Had a Facebook discussion with a friend of mine last night, and after she equated people burning flags with people who want to “get rid of our guns!!!112!!” and then following that up with some other type of nonsense, I asked her, if she held the Constitution in such a high regard, would she similarly follow the Constitution if the 2nd Amendment was repealed. She said “NO! I would not willingly give up my guns”. So I told her it seemed she thought owning a gun was more important than upholding the Constitution, at which point she said she was done arguing, she had to go pray :rolleyes:
Anyway, I thought I would do a poll here to see the answers from gun owners, since if you don’t own a gun, kinda hard to give it up assuming the 2nd Amendment was repealed.
While the Constitution is essentially the ultimate arbiter of what is legal, something is not made right or wrong morally just because it’s in the Constitution. Prohibition was stupid. Slavery is morally wrong. We’ve fixed both of those things in the current Constitution but they were always stupid and wrong regardless of the Constitution’s status at any given moment.
I’m not saying that this right to bear arms should be unlimited. We don’t need rocket launchers and machine guns, but if the day comes that my wife’s .22 semi-auto rifle and .38 revolver pistol are banned, then I will pretend to have lost them in my last move.
You kind of left it too vague and full of loopholes to conclude much from the answers to the poll. If the 2nd were somehow repealed, that says nothing about state and local laws, and what they would still allow or disallow as a result.
There’s also the variable ways to define “willingly give up” that will probably lead to people favoring that option - even people who would give up their guns (if local laws compelled it), but would only do so “unwillingly.”
Well, I don’t know how to fix that now. I thought it would be obvious, but if anyone is interested, I meant personal ownership of guns was no longer legal. I just used “repeal 2nd amendment” to avoid “Well that would be unconstitutional” arguments.
Also, ‘yes’ means you would give them up, even if you didn’t want to. ‘No’ means you would hide them, or “lose” them or whatever in order to retain ownership even if now illegal.
I’m not pro-gun. I don’t own a gun, would never own a gun, and don’t see the point in owning a gun.
That being said, it would be pointless to ban guns. Some drugs are already illegal, yet they’re still sold and people still have them and use them. We have laws against murder and stealing, yet those still happen on a daily basis. Back in the day, they tried to ban alcohol, but people still made it…so much so that the higher ups had to finally admit that a law against it was useless.
If guns were banned, it wouldn’t matter…people would still have and get access to guns somehow, if they were really determined, and mass shootings would still happen.
If all private ownership is totally lost = no give.
Reason 1 of many:
History has proven again & again what happens, we just refuse to learn. It is a power grab plain & simple.
The “If it will save a child’s life or 100 children or one or a dozen mass killings then disarm the country.” ( Still won’t keep bad people from getting guns. Make it harder? Not so much. All the ‘do gooders’ have no idea of what the real black market is like and the staggering number of people who supply things like guns to those that will buy. (Anyone remember prohibition? ))
IMO, you can not have freedom without personal defense, responsibility of self and the willingness to fight. YMMV
People in general:
I have a friend who I really admire who wants guns gone or so tightly controlled that the shooting of innocents stops. She spends major $$$$ to have her boy’s fence. ( You know, really long knife fighting. ) But says no to my kids learning to shoot competitively. Or for hunting, guns could be given into bad guys hands too easy… :: sigh ::::
#3:
IMO, it is not a weapon problem, it is a people problem. We bred them & raised them to think it is all their right to be/have/get it all for free with no work, responsibility, personal and for others.
We do not help the mentally ill and we make it so that parents who might ask for help justly fear what the ‘authorities’ will do and the branding and restrictions applied willy nilly to anyone with that illness. It is illness for the most part.
And that is just some of the reasons for me that I hope might make sense to others. I have others.
Never underestimate the perfidy of the human condition.
Thanks for the in-depth reply, but I would assume all those issues had already been covered before 3/4 of the states voted to remove the “right to bear arms” from the Constitution.
What the poll is supposed to be, what would YOU, as a gun owner, do if the law of the land made it illegal for you to personally own a gun, and without having the Constitution backing up your “right to bear arms”
How would any government agency know that I own guns? There really isn’t much at all of a registration system in the US to track who has guns.
My target pistol? My sons gave it to me one Christmas after I had perhaps mentioned getting rid of my previous one when they were young clever boys. I may have mentioned it to them a couple of times.
My deer hunting rifle? That too was a gift from my wife before we were married. A bolt action that fires 7.62 x 39mm AK-47 ammo. Yes the ammo comes in hunting, non-full metal jacket rounds too. There are probably more guns that shoot this round than any other in the world.
My wife’s .30-06? Her brother won it at a Ducks Unlimited dinner raffle and didn’t want it so he gave it to her.
None of these guns are directly traceable to my home. How would they know what they are looking for? Why would I tell?
Are they really just going to go door-to-door and fully search every house, garage, barn in the US to get these things?
The often quoted number of 300 million guns in the US is at least as old as 2008. Based on sales, production numbers, NICS background checks, that number is easily approaching 500 million, or a half billion guns.
You made a good point. I hadn’t really thought of it before but it’s obvious that they are not defending the constitution, only their own self interest, since if the constitution didn’t agree with them they would obviously disobey or ignore it.
Guns > Constitution
I wonder what a Christian gun owner would do if the God of Abraham showed himself and told him to give up his guns… Are Guns more important than God himself?!
Again, the poll is what would YOU do? You know that you have guns in your home. They are now illegal. That illegality is Constitutional. You have a grace period to turn them in without consequence. What would YOU do?
I concur. I have a gun and wouldn’t give it up. Even if the 2nd was repealed I can promise you nobody in my neck of the woods would give up their weapons even if offered a 200% buyback from the government. Paranoia about government power runs deep here.
The gun saturation and idolatry in the U.S. is already such that I think it is a stretch to believe repealing the second amendment would significantly help. A combination of tightened gun control laws, implementation of more and better security measures in public spaces and businesses, and revamping/funding mental health initiatives to identify and isolate potential mass shooters earlier seems like a better approach to me. We also need to train all citizens to recognize and report warning signs, similar to the *See Something, Say Something *campaign.
I am pro-Second Amendment. I do not own a gun now. I live in California, so in my pointy little head, I have no doubts that the California legislature would ban guns toot-suite if the 2nd was repealed.
If I owned a gun, and they were made illegal at the stroke of a pen, I would turn them in. I do not wish to become an Enemy of the State, nor would I wish to shoot some cop in the face just to keep it.
Guns? What guns? We ain’t got no gun. We don’t need no guns. I don’t have to show you any stinking guns.
You’re asking people to publically (that’s what the internet is) announce how they will deal with their illegally owned firearms when the government comes to confiscate them. I can only imagine that MOST firearm owners aren’t going to tell you. At least not in a public gathering.
