Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT
Detbuch, you agree that nursery schools should be able to prevent people from keeping and bearing arms on their property, then you say you don’t understand how this means the 2a isn’t absolute. We are at an impasse. You can have the last word.
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If God commands you to pray or take communion, are those commandments absolute? Can you do them in homes or places where the owners don't want you to? Can people reasonably discuss and regulate them?
Is the Constitution the supreme law of the land?
The 2A is part of the structure of the Constitution. Each part of that structure is absolute in its specific right. But no parts can contradict or trump any other part.
The 2A says (if you read it carefully and read what the reason for its existence is as was argued in the debates leading to the creation of the Constitution) that a citizen of sound mind can absolutely own the type of weapons that a common soldier is equipped with for the purpose of resisting a tyrannical government.
The 2A does not say, nor imply, that you can bring your weapons into a home or other private place where the owners do not allow it. Rights referred to and implied in the Constitution are "unalienable," that is they are absolute against infringement by government. Nor can they infringe each other. The absolute right to own weapons does not trump the absolute right to own property. You have the right to own your gun and I have the right to deny you from bringing it to my house. Or, as Justice Holmes said "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." I don't find that difficult to understand. Rights are absolute within the structure of the Constitution--absolute in their own right, but constrained against trespassing others.
Your open-ended claim that the 2A is not absolute implies that nothing about it is absolute, therefor all of it can be regulated or denied. I asked you if there is "some point at which it IS absolute and which no more compromise is possible except to finally revoke it?" Do you have an answer to that? Or do you believe that after every new restriction on it, still newer ones can be imposed, since it will always be "not absolute"?