Rather complicated and takes a hella long time. Might be easier to gather all the Christian leaders together for a revision of the Ten Commandments, in fact.
At this point it would make things much worse. Too many Americans believe that it is their God-Given and/or Natural Right to bear arms, and that the 2nd Amendment merely affirms that God-Given and/or Natural Right.
And, there are tens of millions of guns (at least) which have absolutely no paperwork on them. Absent a complete sea change of opinion on the part of gun owners everywhere, repealing the 2nd is not going to do a damn thing about those guns.
Are you a Democrat, or favor Democrat Party candidates?
Is that the one that generally stands opposed to the Republic Party?
With limitations. You can’t say - even in jest - that you’re going to kill the PotUS. They don’t really have a sense of humor about that. Or yell “fire” in a crowded theater, and so forth and so on.
One of the problems, as I see it, is that many people consider the 2nd Amendment to be sacrosanct. There can’t be any suggestion of enhanced background checks, or an assault weapons ban, or a ban on armor piercing bullets, or any number of other things that just might save lives. Because the 2nd Amendment, dammit! It’s our right!
But I’ve noticed that people don’t appear to get as worked up about the 1st Amendment. I never see people walking around shouting that they’re going to kill Obama, and explaining to an officer that he was just exercising his rights.
I’m generalizing here, but why do people get more upset about background checks or common fucking sense than they do about free speech?
Why is the 2nd Amendment so much more important than the 1st?
Maybe because you’re comparing apples and oranges?
Running around shouting you’re going to kill the president would be comparable to walking into a gun store and demanding that you need to buy a gun right away because you want to kill your neighbor. Even with the “sacrosanct” 2nd amendment etc. you won’t be able to buy your gun if you do that.
That there are people who believe that idiocy like the assault weapons ban could save lives is precisely why people get so pissed off about attempts to undermine the Second Amendment. People who don’t even know what an assault weapon ban is should not be claiming it is a justifiable restriction on people’s rights.
That doesn’t change anything about my post. You can’t deny someone a gun simply because he’s a racist. Now, there are many subsets of racist who are also other things, and those other things might be a reason to deny him a gun.
I’m no fan of the 2nd amendment, but I think you have confirmation bias here. People get VERY worked up over the 1st amendment. Would you like to compare how many 1st amendment vs 2nd amendment cases made their way to the SCOTUS?
Could you do it at a gun show?
Not really a fair comparison-what makes its way to the SCOTUS is determined not by its importance, but by whether the SCOTUS decides to hear it.
edited to add: Maybe about this topic they’ve been…gunshy?
Depends on the seller and how many people overhear your. Kinda like with the Obama-killing utterances - depends on who hears you.
Besides, plenty of gun shops put up pictures of Obama with “Salesman of the Year” captions. Apparently, each of his presidential wins boosted sales, because people wanted to buy more guns before he took them away.
It’s not the guns that are hard to get now…it’s the ammo. People are hoarding ammo at an unbelievable rate over the last couple of years.
Well, sure! If the thing that you feel is good for the country is in fact not.
But I just mean as a general principle. And, I have no idea how the families of Charleston church murders feel about gun control, but they might very well welcome a politician using this tragedy to enact tougher laws, if that is there inclination.
Well, then he can propose his own criteria for proving his statement. Until then, I’m calling BS on it.
As Ethilrist stated, the 2nd Amendment isn’t really your problem. Your problem is that 3/4 of Americans do NOT want to ban guns, and the trend lines are heading in the wrong direction for gun control advocates. Our country is significantly more pro-gun than it was just 10 or 15 years ago.
I’ve come to believe the more deeply invested of the gun crowd regard the 2nd Amendment as a sacred value, and in the area of guns operate in a different cognitive mode, a kind of faith-based thinking. Here is a link to a New York Times article to that effect.
The 2nd Amendment exists, and has been law since 1789. The individual right of self-defense, including the use of “arms”, existed long before a U.S. Constitution was even considered a future possibility.
Do you have a cite on that?
I actually want to agree with you, except that I’d say then that gun control advocates aren’t identifying the wrong problem, there are two problems. Both the 2nd amendment *and *public opinion.