Indulge me a bit as I begin by stating the obvious. We humans are social animals. My mother was a religious person and a regular church goer. Since religious training did not stick with me, it took many years before I was able to understand why it was so important to her to attend church services and participate in church activities. A good part of it was her faith, but is was also the community of believers who shared her beliefs and values and gave her emotional support. The fact that church does not fill that need for me does not negate my need to be a part of a community, and as I began to recognize that need I could see it in others as well. So many of the people who join the Democratic club I belong to start out with a tremendous need to rail at Republicans and express their anger over the danger the right wing poses to democracy. In this red district those new members are desperate to find people who will listen and who understand the frustration of trying to have political conversations with people who refuse to acknowledge facts and defend absurd beliefs as though those beliefs are religious doctrine. When I first joined the democratic club I felt the same sort need for a friendly audience even though I was venting on a political blog I created on Google Blogger.
What was lacking on Blogger at that time was a way to tell how many people were visiting your blog. I should add that the spam protection still makes it so difficult to leave a comment that very few people even try to do so. In other words, there was little or no interaction with an audience or a community. Google now gives a pretty good indication of how many visitors you have, but there is still very little interaction with those visitors. One of the things that makes Daily Kos attractive is the community and the interaction with fellow Democrats. In all honesty, there are not many people who scratch my itchy ego by recommending what I post here, and some of the comments I get sound like they were written by Republicans. The bad comments, however, are the exception, and there are times when a post will elicit such thoughtful and informative comments that the comment section seems like a forum where knowledgeable people are discussing the subject of my post.
My post last Sunday, “Guns And A well Regulated Militia,” drew the attention of knowledgeable people, and the comments they made were informative and thought provoking. In my post I connected the right to bear arms to a well regulated militia. John Rudden wrote that Scalia's opinion in the 2008 Heller decision “was the Constitutional birth of an individual’s right to bear arms unconnected to being a member on a well regulated militia.” Good to know. In law the last decision becomes the precedent even if it ignores over two hundred years of precedent.
I also conjectured about why the Second Amendment was written by saying I thought it was a wink and nod telling people on the frontier that it was alright to form militia to fend off attacks from Indians who were trying to protect their territory from encroachments by white settlers. Professor 1215 responded to this by writing that “[t]here’s a long backstory to the 'right to bear arms' phrase, and it has to do with the Reformation in Europe.” I did a quick search and soon discovered there is a history of the right to bear arms in English common law. Then jsteve7 pointed out that militias were called slave patrols in the south, and the Virginia delegates demanded that the government preserve those slave patrol militias. All of those explanations of why the Second Amendment was written have merit.
As for my statements about the danger of having unregulated militias, Smiff provided a link to a Georgetown law article on “how 'militia' is illegal in 50 states,” and another link to a post entitled “Prosecute Your Local Militia,” by robctwo.
Those and other very good comments from people I have not mentioned here were like taking a refresher course on the history of gun rights and militia, and that makes my post a good place to start for someone who wants to study the subject. A big thanks to everyone commenting on my post and making it better. It's good to be a member of a community where such intellectual discourses are welcome!