The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Wednesday declaring that its state constitution grants individuals absolutely no right to keep and bear arms outside the context of military service. Its decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, refusing to interpolate SCOTUS’ shoddy historical analysis into Hawaii law. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling on this week’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus; their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
To me it seems like that statement is broken down into two parts, divided by the second comma.
What it’s premise is is that a militia could be formed at any time when the need arises (the Minutemen, etc.), so all the citizenry can have guns so that they are armed when the militia is formed.
Now if back then militias always existed, and they were not formed/disbanded as needed, then ignore what I just said, as it’s incorrect.Edit: just realized if they’re always formed or not wasn’t the issue, its if they were given guns to fight or if they had to bring their own guns to the fight.Interesting, I’d never read it that way before. A lot of interpretation sure does seem to hinge on those little commas.
This is how I’ve always read it, especially given the historical context of the minute men being ready to go within a minute should the continental army/US call them to service.
The US wasn’t intended to have a standing army when we were founded, it was supposed to be militias.
The current constitution was created in part to allow a standing army to exist. It turns out not having a standing army and relying in 13+ militias to become an army doesn’t actually work.
The difference between an army and a milita being premeditation.
But if you follow this logic, how does it apply to the modern world? At the time, there was no standing army, but people could be called up to serve at anytime. There was no all-powerful military industrial complex, so people may need to supply their own gear. Hunting was common and war technology was primitive, so the gear you might keep anyway was directly applicable to war. The goals of this amendment really don’t apply anymore, so how can this topic best serve the people?
To protect against domestic tyranny?
But it doesn’t. Second amendment is not sufficient to protect against domestic tyranny, even from local police with radios and swat teams. Second amendment has a goal of supporting a people’s militia, but there isn’t any such thing nor could it possibly prevent domestic tyranny. At least if you define national guard as that people’s militia, it is equipped to make a difference and somewhat independent of the federal command structure …. But the second amendment in no way supports that
To protect against domestic tyranny, we mostly have the legal system and really need to reinforce its checks and balances, we have the federal system where states have some degree of independence, and we have national guard mostly per state. The very existence of the political stunts around immigration is a demonstration of that protection from domestic tyranny. It may be misguided and seriously flawed but it is “fighting back”, at least in the Don Quixote sense
This provision is completely irrelevant because we now have literal national guard in every state. The 2nd needs to be removed entirely. There is no need for militias anymore to defend the US against Britain or any other country.
Well, that’s a whole other different conversation to be had. I just replied with an interpretation of the actual amendment.
Our forefathers expected us to modify and enhance the Constitution over the centuries, and not that it would be static forever, mired in the time frame of when it was written.
Modify through amendments, not malicious interpretation
I wasn’t suggesting anything malicious. /shrug
Having said that, the amendments themselves are interpreted, which gets us to where we are today, since they were written so long ago. Time has a way of distorting both language and meaning.
I wasn’t saying you are, just what I hear argued from most people in support of a living constitution. Basically that the text of the law doesn’t matter, if it’s considered outdated. But IMO thats the place of the elected legislature to change, not judges, who’s job is to best apply what was written.
That’s definitely true, but there are more genuine honest interpretations, and more dishonest ones. IMO, looking at what the intent was at the time of writing is best, but I can understand the argument of only wanting to follow what is explicitly written.
Not disagreeing with anything that you wrote, but as far as what I quoted above, I just wanted to say that ‘dishonesty’ tends to be in the eye of the beholder, and people tend to distort their reality based on their own personal worldview/bias’, so it’s hard to get a ‘pure’ interpretation.
But I do agree that we should all strive for honest interpretations, the best we can.
Yeah definitely true, but I think we agree that just because 100% fair impartial judging is impossible doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be strived for.
/agree
Repealing the second is the logical conclusion to the insane path the right has taken us down.
That’s always been my take as well, but then I’m not from the US, and I don’t think that it’s possible anyway with the country’s political mechanisms.