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I am 71, and I have a lot of medical expenses, none a result of lifestyle. My income is low according to the average. My taxes are going to go up if I cannot deduct my medical expenses. This is one reason I will never vote for another Republican. To hit seniors, who are on fixed incomes, so the rich can get low taxes and corporations can get EVEN more profit, while the changes to the tax code explode the national debt is obscene, and, I predict, will lose Republicans elections for a long time to come.I can cite an example of what the difference in eliminating medical deductions can do to the ill and elderly. I took care of my parents for the last 14 years of their lives. They both had a lot of medical expenses over their last few years, as can be expected of almost all human beings. My mother had a colon resection, which required a 3-month stay in a rehab facility following the surgery. Medicare and her private insurer paid all of that. HOWEVER, after discharge and because of other physical problems, she grew weak in her limbs, and she had to go into a rehab facility for one month on three occasions, for leg strengthening. One of those facilities cost her $7,500 for the month. The last facility she was in cost $11,000 just for room and board. he costs I have cited do NOT include doctor’s charges, medicine, physical therapy, nursing care, or anything but her room and her food. The prices I have cited were typical for this less-expensive Midwestern region. (We live in St. Louis.) My mother had to pay those costs herself because she had exceeded her Medicare and private insurance coverage for the year (because of her prior 3-month rehab following the colon resection). I know how much those costs were because I wrote the checks to those facilities. If she had not had the tens of thousands of dollars in savings, she could easily have lost the home she and my father shared since 1949. It would have devastated her. Those prices were in 2009. Costs for these kinds of services have soared astronomically in the past 8 years. More and more seniors and sick people are losing their homes and everything they built up over their lifetime because of enormously high medical/healthcare costs.CAN YOU PAY THE KIND OF MONEY THAT MY MOTHER PAID?If not, you stand to lose everything. My mother was able to deduct all medical expenses she had at tax time, so she could get money back. Under the Republican and Trump tax plan, no one can even deduct those outrageous costs, and many will end up having to PAY income tax on top of those losses. My personal experience with my parents gives me the authority to speak out on this issue.Those of you, who voted for Trump and the Republicans, have no idea yet what you have voted for. But, you will find out. Every single person gets sick or becomes debilitated/disabled at some point before we die. For some, those years go on for a long time, even until death. More and more ill and elderly will lose what they have, and their children will be forced to take them into their homes and care for them until the end of their lives. That means, they will have to give up their income to do that. I did so willingly. How many of you are willing to impoverish yourselves to do that? The government is cutting Medicaid, which pays for rehab/nursing facilities. The result will be fewer affordable beds in rehab/nursing facilities and more elderly or sick patients being cared for by their families. This abominable tax reform bill will impoverish not only the sick and elderly, but also their families for generations to come.People must look at the effect of any law as it relates to them and their families far into the future, as well as for the moment. A tax savings of a couple of hundred dollars per year for the present, but which will ultimately dispossess you and your family of everything you have and everything you hoped to have - ESPECIALLY when it only further enriches the wealthy - is a travesty on humanity. Think carefully, and then contact your representatives in Washington. You WILL be adversely affected by this law, if passed in its current form, whether you have realized that or not.

So here’s the Second Amendment, as ratified:A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.In plainer, more modern English, this Amendment might read:Because having a well-armed and well-trained civilian population is necessary for that population to provide for its own security, the people of this country have a right to own, possess, carry and use weapons suitable for that purpose, and that right must not be limited.You’ll notice it gets a lot more wordy; this is because I broke out the connotations of several highly meaningful terms, which are commonly misinterpreted. The 27 words of the Second Amendment were, despite many assertions from modern scholars, very carefully chosen over multiple rounds of debate and drafting in both chambers of Congress for conciseness of language. This was for a variety of reasons, including that this document would have to be copied many times in a combination of hand-copying and typesetting in order to distribute it to the States for ratification.The version of the right to keep and bear arms (commonly abbreviated as the “RKBA”) that became the Second Amendment has its roots in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, penned by George Mason in 1776 shortly after Virginia joined with the other 12 American colonies declaring their independence from Britain. This Declaration stated, in part:That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.A decade later, Mason was one of only three delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that refused to sign the Constitution it produced. His dissent was largely on the grounds that the Constitution did not provide a similar enumeration and protection of basic rights of the people as his own State, and thus that a Federal government created and empowered by the Constitution could too easily overstep its bounds.Fellow Framer and Virginian James Madison, often considered alongside Alexander Hamilton as “the father of the Constitution”, took these concerns to heart, and incorporated the bulk of the Virginia Declaration into what was originally designed as an entirely new Article, but was eventually split into twelve separate proposed Amendments to the Constitution, ten of which were ratified to become our Bill of Rights (an eleventh Amendment, not ratified at the time, would be resurrected by a UT Austin political science student in a 1982 term paper, and was eventually ratified in 1992 as the 27th Amendment. But that’s a whole other answer to a whole other question).Mason’s dissent on these grounds was not alone; notably, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania also produced a missive to Congress and anyone else who would listen, “The Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of Pennsylvania”, aka the “Pennsylvania Dissent”. Their version of the RKBA is derived from the Virginia Declaration, but mixes in language from the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights (“Part The First” of the Massachusetts Constitution).The Massachusetts version reads:The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.The Pennsylvania Dissent split the difference, and also went into more detail as to why the right was important, and what exceptions, if any, existed to the protection of the right against government control:That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own state, or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil powers.A statement of the right to keep and bear arms that is closely related to either the Massachusetts or Pennsylvania versions is found in the constitutions of 23 states. So it’s not exactly unknown in legal circles, though SCOTUS, not being bound by any one state’s constitution in the general case, tends to consider their language primarily for educational and historical purposes, unless a provision of the state constitution is the subject of the question before the Court.So, while the 27 words ratified in 1791 represent the authoritative legal form of the right to keep and bear arms, in the interest of knowing what the RKBA actually means in today’s plain language, it’s important to consider these alternate statements of the right, written by the figures involved in debating it.There are some very common threads across all of these statements of the right; let’s examine a few in plain language.The right to keep and bear arms is a matter of defense and security. This is very plain from a reading of any of these versions of the RKBA, specifically stating that the right exists for this reason. It’s also apparently very important, given that few if any other enumerated rights in the Bill had any reason given for why they were being recognized and protected in the statement of the right itself.Many gun control advocates argue that “you can keep your hunting and target shooting firearms, therefore we are not infringing the Second Amendment”. That is a fallacy. The Second Amendment, and other statements of the RKBA, make it plain that the right exists so that people can provide for their own security, not just for their recreation or subsistence.The use of a professional, full-time armed force for domestic defense and security is a dangerous concept. The Framers learned this firsthand, as the British used enlisted military soldiers for law enforcement in the years leading up to the Declaration of Independence and in cities they controlled during the Revolutionary War. This resulted in several uses of deadly force by these troops to quell riots and other protests. The fledgling United States definitely did not want a force for law enforcement to be in the military chain of command. For such a nation to defend itself against enemies foreign and domestic, then, another solution was needed.This concept that standing armies ought not to be maintained has been significantly watered down in the wake of the Civil War, when a fundamental problem inherent in state-level organization and control of the country’s military forces was illustrated. It was accelerated with the mechanization of war in the Industrial Age, which made the materiel of war much more complex, requiring expensive upkeep of expensive armor and aircraft, and in-depth training of their operators which made them more valuable to keep around. Certainly by the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, it was impractical not to have a sizable, professional military force to manage the materiel and support systems behind the front lines, ultimately leading to the transition to an “all-volunteer force” by the Nixon Administration. We also, over the last century or so but especially in the last 30 years, have developed a system of full-time, heavily-armed and armored forces under local control with the primary job of enforcing domestic law and order, and there are very notable cases of abuses of power within those forces.The spirit of the sentiment remains, however, as the States retain first-line control of the National Guard for their own use, and the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the military being deployed domestically to enforce the laws of the United States by executive action alone (either Congress must expressly authorize such deployment, or the Constitution must explicitly grant the power to use military force in the situation presented, such as during a foreign invasion; the landmark Reconstruction case ex parte Millegan further defines situations in which martial law either may or must not not be imposed).The right refers to an individual’s ability to access weapons. This is most clearly illustrated in Pennsylvania’s version. The inclusion of the purpose of killing game makes the right specifically applicable to the activities of an individual person, and the declaration also specifically says that no law may disarm the people “or any of them”. While other statements of the right are not this specific, other uses of “the people” in the Constitution and Bill of Rights are at least dualist in connotation, referring to citizens of the country both as a corporate group and individually.The First Amendment, for instance, is commonly dualist in interpretation with regard to “the right[s] of the people” it contains. Religious expression, assembly and petition to government are, by nature or definition, corporate activities typically undertaken by groups of people, and are protected as such. However any single person also has the right and free choice to identify as a member of a religious or ideological group, to speak their own individual mind whether it agrees or contrasts with any such group, and to communicate directly to legislators and executives in government, unaffiliated with any corporate advocate. The Fourth Amendment, another mention of “the right of the people”, is almost universally considered a right of individual persons, and has never in any case law been predicated on identity as a member of any group smaller than that of all residents of the United States.A major tenet of the dissent in Heller v. D.C. as heard at the Circuit level, which was then brought to SCOTUS by the Solicitor General, was the idea that the 2A was a corporate right only; the right belonged to “people” in an aggregate sense, similar to the way we use the term “taxpayers” to refer to Americans in general in their capacity to foot the bill for government activities and projects. No one “taxpayer” owns or has direct and unfettered access to any specific part of public works, or military materiel, but these are produced, maintained and used for the benefit of all such taxpayers. Thus, the argument was made that the right to keep and bear arms was limited to the ownership of arms by corporate groups of people not directly controlled by the Federal government, and that exercising the right required active membership in such a group. Proponents of this argument further contend that just such a group - the National Guard - exists, and provides arms to its members as required in their duties, therefore the laws in DC restricting ownership of weapons by type and requiring secure unloaded storage at all times was not infringing the RKBA as the laws didn’t affect the National Guard.This is an incorrect interpretation, as SCOTUS unanimously agreed even among the dissents to the majority opinion. George Mason said it himself; the militia is “the whole people, except for a few public officials”, whether they identify as part of a group more specific than “Citizens of the United States” or not. Further, the National Guard, while available for use by state governments in a variety of situations, is ultimately administered by the Federal government, and the President has ultimate authority over when they’re called up and what they do where, overriding the States’ ability to do the same. They cannot, therefore, be “the militia” that Mason was talking about.The right refers to weapons, and other equipment, suitable for use in combat by an infantryman. The original idea of the RKBA was that, when called to duty, a person would bring the long gun they kept in their home, along with a store of powder, shot and flint. The ideal was the “minuteman”; a person who could be heading out their door ready for anything within 60 seconds of a messenger riding by with a call to arms.This is a major crux of the pushback against proposed bans of “military-style weapons”, usually called for with fingers pointed squarely at AR and AK pattern rifles. The entire point of the RKBA is for civilians to own weapons that wouldn’t be out of place in military combat. A common counterpoint is that the weapons of the time in which these rights were debated took about 20 seconds to reload between shots for a well-practiced rifleman. That may be, however no fighting force on the planet currently limits itself to such weapons, so the weapons suitable for combat have progressed in the same way lines of communication (protected by First and Fourth Amendments) and methods of punishment (restricted by the Eighth Amendment) have done. The enumerated rights of the people are not limited based on the advancement of technology beyond what the Framers could have considered, and Scalia specifically said as much in the Heller opinion.In fact, the weapons generally available to civilians don’t meet military specifications, because they don’t fire fast enough. U.S. v. Miller is interpreted as upholding the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act, in affirming Miller’s conviction for possessing a sawn-off shotgun, holding that such a weapon was not “suitable for military use” which is the scope of the protection of the Second Amendment. This ruling, had it been applied verbatim by the Court in deciding Heller, would have caused the entire NFA to be struck down, as every single category of restricted “Title II” weapons (including weapons capable of automatic fire, restricted as “machine guns” by the NFA) were and still are “common in military use” and thus the core of the 2A protection of the RKBA under Miller.The right assumes the individual’s ability and responsibility to be proficient in the use of that weapon. This tenet requires the general ability of citizens not only to own and possess a working firearm, but to be able to purchase ammunition and to use the firearm, shooting at a designated nonliving target for the purpose of acquiring and maintaining skill in marksmanship. As such, the RKBA naturally extends to a limitation on government’s ability to restrict the supply of ammunition, or to restrict the availability of suitable land or facilities to use as target ranges.This is another area where gun control advocates claim that the 2A is being perverted. The argument typically centers on the term “well-regulated”. When you hear “regulated” in modern conversation, the connotation is “something kept in check by a governing mechanism”, and when people or corporate groups and entities are “regulated”, the entity doing the regulation is usually an agency of the government. The argument is therefore made that the right, and those who exercise it, are subject to control at some level by some agency of the government.However, a look at documents authored around the 1790s shows the connotation of the word has shifted over 200 years, as words have a tendency to do. In the understanding of the Framers, something that was “well-regulated” was something that was prepared to do its job as designed. A “well-regulated clock” kept accurate time, a testament to the design of the machine and the skill of the watchmaker in implementing it. A “well-regulated mind” was one taught and trained to solve the problems presented to it. The concept of “making something regular”, in the sense that the preparation includes discipline and layers of control, is not incompatible with this understanding, however the control is not and cannot be the goal of regulation in itself.A “well-regulated militia”, therefore, is a militia that has the tools and training to provide “the security of a free state”. Even if we accept that the right is not totally absolute (and most people on both sides agree it isn’t), and that the ownership of a firearm carries with it a responsibility for not only proficient, but conscientious use, which is obviously being disregarded by a select few, it still does not follow that the government can ignore the Second Amendment and exercise a power it does not have over all gun owners as a result of these select few disregarding their responsibility.The right is not absolute. This one kinda goes the other way. Most 2A proponents will have openly and eagerly agreed to everything I’ve said so far. However, the idea that there is a limit, somewhere, to the public ownership and use of weapons, is problematic to supporters of the RKBA, because it invites gun control advocates to come right in and draw a line where they think that limit should be, usually somewhere between the current, already-”infringed” status of the right and not having the right at all, and call that a “compromise”.Let’s be clear; the limits of the right that the Pennsylvania Dissent mentions, that people may be disarmed “for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals”, are limits that are already in place. Proponents of the RKBA assert that the existing laws prescribing disarmament in these situations are not being enforced, and a law that isn’t enforced is a law that only people who are morally inclined to follow the law will obey. People who are inclined to ignore laws as it suits them are known as “scofflaws”, or in more absolute language, “criminals”, and they are and always have been the problem behind the use of guns in violent crime. Laws aimed at better identifying those people and forcing them to answer for breaking the law are laws generally supported by 2A proponents. Laws that primarily serve to present additional obstacles to lawful gun ownership, or that can be easily abused to disarm people who have done nothing wrong, are laws generally opposed by 2A proponents.The right is no less important today than it was in 1790. This goes beyond most written words in any form of the RKBA, suffice to say that an increasingly common argument of gun control is that we simply do not need the Second Amendment anymore, and should get rid of it.This is, again, misguided, as the reasons enumerated in the Pennsylvania Dissent are no less true today than in 1790. There were butchers selling meat that you didn’t have to hunt or slaughter yourself. There were professional law enforcers. There were very definitely professional soldiers in the US; George Washington was one of them for most of his life, first for the British, then for the Continental Army. So, you didn’t have to own a firearm in colonial or post-colonial America in order to be confident that your home, community, state or country would be defended, or that you could procure food for yourself and your family. Just as you don’t have to own a firearm to do any of the same things today. You just had to live somewhere that you could be reasonably sure someone else had the means to provide these things on your behalf.Despite that, the Framers still made it a priority to include a protection of the RKBA in the proposed Amendments, and the States still made it a priority to ratify that Amendment. Remember that the original slate had 12 Amendments, and only 10 were adopted; if any 5 states had said “no, this one’s too troublesome”, what we would call the Second Amendment would be our current Third Amendment, practically dormant for 200 years, and if the RKBA were recognized at all it would be at the state level.The right was and is recognized, because despite any substitute methods to otherwise guarantee the provision of things the RKBA enables, the RKBA was, and is, still the best method to provide many of these, especially as they relate to the individual and those closest to him.

How do you determine what were the standards of the time, though?Unless you are a historian or you have spent a large amount of time with primary sources, you almost certainly have no idea what the standards of the time were.Many people defend George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for having owned slaves, the idea being that these people were heroes, and that what they did was normal for their time and place.But consider the following passage:But the slaves of which Homer speaks were whites. Notwithstanding these considerations which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity. -- The opinion, that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to analysis by fire, or by solvents. How much more then where it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all the senses; where the conditions of its existence are various and variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a circumstance of great tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given them. To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question `What further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.The author is saying that:The slaves described in Homer were whites, and possessed in all likelihood the same faculties as their masters.Blacks are an inferior race.Romans could free their slaves because those slaves were of the same race, and once freed, could have children with the rest of the population “without staining the blood” of their masters.But US slaveholders couldn’t do any such thing. Since the slaves of humans of a lower order, if freed, they had to be removed from the country.This was written between 1781 and 1783, and published in 1785. The author was Thomas Jefferson.[1]If you ask me, the ideas described above are racist and despicable. But maybe I’m just applying 21st century standards to an 18th century man.Let’s look at another passage, then:No representation of the Colonies in parliament alone, would however be equivalent to a subordinate legislative among themselves; nor so well answer the ends of increasing their prosperity and the commerce of Great-Britain. It would be impossible for the parliament to judge so well, of their abilities to bear taxes, impositions on trade, and other duties and burthens, or of the local laws that might be really needful, as a legislative here.3dly. No legislative, supreme or subordinate, has a right to make itself arbitrary.It would be a most manifest contradiction, for a free legislative, like that of Great-Britain, to make itself arbitrary.4thly. The supreme legislative cannot justly assume a power of ruling by extempore arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice by known settled rules, and by duly authorized independant judges.5thly. The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property, without his consent in person, or by representation.6thly. The legislature cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands.These are their bounds, which by God and nature are fixed, hitherto have they a right to come, and no further.1. To govern by stated laws.2. Those laws should have no other end ultimately, but the good of the people.3. Taxes are not to be laid on the people, but by their consent in person, or by deputation.4. Their whole power is not transferable.These are the first principles of law and justice, and the great barriers of a free state, and of the British constitution in particular. I ask, I want no more —Now let it be shown how ’tis reconcileable with these principles, or to many other fundamental maxims of the British constitution, as well as the natural and civil rights, which by the laws of their country, all British subjects are intitled to, as their best inheritance and birth-right, that all the northern colonies, who are without one representative in the house of Commons, should be taxed by the British parliament.That the colonists, black and white, born here, are free born British subjects, and entitled to all the essential civil rights of such, is a truth not only manifest from the provincial charters, from the principles of the common law, and acts of parliament; but from the British constitution, which was reestablished at the revolution, with a professed design to lecture the liberties of all the subjects to all generations.Here is a man arguing for black and white equality before the law. His name was James Otis Jr. He was a lawyer and a leader in the American Revolution. The passage above was from a pamphlet written in 1763, fully a century before the Battle of Gettysburg.[2]So, what exactly were the standards of the time? It is obviously not the case that everyone thought that slavery was fine because Blacks were clearly inferior.Tell me that Jefferson was a great man in spite of his flaws. Tell me that you admire his advocacy of greater democracy—as long as it didn’t apply to Blacks. Tell me that you admire that he wanted to restrain the power of the federal government—and his ability to give this up in order to purchase the Louisiana territory from Napoleon. But please don’t give me some bullshit, facile defense of his behavior by pretending that no one at the time thought that owning slaves was morally repugnant.Footnotes[1] Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia: ch. 14[2] 1763: Otis, Rights of British Colonies Asserted (Pamphlet)