But in the mind of libertarian nutball Cody Wilson, lawmakers will just say "Welp, he beat us, time to pack up and go home, I'll see if I can charter an APC for us since it's gonna be like Somalia out there. This is the worst day since the basic theoretical disproof and repeated cracks of DRM made us give up on digital copyright issues."
But in the mind of libertarian nutball Cody Wilson
Instead of calling people names, why don't you and yours [thehill.com] simply campaign to abolish the Second Amendment altogether? If we read the First the same way we are told to read the Second, our freedom of speech too would be limited to "petitioning the government" — and only for "redress of grievances". Oh, and only after a "cool-down" period [theonion.com].
"Assault firearms" my foot — you can't even carry a freaking sword [findlaw.com] or brass-knuckles [findlaw.com] in many parts of the count
Frankly, it doesn't matter what you should think. "Arms" doesn't mean "hunting rifles." It means "arms." It's a very broad term covering things like swords.
Is it silly to think people should be able to walk around with swords? Maybe... but then we need an ammendment to the constitution limiting what "arms" means, you can't just arbitrarily think it should mean something to everybody... and any laws that ban keeping and bearing swords violate the 2nd ammendment just as much as bans on firearms.
[...] "Arms" doesn't mean "hunting rifles." It means "arms." [...]
We have to make the laws that are reasonable to our time. The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women. There are lots of things that we can look at now and say need (or needed) to be changed from the original document, with the perspective of the passing of 200 years.
Make arguments, please, that are really arguments, rather than hiding behind a document. Does it make sense now for individuals to buy and sell full-auto weapons? "Assault rifles"? Flamethrowers? Surface-to-air missles? What are the real distinctions?
And there were amendments made to the Constitution to eliminate slavery and give women the right to vote. Amendments are how the Constitution is a "Living" document. Just ignoring the parts you don't agree with is not how it is done. The right to bear arms was put in place to make sure the people never fell under the boot of the government, which means it was intended for us to have arms capable of standing up for our rights. You may be naive enough to trust the government, that does not mean others are.
Yes I love how in the 1860s in the US an armed citizenry overthrew a corrupt goverment that allowed the enslavement of its citizens - oh wait, that didn't happen, the armed citizens were there to suppress slave revolts on the south, which was the original purpose of the second amendment - not to overthrow a tyrannical goverment, it was to preserve a tryranical government which allowed slavery - i.e. to allow (white) people to carry guns to suppress local slave revolts - duh, you can't really keep slaves without guns to keep them in line. The freedom loving patriots in the south never rose up to free the black slaves - that took a fucking government army.
So is what you are saying, that if one were to look for any historical documents linking the 2nd amendment with trying to prevent tyranny, that none would be found because none exist?
I am kinda curious where this 'the 2nd amendment is so we can keep the government in check' idea came from. Historically it is complete nonsense.
At the time the US just got through fighting the revolutionary war. In that war the average citizen was about as well-armed as a professional soldier, with most people providing their own arms. Stuff like artillery was of course controlled by armies, but at the time a fairly small force with small arms was able to do stuff like capture the guns at Ft Ticoderoga.
Things have changed significantly since then. The weapons of war have become much more powerful and expensive. Communications has become much mo
The Constitution was written almost immediately after citizens had overthrown their previous government (England) via armed revolt. Many times England had tried to disarm to Colonists to prevent just such a thing from happening.
Do you honestly think its "nonsense" to think that a group that had just overthrown their government would not think it possible (and in the right circumstances necessary) to do so again?
"To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them."
- George Mason
"I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few politicians."
- George Mason (father of the Bill of Rights and The Virginia Declaration of Rights)
"The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops."
- Noah Webster
"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
- Joseph Story
What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
I am kinda curious where this 'the 2nd amendment is so we can keep the government in check' idea came from.
It's from reading the writings of the founding fathers on the subject. A quick google search will produce more material than you can possibly choke on.
This all asumes the army actually fires on it's own people, ultimately "their" people. Not sure how that would play out. I'd bet you'd have the military split as well.
I think your post, while well thought out, misses the point of an armed citizenry. No one is realistically thinking a lightly-armed, poorly-trained citizenry can effectively wage war against a well-equipped, well-trained professional military force. Nor do I think anyone is suggesting a straight up guerrilla-style campaign for asymmetric warfare.
No, the point of an armed citizenry is to give the government pause. An unarmed populace can be brought to heel without much in the way of bloodshed. But an armed populace? Even a lightly-armed one means the government can't just march in and round up potential dissidents. There is the strong possibility of a firefight. Sure, the little guys will probably lose. But it means the government must escalate to lethal force just to get started on whatever nefarious course it may be planning for its citizens.
In a way, it's little like conventional vs. nuclear combat between nation-states. When both sides were purely conventional, wars were fairly common (call this analogous to both sides being armed with swords). When one side has nukes and the other does not, the side with nukes gets its way pretty much whenever it wants without ever having to drop a nuke (analogous to a police state with a disarmed citizenry). But when both sides are equally armed with dangerous weapons that require either side to really think about whether they want to invite a deeply damaging and dangerous conflict...you get very few actual wars (analogous to an armed state and armed citizenry).
If I'm unarmed and the government (for whatever reason) decides I need to be removed, not only can I not stop them, but I probably can't even inflict significant harm on them. They will most likely even take me alive, without a protracted fight. The risk to them in this case, both in blood and bad PR, is minimal.
If I'm armed and the government (for whatever reason) decides I need to be removed, they will most likely succeed. I will, however, most likely succeed in causing casualties and/or making a big PR spectacle of being taken down. I might even achieve martyr status if I'm killed, causing a PR debacle for the government. The government will want to avoid these things, thus they will try to find means other than brute force of arms to remove me. Or they might not remove me at all, deeming the political risk too high. This is why we need to be armed. Not as a credible army-in-waiting, but as a deterrent.
This all asumes the army actually fires on it's own people, ultimately "their" people. Not sure how that would play out. I'd bet you'd have the military split as well.
Well, that was what I was getting at about requiring military collusion. It happens, and depending on the situation it may be more or less likely to happen.
True. In any case, I think all of this is like trying to put the genie back in the bottle. It is just way to easy to manufacture a gun to try to control access to them. Once both guns and ammo are easy to replicate using legal-to-obtain materials/equipment I suspect you'll see a rise in gun ownership even in countries that ban them.
The truly scary time will come when the same is true of more serious weapons, like chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons. As technology progresses these may become mo
If you don't have an army prepared to fire on it's own people, then you haven't got a proper totalitarian state in the first place.
Anyway, are you seriously under the impression that no US cop, FBI agent, soldier or National Guardsman has ever killed a US citizen?
The government just needs to call them dangerous criminals or terrorists for them to become legitimate targets. And anyone who offered violentresistance to the government would be very easy to label as a terrorist, I would think.
If I'm armed and the government (for whatever reason) decides I need to be removed, they will most likely succeed. I will, however, most likely succeed in causing casualties and/or making a big PR spectacle of being taken down. I might even achieve martyr status if I'm killed, causing a PR debacle for the government.
No, if a cop/soldier shoots and kills someone, it's much better PR for the government if that person is armed.
The best martyrs are unarmed and offer only passive resistance.
Nope. I see nothing about keeping the government in check in that wording. If anything, it's about defending the state from its enemies whoever they may be including rebellious slaves.
The for protecting the states and people from the federal government is actually the whole constitution.
For the army forces, artillery was mostly owned by the continental army. The continental navy was minimal and many naval functions were performed by privateers who owned their ships and the armament on it, which included cannon.
so just because there is a standing army, that means we should ignore the rest of the constitution instead of, i dont know. killing off the unconstitutional army, or amending the constitution to allow for a standing army??
At the time the US just got through fighting the revolutionary war. In that war the average citizen was about as well-armed as a professional soldier, with most people providing their own arms. Stuff like artillery was of course controlled by armies,......., and a bunch of guys with guns aren't going to improvise an air defense using captured aircraft the way a bunch of people could man the guns at a fort to defend against a counter-attack that takes three months to arrive....
Where do you think those old cannons that used to be in many town squares came from? They were once used by the local militia, when they had more to do.
A couple of guys couldn't take over a base, but a hundred could, if they had the element of surprise. And there are many citizens who can operate the anti-aircraft systems, some better than the regulars. What light arms get you, is the ability to capture heavy arms.
But the major purpose is deterrent, as a psycological force to prevent the "control-freaks" fr
No, if a cop/soldier shoots and kills someone, it's much better PR for the government if that person is armed.
The best martyrs are unarmed and offer only passive resistance.
But you miss the point. If I'm unarmed, the government has no need to use deadly force to remove me. A few flashbangs and a SWAT team and there's very little I could do about it without my own stash of firepower.
The truly scary time will come when the same is true of more serious weapons, like chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons. As technology progresses these may become more accessible to individuals as well. It will be an interesting world when the disgruntled kid at school can just blow up the city instead of shooting up the school.
Agreed. And the worst part is, I don't see a way to defend against it in a passive sense. Imagine, if you will, a scenario were a single bad guy could personally possess and use a weapon with the capability of killing tens of thousands of people. It's not a big stretch to see that coming to pass in the next half century. If such a weapon were easily portable, easily concealable...what can you do to stop it? The answer is, you can't. At least not once the weapon is in his possession and close to the ta
Technology has been in an arms race between arms and armor since the first man picked up a stick. One thing that stands out is that armor always is playing catch up. I don't see that changing. Even a mythical force shield would just create the atmosphere for a weapon designed to pierce it.
The issue here isn't to go after the weapons. Nor is the issue to develop defenses against the weapons. The issue is to go after the men and the mentality that would use them for ill. If this sounds like racial profi
This is why we remember events like Waco -- not because they were dissidents, but because they were *armed* dissidents who put up a fight.
[This applies regardless of your opinion on whether the dissidents had a valid point or were just, uh, whackos.]
The same could be said of the American War for Independence -- if they were not *armed* dissidents, they'd be long-forgotten and we'd all be singing "God Save the Queen".
Where do you think those old cannons that used to be in many town squares came from? They were once used by the local militia, when they had more to do.
I was lumping militia and army together. My point was mainly that they weren't personally owned.
A couple of guys couldn't take over a base, but a hundred could, if they had the element of surprise. And there are many citizens who can operate the anti-aircraft systems, some better than the regulars. What light arms get you, is the ability to capture heavy arms.
Against a modern army using combined arms? Just how long do you think it would take for the Pentagon to find out that one of their bases is under attack - most likely minutes. Maybe if you knocked out communications at a time of complete peace they might not assume the worst and it would take them a bit longer.
I think you're really over-estimating the ability of a rag-tag group to coordinate their operations i
It's 10 years federal to posses those things. But if the shit hits the fan I guarantee you we will have them. Already possessing the skills to make them and the judgement not to.
According to the people who wrote the Constitution, the 2nd Amendment was written to ensure that States had the right to form a militia, not an individual right for anyone to own any gun with no restrictions. At the time, when someone tried to build a private army, they executed him for treason. And since then, there have always been laws restricting who can own what kinds of weapons. Nobody sane argues that literally anyone should be allowed any weapon. For example, violent felons shouldn't be allowed to h
The freedom loving patriots in the south never rose up to free the black slaves - that took a fucking government army.
I don't think this is a good example. You refer to the slaves in the south as "enslaved citizens". But they weren't really citizens if they were not granted the rights of citizens. For example, they were certainly not granted the rights conferred by the 2nd amendment.
You can't criticize the 2nd amendment for not solving a situation where it was not even in effect. It would be one thing if the slaves were all given guns and slavery just continued to persist.
Yes I love how in the 1860s in the US an armed citizenry overthrew a corrupt goverment that allowed the enslavement of its citizens - oh wait, that didn't happen, the armed citizens were there to suppress slave revolts on the south, which was the original purpose of the second amendment - not to overthrow a tyrannical goverment, it was to preserve a tryranical government which allowed slavery - i.e. to allow (white) people to carry guns to suppress local slave revolts - duh, you can't really keep slaves without guns to keep them in line.
You need to take some history lessons. The Second Amendment wasn't written by the South. And the writers of the Constitution had to acknowledge that in the day it was written, there was no way it would be ratified by the States if they tried to abolish slavery immediately and directly.
But if you notice, it was written in such a way that it guaranteed rights to every person... making it easy to amend it later to abolish slavery. They didn't HAVE to write it that way, you know.
No. Just no. The Second and Third amendments deal with the nation's founders being paranoid of the potential for their new government to abuse its power. Much of a government's coercive power comes from its army, so, the constitution forbade the creation of a standing national army. On the other hand the founders recognised that the nation would need a way to defend itself against threats both internal and external. Militias would be the answer to that. This is why the second amendment not only give a direc
No. Just no. The Second and Third amendments deal with the nation's founders being paranoid of the potential for their new government to abuse its power. Much of a government's coercive power comes from its army, so, the constitution forbade the creation of a standing national army. On the other hand the founders recognised that the nation would need a way to defend itself against threats both internal and external. Militias would be the answer to that. This is why the second amendment not only give a directive, but also a reasoning.
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.
This is not that hard to understand. Unless, of course, you are intentionally failing to understand it so that it fits into your world view.
Nothing I wrote contradicts this. What makes you think it does?
Sorry Jane,
I misdirected that. it should have been in reply to the thread that said that the second amendment was intended to protect the citizenry against tyranny...
Yes I love how in the 1860s in the US an armed citizenry overthrew a corrupt goverment that allowed the enslavement of its citizens - oh wait, that didn't happen, the armed citizens were there to suppress slave revolts on the south, which was the original purpose of the second amendment - not to overthrow a tyrannical goverment, it was to preserve a tryranical government which allowed slavery - i.e. to allow (white) people to carry guns to suppress local slave revolts - duh, you can't really keep slaves without guns to keep them in line. The freedom loving patriots in the south never rose up to free the black slaves - that took a fucking government army.
The fastest way to get gun control is to have black people carry guns.
In California, as soon as the Black Panther Party started to carry guns, the California legislature passed gun control laws, which Ronald Reagan signed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In times past, yes. Nowadays however gun-rights activists indeed are heavily recruiting minorities to try and appeal to them. The NRA brought on Colion Noir (a black gun owner/vlogger) as a spokesperson, and they were very quick to jump to Shaneen Allen's defense when she (a black woman) was arrested in New Jersey for accidentally violating one of their draconian gun laws.
Simply put - trying to paint the NRA or gun rights activists as racist is a trick that simply doesn't work anymore. 40-50 years ago it
The fastest way to get gun control is to have black people carry guns....
Modern gun control laws started in the south after the civil war, pushed by the southern democrats to dis-arm the former slaves. The democrats still push gun control, and want their rights as slave owners back. I grew up in south carolina and saw it...
In times past, yes. Nowadays however gun-rights activists indeed are heavily recruiting minorities to try and appeal to them. The NRA brought on Colion Noir (a black gun owner/vlogger) as a spokesperson, and they were very quick to jump to Shaneen Allen's defense when she (a black woman) was arrested in New Jersey for accidentally violating one of their draconian gun laws.
Simply put - trying to paint the NRA or gun rights activists as racist is a trick that simply doesn't work anymore. 40-50 years ago it was true, but back then half the country was racist. The whole country - including the gun rights movement - has come a long way.
No. Even today, gun laws are enforced disproportionately against blacks.
Best evidence of that is New York's stop and frisk laws. That was basically an experimental suppression of the 4th Amendment. They arrested people mostly for drugs and secondarily for guns. There was lots of court testimony to show that the stops were disproportionately used against blacks.
The overall result was to take guns away from blacks. A lot of black people said they didn't carry guns because they were afraid of stop and frisk. W
Simply put - trying to paint the NRA or gun rights activists as racist is a trick that simply doesn't work anymore. 40-50 years ago it was true, but back then half the country was racist. The whole country - including the gun rights movement - has come a long way.
Consider that 40-50 years ago the NRA wasn't even a gun rights organization at the time, having a history of supporting things like the NFA, various 'Saturday night special' bans*, etc...
Then, as the rights people gained power the NRA did a complete about-face on some of the racist things, started considering gun rights as much as hunter safety and the proper operation of safe ranges.
*A 'Saturday night special is a now older term for a cheap handgun. Gun control laws targeting them at least have the benefi
According to John Dean, Nixon's former White House counsel, the purpose of the Republican "Southern strategy" was for the Republicans to replace the Democrats by appealing to racism, among other things. They seem to have succeeded. A lot of the old racist southern Democratic politicians became Republicans.
thats some crazy revisionist history there. The 2nd amendment was made to give slave holders the ability to keep their slaves in check??? now ive heard everything
Wow! I have NEVER seen the Civil War characterized that THAT before. Just wow. What kind of mental deformations did you have to experience before you could interpret past events in such a manner?
Except that the people who had guns then could just as easily kill with guns then as now -- there is no change in that. Their reasoning is that at any point a Democracy can devolve into a dictatorship as soon as the new popularly elected leader decides to use secret police to defend his power -- as has been proven in many countries over the last few hundred years. At that point neither passive reason nor a foolable ballot box will succeed in defeating the armed secret police -- only an armed responsible cit
Except that the people who had guns then could just as easily kill with guns then as now -- there is no change in that. Their reasoning is that at any point a Democracy can devolve into a dictatorship as soon as the new popularly elected leader decides to use secret police to defend his power -- as has been proven in many countries over the last few hundred years. At that point neither passive reason nor a foolable ballot box will succeed in defeating the armed secret police -- only an armed responsible citizenry can do that. Read Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" and get wise.
I'll make sure to hop into my time machine and tell Gandhi that his whole unarmed rebellion and civil disobedience has no chance in getting rid of the British. The people who seem to fear the government and it's armies overlook one very important fact. Where in hell do those armies come from? They come from the citizenry of this country. If the government were to order it's soldiers to conduct wholesale infringement of it's populace, against those soldier's own families and relatives, and friends, how
India's independence came about as part of a large decolonization movement by Britain after having been bankrupted from WW2. It also helped hasten things that that Royal Indian Navy mutinied. They were not at all solvent enough to maintain colonies that had any sort of inclination towards independence especially with Japan having occupied many British colonies and caused anti-Japanese rebels to rise and arm themselves.
The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women.
It did no such thing, it simply reserved such matters to the States, per the 10th Amendment. The 14th and 19th Amendments changed that of course. The 14th was actually intended by its drafters to be interpreted more broadly than it has been, in theory it should have immediately applied the Bill of Rights against the States (including the 2nd Amendment) but SCOTUS neutered it and it has instead taken the better part of a century and a half to get most of the Bill of Rights applied against the States.
Incidentally, the established process of amending the Constitution (Article V) is available for gun control proponents to take advantage of if they think they can actually win a debate on the merits of the issue. All you need to do is convince 2/3rd's of Congress and 3/4ths of the State Legislatures to sign off on a repeal or amendment of the 2nd Amendment. Best of luck with that.:)
Constitutional amendments have nothing to do with debating the merits of the topic. Politicians are concerned with keeping their jobs, their entire reward/punishment system is built around obtaining and holding political power. The only way an amendment would get passed is if a large number of political figures were convinced they would get voted out if they did not, and given the 97% incumbency rate we have today, that is just not going to happen.
Constitutional amendments have nothing to do with debating the merits of the topic.
It does when people start saying things like 'stop hiding behind paper' and 'the constitution is a living document'. Sure it's a living document, there's a way to change it built into the very document itself. Until then, pointing out that many gun control proposals are unconstitutional isn't necessarily out of line.
Also, going by what most recently happened in Colorado, what happened after the first assault weapons ban, and such, pushing for repeal or significant restriction on the 2nd is a good way to l
The constitution absolutely allowed slavery. It didn't condone it, but allowing the states to decide to have slavery is "allowing" it (i.e. not prohibiting it).
The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women.
It did no such thing, it simply reserved such matters to the States, per the 10th Amendment. The 14th and 19th Amendments changed that of course.
The way I read English, when the Constitution doesn't prohibit slavery, and leaves it to the states, it allows slavery.
Incidentally, the established process of amending the Constitution (Article V) is available for gun control proponents to take advantage of if they think they can actually win a debate on the merits of the issue. All you need to do is convince 2/3rd's of Congress and 3/4ths of the State Legislatures to sign off on a repeal or amendment of the 2nd Amendment. Best of luck with that.:)
Unfortunately, a small, aggressive, well-funded minority can always subvert the democratic process.
Then you need to review the Ninth Amendment, which spelled out that rights not explicitly mentioned by the Constitution may still exist and be recognized in a Constitutionally relevant way. There had been hesitance about stating rights in the Constitution explicitly meaning that rights _not_ spelled out would no longer be acknowledged as valid.
Unfortunately, a small, aggressive, well-funded minority can always subvert the democratic process.
If by this, you are obliquely referring to the NRA (as the aggressive, well-funded minority), you might take note that right now in Washington State, billionaires are out-spending the NRA (and pro-gun overall) by a ratio of 7 to 1 on an initiative to expand background checks. Well, at least that is what they are calling it. It's a whole lot more than "simply" expanding background checks, but I digress...
Said billionaires include:
Bill and Melinda Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer (gotta love all that Micro
it simply reserved such matters to the States, per the 10th Amendment.
I'm not sure how 'not forbidding' is different than 'allowing'. Regardless, slavery wasn't handled just through the 10th amendment. Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 specifies that slaves (i.e. people who are neither free nor indianans) count as 0.6 people for determining the number of congressional representatives from a state. Because of that, I'd say that the constitution condoned slavery.
Regardless, slavery wasn't handled just through the 10th amendment. Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 specifies that slaves (i.e. people who are neither free nor indianans) count as 0.6 people for determining the number of congressional representatives from a state. Because of that, I'd say that the constitution condoned slavery.
You should actually research the matter rather than parroting poorly informed talking points. The 3/5th's clause was a compromise between the Northern States that wanted slaves to count for nothing (thereby eroding the political power of the slave holding states and presumably leading to a quicker demise for the institution of slavery) and the Southern States that wanted them counted at 100%. Had the North gotten its way it's quite probable that the Civil War and u
it simply reserved such matters to the States, per the 10th Amendment.
I'm not sure how 'not forbidding' is different than 'allowing'. Regardless, slavery wasn't handled just through the 10th amendment. Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 specifies that slaves (i.e. people who are neither free nor indianans) count as 0.6 people for determining the number of congressional representatives from a state. Because of that, I'd say that the constitution condoned slavery.
That was known as the Virginia clause as implementing it gave the state the lions share of representation and is the key reason that the first few Presidents were all Virginians. The part that gave everyone two Senators per state regardless of size was the New Jersey clause.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
While the Constitution did not explicitly "allow" slavery, it did implicitly recognize it's existence (the 3/5ths clause) and it could be argued thereby tacitly allowed it. With the 13th Amendment slavery was abolished.
The Constitution was amended, using the very processes described in said document, to make slavery illegal. Unless and until the 2nd amendment is revoked, the government has *no* granted power to infringe upon the right of the people to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms (weapons).
There are certain weapons which are eminently impractical to use for self-defense purposes, but that provides no grant of power to the government to disallow *ownership* of such weapons.
We have to make the laws that are reasonable to our time. The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women.
Yeah, and when times changed it got amended. But the right to bear arms hasn't been amended, and until it does, it still stands as the law of the land that all arms are included.
Does it make sense now for individuals to buy and sell full-auto weapons? "Assault rifles"? Flamethrowers? Surface-to-air missles?
Absolutely! How else is the public supposed to support a revolt against tyranny? (That is what the 2nd Amendment is for, you know... it's a rule written by violent revolutionaries for violent revolutionaries.)
Yeah, and when times changed it got amended. But the right to bear arms hasn't been amended, and until it does, it still stands as the law of the land that all arms are included.
Has the 4th amendment been updated?
Or are you under the illusion that this one amendment is sacrosanct while they crap all over the rest of it?
Because blanket surveillance, property seizure because police lie and say they suspected drugs, and parallel construction are pretty much in violation of your Constitution as well.
Absolutely! How else is the public supposed to support a revolt against tyranny?
Look, you're descending into tyranny now. So, either get on with it, or stop whining about how you'll do it when you get around to it or someone really outlaws jumbo sized soda.
Otherwise, it's just lip service. Your government is already ignoring your Constitution on a large scale, but apparently nobody gives a damn.
Or are you under the illusion that this one amendment is sacrosanct while they crap all over the rest of it?
Because blanket surveillance, property seizure because police lie and say they suspected drugs, and parallel construction are pretty much in violation of your Constitution as well.
I have yet to see a single comment from anyone (democrat or republican) arguing that the US government is properly following the 4th amendment.
I'm not sure how this makes not following the 2nd amendment in addition to not following the 4th ok.
Because everyone claims the 2nd is to keep the 4th (and others) from being repressed. Looks like we're doing a fantastic job. To put it another way, it's OK for the TSA to shove their fingers up your ass as long as you're holding a gun while it is happening. I don't often agree with stoddart, but put up or shut up!
Because everyone claims the 2nd is to keep the 4th (and others) from being repressed.
The 1st amendment right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press is also supposed to keep the 4th (and others) from being repressed by allowing people to raise awareness. I guess the 1st amendment should be abandoned as well since it too is not working.
To put it another way, it's OK for the TSA to shove their fingers up your ass as long as you're holding a gun while it is happening.
Go find me a bunch of 2nd amendment supporters that have anything nice to say about the TSA. You'll have trouble finding me anyone who has naything nice to say about the TSA. What's your point?
I don't often agree with stoddart, but put up or shut up!
What exactly am I supposed to "put up" according to you?
Otherwise, it's just lip service. Your government is already ignoring your Constitution on a large scale, but apparently nobody gives a damn
I am not American, still, I do truly believe that hundreds of millions of Americans do give a damn.
The problem is not giving a damn. The problem is that guns are a stupid way to try and change governments, and everyone there must intuitively understand this. I keep reading comments by 2nd amendment fundamentalists saying they're packing guns so they can overthrow the go
Guns can be _extremely effective_ at changing governments, ranging from assassination of critical leaders to armed revolt. The assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austria triggered World War I, which reshaped Europe and governments and economies around the world.
Or are you under the illusion that this one amendment is sacrosanct while they crap all over the rest of it?
Are you arguing that because they crap all over the rest of the Bill of Rights, we should allow them to crap all over the second as well? Really?
Obviously, the correct solution is to required our government to obey all of the law -- and in the extreme (and unlikely, I think) event that we fail to achieve that via political processes, we'll have to make use of our arms to retake control (our arms and the unwillingness of the US military to fight fellow citizens; both are necessary). The "crapping all over
The point is that freedom of speech and association are far, far more important than the ability to carry cool looking guns, in terms of actually getting anything done politically.
The US's privately held arsenal has so far been useless in preventing the creation of a semi-fascist state.
The point is that freedom of speech and association are far, far more important than the ability to carry cool looking guns, in terms of actually getting anything done politically.
Up to a point, that's true. But you simply raise the same question again: Are you arguing that since we're letting some of our rights slip we should also let the 2A go? Or do you believe that if we ignored the 2A that would some how make it easier to defend freedom of speech and association? I'd argue that it would help to undermine them, by providing yet another precedent showing that the "living Constitution" means whatever we want it to, making it meaningless.
The US's privately held arsenal has so far been useless in preventing the creation of a semi-fascist state.
Does it make sense now for individuals to buy and sell full-auto weapons? "Assault rifles"? Flamethrowers? Surface-to-air missles?
Absolutely! How else is the public supposed to support a revolt against tyranny? (That is what the 2nd Amendment is for, you know... it's a rule written by violent revolutionaries for violent revolutionaries.)
The second amendment does jack shit to support a revolt against tyranny. You can have nuclear weapons for all I care, a tyranny will only use that a reason to have you flayed. What is needed to get rid of a tyranny is free communication so that you can organize a revolt, that is the part that is hard to
Do you honestly think that allowing random citizens to buy surface to air missiles is a good idea?
Let's just ignore the difficulty that would cause for commercial aircraft for a moment and concentrate on your suggestion that such weapons are necessary to revolt against tyranny. Unfortunately such things are mostly ineffective against the government's most powerful and destructive weapon - apathy. As long as they keep broadcasting reality TV you are screwed. Maybe an EMP would be more effective.
How else is the public supposed to support a revolt against tyranny? (That is what the 2nd Amendment is for, you know... it's a rule written by violent revolutionaries for violent revolutionaries.)
Actually, it's a rule insisted on by the southern, slave-holding states to make sure the federal government would not limit their means of violently suppressing slave revolts. It has nothing to do with hunting, self-defense. It was meant to *preserve* tyranny, not fight it.
Nope, the Constitution was silent on the matter until the Nineteenth Amendment [wikipedia.org].
We have to make the laws that are reasonable to our time.
Sure. The point was, for any such laws to be valid, the Second Amendment has to be abolished (or altered) first. Hardly unheard of — the Eighteenth Amendment [wikipedia.org], which prohibited the sale of alcohol, was repealed by the Twenty-first [wikipedia.org], for example.
Nope, the Constitution was silent on the matter until the Nineteenth Amendment [wikipedia.org].
Well, yes and no. In the original debates (not The Federalist Papers, which had specific authors expressing their own opinions) there was a great deal of 'of course we do not mean XYZ', with significant disagreement about how absolute they were and what did not even need saying (ah, common sense). For instance there were arguments about whether Islam, Judaism, and Catholicism counted as religions. There was no debate about whether the native ones counted, they were most certainly not.
Well, yes and no. In the original debates (not The Federalist Papers, which had specific authors expressing their own opinions) there was a great deal of 'of course we do not mean XYZ', with significant disagreement about how absolute they were and what did not even need saying (ah, common sense). For instance there were arguments about whether Islam, Judaism, and Catholicism counted as religions. There was no debate about whether the native ones counted, they were most certainly not.
The original debates, while important, were not as important as the ratification debates that came later. That is where the Federalist Papers (and Anti-Federalist Papers) came in. They explained the original meanings of many of the clauses in the Constitution, and the ratification debates used them as references.
For example, during the ratification debates it became clear that many states would not ratify UNLESS the Constitution was interpreted to mean that there would be no Federal control of arms at al
At the time it was taken for granted that a person was a white christian male.
White Christian Protestant Male.
It was considered a rather important distinction at the time, given the heavy anti-Catholic bias of the English settlers.
I'm not asking you to convince me that the Constitution says what you think it says. Maybe it even does. "Alexander Hamilton thought it was a great idea" is not a convincing argument for me here.
I'm asking you to convince me that what it is is the way it should be. The USA pays a huge cost for the amount of private gun ownership it has, relative to other countries. Most gun-related injuries are a) accidents, b) suicide attempts, and c) the result of domestic dispute
We have to make the laws that are reasonable to our time. The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women. There are lots of things that we can look at now and say need (or needed) to be changed from the original document, with the perspective of the passing of 200 years.
Err, not saying you're wrong per se, in the context of an originalist vs "living document" sort of argument. But those two are terrible examples because changing them required exactly what GP called for: a constitutional amendment.
The argument is not "open carry for swords would be good for society" or "owning a howitzer is objectively reasonable" or "everything in the text of the original Constitution is perfect as written (including slavery and landed male suffrage)."
Generally personal firearms are rifles and shotguns limited to semi-automatic fire. Full Auto weapons are heavily regulated. The Constitution has been amended to outlaw slavery and to allow women to vote but the anti-gun people know there is no hope in repealing the second amendment so they try to backdoor ban weapons by Federal Law. It hasn't worked well for them but they still have a much better chance at doing it through legislation than a Constitutional amendment.
"That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there."
-- George Orwell
It's a reasonable request, but only so long as it is framed within a discussion to actually amend the Constitution, and specifically the Second Amendment. The problem is that it's not even on the table - all we have so far are attempts to hack around the wording that is there, by creatively reinterpreting it or selectively ignoring it. It would be a much more straightforward talk if people who don't like guns (all or some of them) would just own up and say that their problem really is with 2A itself, and in
I agree on the flamethrowers, though I also remember versions of them being used for pest control as well as controlled burns, snow removal, and other such tasks.
They make a device that pushes out propane or natural gas into animal burrows, turning them into fuel-air explosives, then the operator triggers a spark using the device that detonates it, killing rodents such as gophers in the tunnel network through a combination of overpressure and oxygen deprivation.
Well there were privately owned war ships operating as privateers [wikipedia.org] as well as heavily armed merchant ships. Also lets not forget about the US v. Miller calse [wikipedia.org] where the US government argued that the weapon that Miller had could not be possessed because it was not a legitimate weapon of war. Sprinkle in that we have laws about owning sporting firearms not being challenged and the various handgun bans [wikipedia.org] being overturned and it would seem that the private citizen should be able to own anything from a simple.22lr
A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected.
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Ban "Assault Lathes"!
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Exactly.
But in the mind of libertarian nutball Cody Wilson, lawmakers will just say "Welp, he beat us, time to pack up and go home, I'll see if I can charter an APC for us since it's gonna be like Somalia out there. This is the worst day since the basic theoretical disproof and repeated cracks of DRM made us give up on digital copyright issues."
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Instead of calling people names, why don't you and yours [thehill.com] simply campaign to abolish the Second Amendment altogether? If we read the First the same way we are told to read the Second, our freedom of speech too would be limited to "petitioning the government" — and only for "redress of grievances". Oh, and only after a "cool-down" period [theonion.com].
"Assault firearms" my foot — you can't even carry a freaking sword [findlaw.com] or brass-knuckles [findlaw.com] in many parts of the count
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Do you somehow find yourself aggrieved by not being able to carry a sword with you? Is it ruining your cyberpunk look or something?
Or are you just looking for things to kvetch about?
I should think there's very little call for walking around with a sword.
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Frankly, it doesn't matter what you should think. "Arms" doesn't mean "hunting rifles." It means "arms." It's a very broad term covering things like swords.
Is it silly to think people should be able to walk around with swords? Maybe... but then we need an ammendment to the constitution limiting what "arms" means, you can't just arbitrarily think it should mean something to everybody... and any laws that ban keeping and bearing swords violate the 2nd ammendment just as much as bans on firearms.
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[...] "Arms" doesn't mean "hunting rifles." It means "arms." [...]
We have to make the laws that are reasonable to our time. The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women. There are lots of things that we can look at now and say need (or needed) to be changed from the original document, with the perspective of the passing of 200 years.
Make arguments, please, that are really arguments, rather than hiding behind a document. Does it make sense now for individuals to buy and sell full-auto weapons? "Assault rifles"? Flamethrowers? Surface-to-air missles? What are the real distinctions?
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I am kinda curious where this 'the 2nd amendment is so we can keep the government in check' idea came from. Historically it is complete nonsense.
At the time the US just got through fighting the revolutionary war. In that war the average citizen was about as well-armed as a professional soldier, with most people providing their own arms. Stuff like artillery was of course controlled by armies, but at the time a fairly small force with small arms was able to do stuff like capture the guns at Ft Ticoderoga.
Things have changed significantly since then. The weapons of war have become much more powerful and expensive. Communications has become much mo
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The Constitution was written almost immediately after citizens had overthrown their previous government (England) via armed revolt. Many times England had tried to disarm to Colonists to prevent just such a thing from happening.
Do you honestly think its "nonsense" to think that a group that had just overthrown their government would not think it possible (and in the right circumstances necessary) to do so again?
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I am kinda curious where this 'the 2nd amendment is so we can keep the government in check' idea came from. Historically it is complete nonsense.
well the idea is in the text of the 2nd amendment itself, "a well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state".
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"To disarm the people is the most effectual way to enslave them."
- George Mason
"I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few politicians."
- George Mason (father of the Bill of Rights and The Virginia Declaration of Rights)
"The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops."
- Noah Webster
"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
- Joseph Story
What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty .... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
- Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts
you were saying????
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I am kinda curious where this 'the 2nd amendment is so we can keep the government in check' idea came from.
It's from reading the writings of the founding fathers on the subject. A quick google search will produce more material than you can possibly choke on.
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This all asumes the army actually fires on it's own people, ultimately "their" people. Not sure how that would play out. I'd bet you'd have the military split as well.
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I think your post, while well thought out, misses the point of an armed citizenry. No one is realistically thinking a lightly-armed, poorly-trained citizenry can effectively wage war against a well-equipped, well-trained professional military force. Nor do I think anyone is suggesting a straight up guerrilla-style campaign for asymmetric warfare.
No, the point of an armed citizenry is to give the government pause. An unarmed populace can be brought to heel without much in the way of bloodshed. But an armed populace? Even a lightly-armed one means the government can't just march in and round up potential dissidents. There is the strong possibility of a firefight. Sure, the little guys will probably lose. But it means the government must escalate to lethal force just to get started on whatever nefarious course it may be planning for its citizens.
In a way, it's little like conventional vs. nuclear combat between nation-states. When both sides were purely conventional, wars were fairly common (call this analogous to both sides being armed with swords). When one side has nukes and the other does not, the side with nukes gets its way pretty much whenever it wants without ever having to drop a nuke (analogous to a police state with a disarmed citizenry). But when both sides are equally armed with dangerous weapons that require either side to really think about whether they want to invite a deeply damaging and dangerous conflict...you get very few actual wars (analogous to an armed state and armed citizenry).
If I'm unarmed and the government (for whatever reason) decides I need to be removed, not only can I not stop them, but I probably can't even inflict significant harm on them. They will most likely even take me alive, without a protracted fight. The risk to them in this case, both in blood and bad PR, is minimal.
If I'm armed and the government (for whatever reason) decides I need to be removed, they will most likely succeed. I will, however, most likely succeed in causing casualties and/or making a big PR spectacle of being taken down. I might even achieve martyr status if I'm killed, causing a PR debacle for the government. The government will want to avoid these things, thus they will try to find means other than brute force of arms to remove me. Or they might not remove me at all, deeming the political risk too high. This is why we need to be armed. Not as a credible army-in-waiting, but as a deterrent.
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This all asumes the army actually fires on it's own people, ultimately "their" people. Not sure how that would play out. I'd bet you'd have the military split as well.
Well, that was what I was getting at about requiring military collusion. It happens, and depending on the situation it may be more or less likely to happen.
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True. In any case, I think all of this is like trying to put the genie back in the bottle. It is just way to easy to manufacture a gun to try to control access to them. Once both guns and ammo are easy to replicate using legal-to-obtain materials/equipment I suspect you'll see a rise in gun ownership even in countries that ban them.
The truly scary time will come when the same is true of more serious weapons, like chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons. As technology progresses these may become mo
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I wonder how long it was before the incident in Tienanmen Square that a Chinese person had said that?
Hmm, judging from the movies I've seen, probably a few thousand years...
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Anyway, are you seriously under the impression that no US cop, FBI agent, soldier or National Guardsman has ever killed a US citizen?
The government just needs to call them dangerous criminals or terrorists for them to become legitimate targets. And anyone who offered violentresistance to the government would be very easy to label as a terrorist, I would think.
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If I'm armed and the government (for whatever reason) decides I need to be removed, they will most likely succeed. I will, however, most likely succeed in causing casualties and/or making a big PR spectacle of being taken down. I might even achieve martyr status if I'm killed, causing a PR debacle for the government.
No, if a cop/soldier shoots and kills someone, it's much better PR for the government if that person is armed.
The best martyrs are unarmed and offer only passive resistance.
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Actually, artillery was privately owned too. Ben Franklin bought some cannon for the defense of Philadelphia without government permission.
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Nope. I see nothing about keeping the government in check in that wording. If anything, it's about defending the state from its enemies whoever they may be including rebellious slaves.
The for protecting the states and people from the federal government is actually the whole constitution.
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For the army forces, artillery was mostly owned by the continental army. The continental navy was minimal and many naval functions were performed by privateers who owned their ships and the armament on it, which included cannon.
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At the time the US just got through fighting the revolutionary war. In that war the average citizen was about as well-armed as a professional soldier, with most people providing their own arms. Stuff like artillery was of course controlled by armies, .... ..., and a bunch of guys with guns aren't going to improvise an air defense using captured aircraft the way a bunch of people could man the guns at a fort to defend against a counter-attack that takes three months to arrive. ...
Where do you think those old cannons that used to be in many town squares came from? They were once used by the local militia, when they had more to do.
A couple of guys couldn't take over a base, but a hundred could, if they had the element of surprise. And there are many citizens who can operate the anti-aircraft systems, some better than the regulars. What light arms get you, is the ability to capture heavy arms.
But the major purpose is deterrent, as a psycological force to prevent the "control-freaks" fr
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No, if a cop/soldier shoots and kills someone, it's much better PR for the government if that person is armed.
The best martyrs are unarmed and offer only passive resistance.
But you miss the point. If I'm unarmed, the government has no need to use deadly force to remove me. A few flashbangs and a SWAT team and there's very little I could do about it without my own stash of firepower.
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The truly scary time will come when the same is true of more serious weapons, like chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons. As technology progresses these may become more accessible to individuals as well. It will be an interesting world when the disgruntled kid at school can just blow up the city instead of shooting up the school.
Agreed. And the worst part is, I don't see a way to defend against it in a passive sense. Imagine, if you will, a scenario were a single bad guy could personally possess and use a weapon with the capability of killing tens of thousands of people. It's not a big stretch to see that coming to pass in the next half century. If such a weapon were easily portable, easily concealable...what can you do to stop it? The answer is, you can't. At least not once the weapon is in his possession and close to the ta
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Technology has been in an arms race between arms and armor since the first man picked up a stick. One thing that stands out is that armor always is playing catch up. I don't see that changing. Even a mythical force shield would just create the atmosphere for a weapon designed to pierce it.
The issue here isn't to go after the weapons. Nor is the issue to develop defenses against the weapons. The issue is to go after the men and the mentality that would use them for ill. If this sounds like racial profi
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This is why we remember events like Waco -- not because they were dissidents, but because they were *armed* dissidents who put up a fight.
[This applies regardless of your opinion on whether the dissidents had a valid point or were just, uh, whackos.]
The same could be said of the American War for Independence -- if they were not *armed* dissidents, they'd be long-forgotten and we'd all be singing "God Save the Queen".
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Where do you think those old cannons that used to be in many town squares came from? They were once used by the local militia, when they had more to do.
I was lumping militia and army together. My point was mainly that they weren't personally owned.
A couple of guys couldn't take over a base, but a hundred could, if they had the element of surprise. And there are many citizens who can operate the anti-aircraft systems, some better than the regulars. What light arms get you, is the ability to capture heavy arms.
Against a modern army using combined arms? Just how long do you think it would take for the Pentagon to find out that one of their bases is under attack - most likely minutes. Maybe if you knocked out communications at a time of complete peace they might not assume the worst and it would take them a bit longer.
I think you're really over-estimating the ability of a rag-tag group to coordinate their operations i
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It's 10 years federal to posses those things. But if the shit hits the fan I guarantee you we will have them. Already possessing the skills to make them and the judgement not to.
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According to the people who wrote the Constitution, the 2nd Amendment was written to ensure that States had the right to form a militia, not an individual right for anyone to own any gun with no restrictions. At the time, when someone tried to build a private army, they executed him for treason. And since then, there have always been laws restricting who can own what kinds of weapons. Nobody sane argues that literally anyone should be allowed any weapon. For example, violent felons shouldn't be allowed to h
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The freedom loving patriots in the south never rose up to free the black slaves - that took a fucking government army.
I don't think this is a good example. You refer to the slaves in the south as "enslaved citizens". But they weren't really citizens if they were not granted the rights of citizens. For example, they were certainly not granted the rights conferred by the 2nd amendment.
You can't criticize the 2nd amendment for not solving a situation where it was not even in effect. It would be one thing if the slaves were all given guns and slavery just continued to persist.
You might as well criticize the 2nd amendment f
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Yes I love how in the 1860s in the US an armed citizenry overthrew a corrupt goverment that allowed the enslavement of its citizens - oh wait, that didn't happen, the armed citizens were there to suppress slave revolts on the south, which was the original purpose of the second amendment - not to overthrow a tyrannical goverment, it was to preserve a tryranical government which allowed slavery - i.e. to allow (white) people to carry guns to suppress local slave revolts - duh, you can't really keep slaves without guns to keep them in line.
You need to take some history lessons. The Second Amendment wasn't written by the South. And the writers of the Constitution had to acknowledge that in the day it was written, there was no way it would be ratified by the States if they tried to abolish slavery immediately and directly.
But if you notice, it was written in such a way that it guaranteed rights to every person... making it easy to amend it later to abolish slavery. They didn't HAVE to write it that way, you know.
The Second Amendment was w
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No. Just no. The Second and Third amendments deal with the nation's founders being paranoid of the potential for their new government to abuse its power. Much of a government's coercive power comes from its army, so, the constitution forbade the creation of a standing national army. On the other hand the founders recognised that the nation would need a way to defend itself against threats both internal and external. Militias would be the answer to that. This is why the second amendment not only give a directive, but also a reasoning. 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. This is not that hard to understand. Unless, of course, you are intentionally failing to understand it so that it fits into your world view.
Nothing I wrote contradicts this. What makes you think it does?
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Yes I love how in the 1860s in the US an armed citizenry overthrew a corrupt goverment that allowed the enslavement of its citizens - oh wait, that didn't happen, the armed citizens were there to suppress slave revolts on the south, which was the original purpose of the second amendment - not to overthrow a tyrannical goverment, it was to preserve a tryranical government which allowed slavery - i.e. to allow (white) people to carry guns to suppress local slave revolts - duh, you can't really keep slaves without guns to keep them in line. The freedom loving patriots in the south never rose up to free the black slaves - that took a fucking government army.
The fastest way to get gun control is to have black people carry guns.
In California, as soon as the Black Panther Party started to carry guns, the California legislature passed gun control laws, which Ronald Reagan signed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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In times past, yes. Nowadays however gun-rights activists indeed are heavily recruiting minorities to try and appeal to them. The NRA brought on Colion Noir (a black gun owner/vlogger) as a spokesperson, and they were very quick to jump to Shaneen Allen's defense when she (a black woman) was arrested in New Jersey for accidentally violating one of their draconian gun laws.
Simply put - trying to paint the NRA or gun rights activists as racist is a trick that simply doesn't work anymore. 40-50 years ago it
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The fastest way to get gun control is to have black people carry guns. ...
Modern gun control laws started in the south after the civil war, pushed by the southern democrats to dis-arm the former slaves. The democrats still push gun control, and want their rights as slave owners back. I grew up in south carolina and saw it...
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In times past, yes. Nowadays however gun-rights activists indeed are heavily recruiting minorities to try and appeal to them. The NRA brought on Colion Noir (a black gun owner/vlogger) as a spokesperson, and they were very quick to jump to Shaneen Allen's defense when she (a black woman) was arrested in New Jersey for accidentally violating one of their draconian gun laws.
Simply put - trying to paint the NRA or gun rights activists as racist is a trick that simply doesn't work anymore. 40-50 years ago it was true, but back then half the country was racist. The whole country - including the gun rights movement - has come a long way.
No. Even today, gun laws are enforced disproportionately against blacks.
Best evidence of that is New York's stop and frisk laws. That was basically an experimental suppression of the 4th Amendment. They arrested people mostly for drugs and secondarily for guns. There was lots of court testimony to show that the stops were disproportionately used against blacks.
The overall result was to take guns away from blacks. A lot of black people said they didn't carry guns because they were afraid of stop and frisk. W
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Simply put - trying to paint the NRA or gun rights activists as racist is a trick that simply doesn't work anymore. 40-50 years ago it was true, but back then half the country was racist. The whole country - including the gun rights movement - has come a long way.
Consider that 40-50 years ago the NRA wasn't even a gun rights organization at the time, having a history of supporting things like the NFA, various 'Saturday night special' bans*, etc...
Then, as the rights people gained power the NRA did a complete about-face on some of the racist things, started considering gun rights as much as hunter safety and the proper operation of safe ranges.
*A 'Saturday night special is a now older term for a cheap handgun. Gun control laws targeting them at least have the benefi
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According to John Dean, Nixon's former White House counsel, the purpose of the Republican "Southern strategy" was for the Republicans to replace the Democrats by appealing to racism, among other things. They seem to have succeeded. A lot of the old racist southern Democratic politicians became Republicans.
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It is not legal to have a gun in NYCity much less carry it concealed.
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Wow! I have NEVER seen the Civil War characterized that THAT before. Just wow. What kind of mental deformations did you have to experience before you could interpret past events in such a manner?
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Except that the people who had guns then could just as easily kill with guns then as now -- there is no change in that. Their reasoning is that at any point a Democracy can devolve into a dictatorship as soon as the new popularly elected leader decides to use secret police to defend his power -- as has been proven in many countries over the last few hundred years. At that point neither passive reason nor a foolable ballot box will succeed in defeating the armed secret police -- only an armed responsible citizenry can do that. Read Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" and get wise.
I'll make sure to hop into my time machine and tell Gandhi that his whole unarmed rebellion and civil disobedience has no chance in getting rid of the British. The people who seem to fear the government and it's armies overlook one very important fact. Where in hell do those armies come from? They come from the citizenry of this country. If the government were to order it's soldiers to conduct wholesale infringement of it's populace, against those soldier's own families and relatives, and friends, how
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India's independence came about as part of a large decolonization movement by Britain after having been bankrupted from WW2. It also helped hasten things that that Royal Indian Navy mutinied. They were not at all solvent enough to maintain colonies that had any sort of inclination towards independence especially with Japan having occupied many British colonies and caused anti-Japanese rebels to rise and arm themselves.
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The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women.
It did no such thing, it simply reserved such matters to the States, per the 10th Amendment. The 14th and 19th Amendments changed that of course. The 14th was actually intended by its drafters to be interpreted more broadly than it has been, in theory it should have immediately applied the Bill of Rights against the States (including the 2nd Amendment) but SCOTUS neutered it and it has instead taken the better part of a century and a half to get most of the Bill of Rights applied against the States.
Incidentally, the established process of amending the Constitution (Article V) is available for gun control proponents to take advantage of if they think they can actually win a debate on the merits of the issue. All you need to do is convince 2/3rd's of Congress and 3/4ths of the State Legislatures to sign off on a repeal or amendment of the 2nd Amendment. Best of luck with that. :)
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Constitutional amendments have nothing to do with debating the merits of the topic.
It does when people start saying things like 'stop hiding behind paper' and 'the constitution is a living document'. Sure it's a living document, there's a way to change it built into the very document itself. Until then, pointing out that many gun control proposals are unconstitutional isn't necessarily out of line.
Also, going by what most recently happened in Colorado, what happened after the first assault weapons ban, and such, pushing for repeal or significant restriction on the 2nd is a good way to l
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The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women.
It did no such thing, it simply reserved such matters to the States, per the 10th Amendment. The 14th and 19th Amendments changed that of course.
The way I read English, when the Constitution doesn't prohibit slavery, and leaves it to the states, it allows slavery.
Incidentally, the established process of amending the Constitution (Article V) is available for gun control proponents to take advantage of if they think they can actually win a debate on the merits of the issue. All you need to do is convince 2/3rd's of Congress and 3/4ths of the State Legislatures to sign off on a repeal or amendment of the 2nd Amendment. Best of luck with that. :)
Unfortunately, a small, aggressive, well-funded minority can always subvert the democratic process.
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Then you need to review the Ninth Amendment, which spelled out that rights not explicitly mentioned by the Constitution may still exist and be recognized in a Constitutionally relevant way. There had been hesitance about stating rights in the Constitution explicitly meaning that rights _not_ spelled out would no longer be acknowledged as valid.
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Unfortunately, a small, aggressive, well-funded minority can always subvert the democratic process.
If by this, you are obliquely referring to the NRA (as the aggressive, well-funded minority), you might take note that right now in Washington State, billionaires are out-spending the NRA (and pro-gun overall) by a ratio of 7 to 1 on an initiative to expand background checks. Well, at least that is what they are calling it. It's a whole lot more than "simply" expanding background checks, but I digress...
Said billionaires include:
Bill and Melinda Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer (gotta love all that Micro
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it simply reserved such matters to the States, per the 10th Amendment.
I'm not sure how 'not forbidding' is different than 'allowing'. Regardless, slavery wasn't handled just through the 10th amendment. Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 specifies that slaves (i.e. people who are neither free nor indianans) count as 0.6 people for determining the number of congressional representatives from a state. Because of that, I'd say that the constitution condoned slavery.
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I'm not sure how 'not forbidding' is different than 'allowing'.
The AC said it better than I ever could [slashdot.org].
Regardless, slavery wasn't handled just through the 10th amendment. Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 specifies that slaves (i.e. people who are neither free nor indianans) count as 0.6 people for determining the number of congressional representatives from a state. Because of that, I'd say that the constitution condoned slavery.
You should actually research the matter rather than parroting poorly informed talking points. The 3/5th's clause was a compromise between the Northern States that wanted slaves to count for nothing (thereby eroding the political power of the slave holding states and presumably leading to a quicker demise for the institution of slavery) and the Southern States that wanted them counted at 100%. Had the North gotten its way it's quite probable that the Civil War and u
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it simply reserved such matters to the States, per the 10th Amendment.
I'm not sure how 'not forbidding' is different than 'allowing'. Regardless, slavery wasn't handled just through the 10th amendment. Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 specifies that slaves (i.e. people who are neither free nor indianans) count as 0.6 people for determining the number of congressional representatives from a state. Because of that, I'd say that the constitution condoned slavery.
That was known as the Virginia clause as implementing it gave the state the lions share of representation and is the key reason that the first few Presidents were all Virginians. The part that gave everyone two Senators per state regardless of size was the New Jersey clause.
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The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women.
It did no such thing, it simply reserved such matters to the States, per the 10th Amendment.
So what you're saying is that the Constitution allowed slavery.
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Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
While the Constitution did not explicitly "allow" slavery, it did implicitly recognize it's existence (the 3/5ths clause) and it could be argued thereby tacitly allowed it. With the 13th Amendment slavery was abolished.
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1 week later. During the '100 million gun march' the president shits out his spleen and dies on the spot.
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The Constitution was amended, using the very processes described in said document, to make slavery illegal. Unless and until the 2nd amendment is revoked, the government has *no* granted power to infringe upon the right of the people to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms (weapons).
There are certain weapons which are eminently impractical to use for self-defense purposes, but that provides no grant of power to the government to disallow *ownership* of such weapons.
Re:the solution: (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and when times changed it got amended. But the right to bear arms hasn't been amended, and until it does, it still stands as the law of the land that all arms are included.
Absolutely! How else is the public supposed to support a revolt against tyranny? (That is what the 2nd Amendment is for, you know... it's a rule written by violent revolutionaries for violent revolutionaries.)
Re:the solution: (Score:5, Informative)
Has the 4th amendment been updated?
Or are you under the illusion that this one amendment is sacrosanct while they crap all over the rest of it?
Because blanket surveillance, property seizure because police lie and say they suspected drugs, and parallel construction are pretty much in violation of your Constitution as well.
Look, you're descending into tyranny now. So, either get on with it, or stop whining about how you'll do it when you get around to it or someone really outlaws jumbo sized soda.
Otherwise, it's just lip service. Your government is already ignoring your Constitution on a large scale, but apparently nobody gives a damn.
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Has the 4th amendment been updated?
It hasn't, and we must fight this unconstititional crap as well.
Re:the solution: (Score:4, Insightful)
Or are you under the illusion that this one amendment is sacrosanct while they crap all over the rest of it?
Because blanket surveillance, property seizure because police lie and say they suspected drugs, and parallel construction are pretty much in violation of your Constitution as well.
I have yet to see a single comment from anyone (democrat or republican) arguing that the US government is properly following the 4th amendment.
I'm not sure how this makes not following the 2nd amendment in addition to not following the 4th ok.
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Because everyone claims the 2nd is to keep the 4th (and others) from being repressed.
The 1st amendment right to freedom of speech and freedom of the press is also supposed to keep the 4th (and others) from being repressed by allowing people to raise awareness. I guess the 1st amendment should be abandoned as well since it too is not working.
To put it another way, it's OK for the TSA to shove their fingers up your ass as long as you're holding a gun while it is happening.
Go find me a bunch of 2nd amendment supporters that have anything nice to say about the TSA. You'll have trouble finding me anyone who has naything nice to say about the TSA. What's your point?
I don't often agree with stoddart, but put up or shut up!
What exactly am I supposed to "put up" according to you?
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I am not American, still, I do truly believe that hundreds of millions of Americans do give a damn.
The problem is not giving a damn. The problem is that guns are a stupid way to try and change governments, and everyone there must intuitively understand this. I keep reading comments by 2nd amendment fundamentalists saying they're packing guns so they can overthrow the go
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Guns can be _extremely effective_ at changing governments, ranging from assassination of critical leaders to armed revolt. The assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austria triggered World War I, which reshaped Europe and governments and economies around the world.
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Not to mention the 'three votes' cast for LBJ in the school book depository.
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Or are you under the illusion that this one amendment is sacrosanct while they crap all over the rest of it?
Are you arguing that because they crap all over the rest of the Bill of Rights, we should allow them to crap all over the second as well? Really?
Obviously, the correct solution is to required our government to obey all of the law -- and in the extreme (and unlikely, I think) event that we fail to achieve that via political processes, we'll have to make use of our arms to retake control (our arms and the unwillingness of the US military to fight fellow citizens; both are necessary). The "crapping all over
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The US's privately held arsenal has so far been useless in preventing the creation of a semi-fascist state.
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The point is that freedom of speech and association are far, far more important than the ability to carry cool looking guns, in terms of actually getting anything done politically.
Up to a point, that's true. But you simply raise the same question again: Are you arguing that since we're letting some of our rights slip we should also let the 2A go? Or do you believe that if we ignored the 2A that would some how make it easier to defend freedom of speech and association? I'd argue that it would help to undermine them, by providing yet another precedent showing that the "living Constitution" means whatever we want it to, making it meaningless.
The US's privately held arsenal has so far been useless in preventing the creation of a semi-fascist state.
Because it hasn't yet gotten bad enough to ju
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Does it make sense now for individuals to buy and sell full-auto weapons? "Assault rifles"? Flamethrowers? Surface-to-air missles?
Absolutely! How else is the public supposed to support a revolt against tyranny? (That is what the 2nd Amendment is for, you know... it's a rule written by violent revolutionaries for violent revolutionaries.)
The second amendment does jack shit to support a revolt against tyranny. You can have nuclear weapons for all I care, a tyranny will only use that a reason to have you flayed.
What is needed to get rid of a tyranny is free communication so that you can organize a revolt, that is the part that is hard to
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Do you honestly think that allowing random citizens to buy surface to air missiles is a good idea?
Let's just ignore the difficulty that would cause for commercial aircraft for a moment and concentrate on your suggestion that such weapons are necessary to revolt against tyranny. Unfortunately such things are mostly ineffective against the government's most powerful and destructive weapon - apathy. As long as they keep broadcasting reality TV you are screwed. Maybe an EMP would be more effective.
Realistically
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do I believe it is every americans RIGHT to own one IF they choose? I sure as hell do
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How else is the public supposed to support a revolt against tyranny? (That is what the 2nd Amendment is for, you know... it's a rule written by violent revolutionaries for violent revolutionaries.)
Actually, it's a rule insisted on by the southern, slave-holding states to make sure the federal government would not limit their means of violently suppressing slave revolts. It has nothing to do with hunting, self-defense. It was meant to *preserve* tyranny, not fight it.
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Would you please provide some kind of citations to historical documents to support your assertion?
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Nope, there until the [crf-usa.org] Thirteenth Amendment [umkc.edu].
Nope, the Constitution was silent on the matter until the Nineteenth Amendment [wikipedia.org].
Sure. The point was, for any such laws to be valid, the Second Amendment has to be abolished (or altered) first. Hardly unheard of — the Eighteenth Amendment [wikipedia.org], which prohibited the sale of alcohol, was repealed by the Twenty-first [wikipedia.org], for example.
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Well, yes and no. In the original debates (not The Federalist Papers, which had specific authors expressing their own opinions) there was a great deal of 'of course we do not mean XYZ', with significant disagreement about how absolute they were and what did not even need saying (ah, common sense). For instance there were arguments about whether Islam, Judaism, and Catholicism counted as religions. There was no debate about whether the native ones counted, they were most certainly not.
At the time it was
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Well, yes and no. In the original debates (not The Federalist Papers, which had specific authors expressing their own opinions) there was a great deal of 'of course we do not mean XYZ', with significant disagreement about how absolute they were and what did not even need saying (ah, common sense). For instance there were arguments about whether Islam, Judaism, and Catholicism counted as religions. There was no debate about whether the native ones counted, they were most certainly not.
The original debates, while important, were not as important as the ratification debates that came later. That is where the Federalist Papers (and Anti-Federalist Papers) came in. They explained the original meanings of many of the clauses in the Constitution, and the ratification debates used them as references.
For example, during the ratification debates it became clear that many states would not ratify UNLESS the Constitution was interpreted to mean that there would be no Federal control of arms at al
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At the time it was taken for granted that a person was a white christian male.
White Christian Protestant Male. It was considered a rather important distinction at the time, given the heavy anti-Catholic bias of the English settlers.
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"I am making a legal argument, [...]"
I'm not asking you to convince me that the Constitution says what you think it says. Maybe it even does. "Alexander Hamilton thought it was a great idea" is not a convincing argument for me here.
I'm asking you to convince me that what it is is the way it should be. The USA pays a huge cost for the amount of private gun ownership it has, relative to other countries. Most gun-related injuries are a) accidents, b) suicide attempts, and c) the result of domestic dispute
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We have to make the laws that are reasonable to our time. The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women. There are lots of things that we can look at now and say need (or needed) to be changed from the original document, with the perspective of the passing of 200 years.
Err, not saying you're wrong per se, in the context of an originalist vs "living document" sort of argument. But those two are terrible examples because changing them required exactly what GP called for: a constitutional amendment.
The argument is not "open carry for swords would be good for society" or "owning a howitzer is objectively reasonable" or "everything in the text of the original Constitution is perfect as written (including slavery and landed male suffrage)."
Rather, the argument is "if yo
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Generally personal firearms are rifles and shotguns limited to semi-automatic fire. Full Auto weapons are heavily regulated. The Constitution has been amended to outlaw slavery and to allow women to vote but the anti-gun people know there is no hope in repealing the second amendment so they try to backdoor ban weapons by Federal Law. It hasn't worked well for them but they still have a much better chance at doing it through legislation than a Constitutional amendment.
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-- George Orwell
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It's a reasonable request, but only so long as it is framed within a discussion to actually amend the Constitution, and specifically the Second Amendment. The problem is that it's not even on the table - all we have so far are attempts to hack around the wording that is there, by creatively reinterpreting it or selectively ignoring it. It would be a much more straightforward talk if people who don't like guns (all or some of them) would just own up and say that their problem really is with 2A itself, and in
Flamethrowers (Score:2)
I agree on the flamethrowers, though I also remember versions of them being used for pest control as well as controlled burns, snow removal, and other such tasks.
They make a device that pushes out propane or natural gas into animal burrows, turning them into fuel-air explosives, then the operator triggers a spark using the device that detonates it, killing rodents such as gophers in the tunnel network through a combination of overpressure and oxygen deprivation.
It's not what most would consider a flamethrow
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