This is a very potent argument against the "2nd amendment means militia" talking point

Saw this on twitter. Idiot senator chris Murphy of CT tweeted this:

quote:

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Here's my side of the argument, on why the 2nd Amendment is about collective, not personal defense, and allows the government to reasonably condition firearms ownership.

It actually reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." It references militias - not personal defense - for a reason.

The founders were strongly opposed to America having a standing army. Madison called it an "instrument of tyranny". But a young America needed to defend itself. This is where militias come in, and the need to make sure citizens were armed in order to serve.

Nowhere in Madison's copious notes from the Constitutional Convention does he mention the 2nd Amendment being about the private right of gun ownership. And the term "bear arms", which today is connected with private gun ownership, back then was connected to militias.

So I don't think the 2nd Amendment is about protecting the right to defend your personal rights with a gun

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LINK

A national review writer named CW Cooke, who was born in britain and chose to become an american citizen, owns him, by quoting the connecticut constitution from BEFORE the 2nd amendment was even ratified.

quote:

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You’re going to get the most almighty shock when you get around to reading the Constitution of Connecticut, which from the moment the state has had one, has held that “Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the State.”

You’ll be equally shocked when you learn that the Philadelphia Constitution of 1776, which predates the Second Amendment, reads: “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state,” and does so in the same sentence it bars standing armies.

And I can barely imagine the scale of your surprise when you learn that Madison didn’t take notes on the first ten amendments at the Convention because the first ten amendments were added later—at the behest of those who thought the enumerated powers doctrine would be abused.

In essence, your position is that our reading of the Second Amendment is a modern mistake—that was made *before it was written* by Pennsylvania (and Vermont, which copied it literatim), and immediately afterwards by your own state, whose Constitution you have never read

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LINK

It really does appear to be true that every single state in America that had a constitution before the US constitution was ratified, clearly guaranteed gun rights on the basis of both personal protection and protection of the nation.

It would be irrational to believe that the drafters of the US constitution had a massively different conception of gun rights than drafters of state level constitutions *written before* our own national constitution.