Re: Should private explosive device ownership be constitutionally protected?
Arms are arms are arms and the Constitution protects the right to have them. Either the government can restrict and pass reasonable laws over arms or they cannot do so.
It is intellectually dishonest to pretend that GUNS must be treated one way by government with one standard and other things like bombs can be treated a completely different way with a different standard.
In a state of nature, the individual has the absolute and unlimited right to self-defense using any means necessary. There are no rules one needs to abide by; the individual is free to keep and use anything he can find, make, or obtain.
However, when individuals band together to form pacts of mutual protection they can voluntarily enter into agreements limiting various rights in order to live together. In the case of these United States it takes the form of the Constitution, and the other laws and regulations we allow our elected representatives to enact.
Still the right to keep and bear arms protected under the U.S. Constitution
is based on the individual's right of self-defense. Our true founding document, The Declaration of Independence states "...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,... it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
So as Goshen has tried to point out,
we must look to the origins of the agreement to determine what types of weapons may be freely allowed an individual, and which can be freely regulated by the established government. The intent of the framers, and the citizens who ratified the agreement when it was created. The term militia is clearly used; so under historical militia rules,
arms are those weapons and armor commonly carried by the average combatant in warfare.
Ordinance in the form of bombs, grenades, etc. were not given to everyone, only those specially trained or others on an as-needed basis. That is still the case today in both military and police organizations.
It is disingenuous to claim, as you do, that since ordinance falls under the general dictionary definition of a term, it automatically falls under the definition provided in our social agreement codified by the Constitution.
It is the intent of the agreement that binds. That is why GUNs are protected, because guns and their ammunition were what the framers were talking about.
