billy said:
Correct, but we need to let linguists and historians tell us the meaning of those words when written, not some one with no special expertize, but huge ego, telling that his 2015 interpretation is the only correct one.
Which "linguists and historians" are you going to listen to, in your humility? Are you going to reason better from what they say, than you have in the past - when claiming, for example, on the authority of these experts, that the State supplied the weapons for the militia in the Revolutionary War?
billy said:
In post 66, I quoted about seven more qualified authors of papers /articles, basically to show that the word "militia" as used by the constitution writers referred to a group of local men, who owned arms, and routinely trained under state appointed officers, typically more educated, elite members of the community or near by ones.
You did not read them carefully. The local militia was commonly not a "group of men", but all of them in a given region. The region was not a "State", or even a colony, but a geographical area in communication - a town, a county, a valley, a particular range of mountains. The training they described did not meet your standards of "regular" - you were taking them from the modern Swiss (remember your "once a week"?) - and even so reduced the militia they described were not a universal kind, but examples of a kind that did exist.
And I posted a link to a better example for you than those papers provided, of a more complete description of an actual Colonial militia that did come fairly close to your description - you're welcome.
I also posted a link to lists of actual militia of the time, which did not meet your standards. Dozens of them. The common run.
Of course they were led and trained by the best they could find - these were often people familiar with fighting, and they valued good leadership as people who actually face combat do. They often named themselves after their local war chief, the guy they followed into combat (you can see that in the list). Small scale military conflicts were common all up and down the colonies, the King's law and order was mostly on the other side of an ocean (and allied with local Reds or their less congenial neighbors, often). But they weren't leaving their families at home in the country without men and getting together once a week, or even once a month, a day's ride over bad roads from their farms, in the middle of winter or the middle of harvest or the middle of planting or the middle of hunting season, to practice army drill for a few hours. And that was the situation for a lot of them. Not all of them - there were towns, even cities at ports, where the shopkeepers and hostelry operators and such could meet and drill on the green - but a lot of them, and a lot of the better regulated ones as it happened: the veterans of the Red wars, the guys who hunted in parties regularly, the riflemen nearer the frontier.
billy said:
PS, What do you think "well regulated" means if not regulated by state laws?
Once again (how many times?): "Well regulated" here has nothing to do with government regulations in particular. Nothing. It means put in good order, properly organized and equipped, capable and effective. It's the word involved in the regulator on a scuba tank or a car engine, the regulation of a mechanical watch. It was commonly used to refer to a properly fitted and maintained sailing ship, merchant or military, with no reference to any State or landlubber's laws. It means in particular here that your militia don't show up for service barefoot with pitchforks in their hands and no water bottle, having not fired a gun in months (or since the last "training"), weeks of training plus much gear from being able to fight well - the all too common situation in Ireland and England and Scotland and France and Germany and so forth, where the peasantry had been disarmed by their government. This is obvious from the context, if you aren't familiar with older prose and literature; it's right there in the construction of the sentence. It's the clever reason "the people" needed to keep and bear arms - you can teach somebody flag and trumpet signals, coordination on the march and battlefield, in a few days; you can't hand somebody a black powder firearm and expect them to maintain and shoot it effectively under combat conditions in any such time.
Militia were raised at need, not standing forces, from a largely rural (even wilderness) population. Look at the dates on that list I handed you, click on the blue ones for their time of formation.
billy said:
Hint: A militia is NOT just a bunch of men who own guns.
You're right. It's a bunch of guys whether they have guns or not.
billy said:
That is what US has today and is more than 100 times more fatale to Americans than all the terrorists are.
No, that is not what the US has today. Again: within thirty miles of where I sit right now there are hundreds of well trained, well armed, militia. Many have combat experience, command experience, logistic experience. They can be raised quickly, organized in a matter of hours. This is exactly the situation put in place by the Founders. Now whether this is necessary for the security of the free State - that's a good question. But there is no question that this is what the 2nd Amendment protects.
billy said:
IE, if some power was not specifically given to the federal government, it was reserved for the states, and they could each use that reserved power differently if they liked.
Or the people. The States don't get it all. Not just the States, but the people, are guaranteed powers. Including keeping and bearing arms.
Look: you don't need this. You don't have to beat head on this wall - there is plenty of room for effective efforts to reduce school shootings in the US, long before anyone bumps into the 2nd Amendment. This is how those readily available efforts get bogged down, blocked.
