Wednesday, March 13, 2013

I had a conversation with some anti-gun folks the other day.  They were wildly misstating and misinterpreting the 2nd amendment, and then saying "you're interpreting that using 20th century understanding of those words... I'VE looked into it and know really what they meant back then."  I explained that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were argued at length in what are now known as the federalist papers, by folks who actually lived in the 18th century and who actually wrote the Constitution, and so probably had a better understanding of what they meant than this individual who was trying to twist their words into pretzels 200+ years later (e.g. "by 'right of the people', they meant 'right of the states to form militias'").

Anyway, I saw this on Patriot Post (patriotpost.us), and it reminded me of that conversation.  Incidentally, the founding fathers were a pretty amazing bunch of guys.



"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positives forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28, 1787


Which was 18th century language for "gird your loins".

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