Sorry I didn't see this earlier. That's an excellent question. I don't find anything in my quotes collection that says that specifically in that way, but there are some that state the same idea.
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the law," because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
--- Thomas Jefferson
(emphasis added)
The limits "around us" that Jefferson would've been referring to is the government he was either contemplating when he wrote (or spoke as the case may be) those words, or that he was a part of after ratification of the Constitution and/or BoR. He didn't add "within the law" because he was acknowledging the right of The People to be free from government-imposed limitations that only tyrants would think it within their authorities to impose. This quote makes my point better than I made it for myself. Thanks.
Although this can't be attributed to any specific founder, it does convey that the right to bear arms is limited, at least in the context of keeping them out of the hands of criminals:
That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own states 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.
--- A proposed amendment to the Federal Constitution, as passed by the Pennsylvania legislature.
(emphasis added)
Well, the Constitution itself has provisions for limiting criminals' rights, and the bit about unnamed individuals who pose completely undefined "real dangers" was so ambiguous as to expand government power rather than acknowledge a fundamental right, so that's probably why this amendment never passed.
I've never seen this proposed amendment before so I have to ask, was it something proposed or supported by any Framer(s)? Was it proposed contemporaneously with the BoR? Shortly thereafter? Several years or decades hence? Rejected before the BoR were ratified? It might be interesting to read how it progressed from what you quoted here to being an obscure reference found in the dustbin of history, but it certainly doesn't support the notion that our rights, as articulated within either the Constitution or BoR, were ever intended by this country's Founders to be limited in any way other than how they are limited by the clauses and amendments within the documents. The Fourth Amendment, just as an example among several, has a built-in limitation on the right that searches and seizures must be reasonable. "The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" offers exactly zero latitude for government interpretation, however, and knowing that government has usurped our Second Amendment rights egregiously and often with zero authority to do so, it should be no wonder to anyone that the word "unreasonable" in the 4A has given the imprimatur of legitimacy to all manner of weakening that amendment to the point that only lip-service is paid to the rest of it, while cops, prosecutors and courts from bottom to top exercise authorities that can in no way be discerned from the rest of those words.
In any case, no matter when the above amendment was proposed, or who authored or supported it, it was rejected, and to boot, you yourself say there's no attribution for its origin anyway, so it doesn't address the question I asked about
Framers expressing support for the notion that rights are limited beyond the words and ideas expressed in the way they were written.
I'd swear that I've seen founders express that very same sentiment that criminals and other dangerous individuals be denied arms but I can't find it in my personal collection. Maybe I'll find the time later to look for it further.
Your swearing an oath to having seen Founders express the same sentiment that the
rejected proposed amendment would've put into law is rather amusing, but not particularly compelling. Quotes that can be scrutinized and tested for accuracy and/or context, or it didn't happen.
There are plenty of warnings in quotes from the founders that some will try to get people to accept blatant usurpation in various ways, and the ways in which they will try it, so you aren't expressing an idea that they were in any way silent about, or less concerned with.
I can't untangle this. Are you suggesting that a person who speaks and understands the English language and takes a literalist view of the words, concepts and principles contained in our founding documents, is somehow trying to
"...get people to accept blatant usurpation..."? You're ostensibly juxtaposing what I've expressed against what unnamed and unquoted founders expressed, when the plain fact is, I either have accurately described their literalist intentions, or I haven't. Again, quotes that can be scrutinized and tested for accuracy and/or context, or it didn't happen.
Blues
ETA: And here's a question for you on-topic to the thread: Do you believe that the Commerce Clause was intended to limit the right(s) expressed in the Second Amendment? That's the crux of the conflict being argued in this and the other national reciprocity threads. If that's what you're arguing, please just come out and say it. If not, we're just having an academic, but nonetheless unrelated discussion.
