Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard/Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
26 July 2013

Have you discussed this on a talk page?

Yes, I have discussed this issue on a talk page already.

Location of dispute Users involved Dispute overview

From 1939-2008, US courts held that the Second Amendment protects bearing arms in a militia but was not an individual right. Two Supreme Court cases, dozens of appellate cases, the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, and hundreds of articles (including a good report in the New York Times) from 1939 to today back up that that was indeed the law at that time.

In 2008, in the landmark Heller decision, the US Supreme Court changed the then-prevailing legal interpretation of the Miller case of 1939 and held that the right to bear arms was an individual right unconnected to service in a militia. A 5-4 opinion written by Scalia in 2008 said they were clarifying but not actually changing the law and the earlier cases were wrongly decided. Four dissenting justices disagreed and would have maintained prior law.

CRUX OF DISPUTE: Should we (A) state the law as it existed from 1939-2008 and cite the post-2008 law as well? Or (B) should we ignore all prior law that conflicts with current law?

Some editors claim there is no need to mention the prior interpretation of law because, they say, the law as it existed in 2008 IS the same as the law as it existed from 1939 to 2008 because, citing Scalia, the earlier cases were "wrongly decided". They have therefore deleted all reliable sources from 1939-2008 that describe the law as it existed pre-Heller.

Other editors believe both pre-Heller and post-Heller views should be in the article (including the Heller view that the pre-Heller cases were wrongly decided). This would be similar to the article on Brown v. Board of Education, which mentions prior law (Plessy v. Ferguson) even though saying earlier law was wrongly decided.

Some also want to quote from an article in the NYT that states how activists managed to change the legal interpretation from "militia" to "individual" in the late 20th Century.

Have you tried to resolve this previously?

There's been detailed discussion on the talk page that has gone on for pages and pages since I've been involved in January. Probably hundreds of thousands of words and sharp disputes. Interestingly, if you check the archive, you can see a version of this question (how to describe the "militia v. individual view") has been argued over for 35 archived pages dating back 5 years, often with many of the same editors.

How do you think we can help?

If you can answer the fundamental question of whether to include the law as it actually existed from 1939 to 2008, this will solve the primary problem. Half of us believe all prior law should be included. The other half believe only this 70-year period of law should be excluded from the article or de-emphasized.

Secondly, can a relevant quote from a clearly reliable source be removed if an editor says "it isn't true"? I believe we should show both sides of a controversy rather than just delete

Please limit to 2000 characters - longer statements may be deleted in their entirety or asked to be shortened. This is so a volunteer can review the dispute in a timely manner. Thanks.
 * Opening comments by North8000

The opening statement is a complete mis-representation of the situation. Ironically, I think that everybody already agrees on the answer to the question that is defined as the "Crux of the dispute" and in fact such is already implemented in the article  The fallacy is pretending that it hasn't, and pretending that the "law" during that period is what GreekParadise wishes it was rather than what it actually was. If there is some evidence that there would be a genuine discussion of the question, (including a more factual and specific rewrite of the opening statement and dispute) I would participate. Otherwise not. There is a long list of things that GreekParadise has done at eh article and talk page that are badly out of line, to put it mildly; Grahamboat's, SMP0328's & Gaijin42's comments are accurate. North8000 (talk) 20:27, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

GreekParadise’s opening is full of half-facts. He claims half of contributors support his views when in fact, since March, he is the only one pushing a dispute – we reached a consensus on this issue back in March 2013. He failed to include many active editors in this dispute. GreekPardise is trying to synthesize that the 2A only protected a firearm right in conjunction with a militia from 1939 to 2008. He wants to use the scant number of lower court cases to prove his point. The problem with that strategy is none of those cases dealt with individual vs collective firearms rights but rather they dealt with restrictions on those rights. Even Miller did not deal with that issue. His latest example, United States v. Lewis, he wants to quote from a footnote dictum taken out of context in a case that had nothing to do with the 2A. His claim that the law of the land was dictated by these few cases does not hold water.
 * Opening comments by Grahamboat

GreekParadise has been difficult to work with as he has vandalized the article HERE , accused his fellow editors being unscrupulous, charlatans, and pushing NRA-POV HERE . He dumps 10 K rants that are difficult to follow and turn out to be just rehashes of material already discussed. Cheers. Grahamboat (talk) 23:16, 27 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Consensus – I believe we have reached a consensus here. GP is the only one holding out. No matter what happens he is unlikely to agree with any of us and will probably reappear at a later time with a rehash of the same old: as he has in the past. I recommend we wait a few days for others to respond: then close the dr. Cheers. Grahamboat (talk) 22:37, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I am declaring a de facto consensus. Thanks for your guidance TransportorMan. Cheers. Grahamboat (talk) 17:53, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

GreekParadise uses hyperbole and ad hominem attacks in an effort to intimidate editors in to allowing him to convert the article into being a reflection of his POV regarding the Second Amendment. I'm sure he can offer improvements to the article. A few months ago he wanted a reference to pre-Heller Court of Appeals decisions to be added to the article. A consensus was reached allowing for that addition via a reference to such decisions and a footnote containing citations to those decisions. After that, GreekParadise stopped communicating on the talk page. It appeared he was a member of the consensus. Now GreekParadise has returned with the same claims he originally brought. GreekParadise needs to stop attacking his fellow editors and stop asking for what basically is a total rewrite of the article. This article, like every Wikipedia article, is capable of improvement, but this article is not in violation of NPOV. Suggesting otherwise is an exaggeration, no way to obtain consensus, and wrongly accuses editors of bad faith. SMP0328. (talk) 22:56, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Opening comments by SMP0328.

Please limit to 2000 characters - longer statements may be deleted in their entirety or asked to be shortened. This is so a volunteer can review the dispute in a timely manner. Thanks.
 * Opening comments by SaltyBoatr

Please limit to 2000 characters - longer statements may be deleted in their entirety or asked to be shortened. This is so a volunteer can review the dispute in a timely manner. Thanks. The article suffers from many problems, including lack of neutrality, original research, errors and over-reliance on primary sources.
 * Opening comments by The Four Deuces

While it is true that a majority decision by the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is binding on US courts on how any law is interpreted, and belongs in the article, our reporting of the opinions on the amendment should be governed by WP:WEIGHT, i.e., providing proportionate weight to all views expressed in secondary sources. The judgment itself is a primary source and secondary sources are required to establish the weight of the opinions expressed in it.

Also, instead of summarizing case findings, we should use secondary sources that explain them. We are not supposed to base articles on primary sources and Wikipedia editors lack the expertise to analyze judges' comments.

The approach taken leads to OR. For example Blackstone's 18th century legal text is cited as saying the right to bear arms was an auxiliary right, supporting the natural right to self-defense. This gives the false impression that natural rights theory played a role in DC v. Heller, when in fact the CJ who wrote the majority opinion rejects the existence of natural rights.

While DR should only be used after other attempts to resolve issues have been taken, many issues have been taken to other fora. However, the differences of opinion cover so many aspects of the article, that use of any other forum is likely to fail, since they are more appropriate for more narrowly defined disputes.

TFD (talk) 19:57, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Please limit to 2000 characters - longer statements may be deleted in their entirety or asked to be shortened. This is so a volunteer can review the dispute in a timely manner. Thanks. The high level content that Greek wants is already in the article. We are more than open to addressing specific concerns, or additions, but he comes in and posts 10k rants and basically saying the entire article needs to be wiped out because he doesn't agree with it. The supreme court spoke. It said what the law is. It clarified its own 60 year old ambiguous ruling. It further said that that is ALWAYS what the law has been. Lower courts previously disagreed on what the 60 year old ruling meant. They were retroactively made wrong by the supreme court decision. We discuss them. We can possibly discuss them more, but content should be added with a paintbrush, not a dumptruck. And anything added needs to be in the context that if it was written pre-heller, whatever that source might say is objectively, absolutely wrong (insofar as it disagrees with heller). If it is written post heller, but wants to discuss things pre-heller - then and discuss them in the context of how miller was previously interpreted by lower courts - then we should discuss that.
 * Opening comments by Gaijin42

Multiple multiple multiple academic and other reliable sources of all political stripes say that miller was ambiguous. The supreme court has stated TWICE that the miller decision did not rule on collective individual rights. Lower courts interpreted it to be collective. Sure. Then scotus said they were wrong. We have the history in the article already, but GP insists on reformulating the entire article to fit his POV, which is directly contrary to the rulings of SCOTUS, and all up-to-date reliable sources. Gaijin42 (talk) 14:16, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

As requested by transporter, I have re-notified all participants that this DR is re-opened. Gaijin42 (talk) 18:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Re Consensus : I think there is consensus (with the notable exception of GP) that the Miller->Heller "collective viewpoint" period is real, but already sufficiently covered in the article. Many would be open to tweaks to wording or an additional detail here or there, but there is also strong consensus against a major reformulation of the article to emphasize this viewpoint or section of time. GP is essentially trying to argue that Heller is wrongly decided based on historical evidence X. In 20 years, maybe SCOTUS will prove him correct, but in the meantime SCOTUS has ruled, quite explicitly and unambiguously, and in a way that specifically addressed GPs assertions that Miller did not say what GP says it does. Further, Heller, its meaning, and the issue of how that affects Miller have been widely covered in reliable sources. However, I think going through the DR motions would be valuable if only to give GP one more vent, and the consensus one more piece of proof that we allowed him to make his argument, and that consensus is not in agreement. Gaijin42 (talk) 14:12, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Opening comments by Inijones

Please limit to 2000 characters - longer statements may be deleted in their entirety or asked to be shortened. This is so a volunteer can review the dispute in a timely manner. Thanks.

I've actually not been following this for several months now (and I'm happier for it) but I've gone back and reviewed changes since I left and I think the article has definitely been improved. I sort of agree with User:North8000 that the complaints don't seem to match the state of the article. ~KvnG 20:43, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Opening comments by Kvng

No comment on consensus question. Way too much talk page chatter to wade through for me to make an assessment. ~KvnG 13:42, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I had my input in the past archive of the talk page, where I did go on at some length regarding the history and practice of law in the US regarding the right to keep and bear arms, as well as explaining who the militia was and remains. Noteworthy in 's dispute is in the opening of the dispute comment: "From 1939-2008, US courts held that the Second Amendment protects bearing arms in a militia but was not an individual right." Many, many rights were considered not applicable to the populace during that era, including every enumerated right. Indeed, the states were considered to possess all of those rights. On the face of that absurdity, the courts finally recognized the intent of many of the enumerated rights, as it most certainly is nonsensical that a state has the right to be free of warrantless search of its home and papers! The same is true of the remainder of the enumerated rights, which were designed to be reinforcing that which already existed, but were on occasion curtailed by the Crown over the centuries. One considers that the Constitution was not ratified in 1939, but was ratified and came into effect on March 4, 1789! In all of that time, men over the militia age still were permitted to possess and retain possession of firearms. It has only been since Heller that revisionist historians seek to change that which Scalia, for a rare change, got correct. That the second amendment was for all citizens of the land, not only the militia, which was and still remains every able bodied male between 18-45 and prior active duty military to age 60.Wzrd1 (talk) 00:02, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Opening comments by Wzrd1


 * The problem isn't purely one of consensus. There have been multiple RfC's that arrived at consensus only to be challenged a month later. At this point, it's become a dispute that needs resolution.Wzrd1 (talk) 19:44, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

This dispute has reached a point far beyond where it should have been resolved. I had thought an RfC had already resolved this dispute, ongoing since at least March 2013. The RfC process seemed to me the most likely and useful process to address the above user's concerns. However, The problems inherent in the above cited dispute remain:
 * Opening comments by 10stone5
 * The central problem, the above user is looking to invalidate DC v Heller. That's hard to justify within any Wikipedia guidelines, that is support for original Constitutional interpretation to be included in Wikipedia articles divorced from existing constitutional case law.
 * The original dispute concerned citing the 2nd Amendment as a collective right in the introduction, the DC v Heller opinion notwithstanding. Again, an RfC resolved this dispute, whereby instead of citing any collective rights in the intro, the 'Notes' section was used to provide an area to address this concern. Unfortunately, there was not a good faith adherence to the Wiki RfC process by the above user, who subsequently opened a DR. So the obvious question, What happens if we go through with the DR, the findings are the same or similar, and the above user still does not accept the Wiki finding?
 * Neither Plessy v Ferguson nor Brown v Board of Education seem to be reasonable comparables to DC v Heller. The user suggests following a similar article template in citing prior case law. Brown v Board resolved the 'separate but equal' issue already present in the Constitution, problems which were not resolved when the original Constitution was ratified. DC v Heller was different in that it spelled out rights already inherent in the original writing of the 2nd. The ruling did not resolve any issues left unresolved from the original ratification of the Constitution. 10stone5 (talk) 03:43, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Follow-up
 * ' Could everyone note in their opening statement sections, above, where they feel that this is on the question of consensus? Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 13:46, 30 July 2013 (UTC) '
 * >> No, unfortunately this DR is not on the question of consensus, but rather a long running dispute which has been through a number of Wiki resolution processes, and where at this point, DR seemed like the last remaining option in order to close out the dispute.  re: Consensus, this had been reached, I felt, with a preceding RfC. 10stone5 (talk) 19:19, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

This dispute is essentially a non-dispute, save for one editor's viewpoint which was overruled in a previous DR. The problem is that the SCOTUS spoke in the landmark case Heller, and one editor still refuses to accept the outcome. Prior to this landmark SCOTUS ruling, there were no specific rulings from SCOTUS on the 2A, but there were an increasing number of lower court cases that were split. Hence, the need for the SCOTUS to rule in this landmark case, which it did. Trying to pretend that the law was other than what it was prior to Heller is a fool's errand. It is speculative, and WP is not a crystal ball. The article as it exists seems to address the history accurately and succinctly. Creating an alternative history does not seem worthwhile, nor would it meet WP standards. Miguel Escopeta (talk) 19:40, 29 July 2013 (UTC) I believe that a consensus has already been reached, in the prior DR. Miguel Escopeta (talk) 15:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Opening comments by Miguel Escopeta

User GreekParadise does not know how wikipedia works. He comes here hoping to be declared the winner and force his edits into the lede. Using the talk pages as a forum is unacceptable, in spite of the history of the page. Edit waring and edits like this [] are not tolerated. The consensus against the edits made by GreekParadise are documented. Ongoing consensus is building in spite of disruptions by the user. J8079s (talk) 20:22, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Opening comments by J8079

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution discussion
Please do not use this for discussing the dispute prior to a volunteer opening the thread for comments - continue discussing the issues on the article talk page if necessary. Welcome to the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. Though I am a regular volunteer here, I am neither "taking" this case nor opening it for general discussion at this point in time, but I do want to ask everyone a question. When there is only one editor who wants to do something and many who do not, the first question we have to ask here at DRN is whether consensus has already been reached. If consensus has already been reached, then a listing here should be closed because there is nothing to talk about and engaging in dispute resolution would be inappropriate. It sometimes happens, however, that despite the disparity in position that the more-numerous side doesn't feel settled about the matter and is not yet willing to declare consensus without further discussion or, and this is slightly different, does feel that there is probably a consensus but wants an evaluation by a neutral party. Could everyone note in their opening statement sections, above, where they feel that this is on the question of consensus? Regards, TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 13:46, 30 July 2013 (UTC)