Capitol Hill Blue Forums Capitol Hill Blue Opinions CHB Columnists Time for serious control of guns and those who promote their sale, illegal use

I’ve always had a problem with mandatory age limits.

Understanding the Teen Brain

It doesn’t matter how smart teens are or how well they scored on the SAT or ACT. Good judgment isn’t something they can excel in, at least not yet.

The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so.

In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part

Now, you make taxpayer-funded education mandatory up to age 24 with internships, apprenticeships, and living wage stipends, military service optional but recommended for possible future firearm upgrades. And wrapped it in a package that included Medicare for ALL, I might get on the train.

I am an originalist on the 2nd.

If a state has a well regulated militia, necessary to defend said state, then the government can not infringe on the right to own arms.

I appear to be the only originalist here because I believe they said exactly what they meant.

Other brain development studies here, here, and here.

Except as has been pointed out, even the SCOTUS for 219 years read it the way rporter314 read the 2A until Scalia bent himself into a pretzel in 2008.

...Some scholars point to the prefatory language "a well regulated Militia" to argue that the Framers intended only to restrict Congress from legislating away a state's right to self-defense. Scholars call this theory "the collective rights theory." A collective rights theory of the Second Amendment asserts that citizens do not have an individual right to possess guns and that local, state, and federal legislative bodies therefore possess the authority to regulate firearms without implicating a constitutional right.

In 1939 the U.S. Supreme Court considered the matter in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174. There, the Court adopted a collective rights approach, determining that Congress could regulate a sawed-off shotgun which moved in interstate commerce under the National Firearms Act of 1934 because the evidence did not suggest that the shotgun "has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia . . . ." The Court then explained that the Framers included the Second Amendment to ensure the effectiveness of the military.

This precedent stood for nearly 70 years until 2008, when the U.S. Supreme Court revisited the issue in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, 478 F.3d 370.