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[lprkn]

Its funny how a distrust of the very idea of government seems to be... hardwired directly into American political discourse when... that's not how it was in the beginning at all. The point of the American Revolution wasn't that governance didn't work, it was that governance from afar by birthright didn't work... and this framework for a government could work and could work well.

Where did this new line of thinking... that government is fundamentally built to oppress and is evil and must be defended against... get written in?

I mean, it's kind of transparent that it was put in there by business interests who wanted to do whatever the fuck they wanted but...

I don't know, historically, when did this fundamental rewrite of our history start?

Umm, this pretty much has been hardwired since day one man. I mean, the constitution makes things as byzantine as possible so that no one person can totally run the show.

[jaydub]

One on one, most people are basically decent.
When you get three people together, politics begins.
A committee is an organism with six or more legs and no brain.
Once you get larger groups, the amount of useful work per person begins to decline to asymptotically approach a minumum (although the total work accomplished rises).  At some critical level however, bad apples get sufficient cover to work mischief, and corruption, pettiness, and the death of common sense by 1000 cuts ensues.  The larger government gets, the more prevalent the negative aspects of mob behavior become.  This is why libertarians are always harping on the virtue of small government.

Remember, the ultimate government project is war.  The situation in Iraq is a case study in how effective massive bureaucracies are in executing a plan.

[JorgeFabregas]

The revolutionaries hardly had a unified ideological stance. Thomas Paine, for one, did not seem afraid of big government.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Remember, the ultimate government project is war.  The situation in Iraq is a case study in how effective massive bureaucracies are in executing a plan.

yeah, the only thing that makes a government a government is that it is a group with a monopoly on the use of force.

[Ben-San]

I think you're off base with pulling two words out and running to a dictionary, partner. I prefer to discuss the issue along the lines of articles like this dudes rather than just throwing up the hands and yelling 'definition winz0r'!

In other news: The Santa Ana winds have kicked in and the Angelus is on fire so the San Berdoo got scared and closed down all the fire road gates. No deer chasing for me today!

Um. If by "pulling two words out and running to a dictionary" you mean "reading an article about the application of historical linguistics to modern legal interpretation in the International Journal of American Linguistics", then I guess you're maybe right?

I mean, assuming your dictionaries are peer-reviewed journals in the field I guess.

There are a lot of uses of the phrase "to bear arms" in documents of this time, and with two exceptions (in poetry, where they're used metaphorically) all of them refer to military service; none refer to ownership of weapons. Thank you for assuming I'm pulling things out of my ass, though. I'm not saying the Founding Fathers wouldn't have wanted you to have a gun; to them, the idea of forbidding people from having one would've been bizarre. I'm saying that they were educated people who knew what the words they were writing meant, and at the time they meant something different from what they mean today.

I kind of suspect gun ownership is not constitutionally protected for much the same reason your right to maintain a well-equipped kitchen with an array of spices and knives is not: even though you could throw paprika in someone's eyes and shank him, it never occurred to them that someone might later try to ban them.

[Ben-San]

Right, and there was a lot of discussion of it amongst them (FF) and the actual content, wording an breadth were open to debate.

Notice I didn't assault what you said but how you said it. Your second post at least carries some meat, which is what I was hoping mine would provoke.

Cool, I like days that include unreturned benefits on the internet.

My second post contains exactly the same meat as the first post. Go back and read it this time. The only thing I had in the second that wasn't in the first is a citation, which I'll grant is a lesson to me not to go around with my citation needed unzipped and flopping around.

I'm still a little pissed that you assumed I was pulling politicized lies out of my ass. Guess I thought I might've had a little bit of intellectual respect, maybe not.

Edit: Okay, that's bitchier than I intended. To clarify, where I come from intellectual dishonesty is about the lowest thing you can accuse a fellow of. Asking for a citation is one thing but assuming that the other guy's making up his facts is pretty much fighting words, and in the groups I run with that's a lot more personal hostility than I tend to expect in this group.

[jaydub]

I like that this is the first discussion I've seen in a while where the phrase "bear arms" was under debate, rather than "well-regulated militia".  My second amendment sword is well sharpened¹ on the original-intent meaning of the latter.  I shall have to turn my attention to this new bauble.

1. Thanks to the Hon. George Mason, along with the Federalist papers and other statements.

[Ben-San]

I like that this is the first discussion I've seen in a while where the phrase "bear arms" was under debate, rather than "well-regulated militia".  My second amendment sword is well sharpened¹ on the original-intent meaning of the latter.  I shall have to turn my attention to this new bauble.

1. Thanks to the Hon. George Mason, along with the Federalist papers and other statements.

The two questions are related - are you engaging in military service if it is not in the context of a "well-regulated militia"?

I think the big problem here is that "bear arms" is a term that's in relatively common modern use with a changed meaning, so people think it's obvious what that phrase means. "Well-regulated militia" is no longer a common term outside Constitutional discussions, so people are more ready to accept that its meaning might not be obvious to a modern reader.

[Ben-San]

Nah, bitch away. I slugged you in the gut to get you to defend and develop your original output. Because it's interesting and worth discussion.

People around here are (mostly) academically serious, you included. You forget I know and use this, maybe. I wanted the meat served more well done without the gun under the pillow AK-47 FTW gim-krackery. Isn't that sMets gimmick, anyways.

Okay, see, let me clarify.

You want me to make a more sober and straightforward post with citations, you ask me and I will. I'm not attached to witticisms. Well, I am, but I figure once I've posted them the first time it's enough for anyone.

If you want to look me in the eye and ask me for a fight, knuckles out and trying very hard not to think about the knife in my pocket, that's when you outright accuse me of intellectual dishonesty and making up my facts. If you think I'm being flip now, I'm not. I've mostly left that rage behind me and there are very few things that can bring it back out, but one of them is when somebody who I take seriously in an intelligent discussion makes such a claim about me. So just.. I dunno what the equivalent thing to say to you would be. Probably something about your mother and various farm animals. But please do not straightfacedly accuse me of intellectual dishonesty. We all have our own Circumstances.

edit: And just to note: the "defend and develop" consisted of making a citation about where I had read this. Every other point I made was reiterated from my original post: the change in the usage of the phrase, my personal beliefs about the Founding Fathers' beliefs, and the careful distinction between the points of "what I think the Founding Fathers believed" and "what they actually wrote down". Please do not act like you spurred some intellectual development in me like some kind of fatherly Morgan Freeman character, because what you did was invoke a sickening, gut-churning sensation that I choked down in order to calmly reiterate my points with a citation. I dunno, maybe that's what you were aiming for.

[wombat]

I kind of suspect gun ownership is not constitutionally protected for much the same reason your right to maintain a well-equipped kitchen with an array of spices and knives is not: even though you could throw paprika in someone's eyes and shank him, it never occurred to them that someone might later try to ban them.

This is an interesting point nicely put. I wish I could steal it and pretend I wrote it, and since I also feel strongly about intellectual dishonesty, it takes a lot to tempt me to feel that way.

[jaydub]

The two questions are related - are you engaging in military service if it is not in the context of a "well-regulated militia"?

Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, and Tench Coxe, as well as Madison, Paine, and even Washington regarded the individual right to possess firearms and indeed, carry them about, as unrelated to any common obligation to armed forces.

In point of the "bear arms" phrase - while I was browsing about looking to see if I could find an easy direct link to "The Thomas Jefferson Papers" I came across the following from A Bill for Preservation of Deer (1785) The bill would have fined those who hunted deer out of season, and if within a year "[the hunter] shall bear a gun [long arm such as rifle or scattergun] out of his inclosed ground, unless whilst performing military duty," he shall be in violation of his recognizance.

So "bearing arms" at the time of the framers has more or less the same interpretation as today.  Interestingly, it seems that "gun" and handgun were considered different appliances¹.  The fined hunter was free to move about off his land while armed with a pistol without further censure - it was carrying a rifle following his infraction that brought down the law unless he was performing military duty.  This directly distinguishes the private bearing of arms as a practice as a matter of course from military duty.

1. Contrast this with the situation today, where lay persons generally speak about "guns" meaning handguns such as pistols, revolvers, and the like.

Post # 1776!  How apropos!

[Ben-San]

Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, and Tench Coxe, as well as Madison, Paine, and even Washington regarded the individual right to possess firearms and indeed, carry them about, as unrelated to any common obligation to armed forces.

In point of the "bear arms" phrase - while I was browsing about looking to see if I could find an easy direct link to "The Thomas Jefferson Papers" I came across the following from A Bill for Preservation of Deer (1785) The bill would have fined those who hunted deer out of season, and if within a year "[the hunter] shall bear a gun [long arm such as rifle or scattergun] out of his inclosed ground, unless whilst performing military duty," he shall be in violation of his recognizance.

So "bearing arms" at the time of the framers has more or less the same interpretation as today.  Interestingly, it seems that "gun" and handgun were considered different appliances.  The fined hunter was free to move about off his land while armed with a pistol without further censure - it was carrying a rifle following his infraction that brought down the law unless he was performing military duty.  This directly distinguishes the private bearing of arms as a practice as a matter of course from military duty.

"bear a gun" and "bear arms" are different phrases. "bear arms" was a specific phrase used to refer to military service. In this case, the arms being borne are not guns, but the arms (i.e. insignia) of the military in which he is serving, as I recall.

(Warning: I do not have this specific issue available to me, so I may be misrecalling details of this part. But this is as I recall it.)

[AugustWest]

Nah, bitch away. I slugged you in the gut to get you to defend and develop your original output. Because it's interesting and worth discussion.

People around here are (mostly) academically serious, you included. You forget I know and use this, maybe. I wanted the meat served more well done without the gun under the pillow AK-47 FTW gim-krackery. Isn't that sMets gimmick, anyways.

So you're trolling in other words.

fuck*ng troll.  Get a gotdam life.

[littlefallsmets]

To be honest, my gimmick is a lot less like that and a lot more like...

I say whatever my fevered heart tells my mind to say at any given moment and plunk it down.

Sometimes it is well-thought-out, sometimes it is poorly-thought-out but basically-true and sometimes it is the ravings of a man with too many words and too many issues.

Of-the-momentness, for better and for worse.

[jaydub]

"bear a gun" and "bear arms" are different phrases. "bear arms" was a specific phrase used to refer to military service.

Oddly enough, it appears this exact topic is examined on Wikipedia, to which I'll refer you rather than summarizing other than to point out the ratifying sessions of the Constitution in the various states (and for the constitutions of the various states) were recorded for posterity, and the debates on the Second Amendment in particular are there for anyone to read.