Talk:right to keep and bear arms

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The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

right to keep and bear arms[edit]

SOP? - -sche (discuss) 23:20, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Believe it or not I wouldn't have nominated this one, it does say "the right of an individual" as it doesn't apply to organizations. But LOL at the previous definition "declare war if necessary". Would love to see an individual US citizen declare war legally. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:44, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Ha ha. Don't give the right-wing talk radio pundits ideas! ~ Röbin Liönheart (talk) 23:50, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
\begin{lwc}Keep because you can’t know if it’s the right to wield weapons, or if it’s the right to own upper limbs of ursids.\end{lwc} Delete. This is a dictionary, not the Encyclopaedia of the American Constitution. — Ungoliant (Falai) 00:02, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would keep this one as a set phrase, since you can't correctly say "right to bear and keep arms". By the way, the U.S. Constitution only speaks of a "right to bear arms"; the "keep and bear" phrasing comes from various state constitutions, and is the language generally used by gun rights advocates. bd2412 T 02:10, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there are limited hits for "right to bear and keep arms" on Google Books. Is this entry really a fixed phrase? People often just say "right to bear arms" instead. ---> Tooironic (talk) 03:56, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My mistake, "keep and bear" is in the Constitution. bd2412 T 21:36, 15 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, it is fixed because "keep and bear guns" (which is what the right is actually about) is unsupported. It gets only four Google Books hits, only two of which use the phrase as a phrase. See Mark V. Tushnet, Out of Range: Why the Constitution Can't End the Battle Over Guns (2007), p. 32: "Perhaps the modern technology of oppression has made the Second Amendment obsolete were it taken to protect only the right to keep and bear guns and rifles, and ridiculous were it taken to protect the right to keep and bear bazookas. The guns/arms dichotomy is what makes this idiomatic. bd2412 T 17:59, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per Ungoliant. Equinox ◑ 22:39, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as an anachronism like once upon a time and much ado about nothing. DAVilla 10:31, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
In retrospect, gun control and arms control mean two different things, but the right to "bear arms" relates to guns, not "arms" as used in the latter phrase. bd2412 T 22:29, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the meaning of this term as it is normally used in US political discussions is somewhat anachronistic and circumscribed. Specifically, the word arms is, I believe, limited to individually operated small arms. But it apparently does not necessarily include fully automatic weapons or weapons with magazines exceed a certain size. And bear does not mean the normal sense of "carry" as there is no US Constitutional "right" to carry a concealed weapon.
Keep. The term clearly has a legal meaning in the US that is defined in legislature and courts that is not directly deducible from meanings, legal or other, of the constituent terms. DCDuring TALK 17:06, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
SOP, delete per Ungoliant.​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:46, 19 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Arms, by definition, can include weapons of mass destruction, but the "right to keep and bear arms" doesn't allow American citizens to legally own and deploy a nuclear missile. The use of arms here is restrictive. Astral (talk) 07:15, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Kept as no consensus.​—msh210℠ (talk) 02:12, 25 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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