoid repeating himself: They would have said, in the 1st, something to the effect of "Anywhere else in this document we express a limitation, it means that only Congress shall be so limited."
They didn't do that. The 2nd Amendment is all-encompassing, and despite the courts' pandering to modern hysteria, there is NOTHING in the 2nd Amendment that leaves the door open even a crack to "reasonable regulation." Regulation = restriction = infringement. "The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." I must be stupid, because I just cannot figure out what's so bloody difficult to understand in that one, simple sentence.