In today’s climate the chance of passing a constitutional amendment with any controversy is Zero. Did you really not even know that?
(Moreover, some gun nuts here seem to be arguing that the 2nd A merely codified the Will of Jehovah the One and Only True God. Should anyone seeking to repeal the 2nd A fear being damned?)
Fact? No. (You might have some factoid which points that way, but you didn’t even cite it.)
Here, in increasing order,are Murder rates per 100,000 for some selected countries.
Japan 0.28
Iceland 0.30
HongKong 0.38
Slovenia 0.48
Indonesia 0.50
Norway 0.61
China 0.62
Switzerland 0.54
Netherlands 0.55
Spain 0.63
Italy 0.67
Poland 0.67
Greece 0.75
Ireland 0.80
Germany 1.18
Scotland 1.18
Eng/Wales 1.22
France 1.35
Canada 1.68
Thailand 3.24
U.S.A. 5.35
Ukraine 6.34
Russia 10.82
How did I choose which countries to show? I got all the G7 I think; Thailand, which we residents consider notorious for its high murder rate; and all TWO (2) of the European countries with higher murder rates than the U.S.A.
Lately the U.S. strives to have much in common with Russia. If we now view Russia as our peer, rather than Britain and Germany, then I guess the U.S. murder rate is low.
Why do the gun owners get so bipolar? It’s all about having their guns confiscated. As if that is the only option that the government has., or would use. And it would not, because it would be politically disastrous. So the gun owners wail about having their guns confiscated, when it would never happen. So now we are left with gun control. Here the NRA types wet their knockers again, being of the opinion that Joe Blow has an unassailable right to keep military-level hardware at home. The only country that allows this is Switzerland, and only serving soldiers and reservists are allowed to do this.
The other main wail of the gun owners and the NRA is that Joe Blow will be defenseless when armed criminals come through the window to kill him, rape his daughter and pillage his house. Well, jeez, we are only talking about banning military-level hardware - and do you really want high-velocity rounds flying through the neighborhood when Joe hoses the intruder(s) with his beloved AR-15? And, as for the criminals, make it harder for them to get guns. They always can, always will, but in so many cases the perp just bought his weapons from a gun shop. Arms control is a permanent battle, not a one-off.
It also isn’t being claimed. What is being claimed is that drying up the legal supply also dries up the illegal supply - where the hell do you think all that stuff comes from, anyway?
Police have been fighting crime and criminal gangs since, well, forever, and they still exist. To you, that’s an argument to let them win.
You brought up the IRA as an example. There is no difference that you have defined - yet they were “defeated” and disarmed anyway, weren’t they? How do you think that happened?
“Fact”? :dubious:
And even your threats to kill cops who try to enforce it constitute crime in themselves, don’t they, even if you never do act on them.
It was their choice to become criminals, wasn’t it?
In what way?
Again, the fight against crime is perpetual. Changes in the way crime is committed bring changes in the ways the law is enforced.
Strawmen again.
Yanno, we all do. We simply disagree on what rights are involved. To most of us, the right to life and safety is paramount. To you, the right to be able to end our lives is paramount. One of us is wrong, and I suggest it’s you.
Glad we agree that it should. It wasn’t an issue for a couple of centuries, when its obvious meaning, providing for a military capability, was unquestioned, as well as uncontested. But now the invented, perverted interpretation the NRA uses has become so pernicious that it would be better to get rid of the damn thing.
So then what? What would you claim to be the source of a personal right to bear arms if the Second did not exist?
I’d find these discussions more useful if we could focus on one topic at a time.
Would America be a better place if there were far fewer guns in the hands of criminals and non-criminals alike? If Yes, let’s talk about ways to help law enforcement in a campaign against illegal guns. If No, stop whining “If murder is outlawed then only outlaws will murder” or whatever it is.
Do we think Thomas Jefferson would look at the bumpkin rednecks carrying around AR-15’s and feel proud that this was his America? If not, please stop pretending the FFs would admire modern gun nuts.
Do you want guns for hobby or for sport? Neither the debate nor the 2nd A is about you. Nobody’s coming for your hunting rifle. If the animals you like to shoot can only be shot with an AR-15, please go brag about it among your own kind on a different message-board.
Those are some of the rights endowed by the Creator, not an exhaustive list.
The Founding Fathers obviously didn’t think so, or they would not have included the right to keep and bear arms in the Constitution.
Read the Declaration. It lays it all out.
[ul][li]Rights come from God.[/li][li]Governments exist to secure the rights that come from God.[/li][li]When governments no longer secure those rights, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government.[/li][li]The Declaration of Independence is an explanation of why the colonies thought it was necessary to abolish the British government’s authority over them, and to establish their own.[/li][li]The FF were going to use armed force if necessary.[/li][li]Therefore the FF believed that tRtKaBA was a fundamental right, including but not limited to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.[/ul][/li]
The question is, in fact, about rights in general.
All rights are God-given. TRtKaBA is a right. Therefore, tRtKaBA is God-given. QED.
The right to keep and bear arms comes from the same place as the right of free speech, freedom of assembly, and the rest of them. From God. They do not come from the legal system, they do not come from the Constitution, they do not come from the king or any government.
I can’t seem to find The Right To Bare Arms in any Bible. Were the people that wrote the Constitution holy prophets blessed by your god that you would accept what they said without question?
Women were given the “right” to vote in 1920. Is this an example of God changing his mind?
Suppose the Second Commandment is repealed 50 years from now. Would that be Yahweh changing His Mind again? Or the result of a battle between Moloch and Yahweh in the Heavens Above?
I know this was not addressed to me, but the fundamental issue is not guns per se. There can be no God-given right to owning guns since guns are a technology invented by humans and did not even exist for most of human history.
The fundamental God-given right is that of self defense.
Does that mean my right to protect myself from you and your tools of death, and more broadly the right of civilized society to protect itself from the likes of you, is given to me and to us by God and you will not question it? Because I can live with that.
But don’t you understand? Those countries are more harmonious because they’re more homogenous than the U.S. it’s “diversity” (dog whistle for “black people”) that makes the U.S. so dangerously violent.
So at least as far as legal technicalities go, ALL able-bodied men between 17 and 45 are members of the militia in some fashion- organized, if they’re part of the Natl. Guard, and unorganized if not.
I suspect that’s probably some sort of legal foundation for conscription, but in terms of saying that guns should be restricted to the National Guard because they’re “the militia”, I think the presence of the unorganized militia tends to make that line of thought interesting.
Not if you recognize the term “unorganized militia” as being a legal fiction to pre-empt tiresome claims that the National Guard is *not *the militia described in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution itself.
Besides, how can something be well-regulated, in whatever definition you choose to invent, if it isn’t even organized?
