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The Second Amendment does not mention guns at all. Its primary and publicized function when it was passed was to keep the new Federal government from absorbing State militias and their instate managed peace keeping functions into a consolidated Federal law enforcement body. That goes hand in hand with forbidding the Federal Army or any Federal forces from acting in local situations within any State except in specifically mentioned conditions. All of the original States had their own weapons control laws and regulations on the books at the time and they remain there in most cases.
Exempting guns from that weapons control is actually in violation of the Second Amendment, which is first and foremost a States' Rights amendment. It is what both enables state and the subordinate county, parish and local police management the individual States organize as well as any type of statewide peace keeping which is what it actually mandates.
That was always one of the first functions turned over from Federal law and order effort to each new State to enter the Union and the immediate disbanding of the Federal Territorial courts the Federal marshals that reported to them.
You can certainly make a very strong case against Federal weapons management in favor of State management. But you may not under original intentions of the Amendment exempt State management specifically of private gun control or in general of any other kind of weapon as they see fit for peace keeping purposes.
Without the Second Amendment you do not get any barrier against police moving across state lines except in "hot pursuit" which only is enabled between States that mutually agree to even that. Nor do you get any requirement of extradition between states, and not even States' rights to pass their own particular forms of law or how they manage their own forms of subordinate peace keeping functions.
The real protection against tyranny in the Second Amendment is against a consolidated and totally Federally managed peace keeping force such as they had in the English kingdom at the time, one easily augmented by the English national army at the will of the national government, which enabled a few in the national government to interfere in otherwise orderly regional affairs and the traditional rights those regions practiced.
IMO that was one of the wisest actions taken by the Bill of Rights and was an important enough concern that the original Constitution would not have been passed without promise of the additional action in the Bill of Rights and this being one of the first in that list.
Guns are not specifically mentioned in the Constitution at all nor have they been given any special exemptions. Local weapons control was passed to the States in a single sentence with a single purpose, one that specifically meant to limit Federal authority, to be sure, but did not single out firearms for any expanded national liberties and definitely not any national weapons ownership liberties allowed to cross state lines into other State jurisdictions.
I would oppose any repeal of the Second Amendment myself, but not because it confers any private weapon ownership rights, which is specifically does not. I oppose a national police force, with both Federal marshalls and the FBI already over the line, but then I do not oppose private ownership of civilian guns either.
I do support individual State control of specific civilian ownership of particular types of weapons and Federal control of interstate trade in particular types of weapons and weapon augmentation, which is a different matter entirely. Forget your slippery slope business; that is first and foremost a result of the interior leadership coup in the NRA from back a few decades ago that transformed a gun control favoring organization into what is now little more than a laizze faire industry lobby for major gun manufacturers.
Make your own instate and trade instate with instate manufacture and I see no Federal right to interfere, none at all. That goes with a previous post about handloading either yourself or having an instate neighbor or gunsmith do it for you. I do not however see that you have any Second Amendment right to impose local rights out of state any more than the Federal government has to restrict your own instate regulations.
The history is very clear that the Second Amendment was meant to protect States' Rights to control weapons within their own borders specifically for whatever regulated peace keeping efforts they saw fit, and they all had restrictions at the time and have never stopped doing so.
Fight Federal control on an interior States' Rights basis and I think you are on solid ground, but stay out of my State regulations, if you are from out of state. I will not violate your State laws. Do not violate mine. Then we will work together to limit Federal interference where it is not constitutionally allowed as the Second Amendment was meant to do.
States Rights may not be a popular liberal or progressive idea at this point. But casting us all into a strictly reactionary role to what we consider a far overboard misapplication of conservative principles does not begin to be accurate either. Either extreme having carte blanch is simply not going to work. Period!
Originally Posted by Cane Pole
