On Sat, 05 Sep 2009 09:03:21 -0700, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:

>Stephen wrote:
>> Don't a lot of people do that with your constitution as well? Especially when
>> talking about the Second Amendment.
>
>Not really. 

In what way? My understanding as an outsider is that the two sides interpret
your second amendment to be what they want it to mean by abbreviating it so that
it implies that any citizen can carry a firearm, hence they are or can be in a
militia (private or public) or by interpreting "well regulated militia" to mean
an army and "bear arms" meaning to carry firearms for service to the state.

>The biggest debate is over the fact that it's poorly worded. 
>People argue over whether the wording means
>
>"Because we need an army, people can carry firearms"
>vs
>"People can carry firearms in order to be in the army."
>
>I.e., the argument is over whether you need to be in the army to carry 
>firearms, and it's not worded in a way to make that clear.
>

Well at the time America had a distrust of standing armies, I believe. As did
Britain not that long before.

>>> The shining example was "This tax is not a tax..."
>>> which sounds outrageous, but the line reads more like "This tax is not a
>>> tax for the purposes of determining, via total taxes paid, how much
>>> something costs."
>> 
>> Let me guess. A lawyer made that one up or an accountant :)
>
>It's basically talking about whether you can charge others for the taxes. 
>I.e., if it's like VAT (where you pass it along to the consumer) or whether 
>it's like payroll (where your payroll costs don't go directly to the price 
>of the product).

Yes it is quite succinctly put. (I was just joshing the legal profession.)
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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