King you shouldn't be so modest. You should tell your new imaginary friend Jack about one of your favorite "other topics" that you enjoy... i.e., bashing our 2nd Amendment, our NRA, and our gun rights, and then dishonestly claiming that you have never seen any anti-gun sentiment on this board. I suppose it could be Altzheimers disease, or just plain old run of the mill mental illness...
The Court departed from the original understanding of the Second. The NRA and other groups rejected the original interpretation. Even as late as 1991, the jurist Burger appointed by Nixon said "the Second Amendment has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime." In 2008, in the District of Columbia v. Heller, what Burger said was fraud was accepted by the court. Interesting stuff.
Ed, historically the individual "right" to bear arms is relatively new. I believe John Ashcroft in 2002 became the first federal attorney-general to proclaim that individuals should be able to own guns. The Supreme Court in 2008 overturned all mainstream legal and historical scholarship by ruling that there is an individual right to own firearms although with some limits. Obama said it again last week.
I believe that during the previous 218 years the Second meant what it said: firearms shall be held by "the People"---a collective and not individual right---insofar they are in the service of "a well-regulated militia." Was an individual right even mentioned at the Constitutional Convention or in the House when it ratified the Amendment or when debated in state legislatures? I don't think so.
Gun control doesn't work? I believe gun control works reasonably generally in Canada, providing a less violent society compared to some others, in good part because of our different culture.
