Zackey Rahimi, the Texas criminal defendant challenging a federal gun law before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, said this summer that he no longer wanted to own firearms and expressed remorse for his actions that got him in trouble with the law.
“I will make sure for sure this time that when I finish my time being incarcerated to stay the faithful, righteous person I am this day, to stay away from all drugs at all times, do probation & parole rightfully, to go to school & have a great career, have a great manufacturing engineering job, to never break any law again, to stay away from the wrong circle, to stay away from all firearms & weapons, & to never be away from my family again,” Rahimi, who is being held at a Fort Worth jail, said in a handwritten letter dated July 25.
He continued: “I had firearms for the right reason in our place to be able to protect my family at all times especially for what we’ve went through in the past but I’ll make sure to do whatever it takes to be able to do everything the right pathway & to be able to come home fast as I can to take care of my family at all times.”
Whether you personally think that’s the correct interpretation, if you’re intellectually honest you should at least be able to admit, as many conservative legal scholars themselves admit, that the wording is ambiguous.
I’ll buy that when one these “conservative legal scholars” aka moron federalists can produce a single primary source document that uses the phrase bear arms outside of a strictly military context involving uniformed, regimented troops, and instead refers expressly to an individual right of self defense.
Otherwise, it’s not ambiguous.
I was curious about this, so I looked into it. According to the Duke center for Firearms Law, one study found that “nearly 95 percent of all uses of “bear arms” conveyed the idiomatic sense relating serving in the military”. Another found usage to be 66% military, 21% both military and civilian, and 13% ambiguous. But it sounds like there are a lot of primary sources uses of non-military contexts, especially directly preceding the war for independence.
I’m on your side and I think this is an interesting point, but personally, I’m not convinced this is the strongest argument. We should be able to regulate firearms, even if “bear arms” means “carry arms for private use”.
It is far from ambiguous. The first half tells you why the right exists and only part of why. The second half is the right itself, which is the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
The whole question is whether the beginning is a merely “prefatory clause” that has no effect on the application of the second half. The other interpretation is that the beginning is not just idle small talk: People have the right to keep and bear arms insofar as it’s conducive to a well-regulated militia.
Now, you may disagree with that interpretation, but the existence of at least two rival interpretations is the very definition of ambiguity.
It’s only unclear if you have an ulterior motive.
Then I guess there are a lot of pro-gun conservatives who have an ulterior motive! The sentence isn’t even grammatical according to the rules of modern English because the controversial comma separates a subject from its predicate.
A metric by which no other amendment is interpreted, otherwise we could insist completely dumb shit like “soldiers must remain homeless for the duration of their service”.