[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

There is no reason for a civilian to have a paramilitary weapon and certainly not this amount.
The second amendment doesn't prevent sensitive gun legislation.

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That right there tells me you have bought into the fanatics view on this issue.
Your link also doesn't deal with SSRIs and you seem to be just parroting the bullshit coming out of idiots like Joe Kennedy III.
So long as gun-prohibitionists continue to lie about this, push quackery, and continue to avoid the fact that nearly every mass shooter since 1960 has been on an SSRI, there will be no discussion. In fact, what will be pushed for by moderates like me is a need to reign in the bans, while at the same time bolster the background check system and get the cops to do their job. Numerous times now Law Enforcement has failed to act on tips, and probable cause with catastrophic results.
The gun-free-for-all types will not get their silencers, and other nonsense either so you can take comfort in that fact (many moderates are for making bump-stocks and drums Title-II items, but now outlawing them).

The Founders of this country did in fact want us to have military arms.

George Mason: When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually. . . I ask, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.[1]

George Mason: “That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a Free State…”

Alexander Hamilton Federalist paper #29: There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia, that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous artifice to instill prejudices at any price; or as the serious offspring of political fanaticism. Where in the name of common-sense, are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens? What shadow of danger can there be from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits and interests?

Alexander Hamilton (Fed papers 184-188): “The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”

Patrick Henry: “The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun.”[2]

Rep. Elbridge Gerry (of Massachusetts 1789): “What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty…Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins…”

Patrick Henry: “Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”

Richard Henry (Light Horse Harry) Lee in his Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic (1787-1788): “A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves . . . and include all men capable of bearing arms . . . To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them . . . The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle.”

James Madison: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”[3]

James Madison: “The highest number to which a standing army can be carried in any country does not exceed one hundredth part of the souls, or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This portion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Besides the advantage of being armed, it forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would surely shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors.”

Thomas Jefferson: “For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security.”

Thomas Jefferson: “Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every Free State.”

Militia act of 1792: “…each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia…”

Quotes by Tench Coxe (1755-1824 American political economist):

1) “The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American …the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”

2) “The militia, who are in fact the effective part of the people at large, will render many troops quite unnecessary. They will form a powerful check upon the regular troops, and will generally be sufficient to over-awe them”

3) ”Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”

The US District Courts and the SCOTUS cases that were closer to the time of the Founding Fathers recognized these truths.

In Nunn v. State [Georgia][7],, the Georgia Supreme Court not only recognized that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right, but also applied that right to the states:

“It is true, that these adjudications are all made on clauses in the State Constitutions; but these instruments confer no new rights on the people which did not belong to them before. When, I would ask, did any legislative body in the Union have the right to deny to its citizens the privilege of keeping and bearing arms in defense of themselves and their country?? The language of the second amendment is broad enough to embrace both Federal and State Governments—nor is there anything in its terms which restricts its meaning… [D]oes it follow that because the people refused to delegate to the general government the power to take from them the right to keep and bear arms, that they designed to rest it in the State governments? Is this a right reserved to the States or to themselves? Is it not an unalienable right, which lies at the bottom of every free government? We do not believe that, because the people withheld this arbitrary power of disfranchisement from Congress, they ever intended to confer it on the local legislatures…. If a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of the State of Georgia and of the United States, it is competent for the General Assembly to take way this security, by disarming the people? What advantage would it be to tie up the hands of the national legislature, if it were in the power of the States to destroy this bulwark of defense? … The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of free State.”

The US supreme court decided in Presser v. Illinois[8] that:

“It is undoubtedly true that all citizens capable of bearing arms constitute the reserved military force or reserve militia of the United States as well as of the states, and, in view of this prerogative of the general government, as well as of its general powers, the states cannot, even laying the constitutional provision in question [the Second Amendment] out of view, prohibit the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security, and disable the people from performing their duty to the general government.”

In Dred Scott v. Sandford[9] the Supreme Court considered whether a freed Negro was to be considered a citizen, and therefore whether he had the right to maintain a lawsuit in the U.S. courts. The Court held that such a person could not be considered a citizen, and reasoned that if he were, he would be entitled to all the rights of a citizen:

“[Persons] who are recognized as citizens in any one state of the Union [have] the right to enter every other state, whenever they pleased . . . full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might meet; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”- Id. at 417.

In U.S. v. Cruikshank[10] the Court recognized that the right is an individual right, but held that it was a limit on the power of the federal government and not the states:

“The second and tenth counts are equally defective. The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress.”

The SCOTUS also upheld the National Firearms Act in the 1939 Miller case because a double-barrel sawed-off Savage model hunting-shotgun was:

“…in the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a shotgun having a barrel of less that eighteen inches in length at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that is use could contribute to the common defense…”

Attempting to say the 2nd amendment allows for the banning of militia weaponry and equipment (which is what paramilitary arms and standard capacity magazines are) is a losing argument.
In US vs Heller, Scalia defers to both Presser vs Illinois and US vs Miller to define who comprises the militia (hint: it's not the National Guard), and what weapons are protected (paramilitary arms used for the common defense).
Hunting and Sporting weapons are not protected due to these court cases so the ONLY weapons/arms left that cannot be infringed upon are paramilitary weapons. Unfortunately the activist judges, and gun-prohibitionists have muddied the waters so much as to have turned the issue into a quagmire.

All that needs to happen to correct this situation is for all the bans to be either repealed or declared unconstitutional (while keeping certain weapons under the NFA), and a requirement be made that all members of the reserve/unorganized militia be forced to join the CMP or a proper Civil Defense Corps (that trains once a month) to purchase said arms and equipment.