How so? It’s a factual question, whether Person A has or hasn’t grabbed Person B’s gun. Either they have or haven’t. There’s no imprecision involved.
Mass confiscation of guns isn’t inherently any less logical than your proposal. It’s just light years from being politically feasible. But your suggestion has the same problem.
Yours doesn’t go as far so wouldn’t require US politics to change as much. But would still require them to change a whole lot more than I expect them to in my lifetime. Or we can just stay tuned. But your suggestion as of now “doesn’t have the force of public opinion behind it”, not by a mile, especially with any attention to the depth of people’s feelings on the anti-gun control side v the many casual ‘oh, OK sure I guess so’s’ of many pro gun control answers in polls.
And thus it would “fail miserably” to pass Congress. And the Democrats would almost surely lose seats openly running on it.
But tRtKaBA remains - otherwise they would have amended the Constitution.
If you will read the cite I gave above, you will note the distinction between the organized and unorganized militias.
The part of the Heller decision that pointed out the individual RtKaBA is defensible based on the part about “the people”, rather than “the government” or “the army”. The part finding a right to self-defense, that isn’t exactly what the Supreme Court ruled.
and
So it wasn’t quite that self-defense was a Constitutional right, but that self-defense was a lawful exercise of the RtKaBA, which is. I grant you, it is a fine distinction.
Regards,
Shodan
As a suggestion, drawn from the abortion debates, why not call each side what it wants to be called? I gather that when a pro-life person insists on calling a pro-choice person by the label “pro-abortion”, the pro-lifer is disinterested in adult debate. A similar dynamic is in play when “gun-grabber” gets thrown around.
And “gun-worshipper”
I gather you recognize the issue, then.
You make it sound easy, also that they would have expended time and energy and political capital on a point that they considered moot. They never repealed the troop-quartering amendment either, and for the same reasons.
I’ve heard of that. But never how something that isn’t even organized can be called “well regulated”. That is a semantic work-around at best, not a substantive argument.
Did you miss the part where I called that “invented”? 'Cause it is.
One that is even possible only because of (deliberately?) misconstruing the actual amendment, contextually or not.
The Sixth Amendment remains in force nonetheless. When nobody tries to infringe on the RtKaBA, then we can regard the Second Amendment as we do the Sixth.
No, it wasn’t invented - the word “people” is there in the Second and doesn’t mean “army” or “government”. You could look it up.
Regards,
Shodan
a) That’s a description of attitude, which isn’t exactly quantifiable, and can be viewed rather differently by different people. But it has nothing to do with ignorance, but rather opinion.
b) Blood sacrifice has been a feature of a great many religions.
It wasn’t repealed early on, since you asked, because they thought it was moot. Only in the last few decades has it been latched onto by people with an agenda, and thereby made to be non-moot. But yes, it does need to be repealed now, if only to put an end to the nonsense.
I asked earlier what your arguments would be if it were repealed. Still interested.
You could as well, but there’d only be a point if you’d drop the preconceptions.
I do, as I suspect you do. I’m less confident in ElvisL1ves’ or RTFirefly’s grasp of the issue.
If you do recognize the issue, why do you persist in using those terms? :dubious:
Look, people who own guns don’t own them because it’s their 2ndAR, they own them because they fucking like guns. All this bullshit about the meaning of regulated militia or standing in opposition to tyranny is just that - bullshit. In an event of an actual emergency that calls for the use of a loaded weapon, majority of gun owners will piss their pants before they can even get to their weapon.
Of course, that excludes all of the gun advocates that post regularly to these threads here. I’ve no doubt you’re all fucking Rambos, with nerves of steel, impeccable aim and more than enough patriotic zeal to take on the US military junta. I thank god every day that you’re all on our side.
Where did I use the term? I explained the term to Chronos because he said he didn’t understand it, which got us on this topic, but I don’t think then or since I’ve used the term to disparage a Doper in this thread. Have I?
It isn’t a preconception that the word is “people”, not “army” or “government”. The word, and the distinction between “people” and “government”, occurs several times in the Bill of Rights.
I assume when you read about “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition Government” you recognize that this does not mean the government can assemble if it wants but peaceable assemblies of non-elected citizens can be broken up at will. Likewise “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” doesn’t mean that government papers can’t be searched but my tax returns can be.
“People” means “people” - that’s not a preconception. That’s what it says.
Regards,
Shodan
Somewhere in the collective memory of 2nd Amendment Absolutists is the American Revolution. If guns had been locked up as the OP proposes in 1776, would the revolution have happened? If not, we might still be British subjects.
Fast-forward 200 years. Should this 1776 scenario be something to continue to worry about or have other events overtaken history?
Do you disagree that it would benefit the public to provide those who want access to guns with adequate mental health care?
If youre worried about defending yourself and your family, take a self defense class. Regardless,this plan likely wouldn’t affect you or your family for generations. If you have guns, keep your guns. When you die, your offspring will decide whether to keep the guns or turn them in, and so on, until the number of available guns has declined overall due to wear and tear or disinterest.
Perhaps not. But we’re left with a particular system which explicitly provides for a way to change or delete obsolete amendments, 2/3’s vote of Congress ratified by 3/4’s of state legislatures, or the alternative Constitutional Convention route.
So just forgetting the amendment in total because it ‘doesn’t apply anymore’ doesn’t work. The more promising avenue, practically, is the one where we’d appoint judges who would pretend the 2nd amendment only refers to the state’s right to have (what is now) the National Guard…even though it mentions specifically the people’s right to keep and bear arms, and lack of a logical reason to mention this in a list of rights of the people, if it just refers to a right of the state govts and not the people. But, courts pretended for decades Plessy v Ferguson didn’t violate the 14th Amendment in practice, and courts pretend racial quota’s in education and hiring don’t violate it now. Inconvenient parts of the Constitution can and have been forgotten.
The problem with forgetting what the 2A says though is lack of votes. We’re laughably far from repeal of the 2nd Amendment. We’re not as laughably far from a consensus to just ignore the 2A practically to some degree, but still very far. In fact plenty of stuff which is acceptable under the current judicial interpretation of the 2A isn’t feasible politically. States have ‘assault gun bans’, albeit existing guns grandfathered and often other loopholes. Courts haven’t overturned those. But the prospect of such a measure passing Congress is zero right now, and remote IMO even if the Democrats regained control of everything. That would be based on winning states and districts they’d give right back by enacting an ‘assault gun ban’. They run on ‘common sense gun laws’. There’s a reason they keep that so vague, which includes not being truthful with the anti-gun side how far they are willing to risk going, which is not very far at all.
I will find cites after work, however I want to point out that the proposed mental health requirements are to promote better overall mental health, and to do give those who might become offenders a way to talk about their problems rather than grabbing the first thing with bullets and shooting about them.
If an offender can be identified and stopped by the mental health professional, that’s great, but the main purpose is to promote good mental health among anybody who wants to use a firearm. I believe everybody would benefit from therapy, but this post is strictly in regards to gun control, so don’t assume I think only gun owners need it. I just think they should be required to undergo therapy if they want to handle a machine invented for killing.
Apologies for not being able to reply to everybody yet. I am still going through the first page, so I will respond as I am able.