The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion on Wednesday declaring that its state constitution grants individuals absolutely no right to keep and bear arms outside the context of military service. Its decision rejected the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, refusing to interpolate SCOTUS’ shoddy historical analysis into Hawaii law. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the ruling on this week’s Slate Plus segment of Amicus; their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
False, George Mason quote “I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials.” George Mason wrote a draft of what became the second amendment
Well yeah, a militia is a bunch of armed people with a goal.
A well regulated one knows how to use those weapons effectively, and as a group. In my opinion the law as it stands falls short of the mandate: The US should provide public weapons training and make sure its citizens know what the hell they’re doing. That might actually save a few lives that are currently lost to accidents.
The USA should just do what many other countries do: universal compulsary military service for a time during early adulthood. That’d meet the mandate.
We have the man who wrote those words expanding upon them to say what he meant, and you’re still saying “actually he meant something else.”
I’m saying the words that made it into the bill of rights he championed explicitly say more than that, probably because it was written by James Madison and then cut down by Congress.
Yeah that’s one of the pitfalls of the historical argument. There was more than one writer, and founding father. They absolutely did not agree on how widespread guns should be. However the term “Well Regulated Militia” was in common use to describe militias with extensive training to fight in the line and not just skirmish or be an extra force on the side. Alexander Hamilton states you cannot be a “Well Regulated Militia” training once or twice a year.
So it seems a bit disingenuous to now say it’s everyone and there’s no training or anything they would consider Regulation involved.