Don't you think that it is ironic that Rice is using this example when the founding fathers of the southern states had something a little different in mind when they got their militias together?

Don't you think that it is ironic that Rice is using this example when the founding fathers of the southern states had something a little different in mind when they got their militias together?

You mean fighting tyranny in kicking the British out of Virgina and the Carolinas?

Yep, and all that other stuff about keeping the slaves on the plantation.

Re: cleversponge at May 12, 2005 02:58 PM

Who's talking about organized militias? She talked about a group of neighborhood men (including her own father) protecting their Alabama neighborhood from white "nightriders."

Since the local police weren't very sympathetic to their problem, they appreciated their constitutional right to defend themselves.

Apparently, seeing the wrong end of a gun made the nightriders pause for some spiritual refection and change their mind.

I'm not saying that her father was out of line. All I'm saying is that it is kind of ironic that she is using the 2nd amendment in such a manner when it is likely that the "lack of police militia defense" has probably been used against blacks juuuusssstttt a little more than it has been used in favor of. Mr. Rice definitely had the right to defend himself. However, I don't think that the founding fathers who viewed Mr. Rice as 3/5ths of a man really had Condi's idea of the 2nd Amendment in mind when they jotted it down.

Hey Sponge Brain!

" I don't think that the founding fathers who viewed Mr. Rice as 3/5ths of a man"

If you knew your history you would know that the 3/5th rule came from anti-slavists who sought to limit congressional power of slave states. Slaves states wanted the slave population to count towards representation (even though they couldn't vote) Free blacks were counted whole.

Furthermore, at the time of the revolution, slavery was already seen as anochronism that was expected to fade out existance. However the invention of the cotton gin radically changed the economics of southern agriculture, thus breathing new life into the institution of slavery. Fortunately, the Constitution put the country on a collision course with slavery, it just took 85 years to happen.

Hey Sponge Brain!

" I don't think that the founding fathers who viewed Mr. Rice as 3/5ths of a man"

If you knew your history you would know that the 3/5th rule came from anti-slavists who sought to limit congressional power of slave states. Slaves states wanted the slave population to count towards representation (even though they couldn't vote) Free blacks were counted whole.

Furthermore, at the time of the revolution, slavery was already seen as anochronism that was expected to fade out existance. However the invention of the cotton gin radically changed the economics of southern agriculture, thus breathing new life into the institution of slavery. Fortunately, the Constitution put the country on a collision course with slavery, it just took 85 years to happen.

Why is any of this relevant? Last time I checked my calendar this was the 21st century.

The founding fathers were the ones that Martin Luther King pointed out who said that we are all created equal and are endowed by God with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As Rick pointed out it took awhile but it was laid out from day 1.

Hey Rick Richard!! That's quite the compromise!! Not granting full personhood towards blacks really proves that those "anti-slavists" really were looking out for people like Mr. Rice. Hell, they were regular Jesse Jacksons.

"Fortunately, the Constitution put the country on a collision course with slavery, it just took 85 years to happen."

This is simply inaccurate. The one thing that the founding fathers failed to accomplish at the constitutional convention was to address the slavery issue. The collision was caused by competing economic systems, not the constitution. If we were really fortunate, the constitution would have eliminated slavery in the first place. There were a few unfortunate compromises made during the birth of our nation, the unwillingness to address slavery was one of them.

The slaveowners did not view Mr. Rice as 3/5 of a man. They wanted him to be 100% of a man. That way, they would have more representation in the census. More people in slave states would equal more electoral votes and more congressmen. This, in turn, would preserve or possibly expand slavery. You see, 5/5 or even 4/5 would have been a victory for the slaveowners.

None of this is to take away from the evil of slavery, but cleversponge's oversimplification is not helpful to this discussion.

Rather than ironic, Condi's achievements are historic. The Founders didn't allow women to vote, and even the Civil War didn't change that. But ending slavery and expanding suffrage resulted from amendments to the constitution, not merely picking and choosing which provisions we like and dislike. Dr. Rice's position is perfectly consistent.

Does anyone think that the very fact that some people are arguing that a 3/5ths designation of personhood is somehow a great step forward in race relations and the aboloshment of slavery is just a tad...oh, silly?

However, it is historically accurate to say that anti-slave forces got the 3/5ths provision in place. This was an unfortunate compromise.

It could also be argued that the same sense of compromise led to the adoption of the 2nd amendment. I know that this won't go over well on this site because it is by Garry Wills, but A Necessary Evil makes this point quite well. Specifically, the compromise allowed guns in militias...not private citizens. These militias were most effective keeping the slaves on the plantations...not engaging the British and kicking them out of Virginia and the Carolinas (as was previously mentioned in this line of posts). This function of militias was just a little more important for the folks down south than it was up north.

Sponge,

"Don't you think that it is ironic that Rice is using this example when the founding fathers of the southern states had something a little different in mind when they got their militias together?"

Um...and you're talking about precisely what?

"Yep, and all that other stuff about keeping the slaves on the plantation."

Please show us any references in the Constitutional Convention, or in any of the pre-convention discussions, that tasked the militia (organized or not) with keeping slaves down.

In 20 years of reading on this topic, I've yet to see any such reference.

"I'm not saying that her father was out of line. All I'm saying is that it is kind of ironic that she is using the 2nd amendment in such a manner when it is likely that the "lack of police militia defense" has probably been used against blacks juuuusssstttt a little more than it has been used in favor of."

Again, please substantiate.

The South allowed slaveholders ample legal means of keeping slaves in line - including, during the Nat Turner Revolt, calling out the militia. But again, there is no link between the two.

"Hey Rick Richard!! That's quite the compromise!! Not granting full personhood towards blacks really proves that those "anti-slavists" really were looking out for people like Mr. Rice. Hell, they were regular Jesse Jacksons. "

Now you're delving into absurd non-sequitur. Everyone involved at the time agreed the compromise was imperfect; compromise, by nature, always is.

"This is simply inaccurate. The one thing that the founding fathers failed to accomplish at the constitutional convention was to address the slavery issue. The collision was caused by competing economic systems, not the constitution."

Again, non-sequitur; the constitution avoided dealing with slavery. And saying the "collision was caused by competing economic systems" is a 360 degree evasion; one of the competing economic systems was based entirely on slavery.

" If we were really fortunate, the constitution would have eliminated slavery in the first place. There were a few unfortunate compromises made during the birth of our nation, the unwillingness to address slavery was one of them. "

Circular logic combined with anachronism. Slavery WAS dealt with, to impasse. Hence the compromises.

"Does anyone think that the very fact that some people are arguing that a 3/5ths designation of personhood is somehow a great step forward in race relations and the aboloshment of slavery is just a tad...oh, silly? "

If that's what they were arguing - no, still not then. And it's irrelevant to the thread at hand.

"It could also be argued that the same sense of compromise led to the adoption of the 2nd amendment. I know that this won't go over well on this site because it is by Garry Wills, but A Necessary Evil makes this point quite well. Specifically, the compromise allowed guns in militias...not private citizens."

And "The Embarassing Second Amendment" by Dr. Sanford Levinson pretty conclusively refutes that thesis. Even Laurence Tribe - like Levinson, a liberal and by no means a friend of the law-abiding gun owner - has come around to the "individual right" interpretation. Wills' thesis has been pretty much discarded.

"These militias were most effective keeping the slaves on the plantations...not engaging the British and kicking them out of Virginia and the Carolinas (as was previously mentioned in this line of posts)."

Yet another non-sequitur; the Constitution hadn't been written during the Revolution, and the "unorganized militia" set up in the Amendment wasn't intended to fight a set-piece war against a regular military. It was meant to be a deterrent to excessive federal power.

" This function of militias was just a little more important for the folks down south than it was up north. "

Again - please find some substantiation that this was ever discussed during the Constitutional Convention or by any of the framers of the Bill of Rights.

I'll help you out: You can't.

Wills is the sort of fool who could read of Bellesiles' thesis and not have his first reaction to be an urge to laugh out loud. I recall reading Wills' review of Bellesiles "book", back when I still read the Sunday NYT, and thinking, "Wills cannot possibly be so large a dolt as to accept this cockamamie theory at face value, can he?" Alas, I was wrong.

That's cute...you're using "non-sequitur" after I accused you of doing it earlier. At least you're paying attention.

There is no need for a point for something to be ironic. I've got no beef with Mr. Rice owning a gun to protect himself. I just think its ironic that Condi's argument for the 2nd amendment focuses on the need to protect oneself against lawlessness

There were no references to militias at the constitutional convention. However, there are plenty of instances where militias in southern states were mustered to address slave issues. I will try to find the proper citation.

Not every parochial interest made its way into the documentation of the constitutional convention. Everything from fishing rights off of the coast of Newfoundland to southern militias played a part in the early compromise concerning the support of ratification. I understand that the document did not change, but just as we place great faith in the Federalist Papers, it is often what was said in order to garner support for the constitution that shows how and why things were done.

I will read the Embarassing Second Amendment. I have no idea what its contents are. I do not see any evidence of individual right in the 2nd amendment, but I will read it nonetheless.

Slavery was not dealt with by the constitution. It was put aside. This was noted as a failure by both Adams and Franklin. I think I last read both of their quotes on the matter in David McCollough's book on Adams. If not there, I think it was in Founding Brothers. I think we have a disagrement of semantics on this point. I don't consider an issue that is compromised to a point of impasse and of a nearly fatal flaw to the union to be "addressed" Slavery nearly cost us the union. It was a terrible sin and it should have been rightly opposed from the very beginning of our country. We bandaged a nearly fatal wound with a band-aid. This is not addressing anything. It nearly killed us.

It doesn't matter what you are arguing, the labeling of any person as 3/5ths a man for WHATEVER reason is silly. That will always be evil no matter what the circumstance.

All your talk about stuff not happening directly during the constitutional convention doesn' t make any sense. The document just didn't spring up out of a political and social void. It is OK to talk about the general culture at the time...the general use of militias is fair game on this point. We can disagree on their use and my current lack of documentation (I will check on the sources)...but to insist that just because the framers at the convention didn't talk about a specific topic...that seems a little bit silly.

I'm also thinking that you use the word "non-sequitur" like the short guy in the Princess' Bride used "inconceivable". My points, while disagreable to you, follwed pretty closely from point a to point b in their responses to other people's posts. You are free to say my points are "stupid", "factually inaccurate", or "silly", however, they really weren't any "non-sequiturs" in this case. FYI.

I do have a serious question for you. I don't want to fight with you or anything. I realize I'm a bit of a smart ass, but I think I'm fair and pretty open. I honestly don't get how anyone can get individual rights out of the 2nd amendment. If you were going to change my mind, what would you have me read. I honestly don't know how to seperate the bullshit propaganda from the real facts when I try and research pro-gun positions.

One last thing, I just thought of an analogy for my "addressing slavery" bit. Do you think we addressed the issue of Social Security in the 80's? Are we doing it now? My guess is that you feel the same way about the "addressing" of Social Security as I do about the "addressing" of Slavery in the constitutional convention. Semantics? Perhaps. But I think you know what I mean.

Don't feed the troll.

Clever, Mitch aleady mentioned that the raving right wing lunatic Lawrence Tribe holds to the individual right position. Why not start with a simple google search of "Lawrence Tribe individual right Second Amendment"?

...hey, I just did so, and learned that Tribe's latest edition of his constitutional law textbook devotes 10 pages of analysis outlining why the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right. If you are worried about reading what you believe to be propaganda from people with whom you differ, Tribe is among the pre-eminent legal scholors of the Democratic Party.

More troll speak:

OK, I have went and read some of Tribe's available stuff on the internet. I can agree with his basic principe. After all, I really don't have a problem with gun ownership being that I have one myself. I just don't get where the right came from, individually. Plus, my adversion to the 2nd amendment has everything to do with gun control...not necessarily the abiltiy of people to have them in the 1st place. As to that issue, I don't understand what scope the 2nd amendment has. I think this part of the amendment is left open to debate. For instance, "shall issue" and concealed carry are simply not addressed. I've also gone through the nearly 40 Supreme Court cases on the matter. While I'm not quite through, it doesn't appear that any decision really gives a detailed explanation of the scope of the amendment. Being a miserable elitist, I would like to see these boundries hashed out in the court prior to any legislation being passed. Surely there's some case out there they could put on the docket to make things a bit more clear.

How unclear is this issue? The 10th and 5th Circuit Courts take differing stances on the issue. The 10th claims that some of the other circuits subscribe to the collective rights model. The 10th claims to join the "sophisticated collective rights model". The 5th circuit (covering my gun loving homestate of Texas)

This is where all my confusion was coming from. I'm still not clear on the interpretation of "well regulated". The Supreme Court needs to clear up this confusion in the lower courts. I did find a link to a justice department briefing on the matter that was written last year. It is pretty informative and free of nuttery. However, it is just some recommendations; not something that will clear up the mess in the 10th and 5th Circuit Courts.

http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm

Whoops...

something got deleted in the last response....

after the 5th Circuit and my homestate of Texas, it should have read "subscribe to the individual rights theory"

I don't have time right now to dig up all the cites I've used over the years; since the gun control debate has largely been won, it's not as close to the front of my mind as it used to be.

What is the scope of the Second Amendment? Personal, and here's why.

1. "Militia" was traditionally an unorganized group, not a military unit. The US Code actually confirms this, dividing "Militia" into "Organized Militia" (National Guard) and "Unorganized Militia" (all citizens over the age of 16 who are not in the Organized Militia)

2. Gramattically, look at the amendment. There's an Independant Clause ("The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged"), and a dependent clause ("A well-regulated militia..." etc), which, being dependent, has no meaning without the independent clause. The militia (whether regulated or not, see below) is not the subject of the sentence, the *right* is.

3. The term "Right" is used several times in the Bill of Rights. In no case in the Bill of Rights does it refer to a group right; why would the Constitution lurch out of consistency only in the Second AMendment?

More later.

I can agree with that. I guess my main contention would still be with the scope of the individual right. I definitely oversimplified my view on the matter in order to be a smart ass about what I believe is just a little bit of irony with Condi's statement. I guess my misunderstanding is based on the scope and the current legal definition that is blurred by differing opinions in 2 lower circuit courts. I can definitely see how the individual right has won the day in academic arguments; however, I don't understand how it is held up with 2 competing lower circuit court decisions. I think that the link that I provided above from the Justice dept provides the best explanation of individual rights and gun ownership, but that isn't precedent.

A true irony is Nixon going to China or Clinton criticizing Sister Souljah. Another example true irony is that an institution founded as the anti-slavery party can only garner 10-15% of the black vote.

I won't even get into how civil rights groups are now supporting the filibuster.

There is plenty of irony to go around, but blacks being in favor of gun rights is not an example of irony. Just last week, the U of MN Film Society screened the documentary "Negroes with Guns," about black activists in the 60s who advocated, you guessed it, self defense for blacks.

Condi is saying that, based on her personal life history, gun ownership provides protection against oppression. No irony there. She is adding new facts to a theoretical debate, which in turn provide a basis for her opinion. If we are to accept her story as true, the real irony would be if she were _against_ personal gun ownership.

There is also no irony in not wanting to pick and choose which portions of the constitution to enforce and which to ignore. Blacks and minorities have a lot to lose if the text of the constitution does not restrict the actions of the majority.

Accusations of hypocrisy and irony a thrown around way too much. Usually they come from a caricature of the person's views in the first place. For example, Tom Delay is for tort reform, therefore he is against ALL personal injury lawsuits (not!), and therefore he is a hypocrite for being a named plaintiff in his father's personal injury lawsuit (the proceeds of which he gave to his mother, the widow).

How about just saying that you think someone is wrong? Not ironic. Not hypocritical. Just wrong.

Mitch, I just read that a bouncer at Nye's was murdered last night. This is one of my old haunts, before it became trendy, and fills me with grief to think of it. It'll be grimly interesting to learn what this piece of excrement's past criminal history is.

Irony doesn't have to be wrong or hypocritical. It has gotten a bad rap in recent years. Alanis really screwed it over...which is in itself ironic because her song was not really all that ironic. Spoon and a knife...that's just bad luck sister. All I am saying is that I think it is ironic that a black woman is saying that guns protected her father from lawless violence when I think that in the course of our nation's history, more often than not, it was the black family at the other end of lawless racial violence. This is a good irony that it got turned around...but an irony nonetheless.

plus, it is terrible what happened at Nyes. I haven't been there in many, many years. All I remember was an old lady singing 70's pop tunes on an organ.

Cleversponge, if you're interested in other documentation and analysis of the Second Amendment, I recommend GunCite, http://www.guncite.com/ which focuses on documenting the debate. though primarily as an individualist's view.

If by scope, you mean limits, such as those imposed on the first ( no prayer in school, no yelling fire in a theatre, political spending limits, libel, etc ) then that's a question that can only be discussed reasonably once the fear of law abiding gun owners subsides.

In WA, you don't need to prove competency with a fire arm to care concealed. That, somehow is a less of an issue than recording sales at gun shows, a relatively minor vector for criminally misused firearms. This is an example of it is likely impossible to discuss the /limits/ of the second amendment while so many people are publicly declaring that the people have no right to defend themselves at all.

Aodhan:

I'll check out the site. That's the stuff I'm concerned about. I think the scope of individual limits needs to be elucidated in the same way that the first amendment is (like you mentioned.)

For instance, I think proficiency and knowledge of the handling/use of a deadly weapon is a legitimate caveat to the right to have guns.

I think it is at the very least important for folks on "my side" of the debate to acknowledge the individualist approach and then go for reasonable limits in scope.

If there were more agreement that people had the right to defend themselves, we would probably see more agreement that the people defending themselves must be competent to do so.

If you're going to draw and fire, the community might be well served if the state required you to hit your target. (A modicum of training or practice does a world of wonders, I believe. )

This is the debate going on with the program to arm pilots. Law provides that pilots may be armed, but the FAA makes it nearly impossible for pilots to be considered 'qualified' to carry. However, the debate is over degrees of competency, not whether self-defense is legal. This is, as I see, progress.

Clever, you think there ought to be government limits on Constitutional rights? Really?

Where do you stand on partial-birth abortion or parental notification laws?

Where do you stand on baning political speech 60 days prior to an election?

You okay with those?

You're looking for reasonable limits. I'll go you one step further, Cleversponge. The limits imposed by the government on my exercise of my Second Amendment rights ought to be identical to the limits imposed by the government on my Sixth Amendment right to a lawyer - if I can't afford a firearm, the government ought to give me one!

.

Nathan:

1- I'm actually a pro-life Catholic if that answers any questions for you.

2- That depends what you mean by political speech.

I don't think it is unreasonable to talk about how we curtail our individual liberties. Each of these curtailments should be taken individualy; just because I support one doesn't mean that I have to support them all. There is no inconsistency in this position...just different forces at play (like my Catholicism, for instance). It would be inconsistent if I singled out gun owners as the only group of people who deserve individual regulation...however, this is clearly not the case.

Constitutional rights are not 100% guaranteed. Just go yell "fire" in a theater to test this out. Or you can be like that USAF filmmaker who broke the UCMJ with the claim that she was doing it as part of her free-speech rights. There are reasonable limits.

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