[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

Scott it's historical fact that the same guys who wrote the second amendment, also wrote a rule saying that no guns were allowed on the University of Virginia campus. Therefore, the only conceivable conclusion, is that they never intended for the 2nd amendment to be absolute. They were literally the same guys.

No, that is not the only conclusion. Property rights were of paramount importance to Jefferson and Madison, as well as the other Founders. Ownership of property would include the right to not permit guns, or most anything else in any domicile or place of business. Ownership by a group, consortium, governing body of a private institution, could ban most anything from their physical space.

The minutes of the University Board of Visitors which contain the ban you refer to were not directly, or indirectly attributed to Jefferson or Madison. They did not, as you say, write the rules. They attended the meeting, and may well not have objected to the ban, but they certainly would not have said that the board could not make the ban. The ban included all sorts of things that could lead to "riotous" behavior including alcohol.

The ban did nothing to curb the absolute right to own guns. Nor the right to how many. Jefferson owned many guns. And he recommended carrying a gun with you. But no freedom in the Bill of Rights allows you to trespass someone else's constitutional rights. Obviously, there is no constitutional right to bear arms or anything else, including yourself, into a private home whose owner forbids it. Again, freedom, as understood by the Founders, is only such when it does not destroy someone else' freedom. It must be mutual among all parties. Under such freedom, you cannot impose your property on someone else's property.


All of our freedoms have restrictions.

An expressed freedom cannot be restricted. Restriction denies freedom. Denied freedom is obviously not freedom. If there is something that needs to be restricted, it would not be included in the expressed freedom in the first place. If you later want to exclude a portion of freedom, it would be necessary to re-express what that freedom is, that is you would have to amend it. Otherwise, that freedom is uncertain, always open to "interpretation," so will be a tool to actually deny freedom in the name of freedom. Or in the name of something else.

Only rarely do the extremists shriek that restrictions are necessarily unconstitutional. Gun control always triggers those extremists remarks. Always.

You sound very extreme with your "never", "only", "always", and "all". You also seem to be shrieking. You're also not making a lot of sense. What is it with the rarely shrieking that restrictions are necessarily unconstitutional. The Constitution is inherently loaded with restrictions. The enumerated powers of the federal government restricts it from everything (the vast residuum of rights left to the people that Madison spoke of) except the rights expressly given to it. The Bill of Rights further sets in stone some specifically expressed restrictions on the government. The vast restrictions on government are necessarily constitutional, not unconstitutional.

The restrictions on the people can be imposed by the federal government if it is within the scope of its enumerated powers. I don't find such an enumeration for gun control.

Of course, there are mass shootings, and garden variety criminal shootings, and suicides, and family squabbles, and accidents. And those hurt the psyche of the population. And even though there is no enumeration that empowers the federal government to attend to the emotional disturbance of the people, it is deemed to be, by the emotionally stricken shriekers, the only venue that can prevent or make smaller such disturbance. As well, it is the go to authority, in spite of no empowering enumeration, to ameliorate hunger, poverty, gender dysfunction, physical health, mental health, education, employment, all commerce in every facet of it . . . well . . . just about anything it puts its mind to.

Why on earth do we bother having all these other levels of government, and religious, charitable, and private, associations, and community organizations, and educational institutions as well as private think tanks and philosophical societies trying to tend to human problems?

The federal government could pretty well fix everything.