Yes, it does. And the author is no white suprema… And Lincoln still comes off looking pretty good. Like I said, it’ll help. Read it.
This thread is about a hypothetical future. Theory is ok unless it’s unsound.
There is no plausible hypothetical future where law exists in the absence of government, and hypothesizing the contrary is unsound.
Reading some reviews, it is critical of Lincoln, which is refreshing, but it mistakenly credits his economic policies with the growth of American industry. At least he isn’t deified like so many are prone to do (Spielberg).
By anyone who has the power to tell me to shut up. Who’s going to defend my rights? I will, of course, as an individual but people have very little power as individuals. It’s easy to push around individuals and take away their rights. That’s why smart individuals band together and defend their rights mutually.
You realize that Amendments have been created (and removed) after 1788, right? This isn’t about owing our ancestors squat, it’s about a living, breathing Constitution that was designed to change with society…which it has. By all means, if you can demonstrate that the 2nd is no longer applicable to today’s society, feel free to do away with it. All you have to do is get sufficient voter support. Knock yourself out, BG, and put one in Burke’s eye. 
They weren’t designed to be ‘above-and-outside the reach of ordinary political/electoral/legislative process’…it IS the process. They are designed such that they can’t simply be waved aside by fiat though, unfortunately for the folks who are against the 2nd. Though gods know, they have tried…and tried…and tried (to get around the system and circumvent it in every sneaky, underhanded way they could conceive)…
The question here is certainly whether it should be in our theoretical new Constitution. How about we put it to a vote? That seems fair to me…we’ll ask the American people what THEY think, and have them vote on whether or not a modified version protecting personal ownership should be in there (we’ll take all that stuff about militia out, since it seems to conveniently confuse anti-gun types). If you are right, and we are just holding on to stuff from 1788 then you should be very happy with the results, right?
My apologies to both you and Will…was getting pretty punchy last night. Won’t happen again in this thread.
But we can’t do anything about guns via a vote. That’s the point I’ve been making. As long as gun ownership is a Constitutional right then it’s immune from any voting process.
This is the equivalent to saying ‘well, we can’t do anything about this 18th Amendment and Prohibition stuff…it’s immune to the vote!’. It’s not. And we can do something about it. All it takes is a large percentage of the population wanting it, and voting their desire, and there is absolutely nothing in the Constitution that can’t be changed, Amended or done away with. Which is what I’ve been trying to say.
As for what you are quoting there, it was a specific response to the idea of drafting a NEW Constitution, and the process we’d perhaps follow. Admittedly, the discussion got somewhat muddled and weird there for a while, but I wasn’t talking about our current Constitution there, but this theoretical drafting of a new Constitution in which, IMHO, we’d basically call for something like a referendum vote from the people. In actuality, it would probably be the elected officials from the various states putting forth proposals and voting, but I’d like to see (in my own fantasy world) a more direct interaction with the people on something so monumental as drafting a new Constitution. Certainly I’m opposed to the fiat way folks in this thread are deciding we don’t need the 2nd.
If someone bops you on your head for saying something they didn’t like, the government would step in not because they were shutting you up, but because they bopped you on your head. The law as it currently is doesn’t protect your free speech from private citizens or organizations. If you walk around town posting pamphlets and someone follows behind and rips up every one, the government doesn’t protect your free speech. If you post something to a website and they take it down, the government doesn’t protect that speech either.
The 1st amendment is there to protect your speech from government. The protection from head-bopping has nothing to do with your freedom of speech.
Likewise if i offended you, but no apology needed, it’s all entertainment in the end.
You didn’t. Like I said, it got weird there for a while, and I think we were all talking past each other. Certainly I wasn’t tracking well on what you were getting at. 
Okay, let’s drop the tangent on general political principles and get back to the topic of the thread.
Let’s start with the blank page that the OP implies. No arguments that a right should exist because it already exists. Assume we’ve been asked to write a new Bill of Rights.
So should an article guaranteeing the right to own firearms be included?
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Let’s start with the blank page that the OP implies. No arguments that a right should exist because it already exists. Assume we’ve been asked to write a new Bill of Rights.
[/QUOTE]
Let me try this a different way. Who do we represent?
If we are supposed to be representing the American people as they actually are, then, as I’ve said repeatedly, the answer is ‘yes’…we have to put that in because that’s what a large percentage of them want. A personal right to keep and bear arms that is protected by the Constitution. Attempting to not put that in would be throwing hydrogen on the fire at this point in history. Even if we assume that we can do a memory wipe of every American and write a new Constitution today, without any reference to history or the old Constitution it’s going to be the same answer…there is a sufficient percentage of the population that wants such a guaranteed right to ensure that we must put it back in, unless we first magically take all the guns away, wipe all of the gun owners minds of both the history of the various anti-gun folks past tactics and obvious efforts to take all those guns and any knowledge of the history of gun ownership in the US from them. If we are going to that level of fantasy then I suppose we could just leave it out by fiat…but if we can’t do all of that, then it’s going to have to be in there.
Okay, you keep saying a large percentage of people want gun ownership. What percentage are you taking about here? A majority?
Well, if we assume that all gun owners would want such protections that’s something like 40-45% of the population, IIRC. Assume that some percentage of non-gun owners (such as me) would also want them and that’s probably the best answer you are going to get. A majority? I’d say yes, but even if we only count gun owners it’s still a large minority. Large enough to warrant a constitutionally guaranteed right. Hell, I’d say that anything more than 20% (maybe even less) of the population wanting such a guaranteed right warrants serious consideration.
I think it’s an important question. In a democracy, a majority guarantees its rights just be existing. So there’s no reason to give a majority any special rights (in fact, I’d say there’s a good argument against giving a majority any special rights).
But you seem to feel that those who support a full right to own firearms (which I’ll define as the kind of thing guaranteed by the existing Second Amendment) may not rise to a majority.
So my question is if a minority wants full gun ownership rights and a majority wants limited gun ownership rights, why should the minority rather than the majority get what it wants? Shouldn’t it be the will of the majority?
Flip the question around. Suppose it was a majority that wanted full gun ownership rights and a minority that wanted limited gun ownership rights. Would you favor a constitutional amendment granting that minority their wishes in defiance of the will of the majority? (This is a rhetorical question. Obviously from what you’ve said you would not.)
So from the arguments you’ve made, it’s not really an issue about how many people support gun ownership. If the majority agrees with gun ownership, you agree with the majority. But if the majority opposed gun ownership, you’d side with the minority in still favoring it. So it’s gun ownership not majority rule that you’re really arguing for here.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
I think it’s an important question. In a democracy, a majority guarantees its rights just be existing. So there’s no reason to give a majority any special rights (in fact, I’d say there’s a good argument against giving a majority any special rights).
[/QUOTE]
No…that’s now why we have rights. We have rights to limit the potential of either the government or a majority (or even a strong and vocal minority) from infringing on things we, as a people, consider important enough to protect.
I don’t know, but it seems irrelevant to me. I think a majority of Americans desires a personal right to keep and bear arms but constrained to a greater or lesser degree exactly as it’s constrained today, but even if that’s not true it doesn’t matter one way or another as to whether we should enshrine a personal right to keep and bear arms in the Constitution.
Because a large number of Americans DOES want such a right enshrined in the Constitution, and because, clearly, a small but vocal minority has done everything in it’s power to take that right away…and that is WITH a freaking Constitutional right. They have used every dirty trick to accomplish this goal, including simply interpreting it out of existence. So, we have a large percentage (whether majority or minority) who wants such a right, and clear evidence that it needs to be protected, because if it isn’t the eventual outcome pretty clearly is that a large percentage of Americans, whether they want the right or not, will be deprived of the choice.
We ARE flipping it around, Nemo. We are talking about a minority who wants an all out ban, who has demonstrated repeatedly that they don’t want to work within the actual system we have to remove the Amendment (and that begs the question…why haven’t they? The 18th was overturned, why no serious attempt to overturn the 2nd? Why, instead, these sneaky, underhanded tactics?), yet here we are, seriously discussing writing a new Constitution and leaving it out.
I think a majority of Americans wants gun ownership, true enough (whether they exercise that right or not and actually own a gun…they want the right to a choice to make their own decision about it). The key point, however, is that a large percentage, whether they are a majority or a minority wants that right enshrined in the Constitution. If that changes, then we have the mechanisms to change the Constitution. We always have. It’s been done. The only reason to NOT put it in, by fiat, is because the anti-gun folks don’t actually think they could rally enough popular support to do it. Or, they are so unused to using dirty, underhanded tactics that they don’t realize the COULD do it. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, though, and say it’s the former. But things change, and gun ownership in the US is actually on the decline…as, ironically, is gun violence and gun deaths. Again, ironically, this is at a time when gun controls have been relaxed and liberalized…and it’s now that the anti-gun folks are pushing, again, for their controls. I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with several sensationalized instances of loons going off the deep end and using guns to murder innocent kids and other victims.
Gah…I hate posting from my iPad sometimes. This should have been:
Your responses still seem evasive to me and that makes it hard for me to follow your argument. You seem to be arguing that gun ownership is only supported by a minority but the majority of people agree with them. Huh?