Multiple guess quiz on the 2nd Amendment

I took a quiz on the 2nd Amendment and got 11 out of 12 answers correct. I missed one history related question that I guessed on. It shouldn’t be too surprising that I missed a history question. I much prefer shaping and even creating the future rather than documenting the past.

The quiz was very well done. They even got the wording on things like “The 2nd Amendment protects the right…” rather than “grants the right”.

I especially liked one option for the question, “What did the Supreme Court decide in the 2008 case?”:

Bank robbers, drug dealers, and mob enforcers must be given an opportunity to register their firearms with local authorities and then become eligible for a professional discount on licensing fees.

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5 thoughts on “Multiple guess quiz on the 2nd Amendment

  1. So I got 11 out of 12 because I disagree with their answer on “Does the Second Amendment guarantee a personal right to own assault rifles, machine guns, and perhaps even shoulder-fired missiles?” — of course it does. They also made a mistake (a very common one) in that the original text of the 2nd Amendement only has a single comma in it not three. Check out the image of the US Constitution (online) vs. the transcribed copies.

  2. Missed the same question as Hugh Davis – for essentially the same reasons. The CSM insists their arguable preference for the historically ignorant opinion “Probably not” is correct instead, despite the clearly optional (and therefore possibly conditional) nature of the words and perhaps even … in the question surveyed.

    How soon can we get Alan Gura to get around to clearing up this minor but annoying misconception? 🙂

  3. Good quiz. I missed the same question as Hugh and Will. While I personally believe that the founders would have included assault rifles, machine guns and so forth had they known about them, I suspected that “impossible to know” would have been considered the correct answer since such questions have not been considered by the Supreme Court as far as I’m aware.

    Come to think of it, I can’t remember ever taking a quiz where “probably” or “probably not” was the correct answer. It doesn’t seem right.

  4. I missed that question too–in my case, I knew the correct answer (“Heck, yeah, it does!”), but since it was absent, I couldn’t figure out what the quiz-writed had decided was the correct answer.

    Which reminds me of a point someone made about the problems of multiple-guess: sometimes the answer is quite a bit more complicated than the question-and-choose-an-answer format leads people to believe!

  5. Yeah, until SCOTUS actually rules on a case, it truly is “impossible to know” (in terms of “know what legal standard will be enforced”) what the answer is.

    Also, there is the fact that one wholly logical evaluation of the Second Amendment in terms of what “arms” meant in late 18th Century legal definitions could result in the answer being, “Yes, and no.” (I.e., “arms” meaning the broad types of weapons and their accoutrements that would be individually expected necessary to a soldier [not just a plain old infantryman, but not stuff that is “MOS-specific”. . . an AH64 helicopter is not an “arm”] to enable him to be combat effective — including handguns, SMGs, rifles, REAL assault rifles, bayonets, military grade body armor and helmet, etc. . . , but not necessarily what we would call “crew served”, “support” or “heavy” weapons. . . which can be better described in 18th Century terms as “ordnance” or “pieces of ordnance”.)

    Of course, the fact that a particular munition might not be specifically covered by the 2nd Amendment does not mean that it can automatically or arbitrarily banned, either. (Establishing that colonial and early Federal era civilians were allowed to own cannon doesn’t prove that cannon were thought to be covered by the 2nd Amendment; it only proves that they weren’t banned.) There are still two issues to resolve to decide if the heavy stuff is Constitutionally protected:

    A. Does the government echelon proposing to “infringe” on them even have the authority to regulate that area? (Gun Free School Zones in Lopez)

    B. Does the individual have a superior right nestled in another portion of the Constitution (even a prenumbra such as might be found in the 10th Amendment) that overrides a particular regulation? For example, Congress can regulate interstate commerce, yet they generally cannot censor newspapers even if they cross state lines. (Kiddie porn, yes. . . NYT publishing classified documents stolen from the DoD, no.)

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