re: #83 Anymouse

Reading comments over at Huffington Post on today’s votes, I still see liberals making arguments such as “The II Amendment was only meant for muskets. I think gun ownership should be restricted to muskets.”

I hate that argument every time I see it; it is a bad argument. Societies and technology advance which is why we have a mechanism for laws and amendments. If the II Amendment was only for muskets, the the I Amendment was only for printing presses and town criers.

Agreed. Gun control proponents shouldn’t use arguments like that. It’s a self-defeating distraction from things that might actually work.

I’m also leery of arguments predicated on Heller being 100% wrongly decided. The second amendment is ambiguous. There is no way to tell from its text exactly how (if at all) militia service is connected with the right to keep and bear arms. So even if Heller gets reversed, the possibility of that reversal being overturned will never go away.

Furthermore, the militia as understood by the founders is a historical relic that hasn’t been in operation for over a century. Making the second amendment all about the militia just doesn’t seem to make sense.