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Originally posted by sgtclub
That was your smaller point. Your bigger point, I think, was that the proposed SF ban on guns would be constitutional, and that is what I was referring to.
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I'm missing something, but I'm not sure what. In my view, the Second Amendment does not protect a right to carry firearms for people who are not in a militia.
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As for the intent, like I said before, I could care less. Maybe its just the corporate lawyer in me, but as I'm sure you can imagine, there are countless drafts that are exchanged between parties before a definitive agreement is reached, and what matters is the words that appear on that page, because, in the end, that is the language all could live with. Some of the language is crystal clear. Other language is left open intentionally, usually because one or more of the parties think they have an advantage in keeping that way. To try to reconstruct what the various parties were thinking at the time is futile. And all that is just for a basic contract.
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That makes sense with a contract, where there is a Parole Evidence Rule,* and other law establishing background presumptions that the parties can build on. That backdrop just isn't there with the Constitution. I don't personally subscribe slavishly to original intent, but that's because you have years of judicial decisions interpreting the document. To say that you're going to interpret the Constitution according to its words, stripped from their original context and without regard to what courts in the interim have made of them, strikes me as lunacy. Though potentially interesting as an academic matter.
*WARNING: May not apply in California.
