What does specifically specifically mean?
I honestly don’t understand why people bother to debate the first clause of the amendment. The second clause, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” seems clear enough, and I see nothing that makes it contingent on the first clause. So the first clause is essentially a waste of ink. They might as well have written, “I like ponies, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
That said, as a veteran and the owner of several guns, I think the amendment should be repealed and replaced with something that is cognizant of the fact that “arms” can mean almost anything, including “strategic arms,” and that a literal reading of the current amendment allows me to carry a suitcase nuke around.
And given the current Supreme Court, I would not want to bet on what would happen if someone sued for his right to do just that.
There are many countries in Europe that don’t recognize a right to bear arms. Are they not free societies? OTOH, name one country on earth without the right of a free press that you consider to be free.
As I said in my second post…
[QUOTE=John Mace]
There are many countries in Europe that don’t recognize a right to bear arms. Are they not free societies?
[/QUOTE]
There are many countries in Europe who feel it IS right for the government to ban certain aspects of free speech, and several that impinge on religious freedom (such as the right to wear religious garments or icons). Are they free societies? I’d say yes…but their definition of ‘free’ DIFFERS from ours. That’s why we aren’t European and they aren’t American.
Depends on your definition of ‘free press’. Try and publish something concerning Holocaust denial in, say, Germany and then we can debate what is ‘free’. Basically, because other countries do something does not mean that we have to…or vice versa. There are many aspects of European government in the various European countries that would grate on Americans…and, again, vice versa. Gun ownership is merely one of the differences, and personally it doesn’t get much traction with me that Europeans or anyone else don’t agree that personal gun ownership should be a protected right. I’m sure they are militantly disinterested in my opinion on things I disagree with that they do as well. 
-XT
Well, we restrict “certain aspects” of arms, too. If we had a 2nd amendment with restrictions comparable to Germany’s anti-NAZI speech laws, it wouldn’t be much of a 2nd amendment. You might be able to buy a BB gun.
Point being, we have demonstrable proof that there are free societies without any gun rights. We don’t have anything of the sort for societies without any right of free press.
I’m not saying we should be like Europe. I’m saying that the existence of free societies there demonstrates the lack of need for gun rights to have a free society. They are an anachronism.
I don’t possess a gun. I am in your society. Your society is therefore not free.
That, or possession of firearms is not necessary to a free society. Take your pick.
q
I give you the Arab Spring. To include Syria, which doesn’t seem shy about smithereening it’s own citizens, yet they fight on, and Libya where they fought on and overthrew a vicious dictator. Syrians may lose in the end, or not, but they fight on in spite of being massivly outgunned…oh but those revolutionaries were not fighting the might of the US military you say? Exhibit A: Iraq. Exhibit B: Afghanistan. In both places, ill trained irregulars with small arms and improvised bombs have stymied the US military’s objectives. Exhibit B gets extra points because peasants with shoulder arms also repelled the not-shy USSR military, so you can’t blame it on namby pamby US rules of engagement.
To win against a citizenry, it is not sufficient to outgun them, even massively so. You have to get them to stop resisting your military. As long as they have the will, and any means at all to resist, you will never have peace. Kill enough of them, and you no longer have the populace to support a viable economy, so even in winning you have lost.
[QUOTE=begbert2]
I don’t possess a gun. I am in your society. Your society is therefore not free.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know how to read. I am in your society. Your society is therefore not free. I don’t practice a religion. I am in your society. Your society is therefore not free.
That, or the ability to publish and disseminate what you want is not necessary to a free society because I can’t read anyway. Take your pick…
-XT
Well then instead of spouting meaningless platitudes of what gun ownership\ gun censorship accomplishes let’s actually look at the results.
I can’t think of a single dictatorship that doesn’t exercise a fairly large control over the press. Conversely I can’t think of a single country that that completely controls it’s press that also has a free democratic society. This leads to the obvious conclusion that a free press is critical to having a free society.
On the other hand I can name NUMEROUS countries where just about anyone can own a gun and yet the society is a complete dictatorship. Conversely we can name free societies where it is easy to own a gun. Thus the obvious conclusion is that gun ownership has no effect on how free a society is.
I give you a civilian government that is easily(and peacefully) “overthrowable” every few years that most can participate in.
I agree this is the fundamental point. Is the right to own a gun at the same level as the right of free speech or freedom of religion or the right to due process?
Personally I don’t think it is. I don’t think that anybody can argue there is a general right to own property and that the right to own a gun is like a right to own an automobile or the right to own a television. Nobody seems to regard these as constitutional rights - at most some people might feel it should be a constitutional right while acknowledging that such a general right is not recognized as existing. In reality, owning a gun is recognized as a right which is specific to guns as opposed to other items of property.
So why should fire-arms have a special right of ownership? The two bases seem to be resistance to government tyranny and personal defense against crime.
I’ve already addressed the resistance basis but let me repeat myself: it no longer has any foundation in reality. A mass of people armed with personal fire-arms can no longer form a credible resistance to government tyranny. As long as the tyranny holds the loyalty of the armed forces, those armed forces will be able to overwhelm any citizen resistance. A citizen militia cannot stand up to a modern military.
On the personal defense basis, I’ll acknowledge that there are cases where people use fire-arms to defend themselves against crime. But - and I hope gun supporters will return the favor in acknowledging reality - there are also cases where firearms are used to perpetuate crimes. So to me, it’s an issue of weighing the balance. Are the benefits gained from firearms as a means of preventing crime greater or lesser than the costs of firearms as a means of performing crimes? I feel the evidence shows that the cost greatly outweighs the benefits.
When it’s non-violent as in civil protest.
Or when you enter the voting booth?
I know of plenty of tools that have nonzero value for personal defense. Probably the most potent of them, in modern society, is the cell phone. Or, if you want to be more direct about it, a bullet-resistant vest. If people wanted to crusade for their right to own body armor, I’d be right up there with them. But I’ve never yet seen any feasible explanation for how a gun can possibly be used for personal defense.
No, you don’t know how to write. You said that possession of firearms is necessary for a free society. You did NOT say that the right to possess firearms is necessary for a free society.
Problem is though, you were on firmer ground arguing that freedom required everyone having guns, because this posits that the guns themselves serve a vital purpose towards protecting freedom (perhaps by keeping those feisty Canadians too scared to invade, or something). It’s worth noting that the amendment itself was passed on this basis - people have to be able to have guns because them having guns serves a higher purpuse. But if all you’re arguing for is a right to have the guns, well, I have a harder time seeing a clear causal link between that and any other thing necessary for freedom. The argument postited the founding fathers no longer applies, so basically you’re saying that if people don’t let you have guns you feel oppressed, and that’s all there is to it, nothing more.
That impresses me less. I could as validly claim that the right to possess child porn is necessary to be a free society, presuming that there are people out there who wish they could have it. All I lack is an outdated amendment backing me up.
It is an anachronism, for the most part, and it’s very much tied up in the concept of raising a militia for national defense as opposed to having a standing army. It can’t be overstated how distasteful many Enlightenment-era thinkers found the idea of a professional soldier class. It’s very easy to forget this in light of the current American veneration of the armed forces.
It was Madison, the advocate for strong federal government, who said “The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”
Professional soldiers were viewed as rough, violent men who obeyed orders, not laws or ideals. Better for national defense to rely on a well-armed populace were ready to fight but who were citizens of the Republic first and foremost, soldiers only when the circumstances required it.
[QUOTE=begbert2]
No, you don’t know how to write.
[/QUOTE]
Sure, and thanks for pointing that out. I assume your point is that it should have been ‘write’ instead of ‘read’ (unless you were making an unflattering though perhaps not untrue statement about my abilities), but I have to admit I don’t see the distinction as being all that meaningful, so I must be missing something.
Well, that might be what I said, but it wasn’t what I meant in the context of this thread. I’d have to go back and look at what I wrote earlier on my iPad…I certainly didn’t mean for anyone to parse things with a razor or get into maze like semantic arguments.
It might be a distinction important to you, but to me it’s simply semantics. This is a discussion about the 2nd Amendment, which IS about the ‘right’ to possess firearms by free citizens.
I disagree. Which was the point about not being able to read (or write, if that’s important to you) yet still protected by freedom of speech and not needing religion but protected by a freedom of religion. The writing itself doesn’t posit some magical protection for society…it’s merely part of what our society THINKS of as aspects that ensure our ‘freedom’.
Gun ownership was viewed in the context of the revolution as well as the colonial realities that existed before and after the revolution, certainly, but I don’t think it was about a ‘higher purpuse(sic)’…merely a means to ensure that free citizens would be guaranteed that future governments couldn’t simply abrogate their ability to keep and bear arms. Just like the First Amendment was put in to guarantee free citizens would have a freedom from religion, a right to free speech and assembly. They are all part of a bigger picture, taken in context, to limit the ability of government to impose short term abrogations of any of those things, because each represented a power that the people could use as a check on the government. None of them were magical wands that granted the ability to overthrow the government.
Seems all the same to me. ‘Freedom’ is defined by what you, I and our society THINKS it is. It’s all conceptual in the end. As my example earlier about Europe was supposed to address. In the US, gun ownership…the concept of gun ownership…is still considered one of the things that compose ‘freedom’ by a large majority of citizens. No all, to be sure, as demonstrated by threads like this…but not a trivial number, either. Like the other rights guaranteed in the Constitution, their power is more in the symbol of what We, The People THINK they represent with respect to what ‘freedom’ means to us all. So, freedom of speech is important to us because we THINK it’s important. As noted, the very concept of what ‘freedom of speech’ actually IS, and what it ENTAILS, varies fairly significantly between peoples who obviously think of themselves as ‘free’. And in this country you are going to get a pretty wide variety as well…I know a lot of folks who would be just fine with banning all porn, say, or all sexual writing, swear words, or ‘un-Christian’ (whatever even THAT means) writings or concepts. They would cheerfully do this, despite the fact that it’s protected in the Constitution. That’s exactly the attitude that the FF’s were trying to avoid by attempting to broadly guarantee certain rights that the government couldn’t simply wave away due to the expedience of the moment.
I disagree that it no longer applies. Certainly if someone takes away what has historically been a right without using the mechanisms that exist to do so I’m going to feel oppressed. If I’m a Christian fundamentalist and am trying to say that all porn and all writings with any sort of sexual content should be banned, would you think that someone might feel oppressed? I’m guessing that you would say ‘yeah, but that’s different’…but IMHO it’s not. It’s exactly the same thing.
As I’ve said repeatedly in these debates, there are mechanisms in place to amend or abolish Amendments. If the 2nd is anachronistic, if it’s no longer meaningful, then use them. Every right laid out in the BOR and the various Amendments is subject to change if society believes that they no longer apply…and that includes the 2nd.
Well, I can’t help that you are unimpressed. I’m equally unimpressed with the argument as a whole and this paragraph in particular. You equate gun ownership to merely an unsavory and marginal aspect of freedom of speech. Say, instead, that you could validly claim that the right to possess ANY ‘porn’ (by some nebulous but insidious definition that encompasses huge swaths of what some Christian fundy might consider ‘porn’) is necessary to a free society, presuming that there are people out there who wish they could have it. Is it important that we have ‘porn’ to ensure our society is ‘free’? Well, I suppose that depends on ones perspective from an individuals viewpoint and world view…but our SOCIETY does believe that it’s important. And if we don’t, in the future, then there are mechanisms in place to replace or modify the ‘anachronism’ that is the First as well. Luckily, those mechanisms would entail a large majority of Americans wanting that change in order for it to happen.
-XT
ETA: Not sure what was up with the board…I couldn’t post the above for several hours for some reason. Haven’t really read through it so hope it’s at least partially coherent.
I figured it would come down to a semantic argument over the definition of defense. If you shoot someone who is attacking you then you have defended yourself.
Why do people always think “taking arms up against the government” has to mean revolting against the feds. It could mean going against a rouge county sheriff.
Someone impress everyone and tell them what I’m talking about.