2nd Amendment a collective or individual right?

Question

Early in 2008 the US supreme court is set to hear the case of the "Parker vs The District of Columbia", they will decide if the 2nd admendment is a collective (government ) right or an individual (each person) right. What do you think?

I agree that the right is individual.

Jim, thanks for the answer, but do you realize that AR-15 and AK-47's can be used for both hunting and target practice.

Answer 1

In every other mention of the word ''People'', the meaning is an INDIVIDUAL. Why should this Amendment be considered otherwise ?

Jim is wrong - it's not a Right of Hunting
amendment...

Answer 2

I believe that in the event of invasion by hostile forces that every able bodied US citizen would be part of that militia and therefore agree that the right to own and bare arms is an individual right. I do believe that this "right" can be regulated to the extent that the average citizen has little use for a quad-50 gun mount, a howitzer, or any number of other large bore high capacity weapons. I believe the weapons that the average citizen should be allowed to own would be those that have practical use in home protection, target practice, hunting or other legitimate uses. I believe that the government has the right to require registration of certain weapons that fall outside of the what the reasonable person would consider to be a private persons weapon. There are few legitimate uses for fully automatic, high capacity weapons like Uzi's, MK-10's , AK-47s etc. and can't think of a reason an average citizen would have C-4 Plastique or Claymore Anti-personnel mines.

Answer 3

The second amendment is clearly applied to the people, which means that it is an individual right to members of the collective.

However, the supreme court is NOT REQUIRED to correctly interpret constitutional law. As long as five of the nine agree on a certain topic, they can decide anything they want to decide. There are documented incidents of the Supreme Court 'interpreting the will of congress' when congress explicitly states the exact opposite of the interpretation.

Answer 4

There is no doubt it is an individual right!

Explicitly defined by the founding fathers in previous writings on the subject, as the Federalist Papers and the writings of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and so on.

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Answer 5

Individual. A tyrannical government entity is what that amendment is there to protect against.