This is why we need to stop being such douchebags about gun violence research

[garbon]

Be a dick and then die.

[Habbaku]

  That doesn't seem like good advice.

[Oexmelin]

Also, if some are interested in what historians had to say about the Second Amendment:

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/07-290_amicus_historians.pdf

[garbon]

That doesn't seem like good advice.

Try it first.

[Habbaku]

Rrrow.  Hiss.

[LaCroix]

Also, if some are interested in what historians had to say about the Second Amendment:

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/07-290_amicus_historians.pdf

in addition, for those interested in what historians had to say about the second amendment:

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/07-290_amicus_academicsforsecondamendment.pdf

figured may as well post the opposite side's 

[Oexmelin]

Well, "Academics for the Second Amendment" is, surprise, surprise, funded in part by the NRA, whose main academic members (amidst many, who are not) are not historians, but law professors.

[LaCroix]

here's another that was filed

http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/preview/publiced_preview_briefs_pdfs_07_08_07_290_RespondentAmCuCATOInstJMalcolm.authcheckdam.pdf

is there a reason to reject, without considering the material, this brief as well?

[derspiess]

Grabon's off his meds again.

[CountDeMoney]

That doesn't seem like good advice.

Try it first.

That's not very well regulated militia-friendly.

[Oexmelin]

La Croix: You misunderstand me: the briefs do not have to be rejected. They were filed, and are part of the debate. I presented the Amicus brief of Rakove, Cornell, Konig et al., as the brief of "historians", because they represent what I assess is a majority view amongst early americanists and specialists of the early republic. I happen to think that "Academics for the Second Amendment" are lousy historians. Joyce Lee Malcolm is not. I disagree with her analysis, but she can, and should be engaged and taken seriously - as have, repeatedly, the historians aforementioned.

[LaCroix]

appreciate the clarification

[11B4V]

Felt good slamming those shells in, didn't it?

It was okay.  A shotgun just seems like such a blunt, brutish tool.  It was fun to see what it did to the targets.

kind and sensitive person.

It is and very effective

[11B4V]

I read something about this before, but I just took a look at the text of the 2nd amendment:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

How, exactly, do you go from "a well regulated militia" to "I should be able to get whatever guns I want and shoot people who threaten me"?

Because guns are cool.

Yes a blast.
Just spent all day in live fires, building clearing. Active shooter drills with simunitions. Drilled a dude in the dick with a three round burst. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

My historical-legal opinion on the second is it was specifically a protection of the State's right to maintain a well armed militia force, so that they were, enshrined in the constitution, the irrevocable right to maintain their own military power independent from the Federal government. I think essentially every person in America alive in the 18th century and a functioning brain believed gun ownership to be a natural right no different from the right to own any number of things, but I don't think it was specifically enumerated. The Founders were pretty damn specific that they had written a limited constitution, and that when they passed the Bill of Rights it absolutely was not an exhaustive list of rights, in fact they even made sure one of the Amendments specifically said there are rights the people reserve that have not been enumerated in the BoR.

Unfortunately once Congress found its way around the "limited government" aspect of the constitution we found out that only specifically enumerated rights were much protected at all from Congress.