<p>I may personally disagree but the SCOTUS is much more qualified to answer the question than I am. It’s very unlikely that the decision will be unanimous, in any event. I would certainly own up and say I got it wrong. I am really wondering if this case will be The Big One re: gun rights as some publications have called it. I won’t take any potshots at federal agents if they overrule the appellate court.</p>
<p>Guns + Swtizerland</p>
<p>Guns are deeply rooted within Swiss culture - but the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept.</p>
<p>The country has a population of six million, but there are estimated to be at least two million publicly-owned firearms, including about 600,000 automatic rifles and 500,000 pistols.</p>
<p>This is in a very large part due to Switzerland’s unique system of national defence, developed over the centuries.</p>
<p>Instead of a standing, full-time army, the country requires every man to undergo some form of military training for a few days or weeks a year throughout most of their lives.</p>
<p>Between the ages of 21 and 32 men serve as frontline troops. They are given an M-57 assault rifle and 24 rounds of ammunition which they are required to keep at home.</p>
<p>Once discharged, men serve in the Swiss equivalent of the US National Guard, but still have to train occasionally and are given bolt rifles. Women do not have to own firearms, but are encouraged to. </p>
<p>Switzerland is one of the world’s richest countries, but has remained relatively isolated.</p>
<p>It has none of the social problems associated with gun crime seen in other industrialised countries like drugs or urban deprivation.</p>
<p>Despite the lack of rigid gun laws, firearms are strictly connected to a sense of collective responsibility.</p>
<p>From an early age Swiss men and women associate weaponry with being called to defend their country. </p>
<p>So let us not tout Switzerland as a role model.</p>
<p>[BBC</a> News | EUROPE | Switzerland and the gun](<a href=“http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1566715.stm]BBC”>BBC News | EUROPE | Switzerland and the gun)</p>
<p>“It has none of the social problems associated with gun crime seen in other industrialised countries like drugs or urban deprivation.”</p>
<p>Zurich has a major outdoor illicit drug market, and has for years.</p>
<p>Which is associated with guns how, mini?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>haha why not? Sounds like a pretty good role model to me. If people were raised to know and respect firearms, I doubt we would have the problems we have today.</p>
<p>Firearms carry serious responsiblity, one that is not understood by far too many people.</p>
<p>In theory, I would not mind if the government required training to purchase a firearm. The problem comes in the practice of such a law. Who pays for it? Who runs the training? How long will the delay between signing up for the training and being able to purchase a weapon? There are answers to these questions that I would view as reasonable, but I somehow doubt it would work out in reality. Such training would likely save several hundred people per year.</p>
<p>“haha why not? Sounds like a pretty good role model to me. If people were raised to know and respect firearms,”</p>
<p>is that the only thing that caught your attention? how about</p>
<p>"This is in a very large part due to Switzerland’s unique system of national defence,</p>
<p>the country requires every man to undergo some form of military training for a few days or weeks a year throughout most of their lives.</p>
<p>Between the ages of 21 and 32 men serve as frontline troops. They are given an M-57 assault rifle and 24 rounds of ammunition which they are required to keep at home."</p>
<p>You want guns? Join the national guard and have as many guns as you want.</p>
<p>“So let us not tout Switzerland as a role model.”</p>
<p>Sounds like a GREAT model to me. Divide the U.S. up into 5,000 small self-governing cantons. Won’t need a big standing army - I doubt the Chinese are going to invade Piscataway. Won’t need any nuclear weapons. Little militias will do. We can get rid of the U.S. secret WMD biological and chemical weapons program. Don’t like your canton? You can move to another one.</p>
<p>“Which is associated with guns how, mini?”</p>
<p>I didn’t claim ANY association with guns.</p>
<p>Valid point, you merely presented evidence to refute the claim that there were no drugs, suggesting you are refuting the argument that Zurich has no gun-related issues. My apologies… I suppose we’re in agreement that drugs have no relation to guns?</p>
<p>
I don’t know when this statute was enacted, but it doesn’t change the facts in real life - we don’t use “militias” for the security of our nation anymore, and the closest thing we now have to the 18th century militia is the National Guard - not a bunch of pot-bellied yahoos shooting cans off of rocks somewhere in Idaho. We did have an actual functioning system of militias in 1789 which played an actual, important role in the “security of the state”; we don’t in 2007. That is the reality. A statute defining me as marathon runner wouldn’t mean I can run 26 miles, either.</p>
<p>I will read the Supreme Court opinion with interest. It is an interesting question of documentary interpretation and the Court’s opinions should contain a lot of food for thought and discussion. I probably will not absolutely agree with any of the opinions it generates - I usually don’t - but I will probably agree with parts of more than one.</p>
<p>Kluge, I really respect what you say and read every word of what you write, but if it’s a legal issue, we have to go by the legal definition. The law defines me, right now, sitting in a swivel chair drinking a Cheerwine, as a member of the militia. Write a letter to your Congressman/Congresswoman to change the law. That doesn’t mean I am capable of mounting a complex resistance to an invasion. Fortunately, the 2nd Amendment and US Code make no stipulations about how effective a militia needs to be for it to be considered a militia. If the federal government defines me as a member of a militia, does the 2nd Amendment protect my right to keep and bear arms?</p>
<p>The US Code defines one element of the militia as the National Guard and Naval militia, with the other being all males able to provide for the common defense. The National Guard (which is being used in Iraq as a protector of state liberty??) is a component of the national militia but not the only piece. I would be all for state militias and I will try to be a member once I graduate from college. The militia may not be visible, it may not exist in reality, but as a legal standard, I have not seen documentation to counter the US Code.</p>
<p>I would be more in favor of changing the facts in real life and assembling state militias than I would be of denying the individual the right to a firearm.</p>
<p>“I suppose we’re in agreement that drugs have no relation to guns?”</p>
<p>Drugs have a direct relationship to guns. Drugs are how the U.S. manages to supply weapons to warlords in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Ninja, are you sure you want constitutional rights to be determined by definition put into in a statute passed by Congress which has no other actual function or significance? Because Congress can always amend the statute. Kind of makes a mockery of the whole “Constitution” concept, doesn’t it? </p>
<p>Again, the point which this last exchange illustrates is the folly of the “strict construction” (or as I prefer to think of it, “magic words”) theory of Constitutional interpretation. If you can alter someone’s Constitutional rights simply by “defining” him as something he really isn’t, in a routine statute passed by Congress, how does that square with the Constitution being a “foundation” of our nation’s laws?</p>
<p>“Strict constructionists” might start by advocating the elimination of “corporate personhood.” This is clearly not anything the founders would have approved of (I don’t even think it is a gray area), and we know from the period that very, very few enterprises were even allowed incorporation at the state level, and to do so had to demonstrate “public purpose”.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p><a href=“http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/davisjoe/corps[/url]”>http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/davisjoe/corps</a></p>
<p>I don’t think the Founders would have had any problem with the notion of “corporate personhood.”</p>
<p>I also don’t see what this has to do with the second amendment.</p>
<p>“My solution? Simple. Anyone who wants a gun can have one.
As soon as they enlist in the National Guard.”</p>
<p>So what you said was that joining the organized, national militia entitles one to own a gun. If gun ownership rides on militia membership, what constitutes the militia is INTEGRAL to WHO can possess a firearm. In the original sense, every male able to fight was a member of the militia. As the militia is not defined within the Constitution, I don’t know where else to look. The same document that designates the National Guard as a militia, which you consider to be a militia, designates the legality unorganized militia. If gun ownership rests on militia membership and the Constitution does not define the militia, where else can we look for the definition?</p>
<p>I don’t believe that the right to bear arms rests on membership in the militia but many people favor that intepretation of the Constitution. Congress and the states (or the District) have the power to violate or adjust our Constitutional rights until those actions are challenged in court. This is exactly what we’re seeing now.</p>
<p>It has everything to do with “strict constructionism”.</p>
<p>You conveniently left out those parts indicating the purposes for which state charters of incorporation were granted.</p>
<p>[Corporate</a> Personhood-Demeaning Our Bill of Rights - Reclaim Democracy.org](<a href=“http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/]Corporate”>Berkeley Becomes Latest U.S. Municipality to Oppose Corporate Constitutional "Rights" ⋆ Reclaim Democracy!)</p>
<p>In fact, corporate personhood was so poorly established in the early colonies and history of the nation that it required a journalist’s interpretation of 1886 decision of the Supreme Court (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, but not the decision itself) as to the 14th Amendment (which certainly was not in the minds or even imagination of the founders) to establish it.</p>
<p>[SANTA</a> CLARA COUNTY v SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY - Reclaim Democracy!](<a href=“http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/santa_clara_vs_southern_pacific.html]SANTA”>http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/santa_clara_vs_southern_pacific.html)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, as vehicles in illicit international trade they are related. But we were talking about Switzerland. Are you implying that the drug issue in Zurich is related to gun ownership there, or not?</p>
<p>Drugs EVERYWHERE are related to gun and drug trafficking by the United States government.</p>
<p>ninja, my point is that the “right to keep and bear arms” is linked to militias in the constitution because at the time the bill of rights was drafted universal participation in militias - actual, organized militias of men armed with their own weapons of war which were actually mustered and used in actual combat in defense of the community, state and nation, not theoretical “militia by definition” – was the reality of the day. That’s my point - that is the context in which the second amendment was written, and the context in which its meaning should be construed. Once that context changed in a significant manner, specifically with relevance to the central purpose of the amendment, an attempt to interpret the meaning of its words in the context of today’s nation which does not rely on organized, universally mustered militias, is necessarily flawed.</p>