We, the people, in order to form a more perfect and secure Union do state and affirm the following:
That we are a nation of helpless halfasses; as such, we cannot be trusted with possession of weapons capable of hurting ourselves or others.
Under the benign and loving guidance of great visionaries such as William Jefferson Clinton, Charles Shumer, Sarah Brady and Rosie O’Donnell (among others), we have seen the error of our foolish ways.
We renounce our misguided efforts to assume responsibility for our own defense; instead we place our eternal faith in the wisdom and integrity of the aforementioned and those like them; they are greatly enlightened and care only for our well-being.
Now, therefore, we willingly surrender ALL of our dangerous and evil weaponry so that all may live in full security. We do so willingly and joyfully, replete in the knowledge that never again will we (or the children) suffer the bloody maiming and death these horrendous firearms have caused.
WOW! I have to admit you have shocked me with that definition. Is that for real? What is Webster thinking? Seriously though, I am kinda surprised, but perhaps educated. I guess “organized” is used MUCH more loosely than I thought!
Not really. Tracer cited that portion of the Constitution I was thinking of when I created my “proposed” constitutional “amendment”.
I confess. I have been very deceitful. My proposed constitutional amendment is nothing new at all; I created it merely by paraphrasing Article I Section 8 Clause 16. I cite this Clause constantly in person and in online debates on gun control, but I have never gotten a reply, so I was forced to change strategies. The text we are debating is already in the Constitution, although I changed some words so it would not look suspiciously familiar.
My faux proposal was,
I used what I intended to be fairly straightforward Merriam-Webster type synonyms to create my doppleganger. “Organizing” from the Constitution became “marshalling” in my text; “arming” became “preparing”; “disciplining” became “educating, and directing”. “The militia” became “civilian gun-owners” - not strictly a synonym but one which fits “militia” as defined in the Militia Act of 1792 (and Miller v. United States); Joe_Cool and SPOOFE also captured my thinking in a couple of their posts. The language at the end about states executing training programs created by the Feds, is also a pretty straightforward paraphrase of I / 8 / 16.
My intent was two-fold: to get people to recognize that there are parts of the Constitution other than the Bill of Rights, and to get people to interpret the meaning of I / 8 / 16 without prejudice along the lines of “the Framers always agree with Me”. It is clear, from the text of I / 8 / 16, that the Congress has extensive powers to regulate militias. Looking only at the Second Amendment, proponents of broader gun rights have tried, quite successfully, to prove that individual gun-owners are the militia. From a cynical point of view, this is a strategic error (legal correctness notwithstanding) - it subjects individual gun-owners to broadly-stated Federal measures designed to organize and discipline them, as well as being trained and governed by state-appointed officers.
Someone pointed out that we haven’t defined a gun. That’s why I used ‘firearm’.
I’ve always understood one of the meta-principles underlying the Constitution as a whole was one of healthy distrust - of government, of fellow citizens, of concentrated power in general.
I don’t trust most of my fellow citizens to use a gun wisely and safely. I may trust tracer or Glitch to do so, but I’m far more worried about a gun in the hands of most of them boobs out there, than I am about the prospect of totalitarian government.
And like the vast majority of my fellow citizens, I don’t want to remedy this problem by carrying a gun around with me. In all but a few economically advanced countries, one can walk the streets at night in safety, despite their more stringent gun laws. Most Americans want to move that direction, rather than backwards toward a world where each person is responsible for his/her own self-defense.
In a nutshell, that’s what the pro-gun lobby is really up against: people feel that the ‘more guns’ answer to reducing personal risk is not only of dubious effectiveness, but a big step backwards in a larger sense.
Does this mean we all get nukes if we want them? Cool! After all, the 2nd says ‘arms’, not ‘guns’, and nuclear arms are, by definition, arms.
While nukes are an extreme example, it’s apparent that to allow individual citizens access to too great a level of firepower increases the risk that each of us face from each other; at the extreme, we’re all hostages of each other’s whims. I think I’ve got plenty of company in believing that even the level to which that’s true today due to advanced firearms is an unreasonable state of affairs.
Mr. Z, do you advocate that we should each be able to purchase nuclear arms, and if not, where do you draw the line, and why?
BTW, the question that went with my proposed amendment is not ‘what did the Framers intend’, but ‘what do the pro-gun types want, here in 2000?’ In other words, if we were going to renegotiate the amendment now, what would each side consider to be the essentials of what it wanted?
After all, if we just want to go with original intent, we can stick with the current 2nd amendment, thanks, and can continue arguing over its meaning. Which precisely isn’t the point of this thread.
The term arms has been defined by the coutrts and the Miller case defines it as any weapon that would be necesary for a militia. THe case ruled that a sawed off shotgun was not protected because it is not essential to the militia.
I would place no limit on firearms. grenades and land mines, I would have a little more trouble with.
As for “assault weapons” they should be available without restriction. They are responsible for less than 1% of all gun crimes and injuries.
[quote]
A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.
— Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1785. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (Memorial Edition) Lipscomb and Bergh, editors.
Thomas Jefferson was a politician. Politicians today and always are completely full of shit. Case in point: William Jefferson Clinton, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinsky”. Thomas Jefferson (when asked about having sex with his slave Sally Hemmings), “Those who do not fear the truth have nothing to fear from lies.” The DNA says different Tommy boy, the more things change the more obvious it becomes that some things don’t change. TJ wrote the Declaration of Independence which states that all men are created equal, yet he owned dozens of slaves when he wrote this. Scholars tell us that Jefferson was opposed to slavery in principle but didn’t dare express his views publicly in Virginia since it was political suicide. Thomas Jefferson said what was politically expedient and I agree with most of what he said (except for when he compared black people to orangutans) but I question his motivations in some cases.
Now lets take a closer look at your interpretation of what the politicians of 1789 really meant when they ratified the second amendment. It’s your assertion that they supported the right of any idiot or group of idiots to purchase all the guns necessary to overthrow the state should it become necessary. The 2nd amendment was not written to go into effect 100 years after they were dead, they had to live with the consequences of their actions. Revolts (like the Whiskey Rebellion) were not as uncommon then as they are now. Although I can’t quote any specific statements to the contrary I find it hard to believe that colonial politicians were of the mindset that if they ever stepped out of line the public should be well armed enough to kill the lot of them. (If you appreciate my sense of humor then at this point in my diatribe you should get the mental picture of Robert Deniro in a three pointed hat saying in his famous Al Capone voice, “Who do we think we are, I want ourselves DEAD, our families DEAD!”) I’m not using historical records here, I’m just applying common sense. The 2nd amendment was written to prevent the federal gov’t from disarming the militias and rendering a state or states defenseless. If they wanted any individual to have a right to own and bear any type of weapon then they would have said exactly that, they would not have mentioned the militias.
Rex, you can make up anything you want to about the Framers. Go ahead, have fun. But all of your suppositions are worthless in the face of the evidence which is that a) the founders wanted the people to have certain rights guranteed b) they did not consider the “people” to be a bunch of idiots and c) they felt that any tyrant should be overthrown, even if it were one of them.
I find it interesting that you exhibit such a cynical distrust of politicians on one hand, but want to give them more power over you on the other. "they are all a bunch of self serving lying scumbags and I think they should disarm me and have 100% of the power.
I think it is time that I revealed myself to be a gun owner and a big supporter of MY right to keep and bear arms. My point was that politicians have never truly been in favor of the general public having unrestricted access to firearms no matter what they said publicly. Its only common sense that our leaders are afraid of people with concealed hand guns or sniper rifles. I agree with RTFirefly, I don’t trust my fellow citizens with firearms because some of them are criminals and some of them are just plain idiots. If I gave the impression that I supported more gun control legislation then I apologize. I distrust everyone including the NRA and the gun control advocates. It just gets me mad when anyone claims the founding fathers are on their side. The founding fathers were mostly crafty politicians on nobody’s side but their own. I interpret everything everyone says as being self serving and specious and that includes the Bill of Rights. Before the founding fathers created the Frankenstein’s monster that is the federal gov’t they decided to slap some chains on it and that’s all the Bill of Rights was intended to be. They never intended to wear those chains themselves. The Bill of Rights restricts state gov’ts today only because the power of the federal gov’t and the Supreme Court forces it on them.
I don’t like it that there are so many guns in America but I have conceded that there is nothing I can do about it except to disarm myself. There have always been guns in America. The pilgrims carried guns with them as they stepped off the Mayflower onto a foreign and forbidding shore and I’m willing to bet those guns were loaded. I oppose gun control legilation, not because of the second amendment or the will of the founding fathers or any other BS, I oppose them because they are pointless. Guns will remain available for sale in this country (along with drugs and prostitution) as long as there are people willing to pay money for them.
You seem to know more about the law than I do Z, if the SC supports an individual’s right to bear arms why are so many people in jail right now on weapons charges?
Avalongod, I’m glad that I can help you cure your apparently dreadful case of ignorance. I’m also glad to help dispel the haze of delusions that perpetuates your consciousness. If I can do any more for you in the future, please, don’t hesitate to ask, and it will be promptly ignored.
I am currently sitting in the corner, trying to imagine the sounds of Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain over the din of the Donna Summer record my guests are dancing to. I tried playing “Funky Drums” earlier in the evening, but nobody danced. You all had to hog the turntable with your BeeGees records. When Tracer tried to slip the hardest working man in show business back onto the hi-fi, you didn’t dance to that either. MysterEcks has told us he is glad that there never was any soul music, since no one would ever have listened or danced to it. Saint Zero has informed us that it would be too expensive to have a band the size of Parliament-Funkadelic.
I was briefly entertained by a conversation with SPOOFE and company about whether it was accurate to refer to KC outfit as a “Sunshine Band” in the first place, but I still feel curiously defunked. I simply can’t enter the bitter debate about whether Andy Gibb should have made a career with his brothers.
I have even tried placing my “history of funk” compilation CDs on the mantelpiece, in the hopes of reminding people of the purpose of my party. Somebody sidled over to it, said a few words about Shaft movies, and then began shouting “YMCA! YMCA!” when a song of the same title came on. I even went outside and checked the address to make sure I hadn’t stumbled onto someone else’s party.
Yes. It’s true. I’ve tried the straightforward approach. It failed. I’ve tried the deceitful approach. It failed, only more quietly. Now I fall back on the final option of a desperate man - references to underground 70s music, and its mainstream imitators.
I am going to have to defer to someone with a little spare time today. WHat I do know is that the 2nd amendment, like the first, is not absolute. THe Miller case clearly set down the rule that weapons of certain types can be banned. Aslo the Firearms legislation of 1932 made certain arms illegal, namely full auto weapons.
One important thing to keep in mind is that less than 1% of gun crimes involve so-called Assault weapons. banning them is like putting outlawing the Formula 1 race cars to cut down on auto accidents.
I’ve seen statistics like this many times, but they always seem to be applied to different things. “Semi-automatic rifles”, “military-type guns”, “assault weapons”, etc. 1% doesn’t tell us much until I know what it’s being applied to, and whether it’s from pre-1994 or post-1994 research.
I know people are tired of seeing this post, but I haven’t quite given up on it yet.
Okay, Boris, I’m playing catch-up here, so bear with me whilst I exposit here:
Article 1, Sec. 8, par. 16, states quite clearly:
The system floundered about in sporadic fits and starts for the next one hundred fifty-three years until The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as 10 USC, Chap. 13, par. 311 finally officially codified the militia of these Untied States:
It then went on to further define the classes, or subcategories, of the militia:
So by the definition of the militia, and the further amplification of its classes, the right of the individual citizen to possess arms is as abundantly clear here as it is stated in the 2nd Amendment.
Now, to the issues before us.
1) One theory of gun control holds that joining the military or the police automatically makes one a safe, sane and stable member of society, and that only these safe, trained and stable individuals should be allowed to keep and bear arms (provided that they are locked up securely in a vault when they’re are not actually out policing the streets or killing our country’s enemies).
As a former active duty member of our Armed Forces, I say that this is unequivocal horseshit. I received more and better safety and marksmanship training from my family by age 7 than 6 years of military service.
The only thing this theory of “keep and bear” will do is completely disarm the populace from any and all types of firearms, leaving the police and the Federal government the sole protectors of liberty and domestic tranquility, which I think the proponents of this theory would find just jolly.
Sorry, this chuck ain’t buying.
2) Another theory similar to the first seems to hold that only the above categories be allowed to privately possess firearms (as well as a few influential, “connected” people), perhaps keeping them stored in “Gun Clubs” or Police Armories, there to be “checked out” when the owner is going shooting or hunting.
The problem I have is that this is unacceptable to the first category of folks, and they will try to use their influence to muck up the process, like over regulating Storage Laws as to make private clubs untenable.
3) Yet another theory of gun control posits private possession to all qualifying citizens, but with a licensing and registration process, usually with some form of mandatory training, with periodic refresher courses.
Yet this is unacceptable to both the first and second categories of people, who will try to use their influence to sabotage the process, with expensive licensing fees, on the theory that the licensing agency should pay for itself.
Or perhaps a complicated registration process, with enough picky requirements and bureaucratic pitfalls to make a 1040 Long Form with Attached Schedules and Itemized Deductions look easy. Or they could do what New York did with their training programs, as Mr.Zambezi has illustrated for us.
4) Yet a fourth theory of gun control proposes a simple, one time mandatory gun safety training program, as a means of reducing accidental deaths and injuries from firearms.
But this is unacceptable to categories one through three above, and they will use their influence to continuously agitate and lobby for their versions of the law, whilst their cronies within the system do what New York did with their Hunter Safety Training Program.
5) Still another thinks that a waiting period coupled with an extensive riminal background check is the way to go.
But this still has several problems, the least of which is that it is utterly unacceptable to categories one through 4 above. “Waiting Periods” have no valid scientific support to show that they are effective at reducing crime or other forms of domestic violence, in spite of the altogether commonly sensible argument that crimes of passion may be averted by the prospective perpetrator “cooling off” during the waiting period.
And then there’s the issue of gun-control proponents who find themselves in positions of authority, like a local sheriff, who categorically denies prospective gun buyers’ background checks solely on the general principle that they don’t want private citizens owning guns, as has happened in California.
I can go on like this for a while. Other than outright banning, whatever level of gun control we have, it will still be unacceptable to some segment of society.
One other problem I’ll address is the “Straw Man Purchaser”.
This is a person with a clean record buying firearms expressly for the purpose of reselling them to people with criminal record who cannot buy them for themselves.
Much legislation has been proposed to curb these “Straw Men”, from one-gun-a-month limits, to the banning of private sales of firearms (either buy it from a store and undergo a criminal record check, or not at all).
The problem as I (and manny, manny others) see it is these measures lump the criminal and the law-abiding into the same category, and doesn’t address such issues as collection sales (like an estate liquidation), even though it has consistently been shown that criminals have no regard for the law, and will continue to disregard the newer, more restrictive laws with the same abandon as they have ignored all the previous laws!
We say this: put the burden back onto the police to investigate and catch these law-breakers, back onto the prosecutors and courts to try and convict these miscreants, and back onto our penal system to insure that these criminals do not see the light of a free day again for a long, long time.
And then there’s the “Cultural” aspect.
There is a persistent, pernicious stereotype of gun owners being a bunch of “Good ol’ boy” rednecks, who get liquored up and shoot at anything that moves while singing “Way Down South in Dixie” and waving the Stars and Bars.
Or of paranoid patriots wearing camouflage and sitting in bunkers waiting for the commies to come and get 'em.
Or of paranoid suburbanites sitting in darkened houses, waiting for the gangs to bust in their doors so they can take 'em out.
Or of insecure males, surrounding themselves with large-caliber firearms as a substitute phallus in compensation for their, ahem, inadequacies.
While I can’t deny that there are gun owners like that, I challenge anyone to come up with a statistically valid scientific study showing what percentage of gun owners are in this category.
From my personal experience of twenty-eight years of being in the “Gun Culture”, I can honestly say that I have never met them.
I feel (separate from what I can cite and show through scientific method) that these stereotypes are harped upon and perpetuated by those members of our society that don’t understand firearms, who don’t like firearms, who are genuinely afraid of firearms and the people who own them, and in their fear and ignorance lash out at the Gun Culture in a defensive reflex with these insulting personifications of gun owners.
Mankind, historically, has demonized the unknown, and what they perceive as “the enemy”: “Godless Commie Bastards”, “Barbarian Nazi Huns”, “Nips”, “The Red Horde”, “The Yellow Horde”, etc., etc…
The gun control crowd and those with no stake in the issue one way or the other are blatantly guilty of this tactic, using ad hominem to try and demonize, in the greater public’s mind’s eye, the entire Gun Culture to garner support for their cause.
And then there’s hazy, imprecise terminology
Machine gun. Assault Rifle. Assault Weapon. Automatic Handguns. All of them descriptive of one class of weapon or another, yet each of them consistently misconstrued, sometimes deliberately so, in an attempt to scare people with rhetoric.
And here, even Webster’s breaks down. I tend to use the military definitions, as they are more precise. In a nutshell:
Automatic Weapon: (also called Fully-Automatic) a firearm capable of firing more than one round for each pull of the trigger, and which the action of firing ejects the spent round, chambers the next round and re-cocks and discharges the weapon as long as the trigger is depressed.
Semi-Automatic Weapon: (sometime abbreviated to just Automatic, hence the occasional confusion) a firearm capable of firing only one round for each pull of the trigger, and which the action of firing ejects the spent round, chambers a fresh round and re-cocks the weapon for firing the next time the trigger is pulled.
Machine Gun: an automatic, typically belt-fed crew-served weapon, usually bipod, tripod, or vehicle mounted.
Crew Served: any weapon that typically takes more than one person to effectively transport, deploy and/or operate. Including (but not limited to): machineguns, mortars, artillery, air-defense cannons, tank cannons, missile systems, rocket launchers and missile launchers.
Assault Rifle: a lightweight, typically clip-fed automatic rifle, usually issued to the individual soldier as their personal weapon.
Typified by flash suppressors, bayonet lugs, pistol-type grips, collapsible or folding stocks, detachable magazines, and a sturdy, corrosion-resistant matte black or blued finish. May have either wooden or synthetic composite stocks.
Submachine Gun: a compact, typically clip-fed automatic weapon, smaller than a rifle yet larger than a handgun, usually chambered in pistol-caliber ammunition, most often issued to police-type forces and special-warfare units.
Handgun: a weapon capable of being held and discharged in one hand, either a clip-fed semiautomatic or using a revolving cylinder holding the rounds in a circular arrangement, utilizing either a single- or double-action system of firing.
Single Action: a weapon, typically (but not exclusively) a handgun, which must first be manually cocked by the operator before the trigger mechanism will allow the weapon to be discharged.
Double Action: a weapon, typically (but not exclusively) a handgun, in which engaging the trigger mechanism will both cock and discharge the weapon.
Bolt, Lever and Pump Actions: descriptive of various manually operated action systems, typical on rifles and shotguns, in which the action must be manually cycled by the operator to eject the spent round, load the next round, and cock the weapon for firing.
Magazine: a device, either external or integral to a weapon, that holds ammunition
Clip: a detachable box- or drum-like magazine for a rifle or handgun.
Burst Capability: a recent innovation that recognizes the inherent inaccuracy of automatic weaponry after the first few rounds due to excessive recoil (the “jackhammer effect”).
Burst capability limits the number of rounds that will be discharged from one pull of the trigger, typically 3- or 5-rounds at a time.
Note that these are not necessarily legal definitions. Although, if the authors of gun-control legislation were to consult either the military or other knowledgeable experts on firearms, there may be a lot less confusion not only in the law, but in the public perception as well, concerning firearms.
So What Does Keep And Bear Mean?
Well, if you use the “Minuteman” model of the citizen militia, this would be a rifle, possibly an automatic rifle, or a shotgun, and possibly a handgun (in spite of their limited battlefield utility, they do have their uses; else why would cops have them?). Not an artilley piece, or their privately owned tank, not a flamethrower, not a grenade launcher (which the military classifies as a squad-level support heavy weapon, even though a grenadier can carry his launcher and a decent supply of grenades), not a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) Launcher (same as a grenade launcher).
As well, since we as a Nation have killed of most of the natural predators, hunting quality weapons, be they bolt, lever or pump action rifles or shotguns, would certainly be allowed as well (I hate to hear about the occasional knucklehead who goes hunting with an M-16!)
Wildlife Conservation and Game Management is crucial nowadays, not only because of Urban Sprawl, but also because there aren’t enough natural predators to keep the wild herbivore population in check. And noble as the PETA folks’ motives may be, a clean heart shot is much more merciful to a deer than consigning it to death by slow starvation or disease because there’s not enough food to feed and sustain a healthy, burgeoning deer population.
You don’t like to hunt? Fine.
You don’t want to hunt? Fine.
But the simple fact of the matter is this: either we re-introduce the natural predators back into the food chain, and run the risk of having the local mountain lion, wolf or bear carry little Timmy off for supper, or we allow hunters (preferably trained, licensed and regulated) to cull the population of deer, rabbits and such.
And those who feel the need to use a fully-automatic weapon to drop a deer don’t need to be hunting in the first place, because they can’t be interested in the meat they might get, as it will be so shot up as to be inedible. They’re probably just more interested in killing something, and need to see a head bender to get right upstairs.
Most people don’t realize that there are usually minimum/maximum caliber and bullet-type restrictions on hunting; the minimum so as to have a quick, clean kill, the maximum to preclude the preposterous, and bullet-type to reinforce the quick, clean kill principle (penetration and tissue damage being a few of the many factors considered).