with the elections coming up and the obvious timing of this (with there being a powerful incentive for palfrey to bargain with prosecutors for leniency during the sentencing phase of her trial), i can't believe anyone is accepting this as a suicide. it reminds me of the two sago miners who both coincidentally died in apparent suicides, after having raised safety concerns with their supervisors before the sago mine explosions back in january 2006. the thugs of the world have been silencing their critics and whistle-blowers with 'apparent suicides' since history began--it's just the more extreme manifestation of the school yard bully's perverse impulse to make their victims slap themselves in the face--and yet, we still prefer to take the easy way out, and blame it on the victims to comfort ourselves with the belief that it can't ever happen to us. sad. for all of us.

whether it's an effective deterrent to crime or not, it doesn't violate the 2nd amendment and it's not unreasonable. so if the american people want to limit access to gun ownership based on criminal or personal history, it's up to them. the majority rules, like it or not.

So, all we have to do is make it illegal to obtain them in any way, including inheriting them, and we haven't violated the amendment at all, right?

no, but if we made it harder for someone with a long history of irresponsible or criminal use of guns to obtain them, then we arguably haven't violated the amendment at all--but that's for the will of the people to decide, because it's not a matter specifically addressed in the bill of rights.

definitely, making it illegal to obtain arms at all seems like a de facto infringement of the rights guaranteed in the 2nd amendment. but it doesn't strike me as obvious that reasonable limits on how or when someone is allowed to obtain a gun are necessarily inconsistent with the rights to keep and bear arms provided for in the 2nd amendment. since the 2nd amendment isn't clear on that question, any determination of whether such limitations are or are not consistent with those guaranteed rights has to be made by the will of the people--i.e., majority opinion.

'law-abiding' isn't a prerequisite for receiving constitutional protections

sure it is, sometimes. when you're in jail, you no longer enjoy the expectation of property rights, protection against unreasonable search and seizure, or any other natural rights. and the right to vote, for instance, is often suspended in the case of potential voters with a criminal history. do i think that's right? not really. but it's been the practice in many states for many, many years.

I'm under the impression (based mostly on High School US History) that the Bill of Rights explicitly protects certain rights but does not in any way limit us to those rights. I know that the government has evolved since then, but I'm interested in your take on the issue.

Any rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights are reserved for the people. That means, as I understand it, that the democratic process ultimately decides and the will of the people (i.e., majority opinion) should rule. And if at the end of the day, the majority opinion doesn't square with your own personal interpretation of a particular right, then of course you still have every right to try to sway popular opinion in your favor using any form of honest argument you can muster on behalf of your position (using black op style tactics, propaganda, whisper campaigns and other Machiavellian tactics should be off limits, IMO), but it's not proper to use deceptive or undemocratic legislative, judicial or other political maneuvers to impose your personal understanding of a particular right on others. That's how it would work in my ideal system, and I believe that's consistent with the founding vision.

the right to keep and bear arms, as formulated in the second amendment, is vague about scope, and doesn't include any mention of a right to obtain arms in a timely or unrestricted manner. the right to keep and bear arms for lawful use is one thing; the right to obtain them is another. and the language of the 2nd amendment offers no specific guarantees about what rights an individual should have when it comes to obtaining arms. other provisions in the bill of rights are much clearer on such questions (right to a speedy trial, due process, etc.), but i don't think there's anyway you can get around the fact that the 2nd amendment is ambiguous. you might argue that setting the standards for obtaining guns unreasonably high is a de facto infringement on the right to keep and bear arms, but that claim isn't spelled out anywhere or explicitly supported by any language in the bill of rights.

I don't think that forbidding the more dangerous and difficult to use heavy military hardware violates the letter or the spirit of the 2nd amendment.

Well, as a legal basis for decision-making, your personal judgment about what violates the letter and the spirit of the 2nd Amendment is about as rigorous and useful a criterion as a plate of beans. As far as I can tell, you haven't offered any specific, clear guidelines for judging what does or doesn't violate the spirit of the 2nd Amendment.

Many, many other Americans look at the Bill of Rights and in good conscience reach very different conclusions using their own judgment about what does and doesn't violate the letter or the spirit of the 2nd Amendment, concluding that bans on assault weapons, strict licensing requirements, waiting periods and all sorts of other limitations on gun ownership rights are consistent with the 2nd Amendment (since none of these measures are intended to prohibit law-abiding citizens from keeping and bearing arms).

The Militia Act of 1792

Well, "The Militia Act of 1792" isn't the second amendment--and it relates specifically to militias in the context of their service to the Federal government. Arguing that The Militia Act of 1792 provides a sound basis for an individual right to bear arms is even more of a stretch, because that act was clearly concerned with the role of local militias in service to national defense.

I would argue that the militia is mentioned more like this. Since we'll need a militia, the individual people are going to need the right to keep weapons, in order to form that militia.

The historical evidence and scholarship on this strongly suggest the right was provided specifically so people could maintain militias in order to maintain their ability to revolt against the federal government. The drafters of the constitution were all revolutionaries--revolutionaries who had recently launched a new country by their revolutionary efforts. And they strongly believed the revolutionary spirit, deep mistrust of government authority, and a decentralization of military force were needed to keep the government's powers in check.

The government has nukes now. And tanks. And chemical weapons. None of which were conceivable then. So by the logic of the 2nd Amendment as it was conceived, citizens should have the right to keep those kinds of arms as well.

Any legally consistent argument for a 2nd Amendment-based individual right to bear arms, logically, should also apply to the right to bear nukes, chemical weapons, or any other arms the military might have access to. If we aren't prepared to accept that on principle, then we don't really believe in the 2nd Amendment on principle. It's that simple. Either you believe individual Americans have an inherent right to keep any and all military arms--up to and including nuclear and biological weapons--or you only believe Americans have an inherent right to keep and bear arms in an empty, symbolic sense.

I think it's demonstrably true that a militia can stand up against a modern military. They likely can't ever land a knockout blow against a state-backed army, but they can keep giving it a bloody nose until the state finds it too costly to continue.

Not in a war on domestic soil. In a foreign country where the occupying force is on unfamiliar footing and stretched for resources, sure. But in a domestic conflict? No way. Imagine the civil war fought again today, only this time one side has tactical nukes, biological weapons, air reinforcements, and satellite communications, while the other side has only light assault weapons, rifles, pistols and bowie knives. Determination will only get you so far in a fight that lop-sided.

Well, first, merely because there's now a standing army, and has been for more than 200 years, the 2nd amendment, and the idea behind it, is not invalid.

Okay, you've stated what you think, and I understand it, so now just explain to me why I should think it, too--what reasons do you have to support the claim that the idea behind the 2nd amendment isn't invalid now that the US military has tanks, nukes, anti-ballistic missiles, and all sorts of other arms we all willingly concede we have no right to keep and bear?

If the point of the 2nd Amendment was to provide a mechanism for counter-balancing the power of the government (which, as far as I can tell, we both agree) then explain to me how letting me and my grandfather keep hunting rifles has anything whatsoever to do with the intent of the 2nd amendment? And I ask that as someone who isn't pro-gun control at all. I just want to know how this argument makes any sense at this particular point in history.

(What I meant about disbanding the armed forces, BTW, was that our forces would have to be broken up and reorganized into autonomous state militias, as they were back when the 2nd amendment was drafted, in order for the idea that any militia could function as a check on government power to hold water anymore. A citizen militia in this day and age has about as much chance of successfully standing up against the US military as the WSJ does of staying unbiased now that Rupert Murdoch's in the driver's seat.)

If (and it seems pretty clear that it was) the original idea was to enable the people to form into militia then we ought to be able to equip ourselves in a manner befitting a modern day militia.

I agree that the original idea was to allow the citizenry to maintain sufficiently well-armed militias to balance out the power of the federal government, but that ship sailed long ago.

Hell, originally, there wasn't even supposed to be a standing army--all the well-armed militias were supposed to get together voluntarily to form a larger force whenever the need for a national army arose, but we've moved a long way from that idea in the years since, and let's face it, there's very little chance of any armed militia acting as a meaningful counter-balance to US military power today.

So, short of rolling back the clock and breaking up all the branches of the US military into state militias, haven't we already long given up on that original constitutional right in all but name?

It seems clear that the founders expected that the people could and should be in armed opposition to a tyrannical government. Drastically limiting the types of weapons it is permissible for a citizen to own helps keep this from being possible in any real sense.

Exactly. Which is why every American citizen has a constitutional right to keep a small arsenal of tactical nukes, amirite?