But it’s a question of fundamentally different axioms that each side subscribes to: Either guns are instruments of murder and death that have no place in a civilized society except for a minimum number of well-trained peacekeepers; Or owning and carrying weapons for both personal and group protection is a fundamental freedom on a par with freedom of speech and thought. How do you find a compromise there?
Similarly in the abortion debate, one side holds that abortion is prenatal infanticide, while the other says that abortion is reproductive freedom. Roe V. Wade was able to achieve a compromise by ruling that the government acquires a compelling interest in direct proportion to how close to term a pregnancy is- very little within a few weeks of conception, a lot by the ninth month. What analogous compromise would work for firearms?
Let’s focus on gun violence that does not include crime. We know gun crime in nearly all categories is trending downward as discussed and you appear to concede. So what does that leave the gun control advocates? Suicide and unintentional firearm injury and unintentional firearm death.
Luckily, in the previous thread that you participated in we discussed one of these items, unintentional firearm death:
So what about unintentional firearm injury that doesn’t result in death. Not a straight line trend, but an overall decrease for the past 12 years with recent increases. (per 100K):
So that leaves suicide. As you acknowledge, suicide trended downward until about 2006, then started rising again. If you only looked at this, then you could think of it as an indictment against firearms. Firearms are a very effective method of suicide. But over this same period, suicide by all methods increased (per 100K):
So if the discussion is focused on firearms, and their interaction with suicide, then the question is really is suicide by firearm increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? Here is the rate of suicide by firearm as compared to all other methods:
So at the same time suicide overall has experienced a consistent rising trend, the proportion of those suicides by firearm has decreased, with an uptick over the last 2 years of data available. The conclusion is that firearm violence when you include injury and suicide is also trending down in similar fashion to firearm crime. Overall suicide is increasing which as I said before, has separate remedies than gun crime. But even if the suicide data went the other direction - it doesn’t matter. Suicide prevention is not a valid reason to restrict gun rights. Doing so disproportionately impacts the rest of the population who are not suicidal, and are law abiding.
And just to be clear, none of the gun control proposed in the OP from the article would have any meaningful impact on suicides. Standard capacity magazines (only 1 round is used), open carry (these aren’t being done at Target), and background checks (NICS reporting isn’t mandatory for mental adjudication) - there is no connection here with suicide prevention. These control measures are simply what gun control advocates think they can push now. They’re wrong, but that’s what’s going on. If they were ever to be successful, the people who support gun control would move on to the next thing. Like **Yog **said in post 45, gun banners just want something, anything and won’t stop.
And less we forget, Japan with very strict gun control laws has one of the highest suicide rates in the world…in fact, more folks kill themselves in Japan (with less than half our population) per year than die of the dreaded gun violence in the US (well, not strictly true depending on how one defines ‘gun violence’…but it’s around 31k if you combine murder and suicide…this leaves out death by cop and some other stuff, and the Japanese have managed to get their suicide deaths below 30k for 3 consecutive years according to the linked cite above. Of course, the Japanese only have 125 million people, compared to 320 million in the US).
See…concession is possible! You would get access to the machine guns, but would accept greater oversight for their acquisition. I think that’s eminently reasonable.
What I find most interesting, though, is that even gun owners can accept that there are sensible regulations and even prohibitions (i.e. “lines I can live with”) for weapons. See…where not so different after all? Now please stop calling all of us gun grabbers.
I’d be happy to agree to all of this, except for the part about “no background checks”. We already choose to deprive people of rights because of their status (i.e. ex-felons, as you mentioned later in your post), due to a sensible weighing of risk factors, and I think mental illness/confirmed erratic behavior (strictly and clearly defined) belong within that domain of restriction as regards gun ownership.
I think calling the second amendment “plain” and “unambiguous” is ridiculous. It is the only amendment that gives a reason/intent within its text (i.e. “being necessary for the security of a free state”…), it refers to “arms” and not “guns”, and it even uses the word “regulated” within its text!
Plain and unambiguous would be something like “the right to private gun ownership shall not be infringed.”
[QUOTE=Moriarty]
I think calling the second amendment “plain” and “unambiguous” is ridiculous. It is the only amendment that gives a reason/intent within its text (i.e. “being necessary for the security of a free state”…), it refers to “arms” and not “guns”, and it even uses the word “regulated” within its text!
Plain and unambiguous would be something like “the right to private gun ownership shall not be infringed.”
[/QUOTE]
Or maybe something like this: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”
Yeah, what we got was a mess…this was the original draft of the amendment by James Madison before a committee went to work on it to make it the model of clarity it is today. And, BTW, ‘well regulated’ meant something different to Madison and the folks of that day than it means today, so they should have defined their terms as well.
After Heller, the language is unambiguous as interpreted. The points you raise were authoritatively addressed. Any claim that calls the current interpretation ambiguous is wrong. Have you read Heller?
Prefatory clause:
Arms (which should include knives, swords, nunchaku, etc.)
That part about “religiously scrupulous” refers to conscientious objectors, right?
And regulated refers to “regulars”, or infantrymen, right?
It sounds like the intent of the amendment is to allow for a standing Federal army, and the right to compel service (with all due allowance to the Quaker Friends).
Do you think it is? Do you think this question is relevant? Do you acknowledge that firearm violence has experienced a decreasing trend over the last 20ish years?
[QUOTE=Moriarty]
That part about “religiously scrupulous” refers to conscientious objectors, right?
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Yes…there were several religious sects that prohibited killing, so you couldn’t be compelled to give military service in a militia if you had such a religious objection.
No. Regulars in the parlance of the time were the professional military who were full time soldiers. Militia were part time citizen soldiers. Well regulated in the parlance of the time basically meant they were authorized by a governing body and were disciplined and under control (as opposed to a mob of dudes with weapons). It didn’t mean what it means today, and as you can see based on the initial draft it applied to the militia, not to the first part about the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
That was the original intent. That doesn’t mean that some regulation can’t be put on gun ownership as long as the right of the people to keep and bear arms is not infringed.
Um…no. That wasn’t the intent. The founders were distrustful of a large regular (i.e. professional) army, and instead they were more in favor of ‘well regulated’ local militia groups comprised of citizen soldiers…which is also why they wanted to protect the right of the people to keep and bear arms, since ‘the people’ would comprise those citizen soldier formations using their own weapons. Of course, these formations didn’t have uniformly good or reliable service during the revolution, so eventually we did move to a more professional ‘regular’ military force, but none of this had anything to do with the use of ‘well regulated’ in the 2nd Amendment.
Wasn’t my proposal, that’s how Madison first drafted the thing. But I don’t believe HE wanted or was proposing a large standing ‘regular’ army either. He was merely saying that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shouldn’t be infringed, and that obviously (to him) the defense of a country rests on a ‘well regulated’ militia, but that those militia units couldn’t compel service if someone objected to it from a religious standpoint.
The question must be relevant, since you just asked the very same question of me.
I acknowledge that total firearm violence, until approximately 2006, has shown a downward trend, then started swinging back upwards again(for some types of gun violence at least) for an as of now unknown reason. My initial complaint was the goalpost-moving tactics of reciting gun crime stats, and sometimes initially only the stats involving gun crimes that result in death, when the topic of gun violence comes up.
I’ll admit that my first reaction was “Wait - Newsweek is still in print?”. And it’s not so much “leftist” as “superficial dreck desperate to remain relevant”.
Good to know you’re arguing in good faith.
Some gun control advocates would like that. Some have more moderate positions.
All of the above is also true of the pro-gun lobby. How many arguments have we seen here defending gun ownership on the basis of the danger of armed thugs bursting into your house intent on murder and mayhem? How many gun owners have expressed the need to walk everywhere armed just in case someone holds up their local Starbucks while they’re in there picking up their grande mocha? And how many times has the NRA goaded its membership into forking over a few more bucks out of fear that the government was going to be coming for all their guns any day now?
It is certainly possible to approach gun ownership from a rational, logical perspective in the US, but don’t pretend for a moment that the fear factor isn’t the predominant driver of that position as well. You can’t say that gun control advocates don’t understand risk assessment while you’re busy arming yourself in case Islamic terrorists hold up your local Walmart.
I don’t think the question is relevant, but I’m willing to be corrected. The best way to do that would be for you to indicate how you think it is relevant. I invite you do to this by asking you the same question.
Has your complaint of discussing crime without including injury and suicide now been addressed?
I thought it was relevant to this thread since it had just been brought up and pointed out directly before I posed the question in this thread.
My complaint wasn’t about “discussing crime without including injury and suicide”-My complaint(as I have said repeatedly now) is moving the goalposts when the subject of gun violence is raised to change the topic to gun crime.
“Well regulated” was only brought up to the extent it was related to the militia, not gun ownership. The conflation is easy to do, but it was a topic you brought up. In what way do you think “well regulated” as applied to gun ownership relevant?
I think it has been demonstrated that gun violence has moved directionally with gun crime, so much so that it’s not misleading or moving goal posts to talk about one without including exhaustive discussion of the other. Do you agree?
The original federal Militia Act actually set requirements for the arms that citizens were obliged to own for the purpose of militia duty. But there was never a universal requirement to drill at arms, and such a requirement would have been viewed with suspicion as an attempt to regiment the population. For a while citizens were required to “muster” once a year, but short of a state of emergency they didn’t want to be bothered with militia duty and were recalcitrant to be called to enforce the law, especially unpopular laws. During the War of 1812 local militias fared poorly against the invading British, which was hardly surprising as you can’t expect people to be good at anything they don’t practice regularly. As decades went by the practice of yearly musters was allowed to grow moribund until by the 1840s it was considered a farce. The states eventually began to rely on the “select” militia- the volunteers who practiced regularly and could be relied upon to enforce the laws of the state (what the 1903 Militia Act termed the “organized” militia).
Some hardcore minarchists think that we missed the point- that we shouldn’t have any laws that the general population can’t be troubled to help enforce. Imagine for example if we’d started out with a universal requirement to serve on juries when called, but eventually jurors were drawn solely from a pool of people who volunteered for the duty. I doubt most people would trust the impartiality of such a jury.
