2nd Amendment and 9/11

[Lost Sheep]

On the twelfth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, let us consider the hastily formed militia aboard UAL Flight 93 which stopped a terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol (the most likely target).

Though disarmed (aboard aircraft), doesn't this ad hoc militia exemplify the Second Amendment; individual citizens acting to ensure the security of a free State?

Lost Sheep

[dakota.potts]

Certainly those who fought back are, at least in my opinion. The one flight that was brought down early (forgive me for not remembering which one) stopped short of its intended target because the passengers on board brought it down on an empty field. They attacked the hijackers with boiling cups of tea, forks, knives, and anything else they could find in the kitchen compartment of the plane.

A group of Americans came together to fight a foreign threat in defense of their country and other citizens. I believe that is the very definition of a militia, and why we are all part of it.

[Spats McGee]

Thread re-opened. My bad.

[Wreck-n-Crew]

Though disarmed (aboard aircraft), doesn't this ad hoc militia exemplify the Second Amendment; individual citizens acting to ensure the security of a free State?

Heroic unarmed militia giving thier life to protect those that could be saved is a sacrifice well deserving of a monument to say the least.

Those on flight 93 are an emobiment of the true american spirit. Heroes who believed that they would fight an evil without modern arms.

For me they went beyond the second amendment and exemplified the meaning of the constitution as a whole. The freedom, rights of all, and sacrifice to country, standards by which we all should live by.

The people who wrote the constitution did enough in thier own words after the fact to support the true meaning and intentions of the second amendment.
Opposers of the second amendment leave this out of thier argument.

Jhon Adams: “Arms in the hands of citizens (may) be used at individual discretion…in private self-defense…” 1788(A Defense of the Constitution of the Government of the USA, p.471)

Sam Adams: “And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the right of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; …or to prevent the people from petitioning , in a peaceable and orderly manner; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.” (Debates of the Massachusetts Convention of 1788, p86-87)

THOMAS JEFFERSON: (Author of Declaration of Independence)• “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” (Jefferson Papers, p. 334, C.J. Boyd, 1950)
• “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” (Thomas Jefferson Papers p. 334, 1950)

GEORGE MASON: (Virginia House of Burgesses, Virginia delegate to Constitutional Convention, wrote Virginia Declaration of Rights, wrote “Objections to the Constitution”, urged creation of a Bill of Rights)
• “I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.” (Jonathan Elliot, The Debates of the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, [NY: Burt Franklin,1888] p.425-6)

JAMES MADISON: (Drafted Virginia Constitution, Member of Continental Congress, Virginia delegate to Constitutional Convention, named “Father of the Constitution”, author of Federalist Papers, author of the Bill of Rights, Congressman from Virginia, Secretary of State, 4th President)• “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.. (where) ..the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” (Federalist Papers #46)
• “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

RICHARD HENRY LEE: (Signed Declaration of Independence, introduced resolution in Continental Congress to become independent, proposed Bill of Rights from beginning, author of Anti-Fed Papers, Congressman and Senator from Virginia)• “A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves…and include all men capable of bearing arms.” 1788 (Federal Farmer, p.169)
• “No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state… Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizens and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.”