The constitution provided "negative" rights to the people and individual states. Negative rights are rights that exist unless someone acts to negate them. This means the constitution affirms that people and states get to keep all priviledges, unless specifically enumerated as priviledges of the federal government.
So, if the Federal government starts with nothing, the right end state for the for the government to end with nothing.
This is quite different from the inertia you see today in Federal government regulatory growth.
Going back to the current discussion, negative rights dont lapse since they define the starting point. It is only regulations (I.e. anything that comes outside of the constitution) which is subject to reset.
Also the quote started "It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution"
So I don't see what's wrong talking about the constitution.
By all means, let's hold a constitutional convention periodically. Whether it's every 20 years or every 100, we're overdue. The founders even foresaw the potential need for that, and provided a procedure utilizing constitutional conventions to bypass state legislatures, a procedure which the country has not once utilized.
Failure to go through the amendment procedure doesn't grant us the right to ignore the Constitution as written. It's very easy to say you don't like some part of the Constitution. It's very difficult to propose and pass an alternative.
The amendment is clearly written, but ambiguously worded.
Such nitpicking would ordinarily be unimportant, but given that the purpose of the entire prefatory clause is unclear, it completely undercuts any notion that the entire thing is "one of the more clear written" (as the GP said). It makes it impossible to tell whether it's intended to be a limitation or an explanation (which none of the other amendments have or require).
As you say, many of the words are also ambiguous. But for a piece of law whose interpretation is a matter of tens of thousands of deaths per year, one would expect it to at least be grammatically valid.
There are no gramatical errors in 2A or any right. None of the terms used are ambiguously defined, try using a legal dictionary instead of saying they’re ambiguous because you don’t understand them.
Free states are not free to ignore any right enumerated, so that’s a no brainer, same with the loss of rights.
If 2A is ambiguously worded because we want it to define it’s own terms instead of using the standard legal definitions, then what does this make every other right? It seems to me that it’s being defined ambiguous as an attempt to pick it apart.
It doesn't matter that you think it means one thing, it's ambiguous because someone else can find a different meaning which to them is equally clear, and there is no way to determine objectively which interpretation is correct.
Most clauses in the constitution are ambiguously worded. This is intentional. The constitution was supposed to be the foundation of America's legal system, not its capstone. The founders easily could have made every amendment a 500 page document detailing exactly and unambiguously what they meant. They instead went with short and concise clauses that would guide future legislation while leaving plenty of room for future leaders to make decisions.
That is just blatantly false. Most terms get their legal definitions from case law, or other laws. They are purposefully clear to avoid ambiguity when arguing cases.
> Does a militia refer to the organization that is the militia, or does it refer to its members, or to its potential members. At the time of the ratification of the second amendment, the militia was limited to able bodied males over 17, were we supposed to update this to include women as our cultural values shifted or stick with the original definition?
Yes, the law is clear in this definition. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246
How can it get more clear?
> For arms, were they going with the definition of any item useable for offense or defense, or were they using the definition of an item a person arms themselves with? Did they mean every weapon of the era, or every weapon that could ever be invented? Is a machine gun an arm? A grenade launcher? A cruise missile? A pipe bomb? A nuke?
Literally all of these are arms, and with the exception of a nuclear bomb, all are legal to own by civilians with proper licensing. (It still amazes me how many pro gun control people think explosives and automatic weapons are illegal.)
The ATF clearly defines terms related to weapons here: https://www.atf.gov/firearms/firearms-guides-importation-ver...
You'll notice they drop the "fire" part from 2A and use the generic term "arm", which means yes they intended civilian ownership of all arms encompassing explosives as well.
> Does bearing mean the ability to use weapons, or is it the ability to possess weapons, or is it to carry the weapons physically on your person, or is it the more general state of taking up arms, or is it the right to serve in the military? Is a noise ordinance that effectively means I can't fire my gun for target practice in my backyard at 2am an infringement?
The right says "keep and bear arms", which makes it clear that you can both have them, and use them. Bear is a pretty standard word and is used elsewhere (like in finance) and the legal definition is also quite clear: https://dictionary.findlaw.com/definition/bear.html
Where you get the idea of it's a right to serve in the military is a rather interesting thought.
> If you are free to use guns but there are restrictions on transferring ownership, has your right to bear arms been infringed?
No, how could it be? Restricting transfers does not keep you from owning and using them. If restricting transfers from an FFL dealer to the end customer is what you mean then yes (read you can't buy guns because you've made them impossible to purchase), you absolutely can.
> How about if there are no restrictions on gun purchases but there areas where you're not allowed to bring guns, like public buildings?
Courts are deciding this now, and the first case up after the new guidelines says only federal property. If the local government makes use so complicated as there are no places you can legally carry, then it is a violation of the second amendment. So yes, complicating usage is a violation.
> If a school is built in such a way that it is impractical for me to wheel a black powder canon into it, has that infringed my right? > Is a noise ordinance that effectively means I can't fire my gun for target practice in my backyard at 2am an infringement?
Now you're getting ridiculous and I won't answer these.
> It doesn't matter that you think it means one thing, it's ambiguous because someone else can find a different meaning which to them is equally clear, using different but equally sensible definitions, and there is no way to determine objectively which interpretation is correct.
If this is how legal terms were decided, on what someone meant or what they thought the term means, then all cases would be chaos.
> Most clauses in the constitution are ambiguously worded. This is intentional. The constitution was supposed to be the foundation of America's legal system, not its capstone. The founders easily could have made every amendment a 500 page document detailing exactly and unambiguously what they meant. They instead went with short and concise clauses that would guide future legislation while leaving plenty of room for future leaders to make decisions.
Or, they removed a lot of the room for future leaders to remove rights they thought were important, because they came from a country with a pseudo-dictator and wanted the people to have a means to escape.
Essentially you've proven me right. You have used some veil of ambiguity to state a particular right is ambiguous, then proceeded to give various scenarios of a gun controllers wish list to hinder this right. You're claiming it's ambiguous so you can pick it apart. The wording is quite clear, people can own and use guns. It only becomes unclear when people want to remove the right.
The opposition at the time to the Bill of Rights was that it would confuse people into thinking the rights came out of the constitution instead of from nature.
You will not get 2/3’s of the states to listen to you inferring gun owners are criminals.
The comment to which you’re responding made no such inference.
People like to talk about "the founding fathers" as if they were of a singular mind about things. But they were very much not. They were so much not that the Vice President of the United States literally shot the former Secretary of Treasury over various disagreements.
So, you know, they weren't exactly 100% with each other.
Also for the people the politicians represent.
And that's the reason, laws do not automatcally go away. Because it takes so long for a big group of people to decide on something. And people kind of like a certain stability.
"Better stay at home today, they couldn't settle on the law on murder again, so murder is legal right now".
I actually quite like this. The US constitution has been elevated to some quasi religious document where everyone interprets it how they want to interpret it. A bi decadal debate on what it should actually say would be useful. Although it would take politicians longer than that to actually agree.