I'm Confused By The Second Amendment Debate.

I am still confused by the debate going on about the second amendment in the U.S. now. Former SCOTUS chief justice Warren Burger agreed that the amendment's real purpose was to ensure the maintenance of state armies, or militia, for state defense, not personal defense. Especially not for machine guns, bazookas and uzis or even guns with regular bullets, which they didn't even have in Washington's time.

Another thing that confuses me, and I seem to be the only person online bringing this next one up. In 2008 the Supreme Court endorsed the idea of the Second Amendment protecting private gun ownership in the Heller decision. But two years later in McDonald v. Chicago in 2010 they applied it to the states thru the doctrine of selective incorporation. Now I agree that I am not a lawyer. But original intent judges don't believe in selective incorporation. In fact in my 1997 political science class they told us, it's the one time both conservative and liberal judges agree. Our teacher said on the Second Amendment liberal judges become conservatives. Just like on the idea that the right to grand jury would never apply to the states. (I'm just remembering what they taught us. We covered that last one in HS street law class too. And we may have had something about it in the 8th grade in a crash course we had on the constitution too.)

A lot of other people claim to know what they are talking about and try to prove me wrong on all of this. And they may be right. But something about that all seems wrong. And lawyers and even liberals online seem to have little or nothing to say on that subject I've noticed.

 

I'm not confused in the slightest. Res ipsa loquitor; "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."
The Second Amendment is a pernicious anachronism dating back to a time when we were a confederation of states, had no standing army, and the standard infantry weapon had a maximum effective range of 100 yards and a maximum rate of fire of three rounds a minute.
Now we garrison a global empire of at least 128 military bases in 55 countries and territories around the world and our military spending exceeds that of the next ten largest militaries combined (eight of which are allies). The Second Amendment's sole raison d'être; the maintenance of "a well regulated militia", has been a moot point for well over 100 years.
More than 46,000 Americans are killed by firearms annually; one every 11 minutes. More Americans have been killed by guns Since 1968 than in all U.S. wars combined (and the US has been at war 225 out of 243 years since 1776). To try and rationalize such carnage by feigning reverence for an archaic legislative fossil which should have been repealed before high-button shoes went out of fashion is obscene in the extreme.