The murderous rampage which brought death to 20 children in Sandy Hook has been embraced with glee by the gun control fanatics. Only an unthinking emotional reaction to such horror can breath new life into a movement which seeks to leave honest, law-abiding citizens defenseless in the face of criminals and tyrants. Without these crimes the quislings of gun control, who would sooner surrender themselves to a rapist, or watch their children's murder by home invaders, or lick the boot of every petty tyrant from the county code enforcer to the Usurper in Chief, would have nothing, absolutely nothing, with which they can make their case for individual disarmament. So when such murders happen, they stifle their grins and trot out stupid arguments hoping they will be absorbed by osmosis into the emotional crowd.
One of the stupidest arguments brought forth by these happy exploiters of tragedy is the notion that the 2nd Amendment doesn't protect the individual's right to keep and bear arms. A prime example is this article at the Daily Kos titled What Part of "Well Regulated" Do You Not Understand, Shooty McGunnut?. It is available here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/17/1171383/-What-Part-of-Well-Regulated-Do-You-Not-Understand-Buford-McRedneck#.
It is one thing to be ignorant and emotional and exercise your freedom of speech to weigh in on a public topic. It is quite another thing to be arrogant and rude as well. To be fair, it is probably not his fault. He likely is the product of an upbringing where he was given a trophy for riding the bench in intramural coed basket weaving, passed along grade to grade with a good GPA for attendance, and given a college degree in some footed pajama major that only required he buy the professor's book and ritually repeat the liberal slogan's of the day. It is time that he and his fellow travelers on the gun control kiddy train get schooled.
This poor clod believes that:
“it's about time that gun control advocates reclaim the legal high ground in constitutional debates, because frankly the 2nd Amendment not only does not prohibit regulation of firearms, it explicitly states that keeping guns under the control of civil authority is the purpose of the right to bear arms.”
He then follows up with a classic straw man:
“The NRA and its fellow travelers cannot claim to support the 2nd Amendment when they completely ignore what it says and just make up their own fantasy language that says the exact opposite - from "well-regulated militia" to "totally unregulated proliferation of individual destructive power.
In other words, they claim that "well-regulated militia" really means totally unregulated, totally undisciplined, completely unmonitored, and utterly unaccountable distribution of weapons of mass destruction to everyone.”
Finally, he removes any doubt that he is thinking instead of emoting he pukes up a laundry list of
things that tighten his panties, which he attributes to “these people”, and which have nothing whatsover to do with gun control, the second amendment or anything else. These are just the teddy bears in his room that become his scary monsters when the lights are out:
“As far as these people are concerned, freedom of speech means their right to shut everyone else up and deny us any practical ability to seek redress of grievances from elected officials, because silencing people who disagree with them is somehow an act of legitimate expression on their part. Separation of church and state means that conservative religious beliefs are to be taxpayer funded and shoved down the people's throat, because a state that does not acknowledge the absolute and unquestionable supremacy of their religion is violating their religious freedom. Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure means that people who are the wrong color, religion, or nationality are automatically guilty; police can do whatever they find convenient without restriction unless the suspect is rich and white; and there is no right to privacy. Equal rights means that you can deliberately create impediments to voting that specifically target racial minorities and communities that are politically hostile to their agenda.”
This fool Troubadour's mental process (it can't be called thinking) is not “well-regulated.” Unfortunately such incoherence is not uncommon among gun control advocates.
Troubadour's ramblings are full of ignorant assertions and only two are germane to the issue. His first assertion is “it explicitly states that keeping guns under the control of civil authority is the purpose of the right to bear arms.” He is absolutely correct – if we live in Alice's Wonderland where words mean whatever he chooses them to mean. In the real, hallucinogenic free, world the 2nd amendment was ratified as part of a package of 10 amendments the sole purpose and common theme of which was to place limits on what government could do. Here are the real world words 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.”
What the amendment states clearly is that the right of the people to keep and bears arms shall not be infringed. It is a clear limitation on the power granted to government. It is the exact opposite of what the Troubadour tool claims. The purpose given for affirming this right of the people, and by no means is it implied that it is the only reason for affirming the right, is so that a free state might be preserved.
It is easy to see where the Troubador tool get's this notion that the purpose of the amendment is to keep guns under the control of the civil authority. It is because he is scared of guns and WANTS the amendment to mean what he wants it to mean. And so he has to systematically take each part of the amendment and make it mean something other than what it actually does mean.
It is clear that the “security of a free state” is a central concern of the authors of the amendment. In a discussion of the amendment there are only two possible meanings of “free state.” One meaning is a government (state) which is free to operate without the sufferance of a higher, more powerful government. The other meaning is a political entity “free state” where the people of the state are free. For the Troubadour's position on the 2nd amendment to be at all defensible the first definition must be adopted. This, of course, is nonsense. If the purpose of the 2nd amendment was to ensure the sovereignty of the state against the federal government, or foreign governments, then it would guarantee the right of the state, not the individual, to keep and bear arms. Likewise, if the purpose were to “guarantees the right of the People to not be terrorized by random individuals,” it would not declare the right of the people to keep and bear arms as such a right would be counter to the assumed purpose.
Clearly the little tool Troubadour made no effort to comprehend the meaning of “free state” in the context of the 2nd amendment choosing instead to read his desired meaning into it. He commits the error with regard to the phrase “well-regulated militia.” Gun phobics seize on this phrase to insist that the people's right is not an individual right and can only be exercised in the context of a government controlled militia. And, universally, they make no effort to understand the terms but simply insist they have the meaning the ascribed to them because, well, that's how they “feel” the words should be understood.
It takes no real effort to discern the meaning of the word militia. It is defined by law today in the US code and also the constitutions of most, if not all states. It has essentially the same meaning today that it did when the amendment was drafted. It means every able bodied person who can bear arms. It includes both the organized (those able bodied persons who are working within a formal group) and “unorganized” (those able bodied persons who aren't part of any formal group) militia. The meaning is clear and indisputable except, by those such as the tool Troubadour who make no effort to understand the meaning.
The Troubador would have you believe that the right to keep and bear arms does not apply to each individuals but only to those who under the control of an organized militia and only during such time as the organized militia permits. Where the amendment naturally means “all the able bodied people ready to fight are necessary to securing a state where people are free so the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed upon”, Tourbadour want to believe that it means “all the able bodied people who might under control of the state government are necessary to ensure the government is secure so the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed upon as long as they are subject to the government in which case the government can infringe upon the individual all it wants.”
The last hope of Troubadour and the merry band of constitutional subversives is the phrase “well regulated.” Having ignored the clear meanings of militia, free state, and people they poor into this phrase the meaning they so desperately want. Well-regulated, he insists, must mean subject to the control of the civil authority. Of course this is not what it means. If one let even a few synapses fire it would be clear that such a meaning renders the entire amendment incoherent. If the first part of the amendment means what Troubadour fantasizes it means then the last part would undermine it. TO make sense it would have to read “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the state to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” or, “the right of the state to permit the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
As usual it takes very little research to discover meanings of “well-regulated” that fight comfortably within the 2nd amendment and do not mean “under the control of the civil government.” Even today we speak of electrical components that use clean “well-regulated” power. We can find references to “well regulated” timepieces, “well regulated” minds, and “well-regulated” persons in the literature of the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. In the minds of 21st century serf “well regulated” can only mean “subject to the control of civil authorities. In the minds of persons capable of using Google it can easily mean “well functioning”, “working as intended” and other such constructions which have nothing to to with civil authority.
Piecing together the most natural usages and meanings of the words of the 2nd amendment reveals to the modern mind the real meaning of the 2nd amendment:
“all the able bodied people working together effectively, are necessary to preserving a state where people are free. Therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed.”
Troubador concludes his illiterate rant by saying:
“the first step to really making progress is being assertive about the immorality, irrationality, and unconstitutionality of the anarchic policies the NRA supports and has bought themselves through corruption of government. There will always be criminal personalities who even then just cannot reconcile themselves to being accountable to society, but for the rest, maybe they could just learn how to read so we can stop burying children for their ignorance.”
It is that combination of arrogance and ignorance that makes Troubadour such a collossal douche. Like many of the vocal gun banista's, Troubadour is full of self-righteous dismissal and disparagement of those he disagree's with. We share that in common, I suppose. The problem with his arrogance, though, is that he is, along with his fellow traveller's, completely, totally, and inexcusably wrong. He is not only not right, he is the opposite of right. And he is the opposite of right on each and every single area of inquiry. He and they, are irresponsibly not right because we live in an age where anyone can look up virtually anything and get an education in seconds that would have taken years of hard work to obtain not too many years ago. Yet he, and they, don't make the slightest effort to inform themselves.
There is certainly room for discussion about how we prevent crimes like the slaughter in Sandy Hook. We can discuss the practical application of the 2nd amendment with regard to the mentally ill and whether the right applies to all arms or not. However we need to do so in the context of our legal system which provides for altering the constitution by amendment and not the fiat declaration of judges nor the passage of legislation. However, we can only have such discussion with people willing to be informed by fact and not emotion. People such as Troubadouche don't qualify.