However … as a gun advocate I agree 100% with your “There’s got to be a reasonable middle, but the whack jobs on both sides prevent the vast middle from even coming together to discuss it.”
Training, registration, limits on types of weapons … perfectly sensible and in no way impedes our right to own a gun … THEN let the local jurisdictions decide further regulations, my experiences with guns in this 1,000 sq miles of forest is different from someone living in Orange County, CA …
We all want to know if outlawing handguns within Chicago city limits works or not … I say let Chicago try if they want …
And the last time there was an armed insurrection against We The People’s government, the overwhelming response was to snicker and send them bags of dicks.
The bulk of handguns used in Chicago crimes were bought literally next door in Indiana, where sales restrictions are as close to non-existent as it gets. It would be a shock if anything else were to be the case.
OK, since it needs to be spelled out explicitly: The Constitution really does say that well-regulated militias are essential, but gun-grabbers like to pretend that that clause doesn’t exist, and because so many of them pretend that, this wouldn’t work, never mind that it’s perfectly consistent with what the Constitution actually says.
I think you mean that pro-gun types ’ like to pretend that that clause doesn’t exist, and because so many of them pretend that’, yes? Not getting into whether you are right or not, but as written it doesn’t really make much sense.
I think MEBuckner made a valid point. Your proposal is essentially that your position be enacted into law. Lots of people would like to see the same principle applied to things they believe in. MEBuckner pointed out how the same principle you’re using on gun control would look if it was applied to the issue of abortions.
Likewise, the Constitution really does say that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And gun grabbers like to pretend that clause doesn’t exist.
Now that we have established that, we need to concern ourselves with proposals that address both without invalidating either. The proposal of the OP seems to assume that only the first clause is operative, which I think we agree is not the case.
So we need proposals that both make a well-regulated militia possible, and do not infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The OP is good with the first, but falls down on the second. Given that we agree that the pro-gun side is wrong to deny the militia clause, and the anti-gun side is wrong to deny the RtKaBA clause, what proposals can we come up with?
Absolutely wrong. It’s been patiently explained to you over and over. The context given by the other half of that single sentence, and the broader background of the Convention’s discussions, show it to be limited to establishing a well-regulated militia, in lieu of a standing army. Outside that context, the Constitution says nothing whatever about arms.
Likely to receive strong resistance from people who are concerned about government. Particularly government confiscation of firearms.
Does not solve the problem of how to get 300 million firearms collected, categorized and stored in these armories.
See previous comments on “government”.
I was going to comment on the rest, but it’s generally more of the same theme.
Also doesn’t address the issue of using guns for home defense. I don’t want to drive to the armory every time I think I’m going to get robbed.
The fundamental problem of gun control is that the country can’t reach a consensus on what level of “control” is appropriate. Not that we don’t understand the mechanism for securing objects in a vault and having authorized people sign them out.
Confiscation is never going to work. Any plan for reducing the number of firearms in the country has to have the force of public opinion behind it or it will fail miserably.
Better to do something like immediately ban the manufacture, import, sale or transfer of any semi-automatic center-fire rifle. Then give a $300 or so tax credit for every upper receiver turned in for destruction. Turn in 5 of them and you get 5 years worth of tax credits. That spreads out the tax hit. Since the guns can’t be sold or transferred, the numbers go down as their owners die off. Eventually the guns are gone.
And it’s been explained to you in similar detail that not everyone agrees with your interpretation of what ‘well-regulated militia’ means, and that originally the draft of the amendment made a clearly delineated distinction between the two, and that Madison’s papers back up this interpretation. Outside of the context of a personal right to keep and bear arms the part about the militia is meaningless…I do agree with you that context is everything.
You aren’t going to be convinced, and you aren’t going to convince me (certainly not Shodan), so why don’t you let it go and focus on the OP? Just a thought.
The Constitution doesn’t need to say anything about arms outside that context. It says, in that context, that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The Founding Fathers believed that the right of the people to keep and bear arms was necessary in order to have a well regulated militia. Infringing on the RtKaBA means that we couldn’t have a well regulated militia. So, the federal government cannot infringe on the RtKaBA. QED.
Maybe you believe that the feds can infringe on that right and still have a well regulated militia. Then, all you need to do is amend the Constitution. Because it says you can’t, and the Constitution is still the supreme law of the land.
If you want the Second Amendment to say “A well-regulated militia is important, but that has nothing to do with the people”, then you need to get an amendment passed.
I’m aware. In the hypothetical scenario, some of them are going to reach a different conclusion about who the enemies to the Constitution are than you would prefer.
In the context of militia armaments. Odd how someone can insist on a narrow interpretation of rights and freedoms on some issues, and an expansive one on others, isn’t it? How do you manage that?
Since they very shortly abandoned the idea and established a standing army anyway, that’s moot. We do in fact have an army for the purposes the militia was established for, and the army does have a right to be armed, obviously.
That’s what the law *was *established by the Supremes to be for many years, until there got to be 5 ideologues on the bench to change it and somehow find a right to personal self-defense in there.