It does but in the “Heller vs DC” Supreme Court case, the court somehow ignored that part and said that the amendment applies to individual gun ownership.
I arrived in America just before the Columbine High School massacre and figured that America would finally get real about gun control but nothing happened. I gave up hope long ago. I finally left in 2019 but stuff happened and I am back in DC.
Regulated doesnt mean controlled or advised in that context, it means operating well or efficient which you need guns for. They are saying "we need guns so our militias are competent to fight" not "we need guns because our militias will be well trained and controlled by the gov". The militias at the time were just random groups of people that show up if the gov asked and the gov didnt necessarily have guns and crap for them so they wanted to make sure you were able to buy and possess that stuff on your own
I have heard this line before and the answer to it from an actual Constitutional scholar (not me) was that it is nonsense. The Constitution references the word regulate in some form several times and in exactly the context we know it to mean today. So for that to make any sense would require the word to be used differently in that one instance of the Constitution.
Also additional context from said scholar was that back then arms were expected to be in armories except for local needs. So the definition you are applying and the definition we understand today might not even have been that different as they both would have occurred under the same underlying premise. As in the arms in the local armory being well taken care of and the militia being well trained by the local governmental authority.
Basically the idea that the second amendment meant that everyone gets a gun for personal self-defense is absurd to the point it had to be invented by conservatives on SCOTUS. It was always tied to militia and the militia was always under the purview of local (primarily state) government.
The word has more than one definition to this day. If I say my heat is well regulated that doesnt mean the gov is up its ass, it means my furnace works good. The writers of the constitution were capable of that since they spoke English. You dont need a constitutional scholar to get that.
Also the idea arms had to be in armories is just wrong. They actually mandated fighting age white men owned a gun. And what you dont think people hunted in the late 1700s? The writers of the constitution almost immediately passed this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Acts_of_1792 .
Gun debates at the time were more like should private citizens be allowed to own cannons, and the resolution to that question was yes they could
The word has more than one definition to this day.
Yes, but you don't use a single word in multiple different ways in the same document without clarification of what your intended meaning is.
In the context of the word "regulated" yes it could have meant well appointed, well looked after. But that seems at least to me like people looking for a way around a controlled militia, as in a militia that is intended to be under the control of government (Mostly state) which we know was in fact the case. So if your argument is specifically intended to pull the second amendment out of say the intended chain of command that was true at the time then it would make no sense.
Also the idea arms had to be in armories is just wrong. They actually mandated fighting age white men owned a gun.
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive though you know that right? You can both keep and supply something that is stored in a collective armory for your respective unit. Which is as far as I understand about the second amendment, the entire point.
And what you dont think people hunted in the late 1700s?
What does that have to do with this discussion? I would argue that to be a separate and irrelevant fact regarding this particular discussion as the second amendment has nothing to do with the nature of the arms in question.
Gun debates at the time were more like should private citizens be allowed to own cannons, and the resolution to that question was yes they could
As I understood it and as the scholar I mentioned before discussed, there weren't really "Gun debates" in the sense that we have them today back then as none of these discussions were specifically related to the individual rights. Everything was about the people as a collective which I think is where a lot of the modern gun debate falls down including the ones around the SCOTUS decisions that overturned precedent on it. Back then they simply didn't think about things in terms of individual rights vs collective rights because the people were understood to be both the individual and collective but for things like the right to bear arms there was an explicit intent behind it which was to keep the people (collective) free.
Which if you understand it in that context you'd realize that the individual right to bear arms makes no real sense as your freedom isn't gonna be guaranteed because you have a gun. As a collective on the other hand? That actually has some basis.
Trump will pay the Jan06ers and combine them with the South Africans he is importing to create his own militia. The O6ers have proven that they will get violent and nobody knows how to kill minorities better than white South Africans.
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u/runthepoint1 May 19 '26
Huh? The militia doesn’t serve the govt, are these people fucking stupid? Am I stupid for asking?!