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Second Amendment blog
Assault weapon, ghost gun, arsenal, how news vocabulary does the arguing Seven words in gun coverage carry a conclusion before any argument starts. Each one's legal meaning, its use in coverage, and a neutral alternative. A thought experiment where the First Amendment is regulated like the Second Labelled satire: a made-up country regulates speech the way some states regulate guns, to show that no other right is treated like that. Australia, Britain and Switzerland compared, and why none of them is America Gun-control fans cite Australia and Britain, gun-rights fans cite Switzerland. A side-by-side comparison shows why none of the three can be imported here. The weapons of war argument against the AR-15 fails on its own terms The weapons of war claim confuses semi-automatic with automatic fire and ignores the common-use test; here is its strongest form, then the answer. Justice Stevens's Heller dissent, stated fairly and answered point by point The best case against an individual right to arms, from Justice Stevens in Heller, stated fairly and answered with text, history and state constitutions. Black Codes, the freedmen and the Fourteenth Amendment's right to bear arms Southern states disarmed freed slaves in 1865, and Congress wrote the right to bear arms into the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Fourteenth Amendment in answer. Bliss, Nunn and the antebellum judges who first read the right to bear arms Kentucky in 1822 and Georgia in 1846 held that a legislature may regulate carrying arms but not destroy the right. Heller and Bruen both lean on these cases. Why your state constitution may guard gun rights better than the federal one Your state has its own arms clause, often broader than the Second Amendment, and some demand strict scrutiny. Here is how it works and where to read it. St. George Tucker and Joseph Story, the first great commentators on arms Tucker in 1803 and Story in 1833 both called the right to keep and bear arms the palladium of liberty. Their words explain why the Supreme Court cites them. George Mason and the well regulated militia composed of the body of the people Mason wrote Virginia's Declaration of Rights, defined the militia as the body of the people, and refused to sign the Constitution until it had a bill of rights. The Powder Alarm and the British arms embargo that came before Lexington Gage's powder seizure and the Crown's 1774 embargo taught Americans that disarmament comes first. That, as much as April 1775, shaped the Second Amendment. The right of the people means the same thing in the First, Second and Fourth The Bill of Rights uses "the right of the people" three times and never means the state. Read side by side, the collective-right theory breaks on grammar. Justice Thomas stood alone in Rahimi, and his dissent deserves a careful reading Eight justices upheld the federal ban on guns for people under domestic-violence orders. Justice Thomas dissented, and conservatives can learn from both sides. Cruikshank, Colfax and how the Court left freedmen disarmed in 1876 Cruikshank held the Second Amendment bound only Congress, after the 1873 Colfax massacre. Freedmen stayed exposed until McDonald fixed incorporation in 2010. United States v. Miller, the one-sided 1939 case that muddled gun law for years Miller upheld a tax on short-barreled shotguns after no lawyer argued for the defendants. Lower courts misread it as militia-only, and Heller set it right. What the ratifying conventions demanded before Madison drafted an arms right State conventions in 1787 and 1788 asked for an arms guarantee in words about citizens and individuals. Madison condensed those demands in June 1789. Madison's Federalist 46 and the advantage of being armed that tyrants fear In Federalist 46 Madison calmed fears of a federal army by pointing to the armed citizens of America. Read it with Hamilton's No. 29 and the Anti-Federalists. Every able-bodied man must own a musket, the Militia Act of 1792 and its heirs The 1792 Militia Act ordered enrolled citizens to buy their own muskets, powder and flints, which shows the founders assumed an armed people, not an armory. What Pennsylvania and Vermont wrote about arms before the Second Amendment Early state constitutions protected arms for defence of themselves and the state, beside limits on standing armies. They show what Americans meant. Blackstone's fifth auxiliary right and how it shaped American thinking on arms Blackstone listed arms for defence as the fifth auxiliary right. Read the passage closely, see why Americans owned the book, and why Heller leaned on it. The 1689 English Bill of Rights and the arms clause Americans refused to copy England's 1689 arms clause protected Protestants, by rank, as Parliament allowed. The Americans wrote something broader, and the difference is the point. Why Lexington Green and Concord Bridge Started a War on April 19, 1775 General Gage sent troops to seize the colonists' powder and cannon, and farmers who had drilled for months answered at Lexington and Concord.