This is written in the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst Chapel.
Today commemerates the end of the 14-18 War, a war where millions of men armed with rifles were slaughtered. Their firearms useless to protect them against the machines of war.
The Second Amendment is about the "values" one gains from the martial duties that come from Militia service--not the private ownership of firearms.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.
"How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country:
Death pursues the man who flees,
spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs
Of battle-shy youths."
I see that and it makes me think of the Battle of the Somme. On the first day of the battle, british casualties were something like 58,00--a third of them KIA.
ReplyDeleteAin't war grand!?
Let's talk grammar for a moment. A dependent clause cannot stand alone. It provides additional information about the main part of the sentence. In the Second Amendment, the independent clause states our right to keep and bear arms. The dependent clause names militias as the reason that this right is specifically ennumerated. The Constitution didn't list every right that we have. It named only the ones that were felt to be necessary to state explicitly.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what you're getting at. Are you saying that the 2nd Amendment doesn't give you the right to keep and bear arms but the 9th does. Better not let the NRA hear you say that--they've got a 50 years' supply of literature already printed.
ReplyDeleteThis:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/essays/guns.pdf
is mildly interesting.
Greg's doing what they all do, trying to use an anachronistic writing that really has no relevance in today's world to justify the unjustifiable.
ReplyDeleteThe anachronistic writing by the way is not the entire Constitution, but parts of it that make sense only in the context of the day they were written. Two examples are the 2nd and 3rd Amendments. There are other examples too.
What's unjustifiable is the claim that one has the right to own a gun and carry it around without having to submit to restrictions and without having qualified to do so.
I'm just reading the text as it's written. I also don't regard my rights as anachronistic. And no, I didn't say that the Ninth Amendment is what gives us our right to keep and bear arms. Our rights are ours. The Constitution guarantees some of them. The Second Amendment addresses arms, while the Ninth reminds the government that other rights exist.
ReplyDelete