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From: bwm@ccieng5.UUCP ( Morgoth	Lord of Darkness)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: gun control and the government
Message-ID: <143@ccieng5.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 16-Sep-83 07:01:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: ccieng5.143
Posted: Fri Sep 16 07:01:07 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Sep-83 06:51:43 EDT
Lines: 28

I recently got a letter noting the purpose of the gun amendment was soley
for the formations of militias, and so long as these militias had regular
drills and elected leaders, the author felt he would support their right
to carry weapons; not otherwise.

My reply:

Militias can also be of size=1.

While the amendment is for the purposes of forming the militia, the language
is clear - thou shalt not take away guns: i.e.

Because <we wanna have militias>, the right of a citizen to bear arms shall
not be abridged <approximate wording, but look it up - the semantics are the
same>.

VS

Citizens may bear arms so long as they are members of duly organized militias.

If they meant the latter, they would have said it. They could
have, but didn't. Why? To give the reason for a law and NOT INCLUDE IT as
a limit of the law tends to indicate it was there for the purposes of
'window dressing' - i.e. get as many people to assume they know what it
means and vote for it as possible. That does not imply that these people
(or most folks today) did in fact know why it was there.

Morgoth		seismo!rochester!ritcv!ccieng5!ccieng2!bwm