Can the ACLU help gun owners?

[twintornados]

ACLU's mission statement as follows:

 

"To defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States"

 

So, with that stated mission....when will the ACLU step in and protect the rights of the Americans that legally own and maintain their guns?

 

[RangerM]

You can read their position from their website:

 

 

The Second Amendment provides: "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."

 

ACLU POSITION

 

Given the reference to "a well regulated Militia" and "the security of a free State," the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right. For seven decades, the Supreme Court's 1939 decision in United States v. Miller was widely understood to have endorsed that view.

 

The Supreme Court has now ruled otherwise. In striking down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in D.C. v. Hellerheld for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia.

 

The ACLU disagrees with the Supreme Court's conclusion about the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment. We do not, however, take a position on gun control itself. In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue.

 

ANALYSIS

Although ACLU policy cites the Supreme Court's decision in U.S. v. Miller as support for our position on the Second Amendment, our policy was never dependent on Miller. Rather, like all ACLU policies, it reflects the ACLU's own understanding of the Constitution and civil liberties.

 

Heller takes a different approach than the ACLU has advocated. At the same time, it leaves many unresolved questions, including what firearms are protected by the Second Amendment, what regulations (short of an outright ban) may be upheld, and how that determination will be made.

 

Those questions will, presumably, be answered over time.

Here's where I depart from the ACLU.

 

"Militia" in the historical sense (ie. long before 1939) has meant a group of citizens called to act for the cause of common defense, and expected to provide their own weapons while serving. You can't very well provide your own weapon to serve in the militia, if you have no right to have one. Further, a person's right to self-defense includes the method. That was the rationale behind Heller.

[TomServo92]

To add to RangerM's post, I found this on another forum:

 

The following are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, and bracket in time the writing of the 2nd amendment:

1709: "If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations."

1714: "The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the world."

1812: "The equation of time ... is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial."

1848: "A remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person will blame the Mayor."

1862: "It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine proceeding."

1894: "The newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated American embryo city."

The phrase "well-regulated" was in common use long before 1789, and remained so for a century thereafter. It referred to the property of something being in proper working order. Something that was well-regulated was calibrated correctly, functioning as expected. Establishing government oversight of the people's arms was not only not the intent in using the phrase in the 2nd amendment, it was precisely to render the government powerless to do so that the founders wrote it.

 

So using the parlance of the era in which the Constitution, "a well regulated militia" means " a proper functioning militia" not one that is tightly governed.

[Langston Hughes]

To add to RangerM's post, I found this on another forum:

 

 

 

So using the parlance of the era in which the Constitution, "a well regulated militia" means " a proper functioning militia" not one that is tightly governed.

 

Does that change what the judges in "MIller" believed? Not a bit. The fact exists that the Constitution went on to discuss further standards for militia's.

[TomServo92]

Does that change what the judges in "MIller" believed? Not a bit. The fact exists that the Constitution went on to discuss further standards for militia's.

And I believe the judges were incorrect.