akuma587 said:
This is one of my points. How can we reasonably say that arms then means what it does today? To accurately interpret the Constitution you should use a 18th century dictionary and look at what arms would have included at that time. You are saying that what they would currently think now doesn't matter but also saying that we should apply a modern definition of arms. How can we be flexible about expanding the meaning of arms and inflexible about looking at what arms were at that time? And it doesn't say we can't deprive them of a specific type of arms, it just says arms. There is nothing in the Constitution that says people could not be deprived of cannons, just arms. And it doesn't just say arms, it says right "to bear arms." Can you physically bear a cannon or a nuclear weapon? What did they mean by "bear"? Are we limited to things we can hold with our hands? My whole point is that you can play with the language any way you want and get a ton of different meanings out of it, including modern meanings which are out-of-sync with the antiquated meaning. In comparison, the 7th Amendment says "People" shall not be deprived of. It doesn't make a distinction between foreign people or U.S. citizens, which the Founding Fathers easily could have done as foreign people have always been around. People are people anyway you slice it. |
Arms at that time were weapons.
The definition of arms didn't change. Just more forms of weapons were invented.
As for the "what we can hold in are arms" arguement.
Well the easy way to judge that would be to see if Canons counted in the "right to bear arms" which i believe they did.
