That's a nice ideal, but in reality governments can do and take away whatever they want, and a guarantee that they won't take away your "inalienable" rights is only as good as the system built around that government, and the willingness of its people to fight (physically or legally) for their rights.

We need to acknowledge that human beings have a right to self-governance, that this includes the right to form new governments via democratic referenda, and that governments that prevent this are engaged in something which, upon inspection, cannot be distinguished from imperialism.

If there's an amendment to the constitution to ban owning a firearm, so be it. But if that right is severely limited without an amendment, it would be natural to fear for the rest. The verbiage on the first 10 amendments is incredibly simple. "shall not be infringed".

The constitution of the USSR guaranteed the privacy of citizens' communications, freedom of religion, and doesn't just allow citizens to criticize public organizations but prohibits persecution of critics. You know what happened in reality.

The US is by no means immune to that - we've seen last year that the President can easily send some of the millions of armed people he has under his direct control to crack down on protests and disappear some people -- while the constitutional legitimacy gets debated months later once the damage is done...

The National Firearms Act would like to have a word it is unconstitutional on it's face despite what the Supreme Court says. 'Shall not be infringed' hasn't been the law of the land since the 1930's.

Maybe we'll get lucky and this conservative supreme court will do one big thing right and declare all federal firearms regulations null and void thus ending this culture war and forcing the politicians to fix actual problems. However, that is highly unlikely.

If the goal is a "well regulated militia", and therefore gun rights "shall not be infringed", why do we interpret that as "everybody should have largely unfettered access to weapons" rather than "If part of a well-regulated armed force, access to weapons should be allowed during militia activities"? or something similar.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html

Think about the phrase "well-regulated". When has modern regulation ever been described as "well"? And what would that even mean?

The meaning was intended to be somewhere between well-supplied and well-prepared.

Similar to how "regulate interstate commerce" was intended as to encourage and provide-for, not to limit or restrict.

A steam regulator supplies steam from the boiler to the piston/traction, at the desired controlled rate.

It does it via a restrictive valve, but even that's a stretch for it to be considered primarily a retarding device, and not an enabling/ accelerating one.

We don't call a cars gas pedal a deccelerator or fuel-regulator, we call it the gas, or accelerator.

The consistent usage is as a definition of supply.

> We don't call a cars gas pedal a deccelerator or fuel-regulator,

The pedal is not the mechanism, that is the throttle (aka fuel / air regulating device, it regulates flow by throttling it). There's people who call the gas peddle the throttle too, although less common. I don't think any of this proves a point about the word regulated in the constitution though.

And it does so by declaring the well-regulated militia being necessary.

Reading it all consistently, it's consistent with "enabling" and "supplying". There are no other words that even suggest there being a limitation on any party except the federal government.

All other rights in the first 10 amendments are granting rights to the people or states, and restricting the federal government, with any exceptions explicitly stated and conditioned.

Reading "well-regulated" as an open ended grant of authority to the federal government is entirely inconsistent. Especially if that authority is contradicted in the second half of the statement.

Reading "well-regulated" to mean "supply" and "enable" resolves all these inconsistencies and internal contradiction.

If you can read it in a way that makes consistent sense, then that's the way it should be read.

The second amendment clearly states that the government does not have the power to infringe on the rights of citizens to keep and bear arms, and that would be true no matter how you changed the militia clause.

"A rag tag posse of unarmed thugs being unhelpful to the functioning of a monarchy, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

This places the exact same prohibition on the government's power to infringe the right to bear arms.

Right- but that's exactly the point, and why reading it differently is critical.

>A rag tag posse of unarmed thugs

First- the term "militia" also had different meaning back then, and legally, still does, in US law.

It means every "able bodied male". That's it. (It's either the first or very near the first thing codified in US statutes as military law.)

Today, what we call militia is actually organized or semi-organized militia (or even national guard), which is legally and conceptually different.

Think "minutemen" and not "gang".

So it makes even more sense that "regulated" doesn't mean 'control of gangs', but the supplying/enabling of responsible citizen minutemen, implying everyone has some responsibly of military readiness in a free-country.

In that context (and the original desire to not keep a standing army), "limiting" that individual readiness is in direct conflict with the stated intent/benefit.

Which is not to conflate it as the reason individuals have a right to bear arms, but that the right to bear arms is complementary to individual citizens having some level of duty-to-country, to be ready to defend it, if and when called upon to.

If anything, it implies citizens should be armed and that the government can and should enable it, as an enumerated function of government.

Which doesn't imply any authority to control or otherwise restrict an individuals right to bear arms, with the narrow exception of when fulfilling one's role as activated militia, and even then only because of the nature of being subject to chain-of-command.

Although you should double check your assertions, some of the details of the decisions were not 5-4.

And not even that people's right to own and use guns would be revoked if it turned out guns were not good for hunting.

Because the former is pretty clear and unambiguous, and it is the part that actually describes the limitation of the power of the government.

You can quibble over the meaning of well regulated militia and whether or not it is necessary for the security of a free state then or now, but that is clearly separate from the prohibition on infringement of the right to keep and bear arms.

It does not state if a militia is necessary then people the right to bear arms. It does not state that people who are members of a militia have the right to keep and bear arms. It says all people have that right.

Here's something to think about -- Why do people think hunting or personal protection have anything to do with the second amendment?

EDIT: I'll give my answer to my own question, because it might be too ambiguous or obscure. It's actually not that I believe the second amendment has nothing to do with hunting or personal protection, actually the opposite. Those were such obvious things for people to use guns for that back then they did not even have to be listed. That obviousness is why those things still come up today in discussion about the second amendment despite being enumerated nowhere. It would have been utterly absurd when the document was written that people should not use their guns for hunting or self defense. Clearly statement about the militia in there had no intention of the restriction of the right to have and use guns.

I also believe the security of a free state begins (and more or less ends) with the security of the free man so I think guns are a very important tool for self sufficiency, but that's another story.

Today, we use "militia" to mean any unofficial group of armed people, but the common law militia was and is (it is still part of the laws of the USA, see 10 USC § 246) something more specific. The idea is that every potential lawful combatant -- every free man neither too old nor too young to fight -- could be summoned and they would supply their own weapon, clothing, and other supplies. The authorities did not expect to have to supply these things; people were supposed to have them already; and these people were not professional soldiers, with security clearances, government jobs or something like that. They were just regular citizens.

Now, what if they tried to make some kind of law like, only people officially registered in the militia can have guns? This creates a tremendous enforcement burden and does not serve much purpose, because militia membership is supposed to be something that's extremely widespread and so guns would be all over the place. Such a rule would have run-up against another factor, which is that many people who might have been technically too old or too young, or even not eligible at any age because they were women, would still have other reasons that were perfectly reasonable for using guns -- like hunting and shooting pests around the farm. If you see a non-eligible person with a gun, it does not necessarily mean anything; maybe the gun is their dad's or their husband's or their son's; hard to say. It's not really sensible that someone in the same house, and sort of the same legal person due to coveture (the merging of a woman's legal personhood with that of her husband), could not use or put hands on the gun. Enforcing any provision like this would have been extremely tedious and involved, given that the militia relied on people storing and maintaining weapons in their homes. It would, I think, result in something that everyone familiar with the Anglo-American legal tradition, in those times and in ours, would recognize as government overreach.

In fact, the situation was that people had arms for many purposes in England and the colonies, not just for militia purposes, and this was a social institution that went back to at least the 900s in England. The militia as an institution relied on the institution of private weapon ownership, but private weapons ownership was independent of the militia, and people treated weapons like any other article of private property -- they were free to modify them, sell them, and assign them in their wills.

That's why we interpret the amendment the way that we do: in order to have a functioning militia, people need to have weapons and be familiar with them. The militia relied on a prevalent social institution of private weapon ownership: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". The 2nd Amendment says, more or less, that obstructing private ownership of, commerce in and training with weapons would undermine the militia, and so such obstruction is prohibited.

You think guns are the core of the culture war? Even if the SCOTUS did make such a ruling, the culture war almost certainly would not end.

CPS was called on us, and we all gathered outside, I believe I was 16 at the time. The nice social worker lady started asking us some questions about if we were treated well, et cetera, and I ended up getting pretty angry, and explaining to her that I really needed to get back to the college class she had pulled me out of, and then had to take my car—which I'd bought doing some software development work on the side—to the shop, and if asking she could please leave so I could go back to being a productive person.

Thankfully, I was ahead of my age, and able to beat her over the head with it, but she was looking for literally any reason to make me a ward of the state. This is more than a real fear, this is a huge problem.

In my own childhood--an objectively more dangerous time--I explored an area of over 100 square kilometers, unsupervised and with no means of phoning home, yet suffered no problems more serious than a skinned knee.

It's not the social workers who are dangerous, it's the people who come with guns after they check certain boxes in their report.

Are you referring to sex ed. here?

Is it that far-fetched to be wary of concern trolls given that the state allows itself to be used as their weapon?

We recently had a politician arrested for grooming/abusing girls up here in Minnesota. Is this what you mean or are you referring to something else?

To get back to your example, there is a disturbing overrepresentation if pedophiles aiding and abetting this process. I guess they are opportunistic and see only benefits for themselves.

https://youtu.be/OsjmmpyGgHY

This is like saying if Republicans just dropped anti-immigration from their platform they'd gain a ton of people who don't vote for them because they're Mexican.

Any move like this fundamentally alienates the base.

On the other hand I know many people who will hold their nose and vote R only because they don’t want to lose their gun rights.

Sure it can. The "Bill of Rights" is just a term for the first ten amendments. The 21st Amendment reads:

"Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed."

Nothing in the Constitution forbids doing the same to the First, Second, or any other, should enough Americans agree on the point.

The 28th Amendment could read "The President shall be selected by the Prime Minister of Canada, and all redheads shall be put to death" and it'd not only be the law of the land once ratified, but there'd be no legal recourse except another amendment. Even more fun; include a "The Constitution may no longer be amended" as an additional provision.

(Of course, you have to get that through the amendment process, which is fairly obviously unlikely.)

Strictly mechanically speaking, the constitution can be amended by a certain majority of voting in a national campaign, and those amendments can override any other amendment as the voters see fit.

You're essentially saying that if the majority of the country votes to change one of the rights, then what? You'll no longer recognize the government as real?

The mistake so many people make is thinking that government is the lowest level. It is not, government is downstream of culture and is a reflection of that cultures values. Without a unified culture that agrees on certain prerequisits of government, for example from this case elected representation, there can be no functional government.

I mean, the South tried exactly that sort of approach over slavery, which their secession declarations deemed fundamental.

Which were the price the Antifederalists demanded to accept the Constitution as a whole.

Any one of them can be changed at any time by a majority of states.

Supermajority, and only after a supermajority of the Congress starts the process or a supermajority of states calls for a constitutional convention. Even then, abrogating any of the Bill of Rights also abrogates the original deal, making the rest of the Constitution and its additional amendments null and void.

In particular, other amendments have changed part of the text of the original Constitution. How does that not also "abrogate the original deal, making the Constitution null and void"? That argument should apply even more if we're talking about the body rather than the first 10 amendments, shouldn't it? Why do you single out the Bill of Rights as being unchangeable?

I also made an argument in my previous post. You completely ignored it. Would you answer it?

Also, the "inalienable rights" in 1776 were not really inalienable since life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were afforded to a pretty select group of people.