I think you want to assume that because there are lesser things we can do to restrict guns that do not rise to the level of repealing an Amendment, that its somehow wrong and I support some lawless dictatorial view of government?
Humor me then, because I don’t think I can convince you, but I’m curious to know your answer.
How is that in any way a “militia”? And what about regulations? Are gun ranges supposed to regulate themselves? Or can government do so?
This is one of those questions that happens all the time in gun debates so:
No, I don’t think crime will disappear without guns, but crimes will be less severe (due to the ease of harming someone with a gun vs. a melee weapon) and crimes rate will be reduced because it will be harder to commit crimes. That’s why guns should be banned.
Then I question your definition of reinterpretation, because that’s what we do every time a court clarifies the meaning of a law. Its obvious we’ll never agree on that, but you are free to point out to me where it is actually said to be illegal if tomorrow the SCOTUS decides that the 2nd doesn’t give the people unfettered access to all firearms. Maybe even bring back that “militia” part and say that the military, national guard, and police are the militia and only they can have guns. Other than disagreeing with the verdict, where is it illegal?
You can bold all you want and include whatever you like in that question, but I answered it simply as a courtesy because you answered my question. If you misunderstood that, then you are free to admit your mistake. I’m telling you right now that I don’t consider it to be tied to my previous statement and therefore I’m not going to pretend I said something and defend it. You can make that argument all you want, but I know what I was answering more than you do. I suspect you think its some “gotcha” strawman, so you insist on pushing that narrative. But I cannot make it anymore clear to you by saying that I did not answer your question thinking it was tied to the previous statement, therefore it wasn’t
I meant that it would be helpful to you, the pro-gun side
I think the 19th stands on the back of the 14th, even though it took some SCOTUS cases the wrong result to eventually ratify it. But I think it would be silly to say the 14th’s “All persons…” didn’t mean women in a modern reading of the Amendment, just as the original Constitution’s assertions regarding people really only meant white, land-owning males. We know now that they got it horribly wrong, and ignore what the Founders meant, in order to give rights to minorities, women, etc. So the same we can do for the 2nd, knowing that the Founders got it horribly wrong, and a modern reading would probably point out the “well-regulated militia” part to be more important than the “right to bear arms” part.
It weakens it for the historical losers but not the winners
I ask you what 1+1 is and you respond “3!”. I correct you saying, actually, the answer is 2. Your brilliant retort is that you weren’t answering that question, you were answering some other question that wasn’t actually asked. Got it. There was no “tying to a previous statement” since the conditions were included in the question itself. I’m genuinely curious - what question do you think you were responding to? Can you quote it?
It’s not a “gotcha” since I clearly stated the purpose of my question in post #96. The purpose was to illustrate how absurd your scenario was. That you back off of your own hypothetical illustrates this. There is no scenario where guns could be banned but nothing else changes.
[QUOTE=YogSosoth]
I think you want to assume that because there are lesser things we can do to restrict guns that do not rise to the level of repealing an Amendment, that its somehow wrong and I support some lawless dictatorial view of government?
[/QUOTE]
The point is you support reinterpreting an Amendment to basically and categorically go against it’s original intent. We aren’t talking about vertical regulations that would be within the scope (just as they are for the 1st and other Amendments), but instead something to goes completely and totally against the intent at the most basic level (i.e. a full out ban of broad categories)…and that you are fine with doing this rather than going through the actual process laid to do it right.
So, what would be the point of talking about snippets of an Amendment when you already have it in your mind that complete circumvention going completely against it’s intent is a viable option??
As to your well regulated militia argument, that’s so 10 years ago. Please stop bringing this dead horse up, since it’s already been beat to death mid stream AND had it’s freaking teeth checked to see if it was a good gift. It’s a dead parrot at this point and most of the rest of the world has moved on from it.
No, it doesn’t. Try to follow along…IT DOESN’T. Again…I’M NOT SAYING THAT THINGS CAN’T BE REINTERPRETED. Now…what part of this do you NOT understand?
But using your example here, the 14th can be reinterpreted to broaden it’s meaning. What you are trying to do would be if the 14th was written specifically to deny gays and women a right, but then ‘reinterpreting’ it to actually mean that it granted a right…or vice versa. Seriously…how are you having such a hard time grasping this?? I really, truly can’t understand why you can’t at least grasp this seemingly simple concept. You can reinterpret a law or an Amendment to broaden or lessen it’s scope, but you can’t reinterpret either to completely and totally and categorically go against it’s original intent. You can’t ‘reinterpret’ the 1st to really mean that broad categories of speech can be banned, or that broad categories of religion can be banned, or broad categories of assembly can be banned because it’s freaking against the original intent of the Amendment to protect those things! It’s the exact same thing with the 2nd…you can regulate and restrict some things concerning fire arms ownership by citizens, but you can’t broadly ban large categories of ‘arms’ and stay within the original intent of the Amendment. If you are going to go down that route you need an Amendment that basically vacates the 2nd and removes the right, THEN you can create legislature that is actually Constitutional to do what you want to do. That’s the RIGHT way to do this…as seen in the example of the 18th/21st. As I said, YOUR way would have been to keep the 18th in place but basically ‘reinterpret’ it to mean that the transport and sale of alcohol was perfectly legal and fine. That goes beyond reinterpretation, however.
Or, to put this another way, why do YOU think that the 21st exists, if it’s perfectly fine to reinterpret something to the point that it means exactly the opposite of the original intent? Why did they bother?
Clarifying is one thing; carefully explaining why a provision of the Constitution doesn’t really mean what it says is reinterpreting it out of existence. “No Animal Shall Sleep In A Bed” ends up meaning only “In A Bed With Sheets”. :rolleyes:
No provision of the Bill Of Rights has ever been interpreted to confer a boundless libertarian immunity from government interference; you can’t publish convoy sailing times in wartime for example. So no, the SC doesn’t and never has protected “unfettered” access to firearms. If you hold that private ownership of firearms at all is a threat to public safety that the government has a compelling interest in banning, then of course you’d see no reason why guns shouldn’t be taken out of peoples’ hands. But gun rights proponents believe private ownership of guns has both personal and social value, and that the proper response to the misuse of guns is, in one famous quote, " the penitentiary and the gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege".
What makes you think that only the military, the national guard and the police are the militia? By both the ancient definition of the term and by legal statute, the entire mass of the public able to bear arms if summoned constitutes “the militia”. If it’s not “well-regulated”, as in requiring the mass of the populace to undergo training like in Israel or Switzerland, it’s because the government doesn’t bother to. That’s hardly gun owners fault. And yes, privately held arms were specified in the original eighteenth century Militia Act, not a government stockpile people had to return the arms to.
See above; and also the Federalist #29, where Hamilton (a big fan of a strong federal government) actually uses the phrase “well-regulated militia” while defending the proposed constitution against the claim that it would require all people with arms to be under strict government control.
And yet Vermont has three times the gun death rate of Massachusetts:
And it can also be seen in my last link that Vermont has a higher gun death rate then DC.
There of course is a cultural difference where in some places the great majority of gun violence mostly comes when the gun is pointed towards the shooter, and in others it goes the other way. I don’t like either one.
[QUOTE=Lumpy]
See above; and also the Federalist #29, where Hamilton (a big fan of a strong federal government) actually uses the phrase “well-regulated militia” while defending the proposed constitution against the claim that it would require all people with arms to be under strict government control.
[/QUOTE]
Madison as well…clearly, he thought that the two parts of the 2nd were separate and talked about separate things, since as originally drafted that was how the 2nd was. To paraphrase Cecil from a long ago article on this, while it may seem strange to modern eyes, the original drafters of the Amendment thought that a personal right to bear arms for citizens was important. If that has changed (and I agree with him, I don’t see this as the case), then the right thing to do would be to draft and get passed a new Amendment that would vacate the 2nd, clearing the path to legislation designed for more broad powers in banning or regulating than is possible under the current 2nd Amendment. The WRONG way to do this is as the gun banners have tried to do it to date, which is to basically interpret the right out of existence and do away with it through those means. I don’t think that many of them give thought that this would be a slippery slope, that could and would be used to do the same to other Amendments or the Constitution itself. I doubt many of them think it would be a good idea to do the same sorts of things with the 1st, for instance. :eek:
The complaint I’m hearing from YogSosoth and others seems to be “Why can’t we pass the laws we want? Why are we slaves to a piece of parchment and the dead hand of the Founders?” It seems to me that what they want is effectively a system like the British Parliament, which can in theory enact anything. In practice the power of parliament is limited because the proportional seating system means that almost all parliamentary governments require deals with minority interest parties, who control small but crucial swing votes, to gain a voting majority. That’s a workable system- much of the world uses something similar. But it’s not a constitutional system which is what we have, where in theory at least the people are sovereign and the Constitution is a covenant spelling out what powers the people are bequeathing the government.
We didn’t “reinterpret” the Constitution to ban slavery, we amended the Constitution to ban slavery.
Sorry, but we’re not just going to ignore you. You keep talking (posting) and advocating for your point of view, and those of us who disagree with you will keep rebutting your points. (There is also the irony that people like you are probably a substantial part of the reason why even “reasonable restrictions” on guns have been so politically impossible to achieve in recent years.)
Incidentally, as to the notion that message board debates never change anyone’s mind: When I was younger, I was never super gung-ho about gun control, but I was–and am–a liberal Democrat and my opinions about guns were pretty conventional for a liberal Democrat. For example, during the Clinton years if you’d asked me about the “assault weapons” ban, I would have said I was for it; in part because I supported the Democrats over those right-wing Republicans, whom I didn’t (and still don’t) like for a wide variety of reasons, and the Democrats were pro-gun-control and I was a Democrat; and also because, hey, c’mon, “assault weapons” are some kind of super-scary MurderDeathKill guns that are specifically designed to kill whole roomfuls of people, just like in the movies, and getting those “off the street” was just “common sense”, right? (On that particular issue I was pretty much the classic low-information voter.) I certainly wasn’t “pro-gun”; I didn’t know anything about guns and they were fundamentally pretty foregin to me on any personal level. The closest I’d ever come to even the notion of guns was playing with toy ones when I was a boy, and seeing guns used in the movies, or in real life being carried by police officers. As a kid I did tend to want to get my hands on toy guns, and even made toy guns–often science fiction “ray guns”–out of Legos or old paper towel rolls, but as for real guns? Those were for James Bond, or Archie Goodwin, and of course for real-life police officers and soldiers.
In the last…15-20 years, I guess?..my opinions have shifted radically. I am still a liberal Democrat, but my views on the right to keep and bear arms are now quite different from what you’d expect of the stereotypical liberal Democrat. This message board was not the only thing that changed my mind, but it definitely played a big part. There are certainly some arguments for “my side” that I reject, and there are definitely some people on “my side” that don’t seem to have all their cylinders loaded, so to speak. But I’ve also seen a lot of thoughtful and sensible arguments in favor of the legitimacy of gun rights, and some really bad arguments in favor of this or that gun control measure, the combination of which have ultimately changed my mind. (I have always been very a strong supporter of civil liberties, even before my “conversion” on guns–I’ve been a “card-carrying member of the ACLU” since college–so persuading me that the gun rights really are constitutionally protected in this country was–for me at least–something that triggered a major shift in my thinking.)
Correct. There are astounding number of people that still do not really understand the fundamental concepts behind a Constitutional Republic even though they should have learned all about it in early high school at the latest but basic civics education apparently slipped by even some Dopers. The Constitution isn’t just “another set of laws” that can be worked around. It is the structural framework of the entire nation. Yes, it can be changed and there are procedures for that but that process is difficult by design.
I have zero respect for people that want to take a back door approach to circumventing the Constitution as it currently stands. That is the backbone of the entire country and, if you want to change it, you have to do it the honest and correct way. That applies to gun laws, freedom of speech and everything else in it.
If you want to start banning guns wholesale, get to work on repealing the 2nd Amendment. There is no other legal, logical or ethical way to do it.
The problem with getting into a debate with you on this subject is that it feels like you’re setting up a “Heads I win, tails you lose” situation. If you persuade everyone that the Second Amendment doesn’t protect an individual right to keep and bear arms, then, hooray, you win! But if you don’t win that particular argument, then:
So, what’s the point in “humoring you”?
In the late 18th/early 19th century, the “militia” was “all able-bodied male citizens”. (I of course don’t think women should be disarmed, either. Or people with disabilities.) It most definitely did not mean “the military, national guard, and police are the militia and only they can have guns”. Furthermore, the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller held that “an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home” is constitutionally protected.
Another thing that’s very persuasive to me that the right to keep and bear arms was originally seen as an individual right in American constitutional law is that the Second Amendment does not exist in a vacuum. Many state constituitonal provisions have also protected the right to keep and bear arms, often in clearer language than the Second Amendment. From the 18th century (“the right of the citizens to bear arms, in defence of themselves and the state, shall not be questioned” – Pennsylvania, 1790), through the 19th century (" Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state" – Connecticut, 1818; “Every person has a right to bear arms for the defence of himself and the State” – Michigan, 1835; “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state shall not be denied” – South Dakota, 1889) and on into the 20th century (“The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the state shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain, or employ an armed body of men” – Arizona, 1912; " All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the right to keep and bear arms for security or defense of self, family, home, and others, and for lawful common defense, hunting, recreational use, and all other lawful purposes, and such rights shall not be denied or infringed by the state or any subdivision thereof" – Nebraska, 1988), the idea of an individual right to keep and bear arms is protected over and over again in American constitutional law.
You don’t have to agree with any of that. The Constitution is not sacrosanct (and certainly state constitutions aren’t); neither the text of the U.S. Constitution nor our broader ideas about liberty and government were handed down by Jesus to the Founding Fathers on Mt. Sinai. But, a constitutional protection of individual liberty, written into the Bill of Rights and dozens of state constitutions, can’t simply be ignored to death. It must be changed, using the process we’ve established for doing that. That’s a difficult process, but it isn’t an impossible process. We abolished slavery, protected the equal rights of all persons against intrusion by state and local governments as well as by the federal government, introduced an income tax, changed the nature of the U.S. Senate, guaranteed women the right to vote*, prohibited alcohol, changed our minds about prohibiting alcohol, and did several other things, all by amending the Constitution. And of course the Bill of Rights is itself a collection of amendments.
*Although before the Fourteenth Amendment the Constitution itself actually said nothing one way or the other about women’s suffrage.
YogSosoth wants to ban firearms and knows that he, and the other gun-banners, do not have the votes to do so.
It seems to be completely incomprehensible to the YogSosoth-types that they do not speak for everyone and never will. An important consideration in a democratic republic. They can only speculate as to how they can ignore the U.S. Constitution (in order to make it stronger???).
Slight changes being a Sandy Hook that didn’t result in all the GOP acting like shitheads, when it so horrified the nation that the GOP would actually do what most of the country want them to do.
This was your conceived given for the question, just like I made one for you to answer. Both hypotheticals, neither really part of the debate, except that you decided to exaggerate the word “slight” and run with it. I could have done the same with answers from people I’ve gotten but I understood, unlike you, that it was a hypothetical. Again, I’ve already told you that in answering your question, I did not link it specifically to any other point of debate, so I’m not going to defend a strawman you created for me
“Slight changes” isn’t backing off. Its to clarify to a recalcitrant party a question they refused to answer. This semantic back and forth is just you trying to deflect the debate. The scenario I gave fits the one I gave you, where guns are banned but everything else stays the same. Well of course the scenario means that at least stuff like voting and laws will change, there’s a slight change right there, but I’m clarifying it because it makes no sense to say “The world is exactly the same except guns are banned, there’s not even a gun ban law in place, they are simply banned and everyone carries on as if they are banned despite it still being sold at WalMart. Criminals instead make a gun with their fingers and shout “BANG!” and people drop dead as if they were shot”. Your quibbling on the word “slight” is as ridiculous as that example, slight changes will happen, but there’s no need to be that detailed in a hypothetical. The point was to see how far you’d take your stance and I think I’ve shown that you can be quite extreme by continually harping on something irrelevant
Now if you want to keep doing it, fine, but from here on out my answers will probably look familiar because there’s no new argument to be made. You think “slight” means “major” and I took it to be inconsequential. That’s all
Actually no I don’t because I reject that only pro-gun people have the correct intent. The Founders obviously included “well regulated Militia” and to me, that doesn’t mean every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets a gun. You have to be in a militia, and one that has regulations. If California or New York wants to ban private ownership of guns based on those words, and if we can get the SCOTUS to agree or Congress to pass a law clarifying the 2nd, then that is not going against what the Founders intended. Please don’t assume your side has the only correct interpretation.
There are types of speech that are banned, or punished. You can’t slander or libel someone, harassment is restricted in piecemeal over many jurisdictions, judges can issue gag orders, witnesses can be protected, police can withhold information from you, etc. All of that means “free speech” isn’t completely free. There are types we can ban outright. There are types which deserve lesser punishment. There are types you can say only in some situations and only in certain ways. Go ahead and threaten the president right here. Do it on Facebook. When the Secret Service comes to your door, please explain to them how its free speech and that you shouldn’t be arrested.
Guns are no different. We allow guns, but we don’t have to allow all types of guns, or all guns at some place or time. We can regulate the laws that allow one to own it, we can ban certain types outright, we can say only some kinds can be manufactured or all owners need to register. There is absolutely nothing against both the spirit or letter of the 2nd to have those. And if you don’t believe me, seriously, go ahead and threaten the president right now and see how much your interpretation means.
Personally, while I want to ban guns outright, I’m fine with handguns being banned and other types of guns being restricted. Therefore its wrong to accuse me of complete circumvention. You can keep your rifles and your long guns that are hard to hide. Don’t mistake what I’d personally want to do with what you accuse my side of doing.
Its perfectly valid. A different court and different people and maybe we’ll get followers of the 2nd to pay attention to the full thing again. I know that your side won and want to move on, but no, we’re not moving on. You’re not in a militia, why can you own guns?
The part where you consider it slimy for my side to interpret it to restrict guns. You’re the one who keeps contradicting yourself. You talk about how you’re fine with reinterpretation but then say I cannot reinterpret it even after I’ve given you examples that it does and can happen. The only way I’ll let it go is if you acknowledge that there is nothing slimy about reinterpreting the 2nd to strictly regulate all firearms. Regulation does not mean ban, even if the regulation is strict. We have a militia in the army, national guard, and police. They are the only ones who, according to the 2nd, should be armed.
There’s nothing I’m missing here, calm down. I simply don’t believe that 1) it can’t be done, and 2) that the process of doing it is legally wrong.
You seem to believe strongly otherwise. Why? Who says you can’t do that?
Of course you can. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were not part of the original Constitution. It bans writings that are “false, scandalous, and malicious” about the president or Congress. There, a type of speech promised in the 1st was categorically rendered illegal by subsequent laws and so far upheld for 200 years. Nothing more needs to be added if we wanted to ban handguns or assault weapons.
I believe the National Firearms Act of 1934 regulates many types of firearms so strictly that it practically makes it illegal to own a fully automatic machine gun. I’d be fine if we can make handgun practically but not technically illegal, which in places in California (or certain parts of it) requires something like law enforcement to sign off letting you own one. So you can broadly ban categories of arms, unless you want to quibble over the semantics of “ban”. In real life, an interpretation would probably just take the “well regulated Militia” part of the 2nd and enforce the strongly, satisfying the requirement that normal people can’t own guns but they are not technically banned. Also, I believe felons are banned from owning guns, though I know if they distinguish between types of felons (like violent vs. non-violent), so there is the additional way of banning not the ownership of guns but simply prohibiting people from owning them. Maybe something like if you’ve ever been to jail for any reason, or had a misdemeanor, parking ticket, jaywalking, etc. then you are a criminal and can’t own a gun. I’d be fine with that too
Its one way to get rid of the 18th, probably the easiest way given most people wanted to drink. But the existent of the 21st doesn’t mean there aren’t other legal ways to get around it. Like I’ve said before with speech, you don’t need an Amendment to restrict and regulate rights that another Amendment granted
Seems like semantics to me. English has a lot of words that mean pretty much the same thing
And that’s why we will never agree. I do hold that belief and I know you hold your belief.
I don’t have to think that it means only the military and others, I only have to make a case that it does. Given how gun rights people interpret the 2nd to have “militia” mean everyone, I am perfectly fine interpreting it another way. The point is that we have clear militias now that better fits what the 2nd at one point defined as militias, and I would use that to interpret the law to take guns out of private ownership’s hands
Yeah the Federalist #29 isn’t really part of the Constitution so it has no bearing on what is actually in it. It could have been Hamilton’s own ramblings for all we know, unsupported by the other Founders. If he wanted that to be the interpretation, he should have put it in the Constitution
That’s not a correct interpretation of my beliefs as I don’t believe your interpretation of the Constitution is the correct one
We also said blacks were full citizens. Have you read the 14th? It took us at least a hundred years before we created, through a law and not an Amendment, support for that promise. Sure, anyone in 2015 can read and understand that Jim Crow laws were obviously illegal. Obviously. But until there is the will to enforce it, obviously illegal things like that and Dred Scott are the law of the land. Sometimes in times of great change there will be willpower to push through an Amendment, other times an Act of Congress here, an Executive Order there can do the same. I understand that its helpful to push the myth that only another Amendment can undo any part of the 2nd, because ratifying an Amendment is about the hardest thing we can do. But its wrong. Amendments, such as the 1st, can be carved up piecemeal and attacked in small doses. Maybe an Alien and Sedition Act here, an Executive Order there, a reinterpretation that takes other words as important elsewhere, and boom, you will have a gun restriction. And its perfectly legal
Yeah, you know people who don’t believe as I do assuming the argument has been refuted isn’t exactly convincing so you may want to hold off on patting yourself on the back there :rolleyes:
Structural frameworks can be changed. Amendments aren’t the only way
In this case, it’s the gun-banners who are playing the role of the Jim Crow South, doing things (like the Jim Crow laws) that were obviously illegal, but which (they hope) there won’t be the political will to overturn. Is that what you actually mean to be saying, or did it just come out totally wrong?
[QUOTE=YogSosoth]
Actually no I don’t because I reject that only pro-gun people have the correct intent. The Founders obviously included “well regulated Militia” and to me, that doesn’t mean every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets a gun. You have to be in a militia, and one that has regulations. If California or New York wants to ban private ownership of guns based on those words, and if we can get the SCOTUS to agree or Congress to pass a law clarifying the 2nd, then that is not going against what the Founders intended. Please don’t assume your side has the only correct interpretation.
[/QUOTE]
We both know I don’t have to…because MY side actually has the freaking writings and notes from the people who wrote the freaking thing! Good grief…you seriously believe that the framers seriously only wanted people ‘in a militia’ to get a gun?? What do you base this on? What case law from that time shows that this was the intent? Nada…you are pulling this out of your ass. No one believes this because it’s simply ridiculous. Even gun banners don’t believe this horseshit.
And ‘well regulated militia’ doesn’t mean what you think it means, kimo’sabe. Again, this is a fiction that your side has built up. Obviously, you have bought into it, hook, line and sinker.
As to SCOTUS, they have already clarified things (finally), and THEY think it’s a personal right to fire arms ownership. So, unless you want to fantasize that somehow they will reverse that (based on what? only folks like you believe the web of fantasy above), you are going to have to do it the right way and vacate the 2nd in order to get your dream.
You are all over the place here. As to the GOVERNMENT, there are some very vertical types of speech that they ban or censor…child pornography being one example. But this is a very vertical type of speech. Good luck getting, say, all pornography in any form banned. THAT is a broad based ban.
No idea what you think your Facebook example proves except you really don’t understand what free speech actually IS, or what is or isn’t banned or censored, or how the 1st even comes into play. Seriously man, why are you even in this discussion with such a tenuous grasp of even the basics??
Again, this is the same thing…we can regulate and even ban very vertical categories of guns (say, automatic weapons to juxtapose an example with the child porn one from the 1st). We can put in regulation as well. Nothing wrong with that, not un-Constitutional. It’s when you put in regulation with the intent of a broad based ban of something (say, all hand guns, or all ‘scary guns that frighten us :eek:’ that you run into issues with being un-Constitutional. Why can’t you grasp this? Again, if you want to ban all guns or a large broad category of guns you need to get rid of the 2nd first, or you will be in the un-Constitutional territory. Again, just look at the DC example.
Happily, it’s not up to you…or your buddies either. They TRIED this…and failed. And if you put yourself in their ranks then you are part of the movement that went the slimy path. If you disagree with how they did it (you obviously don’t, based on your posts in this thread alone) then feel free to say so.
Me, personally, I DON’T agree with much of what ‘my’ side does these days, and I do think that there is a middle ground. However, I can see why they feel as they do based on the actions of your own side in this ridiculous clash.
Your side has done (and continues to do) slimy things in order to get there ways. I’m not going to sugar coat it, that’s reality. They didn’t even TRY and do this the right way, instead they went for the slime right from the start, and deliberately went about on a path that undercuts the very underpinnings of our system. There are freaking ways to do what they wanted/want to do within our system, there is even plenty of precedence for how it works and how to do it, but they chose not to do any of that. Instead, it’s just like what you are saying here…reinterpret the 2nd so that it is exactly the opposite of what the framers wanted.
As for your continued assertion that the framers thought that ONLY the militia could or should be armed, again, you are pulling that out of your ass. Show me one piece of actual evidence from ANY of the folks who wrote, drafted or had any input into the 2nd. I can show you a bunch that doesn’t, of course, but since you keep asserting it you can back it up. You might want to start with the early drafts of the Amendment alone, since they make it clear that originally the Amendment was in two parts and those parts were only linked by the fact that the FF though an armed populace was essential, and that pretty much every able bodied (white) male WAS in the freaking militia. Then you can look up what ‘well regulated’ actually meant in the 17th century.
It wasn’t even a valid point BEFORE the SCOTUS ruled on this whole question. Now it’s beyond moot. And it has zero basis in history, as you will notice when you try and fulfill my request for a cite above. Even your own side has moved on from this ridiculous bit now, focusing instead on how things are different now than they were then and that we should change with the times, etc etc. Which, if true, means they need to freaking get a new Amendment passed to vacate the 2nd to do what they want to do.
SCOTUS. Again, how’s this working out for DC so far?
And, you are missing the point.
So, a very narrow, vertical ban that basically is a narrowing of the 1st (presumably…you’d need to lay out what you are actually talking about in detail to figure out what your example is supposed to represent) is equal, in your eyes, to a broad banning of ALL hand guns and ‘assault weapons’, a term so vague that it basically means ‘anything that scares the gun banner’. :rolleyes:
So, you have no idea. You should have just said ‘I have no idea’ then.
At any rate, I don’t think we are getting anywhere in all of this. You basically are convinced that, despite the fact that your side has been trying to do this in underhanded and sneaky ways for literally decades now (methods you obviously support wholeheartedly based on your posts) that, somehow, they will be able to just do it instead of just using the process (something it’s obviously occurred to you won’t work, even today). You based this on basically your gut feelings. Just as you base your interpretation that the framers of the 2nd meant for only those in the militia to be armed (and ‘well regulated’ of course :p)…and, essentially, anything your side does to make this fantasy a reality is for the good, even if it goes against our system, and even if there IS a right way to do all of this that isn’t a slippery slope for future attacks on Amendments you might not be quite so willing to see circumvented this way.
This is why there is no worthwhile dialog to be had with you or those on your side… No compromise is possible and no deal can be trusted with people who think this way.
If guns were outright completely banned it would only if and when there was overwhelming support for banning all guns in basically the entire country, so no there would be no civil war because something like that could only happen if the extreme majority was in favor of it. There would of course be isolated cases of resistance, but in that scenario people would see them as nutjobs, not freedom fighters.
Warren Burger would be quite out of step with the rest of his party if he were alive today. But what changed isn’t the fact that you can interpret the constitution variously, but public opinion, especially GOP public opinion.
The Supreme Court consists of political appointees who follow some combination of public opinion and the viewpoint that got them nominated. The system these founding violent revolutionaries, you fellows idolize, set up was designed to isolate our leaders from the unwashed masses. But elimination of property requirements for voting, and direct election of senators, put that for a loop. We all know that the militia clause of the second amendment means whatever you want it to mean, and its meaning will depend, above all, on which party’s president gets to nominate new justices.
Now, personally, I favor opposing the idolization of guns through moral suasion and the facts, as we do with cigarettes, rather than by passing new laws so we can throw more and more people in prison for violating them. So I don’t necessarily need to see Heller reversed. Universal background checks would be nice, but, realistically, if your neighbors think it is OK to sell a gun to a stranger you meet through the internet, you are going to do it. And if your neighbors look down on people who do such an IMHO dreadful thing, it will decline without the police having to lock you up.
So the second amendment, as interpreted by the GOP or otherwise, is not normally a focus when I post on guns. But saying it is unethical for a justice (or a poster) to agree with Warren Burger on the second amendment is, to me, preposterous.
I think that can be applied to both sides. Where there is political will to do something, often the law is little obstruction. Where there isn’t, people will find all sorts of things to justify it. Today it may be gun banning, tomorrow it may be the opposite. We both know where we stand, but my point has always been that the process of the law is not wrong no matter the result you get. Its the result we disagree on. And no, I don’t agree that my side is playing the Jim Crow role. More like your side has continually ignored certain words of the 2nd to achieve your goal
If they wanted all that stuff in the Constitution, it would be in there clearly. Like Lumpy citing the Federalist #29, obviously the Founders all had other thoughts about what they could get passed. I’m sure everyone from Washinton to Franklin to whoever we overlooked in history had other ideas, but it wasn’t put into the Constitution because they couldn’t get the majority to back it. So in terms of what they wrote in letters and explanations later, its all completely irrelevant to this conversation. Every last word. Keep going down this path and I’ll bring up the fact that there were no machine guns and grenades back then so its OBVIOUS the Founders wouldn’t have supported you owning the type of guns we have now. Its obvious.
And back then there was no police, no standing army like we have now, every man and boy who could pick up a gun was considered part of the militia so yes, back then, they considered regular people to be in a militia but the need of that has been eliminated in the last 200 years. Now we have armies, national guards, and police which fit the criteria of a militia and well-regulated and so regular farmboys need not pick up a weapon to defend his country from invaders. You’re not part of a militia so you shouldn’t have a gun
You keep saying that but I don’t see you responding. Where’s the regulation? Or did I just imagine those words? How about this? I can ignore words in the 2nd too! It doesn’t actually say “bear arms”, it just stops at “bear”. We have the right to own bears. That’s all the 2nd guarantees. :rolleyes:
This whole segment of the debate is about reinterpretation. Yes, they have clarified things for now. But in the future, things can change. You have the result you want and you wish it to stay just so, and attack people who point out that with a new lawsuit and a couple different people on the court, we can totally change that. You have a problem with me pointing that out and you concoct this fantasy that unlike every other thing in the Constitution, THIS has been decided forevermore and it can never change. That’s BS, I can almost guarantee that it will change someday, maybe, hopefully, in our lifetime as crime continues to fall and people feel less of a need to be attached to their guns
The proof that my argument is valid is right there. The government has the right and the capability to ban certain types of things even though they may be covered under the Constitution. If I wanted to, I could ask where in the Constitution does it say that child porn should be banned? That’s an affront to freedom! But it is banned, and rightly so, and people don’t challenge that because people agree with it. So too can a handgun or machine gun ban come into play. You can have long guns (porn), but not hand guns or machine guns (child porn). There’s nothing incongruous about that
I suspect you’re faking not understanding because you don’t want to admit you’re wrong, but I’ll play along. You say we can’t ban even certain types of guns, just like we can’t ban speech. But I say you can, because while we have free speech, we cannot, for example, threaten the president. The free speech defense doesn’t work because we have collectively decided that such a thing is so bad it should be banned and anyone who utters it will be investigated and possibly jailed. So too does the argument work on guns. We may be able to have the 2nd guaranteeing us the right to guns, but we can absolutely ban certain types of guns such as hand guns or machine guns. There is nothing antithetical about banning all hand guns for everyone. And if you disagree, then you probably think your argument is valid on speech as well, so I invite you to threaten the president and see how that goes
A “broad category of guns” is still a category of guns, and can be banned without harming the 2nd. All it will take is for someone’s personal definition of “broad” to change slightly. Hell, we had muskets and their equivalent during the time the 2nd was written, I see no reason why we can’t have those types of long guns legal while banning the more dangerous types that came after.
Again you are pushing the false narrative that it was somehow underhanded to have gun regulations. What law exactly did you have a problem with that was overturned by the SCOTUS and what did you consider underhanded about it? That it once passed? Because I’m hearing a lot of complaining about the law itself because you don’t like it, but not a lot of details on what you considered slimy. On the other hand, going back to why I first posted in this thread, I’ve listed very clearly the reasons why I think many gun owners are cowardly. You haven’t really justified your point at all
Its a divide and conquer thing, and I personally don’t think you’re all that amenable to a middle ground solution. If you did, you wouldn’t try to paint me as representative of a large segment of the anti-gun crowd and talk more reasonably about what you think a solution should be.
If I could paraphrase you in this alternate universe for a second, I would say to me: “Hey Yog, I don’t agree with what you want, but neither do I agree fully with the pro-gun side. What are some things you are willing to settle for and let me tell you what I would like for my side to give up so that we can achieve better and safer gun laws that serve everyone and not just the extremes?” I’d happily talk about my less extreme positions with that XT, but sadly, he doesn’t exist, nor does anyone seem to exist like that in this universe
Again, you have attacked but given me no examples. Only repeated statements that you don’t like that we were able to get some laws passed that went against what you believed. To actually be slimy, I’d have to see some illegal maneuvers that resulted in people punished, or something like that, happening across a broad segment representative of my side. Failing that, you’re just complaining we’ve won some lawsuits in the past :rolleyes:
The first 4 words of the 2nd: “A well regulated Militia”. Its hilarious and sad that your side completely ignores this part for all the fawning you make over it. Its as if those words are invisible, or they were not english but some language with meaning that only you guys know
You will show me irrelevant letters, papers, and debates that are not in the Constitution. You’ll excuse me if I ignore it and pay attention to what is actually in the Constitution itself
If they wanted it in there, they would have put it in there. We had the Articles of Confederation at one point too. How many of those laws are you following that you feel supersedes the Constitution?
Times change, we have an actual militia now, paid and volunteered, with regulations and training. I suspect our modern military is closer to what the Founders actually wanted instead of the ragtag bunch of farmers and blacksmiths we had back then, but that’s just a pointless aside.
You might be wondering: “Why is he all up about the Constitution’s supreme authority in its words yet now he’s saying times change and the Constitution should change too?” The answer to that is simple: I only use the exact words of the Constitution as fodder to argue against people like you who seem to take the 2nd at face value and refuse to acknowledge that times change. You want to defend yourself by pointing to those 200+ year old words, then I can point to the same and refute your argument. Personally, things do change, and the Constitution is a living document by design, able to be added to, subtracted from, and reinterpreted in any way that subsequent generations want. NOTHING in there is sacred, so when we do reinterpret the 2nd, it is a dishonest tactic to claim that there are some things in it that shouldn’t be changed. Just in case you were going to use that argument
Quick bullet points in response:
It was always a valid argument because the words are pretty clear in there
There is basis in history because the definition of militia changed
We’ve moved on because its not a winning argument, at least not yet
And no, we don’t need an Amendment to clarify another Amendment as I’ve said before with examples from the 1st
If the SCOTUS decided it one way once, it can decide it again later in another way. True or false? And yes, I’m aware that right now it hasn’t worked, but I hold out hope that in future people will be smarter
When you want to make your point, you call it “narrow”, but when arguing against me, you call my views “broad”. Are those not opinions? Can opinions change?
I gave an answer and that was “it was easier to do it this way”. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean you get to claim I have no idea. Please refrain from creating these actual strawmen in the future that can be debunked by looking at sentence that I wrote. Again, if you’re confused, the answer I gave is “it was easier”. So many people wanted the 18th gone and to fully repeal it, rather than by piecemeal state-by-state, that it was actually easier to just do it all at once using the typically more difficult process of amendments.
Its worthwhile to have a dialogue because there are things much less than a complete win that I would accept, and stop fighting to restrict guns in the future any more if I get those. It is your side that wants to stop the dialogue, with good reason I suppose since you’re winning, but let’s not pretend that the relatively few people who believe as I do is stopping the whole process. If you want to have a dialogue about what I would feel is a “good enough” solution, I’d be happy to. But if you simply want to focus on what I personally believe to be the best solution in a world where I’m emperor, then you will not have a dialogue. And you’ll blame it on me because you are even afraid to lose *that *bit of argument
[QUOTE=YogSosoth]
If they wanted all that stuff in the Constitution, it would be in there clearly. Like Lumpy citing the Federalist #29, obviously the Founders all had other thoughts about what they could get passed. I’m sure everyone from Washinton to Franklin to whoever we overlooked in history had other ideas, but it wasn’t put into the Constitution because they couldn’t get the majority to back it. So in terms of what they wrote in letters and explanations later, its all completely irrelevant to this conversation. Every last word. Keep going down this path and I’ll bring up the fact that there were no machine guns and grenades back then so its OBVIOUS the Founders wouldn’t have supported you owning the type of guns we have now. Its obvious.
[/QUOTE]
So, no cite, just your gut feelings on this about what’s ‘obvious’…to you. Got it.
Sez you. Again, no cite that anyone involved in drafting or ratifying the amendment thought this way. It’s funny that you seem to be able to grasp that times have changed, and thus, perhaps, we need to re-evaluate the amendment, but then you just can’t let go of the militia thing that is only in your own head (well, that’s not true…it’s in the heads of a lot of anti-gun types who haven’t bothered to actually look into this issue and simply assume that a ‘good faith’ reading of the plain language, as interpreted using today’s terms and preconceptions is good enough).
I asked you for a cite. You failed to provide one. What more is there to say? Your ridiculous hand wave about ‘bear’ does really nothing to disguise the fact that you failed to provide what I asked for, nor does it muddy the waters enough for you to swim clear.
You can’t ‘reinterpret’ something to mean exactly the opposite of what it was intended to be, at least not in good faith. That’s the point you keep missing…and I suspect you will continue to keep missing, regardless of how many times I point this out, or how many ways I try to do so.
The proof that you haven’t bothered to read most of what I have said is right there as well. Again, you can ban certain very vertical things. You can regulate things as well. Where you come into conflict is when you attempt to broaden that our. You could ban certain TYPES of guns…as we have. Banning broad categories of them, however, would be like trying to ban broad categories of speech. It would be un-Constitutional. This isn’t some theory…it’s the way our system works. Or, how goes banning all hand guns? How goes the fight to ban all porn?
Instead of more babbling on this, why don’t you just address that last. If the system works the way you say, WHY ISN’T IT DONE? Why aren’t handguns banned if you could ban them across the board? Why is DC in a fight over this if you can simply do it the way you claim? Why hasn’t all porn been banned instead of very vertical types such as child porn? No more handwaving, nor more horseshit, just answer these questions directly and explain how I’ve been missing these broader based bannings of Constitutionally protected rights somehow.
Show me the money then…let’s see some examples of broad based bannings of Constitutionally protected rights. I suspect you are talking out of your ass, especially since the Facebook example shows NOTHING about the government or banning, them being a private company, but what the hell…if you have some tangible examples demonstrating how your assertions ACTUALLY WORK IN THE REAL WORLD OF THE US LEGAL SYSTEM, by all means trot those fuckers out.
Leaving aside why you would think that ‘long guns’ are less dangerous than ‘more dangerous types’, again, show me some real world examples demonstrating this in action. YOU might not see why it shouldn’t work, but I doubt you are a lawyer, let alone an expert on Constitutional law, so your opinion on this is obviously biased based on your world view concerning this one vertical issue (i.e. gun banning). If we could simply ban broad categories of guns (say all hand guns) then we could equally ban broad categories of other protected rights, say all ‘porn’…so, that begs the question as to why this has never happened.
I asked you for a cite. You refused and came back with this ignorance laced horseshit that simply proves you are clueless about this topic and are speaking from the ass. You don’t know what ‘well regulated’ means, you don’t know why the framers put in the part about the militia, you don’t have any idea what the framers were after with this Amendment, and you don’t want to be bothered to find out…you knows what you knows, and that’s what you nose.
As another poster up thread has said, it’s really pointless to engage you on this subject.
Yeah, 'cause all that context stuff is irrelevant…the only meaningful thing is your interpretation of what it means filtered through your biases, ignorance, prejudices and modern concepts and speech. Which means to me, you actually DO know some of this and simply choose to ignore it in favor of clinging to your ignorance. Thanks for this paragraph…it really shows that you aren’t debating in good faith, so I feel free to slam you all I want. This post started out much friendlier until I came upon this paragraph here which really shows your colors.
Gods know what point you think you are making here.
You suspect this based on stuff you are pulling from your ass. The FF didn’t want a professional military, so, no…today’s military isn’t what they would have wanted. And tough titty to them. They weren’t gods, nor were their ever thought or concept perfect and immutable. Happily, THEY know this and so our system has the ability to change and shift with the times. Unhappily, folks like you and your side can’t seem to grasp this (or they have, and grasped that they are in such a minority that they can’t get their way…boo fucking hoo), so have tried to circumvent that system to get their way.
Wrong, wrong, correct (with tons of irony), wrong (and clearly, you don’t understand the examples of the 1st).
Doubtful that they would reverse themselves on this, having finally taken a stand. At this point the only real path to what you want is to amend the Constitution with something that will vacate the 2nd and clear the way to the kinds of broad based bannings you and your side are after. Though, here, I could be wrong…I’m not a lawyer, a Constitutional expert or anything of the kind, so if some of our legal 'dopers want to say that a future SCOTUS could and more importantly WOULD go back on this ruling to reverse it in such a radical way as to make it say what you want it to say, then I’m all ears. Unlike you, when I don’t know something I’m more than willing to at least listen and perhaps learn something.
Because there is a difference. In one, you are refining the text, narrowing or broadening it. In the other, you are talking about a complete reversal of the spirit of the original Amendment, be it the 1st, 2nd or whatever. As I said, using the 18th as an example, you could have broadened or narrowed it, but you couldn’t go back and ‘reinterpret’ it to say that all alcohol was legal to sell and distribute, because that would be going completely against the original intent. So, in order to have alcohol legal to sell and distribute in the US, the 18th needed to be vacated by the 21st to stay within the Constitution. This wasn’t the ‘easy’ way, this was the ONLY way to get the broad based changes that people against the 18th were after. To get what YOUR side wants, broad based bans of wide categories of arms they would need to do the same thing. Regulations or narrow based bans, such as those for automatic weapons are perfectly ok and Constitutional (though some folks gripe about those as well).
I asked you for a plain answer, you gave a non-answer that was meaningless and showed that you don’t get it. Trying to put this back on me as if I don’t get it is really just hilarious.
You have already stated that you consider it worthwhile to “re-interpret” the Second Amendment to say the opposite of what it says, and only using the accepted meaning when it suits you. Therefore, it is hard to believe that you (general you, those who are anti-gun and willing to do as you suggest) can be trusted to abide by the meaning of whatever you agree to now.
So we agree to some “reasonable” restriction on guns. How do we know that you will not merely “re-interpret” whatever the restriction is to mean a complete gun ban?
You claim that you will stop fighting to restrict guns if you get something acceptable. By “stop fighting” do you mean “stop fighting” or “continue fighting”?
Which means to me, you actually DO know some of this and simply choose to ignore it in favor of clinging to your ignorance. Thanks for this paragraph…it really shows that you aren’t debating in good faith, so I feel free to slam you all I want. This post started out much friendlier until I came upon this paragraph here which really shows your colors.