How to Read the 2nd Amendment and the Constitution

[cory]

https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/...ill-rights

The Bill of Rights represents the first step that “We the People” took in amending the Constitution “in Order to form a more perfect Union.” The original, unamended Constitution was a remarkable achievement, establishing a revolutionary structure of government that put power in the hands of the people. The Bill of Rights built on that foundation, protecting our most cherished American freedoms, including freedom of speech, right to bear arms, religion, assembly, and due process of law. For more than two centuries—as we have exercised, restricted, expanded, tested, and debated those freedoms—the Bill of Rights has shaped and been shaped by what it means to be American.

The Second Amendment conceded nothing to the Anti-Federalists’ desire to sharply curtail the military power of the federal government, which would have required substantial changes in the original Constitution. Yet the Amendment was easily accepted because of widespread agreement that the federal government should not have the power to infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms, any more than it should have the power to abridge the freedom of speech or prohibit the free exercise of religion.

Yet many of the points Stan has taken have been accepted: https://constitutioncenter.org/interacti...endment-ii

Times have changed but the debate on our rights have not.

Let us not forget that the Bill of Rights were not a widespread desire amongst those who wrote the Constitution. It was understood that the government only had the powers laid out within the Constitution. Any law or regulation that went beyond this would be null & void. (cite Federalist Papers) Many were afraid that a Bill of Rights would be misconstrued as a definition as to what are Individual Rights.

Well, so much for the notion that rights are unalienable (i.e., cannot be taken away).

Not so at all. Rights were not taken away, but freely allocated from the people to the government when they overwhelmingly ratified the Constitution.

Second sentence contradicts the first. (And the courts have ruled that the government can regulate both speech and firearms.)

You've conveniently left off the following immediate verbiage where I explained what you see as a contradiction. Furthermore the courts are wrong. The founders intentionally made the courts the weakest branch as it's the most predisposed to tyranny.

The Declaration of Independence does not divide rights into categories and subsets of categories.
It says that the rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness are "among" the rights given to us.

Then what are the other Rights? Why did they only specify the 3?

I've hypothesized that these are the 3 principle Rights in their order of precedence, where you assume your Right to Life is your Right to Property as your Life is your first Property. I'm prepared to perform any logical argument to prove this theory, as I have with myself trying to disprove it and it always holds.

If you have a better theory lets hear it. If you can prove my theory wrong, then let's hear.

Hmmm, the courts do not concur and the very founding fathers who penned the document did not concur either, or rather they also immediately violated the 2nd Amendment with the first Militia Act of 1792 less than 6 months after the Bill of Rights, where the right to keep and bear arms was infringed by being made a legally encumbering requirement.

A right is no longer a right when it becomes a requirement.

The courts are wrong. The very founding Fathers set up an intricate set of checks in balances to keep a government in check, that they knew they'd have a part in running. They even feared a government made up of themselves.

Whether our government almost immediately justified our need for checks in balancing in violating the Constitution is irrelevant as to what the Constitution requires.

We should cut the Founders a little slack. They all grew up in colonial America under British common law. Individual Freedoms and a government limited by a Constitution was a radically new concept at the time.