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Law enforcement only gets to check that you comply with driving laws and regulations if you break them in front of them. They don't just get to pull people over randomly and run checks on them because they feel like it because of the 4th amendment. There is also the difference between a privilege like driving, and a constitutional right. No other right requires that you allow law enforcement to keep tabs on you or your property. No one should live in a police state like that
As to your understanding of the 2nd, the "well regulated" part means operating smoothly and in good order. It's fallen out of every day parlance, but a well regulated clock or well regulated engine used to be in more common parlance and still is used in the military I believe. So a plain English reading would be "A fully functional and well operating militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." This is backed up by the Militia Act passed 2 years following the ratification, that confirmed that to join a militia require the militia member to provide their own arms and minimum starting ammunition. Without an individual right to keep and bear arms, that would make it hard to form said militia.
Thanks for the reply. I’m clearly out of my depth on this one and struggle to make sense of it all. I’m not American so this all is so strange to me.
Personally I would say the constitution should not be so fixed in time as times and needs change. This would allow the 2nd to be adapted to modern times and needs.
But as I am not American I have 0 say in this and will step aside.
Sure, I agree with that as well. We have a process to amend the constitution, it just requires 75% of Congress and the State legislators to agree instead of a simple majority to change it so it is a stable source of law. If it could be changed every 4-8 years as power changes, it would wreck havoc across all levels of society.
While non-Americans may not have the standing or skin in the game, I think taking an interest in how other governments and cultures work and evolve is a worthwhile endeavor. I think we can all learn something from each other regardless of nationality. We Americans like to criticize other countries and societies for things we think are backwards or harmful like humanitarian issues in certain countries and regions, but freak out when we get the same in return. I hope we are strong enough to rise above that as a country, but there are a lot of thin skinned individuals and ideologues out here.
There are also arguments to be made about interpretations of 200 year old amendments, such as the current courts originalist interpretation. Under originalism, the court tries to rule based on what the founders and signatories intended, rather than change interpretations as vocabulary drifts and evolves. There are some supporting documents like the Federalist Papers and other first and second hand documents, but it's not exactly clear cut all the time and there is a lot of guesswork involved. I lean towards interpreting based on original intention for stability reasons and to avoid circumventing the legal processes by changing the meanings of words. Breaks the spirit of the law IMO. But that's just like, my opinion man.
I personally tend to agree that the intent of the 2nd was for private ownership of all contemporary weapons of war to protect the Republic from both foreign invasion and internal tyranny if the government becomes co-opted and no longer is "of the people". That probably needs to evolve and be updated as war has fundamentally changed, along with human society, and nukes are way to expensive for anyone to afford short of like the top 100 wealth list (who we shouldn't trust anyway on oligarchal principles). The original militias were forged into the National Guard and Reserves (and to a degree the police forces), and there isn't the same national drive for local/state militias for common protection and defense, but if we want to do away with the right of the people to do so then we need to come up with a modifying amendment that a super majority of the people and State governments can agree on and ratify.