“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” – Thomas Jefferson

1.)Blacks represent a vastly disproportionate portion of the prison population and those committed of Felonies.

2.)There were many laws enacted during Slavery…and reconstructed…and even many that existed right up until the Civil Rights era of the late 50′s early 60′s…

3.)Then, once the civil rights issues were “fleshed out” by the Civil Rights act, etc.(signed on April 11, 1968) we get the Gun Control Act of 1968 (signed Oct. 22, 1968)….Lyndon Johnson…

I WOULD THINK THE ACLU WOULD EAT THIS ONE UP…WOULDN’T YOU???

The Supreme Court has said that to be denied a constitutionally guaranteed right is indeed a punishment…yet, people who have “paid their debt” never stop paying!

Check out the Amicus Brief of:
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership…It is very insightful…They mentioned that there were small uprisings in Germany by very small armed bans of Jews who were “armed illegally” (since Jews couldn’t own guns) The first I had heard of armed conflict between Jews and Nazis early on in Jewish Ghetos etc.

Someone need to look at New York’s Sullivan laws. The de facto political and socio-economic, provable discrimination is jaw dropping.

The history of denying blacks firearms is indisputable in history and continues in New York, Chicago and DC

As far as what is “reasonable”, who decides? How aabout this: “do not use a firearm to aid in criminal activity.” That sounds reasonable to me.

All the comments by the founders and framers indicate that they wanted every honest citizen to be allowed to own, and if they chose to, carry firearms. Jefferson advocated shooting as an uplifting exercise and that the gun should be your constant companion.

The framers would have seen the question more in light of John Locke’s second treatise which would indicate that “collective” rights are merely rights belonging to individuals which individuals choose to delegate to society where society can enhance those rights as a function of it’s having greater resources than the individual. Where society cannot provide an enhanced or at least equivalent to the individual right then that right becomes “unalienable” and falls back to the individual. Same principle that says if the police, as agents of society, can’t be there to protect you then the right to self defense falls back to you as an individual.

In that context, the right to form militias is merely an extention of the individual right to self defense or more concisely in Locke’s view, the “natural” right of individuals to enforce natural law (self preservation being the first law of nature). In situations where individuals alone aren’t capable of meeting a threat, they have a right to band together as a militia to meet that threat, exercising the individual right as a group. Again, to the framers there would been have no division between the individual and collective right (hence the wording of the 2nd amendment created no conflict in thier minds).

The only question is what arms are appropriate to the task of individual defense as opposed to collective defense which , regardless of the logic involved in getting there, the court appears to be moving toward trying to define.

Well, not quite. Under that notion, the state might find it “reasonable” to toss you in jail for writing what you just did. After all, it might anger those opposed to gun control, which could result in bloodshed. What would be more reasonable than preventing you from posting what you did, given the possibility of a violent outcome?

“As far as I can tell, there is no history of discrimnation against gun owners in the U.S. ”

Then, sad to say, you can’t tell very much. Gun “control” was *originally* used to keep blacks from arming themselves against white depredations in the South after the Civil War. Even in recent times, federal laws against “Saturday Night Specials” were aimed at blacks, and came about in partial response to Black Panther public displays of weaponry in the middle 1960s, which led to the Gun Control Act of 1968.

1) Individual-right advocates frequently compare it to the First Amendment. The difference is that the First Amendment protects speech, but the Second Amendment protects, in some form, the right to have a deadly weapon. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

2) I have actually read the Respondent’s Brief from this case, and have listened to some individual-rights advocates, and they appear to advocate for an unlimited right to own weapons. The problem is that even I, a high school senior with no formal experience in law, can tell you that none of the other rights in the Bill of Rights are unlimited. Not the First Amendment (libel, fighting words, etc.), nor the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth, and the only reason I don’t include the Third and Ninth is that the courts appear to have very little use for those amendments. My point is that the Petitioners and the Bush Administration are right in saying that reasonable gun control laws should be allowed. The Supreme Court allows for rational basis “discrimination” against anyone who is not in a “suspect class,” a classification that has a historical history of discrimination associated with it (i.e. race, gender, disability, etc.) As far as I can tell, there is no history of discrimnation against gun owners in the U.S. Therefore, a rational gun control law is allowable, no matter which kind of right the Second Amendment protects. Q.E.D.