# Repealing the 2nd Amendment **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 14, 2016, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326 "2016-06-14T04:05:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/61 "2016-06-14T20:21:36Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > What does “own the consequences” really mean, though? Obviously that there will always be a minority of citizens - good guys who will later become criminals, good guys who next week will just get drunk and angry, a few crazy people and a few terrorists - and that we cannot possibly ever reliably distinguish these people ahead of time. Laws that allow anyone to freely own guns inevitably put guns into the hands of these people. So gun atrocities are a direct result of the chosen freedom to own weapons. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/62 "2016-06-14T21:25:30Z")
> [@Waymore](#): > > This question is open to everybody, but especially Americans in favor of stricter gun control. Why isn’t there an effort to repeal the 2nd amendment? > > The only sensible argument I can see, from the perspective of somebody who wants to curtail gun ownership, is that amending the Constitution is just too hard. Can’t win, why bother. The reason there isn’t a movement to repeal the 2nd amendment is very obviously because it’s not politically possible. Whether one claims that because of the NRA (as some sinister corrupt disembodied force) or one admits the obvious reality that too many ordinary Americans would oppose such a change doesn’t really the change the answer to the question. Yes, politically serious people don’t waste time with such a proposal because they know it has zero chance of happening. The other line of argument, that court precedents could be overturned to reinterpret the 2nd amendment as just meaning guns for state controlled military forces, doesn’t really answer the question either, or again implicitly gives the correct answer: repeal of the amendment itself is light years away from being political feasible. Yes you could also conceivable gut the amendment by getting judges to change the interpretation, but they’d be overruling a pretty long standing and strong line of logic. ‘Militia’ at the time the document was written did indeed mean every person capable of carrying a fire arm, and the wording was chosen specifically as the right of the people to bear arms, not the right of states to organize militia’s and arm them, which it could as easily have said if that instead had been the idea. The seemingly bifurcated logic, mentioning militia (the states’ or local communities’ organization), but also the people’s (not the states’) right, is reasonably interpreted…as it has been. IOW there’s also an ethics and honesty issue in the gambit of gutting it by pretending it meant something it didn’t rather than actually getting the consensus of your fellow citizens you need to change it straight forwardly. ---
**Author:** ![PoppaSan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/poppasan/32/189_2.png) [@PoppaSan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoppaSan)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/63 "2016-06-14T21:40:13Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > You have to start somewhere. Make manufacture illegal. Make selling illegal. Make ownership illegal. Make ammunition sales illegal. Send teams door to door nationwide with gunpowder-detecting dogs and if they find weapons, seize them and imprison the owners. It wouldn’t be long before guns started filling up the dropoff bins at police stations. You conveniently ignore the 4th amendment. Marijuana has been illegal at the federal level for decades. Any attempt to “win the war on drugs” using these methods would be a non-starter. If implemented, the 6th and 7th amendments would come in to play. How large of prisons do you want to pay for? Would there be enough people left to staff them? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/64 "2016-06-14T21:52:12Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > If that which is illegal is seized, then there is no compensation. For instance, if I travel overseas and spend a couple of hundred thou on drugs that are legal where I purchase them, then bring them here where they are _not_ legal and the nice doggy at the terminal gets a little too friendly with my luggage, would you call what happens afterward a “violation of the Fifth Amendment”? This type of thinking is exactly why the 2nd Ad will never be repealed. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/65 "2016-06-14T21:52:32Z")
There is no hope at all of getting 3/4 of the states to approve a repeal. Besides, that’s unnecessary. There will soon be a liberal majority on the Supreme Court. Once that majority is in place, the Court will discover that the Second Amendment doesn’t give individuals the right to own guns- that it only gives states the right to form National Guard units. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/66 "2016-06-14T21:56:50Z")
> [@PoppaSan](#): > > You conveniently ignore the 4th amendment. Marijuana has been illegal at the federal level for decades. Any attempt to “win the war on drugs” using these methods would be a non-starter. If implemented, the 6th and 7th amendments would come in to play. How large of prisons do you want to pay for? Would there be enough people left to staff them? I don’t think anyone is suggesting that getting rid of most guns in the US would be remotely easy. But it’s the **only** solution to the horrific levels of gun homicide. The simple question is, do Americans care enough about the the number of deaths to _want_ to give up their freedoms and to _try_ to get rid of all the guns. The answer at present is an unequivocal “no” - and so be it. Most prefer the screwing-for-virginity approach to gun ownership. Why do you think “Marijuana in the US” is a better analogy than “Guns in every other country”? Nobody really cares about marijuana because smoking marijuana doesn’t hurt anyone. Almost every other civilized country has succeeded in making it extremely difficult for citizens to arm themselves either legally or illegally. Why is that impossible, in the long run, in the US? Given the number of guns already in circulation it would be a long and difficult path, for sure. But the problem is not that it’s impossible, it’s that nobody wants to try. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/67 "2016-06-14T22:00:33Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > There is no hope at all of getting 3/4 of the states to approve a repeal. Besides, that’s unnecessary. There will soon be a liberal majority on the Supreme Court. Once that majority is in place, the Court will discover that the Second Amendment doesn’t give individuals the right to own guns- that it only gives states the right to form National Guard units. There’s been a liberal majority several times, and they have never decided anything like that. In fact, more or less the more liberal Court have simply rejected most 2nd Ad cases. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/68 "2016-06-14T22:03:57Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > There will soon be a liberal majority on the Supreme Court. Once that majority is in place, the Court will discover that the Second Amendment doesn’t give individuals the right to own guns- that it only gives states the right to form National Guard units. That’s what should happen, just based on simply reading the entire sentence. But it won’t happen immediately. As for the compensation sidetrack, if the biggest point of contention is merely _money_, then there are any number of ways available to deal with that. The UK and Australia implemented bans, and are notably still quite free btw - was there compensation involved with those laws? If you own enough guns that they represent a high enough percentage of your wealth that it would hurt to lose it, well, they’re dead assets financially anyway. You were never expecting to get your money back from them anyway, so quit bitching. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/69 "2016-06-14T22:11:36Z")
> [@Waymore](#): > > This question is open to everybody, but especially Americans in favor of stricter gun control. Why isn’t there an effort to repeal the 2nd amendment? > > The only sensible argument I can see, from the perspective of somebody who wants to curtail gun ownership, is that amending the Constitution is just too hard. Can’t win, why bother. > > What, if anything, am I missing? If you graph homicide rates by gun ownership, they go down the more guns there are. If you perform a linear regression using other statistics like income disparity (the main one), ethnic diversity, gender gap, government stability, corruption, etc. gun ownership is the least important variable involved and is still **negatively** correlated to gun ownership (i.e., the more guns, the fewer homicides). So, that’s why there isn’t a large effort. It’s trivially easy to slap down any objection to guns, if you look at the numbers. The best that liberal statisticians have been able to do is show that there maaaaay be a vanishingly small correlation between the prevalence of guns and the percentile of homicides which use a gun as the instrument of death. And, personally, I’m happy to give that to them. But, fundamentally, dead is dead. I’d rather there be fewer homicides than a change in the percentiles of weapons used to cause death. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and start grabbing statistics out of the Wikipedia and plugging them into here: [http://shodor.org/chemviz/tools/multireg/index.html](http://shodor.org/chemviz/tools/multireg/index.html) Put the homicide rate in as the Y column and any variables which you think might affect it (guns, income disparity, etc.) into one of the Xn columns. > **[List of countries by intentional homicide rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)** > > The list of countries by UNODC homicide rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 100,000 individuals per year. A homicide rate of 30 (out of 100,000) corresponds to 0.03% of the population dying by homicide. The reliability of underlying national murder rate data may vary. Only UNODC-vetted data is used in the main table below. In some cases, it may not be as up to date as other sources. See further down as to why its data is used over other sources. > Homicide rates may be under-report... > **[Estimated number of civilian guns per capita by country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country)** > > This is a list of countries by estimated number of privately owned guns per 100 people. The Small Arms Survey 2017 provides estimates of the total number of civilian-owned guns in a country. It then calculates the number per 100 people. This number for a country does not indicate the percentage of the population that owns guns. This is because individuals can own more than one gun. > See also: Percent of households with guns by country. It gives the percent of households with guns. It is furthe... > **[List of countries by income equality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality)** > > This is a list of countries or dependencies by income inequality metrics, including Gini coefficients. The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality (where everyone has the same income) and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality (where one person has all the income—and everyone else has no income). > Income distribution can vary greatly from wealth distribution in a country (see List of countries by wealth inequality). Income from black market economi... > **[List of countries by GDP (nominal)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IMF_ranked_countries_by_GDP)** > > Gross domestic product (GDP) is the market value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year. Countries are sorted by nominal GDP estimates from financial and statistical institutions, which are calculated at market or government official exchange rates. Nominal GDP does not take into account differences in the cost of living in different countries, and the results can vary greatly from one year to another based on fluctuations in the exchange rates of the country's currenc... > **[List of countries by Fragile States Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index)** > > This is a list of countries by order of appearance in the Fragile States Index (formerly the Failed States Index) of the United States think tank Fund for Peace. > A fragile state has several attributes. Common indicators include a state whose central government is so weak or ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory; non-provision of public services; widespread corruption and criminality; refugees and involuntary movement of populations; and sharp economic dec... > **[List of countries by ethnic and cultural diversity level](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level)** > > This is a list of countries by ethnic and cultural diversity level, as per Fearon's analysis. > The lists are commonly used in economics literature to compare the levels of ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious fractionalization in different countries. > Fractionalization is the probability that two individuals drawn randomly from the country's groups are not from the same group (ethnic, religious, or whatever the criterion is). In Fearon's analysis, only groups containing over one percent ... Based on the range of the output numbers and the range of the values in a column, you can determine what percentage of the input was actually used to decide the output. If the multiplier is positive then there’s a positive correlation. If the multiplier is negative, there’s a negative correlation. Gini coefficient is the principal variable, that I’ve seen. Reducing guns causes deaths (though, not at a meaningful level). Reducing the gini coefficient saves lives. If you want to save lives, support the 2nd amendment and measures which reduce income disparity. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/70 "2016-06-14T22:15:05Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > If you own enough guns that they represent a high enough percentage of your wealth that it would hurt to lose it, well, they’re dead assets financially anyway. You were never expecting to get your money back from them anyway, so quit bitching. There’s actually a good market in gun trading and collectible guns. I know a guy who makes a good living off it. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/71 "2016-06-14T22:18:12Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > You have to start somewhere. Make manufacture illegal. Make selling illegal. Make ownership illegal. Make ammunition sales illegal. Send teams door to door nationwide with gunpowder-detecting dogs and if they find weapons, seize them and imprison the owners. I have a friend, reasonable in other respects and all-around nice guy, who is convinced this is already in progress. He cannot be dissuaded. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/72 "2016-06-14T22:21:26Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > … > As for the compensation sidetrack, if the biggest point of contention is merely _money_, then there are any number of ways available to deal with that. The UK and Australia implemented bans, and are notably still quite free btw - was there compensation involved with those laws?.. The change in Australia’s gun laws was implemented with a [buy back program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buyback_program#Australia) funded by an increase in their Medicare tax. The UK similarly [provided compensation](https://www.loc.gov/law/help/firearms-control/greatbritain.php) upon the seizure of handguns. Payment was either based upon a set price for a given model or in accordance with an indivdual valuation. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/73 "2016-06-14T22:27:09Z")
Thanks for the info, **Iggy**. Now is it time for the argument that it wouldn’t be “affordable” here because there are so damn many more to buy? > [@DrDeth](#): > > There’s actually a good market in gun trading and collectible guns. I know a guy who makes a good living off it. Fair enough, but those are typically not weapons people actually intend to shoot, or are in actual danger of getting stolen and used in crimes, are they? Wouldn’t you expect the collectible gun market to go the way of the collectible ivory market? ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/74 "2016-06-14T22:41:32Z")
> [@Waymore](#): > > This question is open to everybody, but especially Americans in favor of stricter gun control. Why isn’t there an effort to repeal the 2nd amendment? > > The only sensible argument I can see, from the perspective of somebody who wants to curtail gun ownership, is that amending the Constitution is just too hard. Can’t win, why bother. > > What, if anything, am I missing? Because gun control != repealing the 2nd Amendment. You can support gun ownership and still believe there should be stricter gun laws. And believe it or not, that’s how many liberals, myself included, actually feel. You don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/848f3c/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_Dunlop)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/75 "2016-06-14T22:56:32Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > So you are proposing confiscation without compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment. No. On the contrary, I’m proposing confiscation in accord with the Fifth Amendment. If there’s no legal market for guns then the fair market value for the confiscated firearms should be their scrap value in metal. The government certainly can’t base values on some illegal black market. I think it’s obvious that would be against public policy. Basing it on some past value from when guns were legal wouldn’t make any sense either. The government is taking your lump of metal that can’t be legally sold for use as anything but a lump of metal. Scrap priced sound just about right. **octopus** scoffingly brought up prostitution, but prostitution actually bolsters my case. Try to take out a disability insurance policy on your illegal earnings from prostitution. You can’t do it. Likewise, illegal prostitutes don’t have the option of voluntarily reporting their illegal prostitution wages to the social security administration so that they can get eligibility for social security disability coverage. We’re not obligated to respect people’s illegal activity within our legal framework. After guns are all outlawed, there won’t be any legal market for guns except as scrap metal. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/76 "2016-06-14T23:07:10Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](#): > > No. On the contrary, I’m proposing confiscation in accord with the Fifth Amendment. If there’s no legal market for guns then the fair market value for the confiscated firearms should be their scrap value in metal. The government certainly can’t base values on some illegal black market. I think it’s obvious that would be against public policy. Basing it on some past value from when guns were legal wouldn’t make any sense either. The government is taking your lump of metal that can’t be legally sold for use as anything but a lump of metal. Scrap priced sound just about right. In other words, the government can declare anything it wants to be illegal, and confiscate it without compensation, and the People have no Constitutional recourse. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2016, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/77 "2016-06-14T23:19:02Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_Dunlop](#): > > the fair market value for the confiscated firearms should be their scrap value in metal… > **octopus** scoffingly brought up prostitution, but prostitution actually bolsters my case. What \*is \*the scrap value of a prostitute? ---
**Author:** ![ralfy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ralfy/32/600_2.png) [@ralfy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralfy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/78 "2016-06-15T01:13:20Z")
> [@Gary\_T](#): > > No, not regulated (i.e., controlled, subject to rules, etc.) militias. The term is [well-regulated](http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm), and it means in good working order, capable, effective. While it seems archaic now it was widely used and well understood at the time the Constitution was written. I think it’s regulated by the Federal government, that is, if the Second is connected to Art. 1 Sec. 8 and the Militia Acts. From what I remember, prior to the Second, various areas had regulated militias, several of them working as slave patrols. ---
**Author:** ![ralfy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ralfy/32/600_2.png) [@ralfy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralfy)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/79 "2016-06-15T01:26:08Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > No need for repeal. Just get all the pro-gun judges new glasses so they can read the whole 2nd Amendment: > > "A _well regulated_ militia being necessary to the security of a free State, … " > > Oh, the whole point is for things to be “well regulated”. So, regulating guns is fine. Why else would they have bothered to put that phrase in there at all??? > > And maybe, just for kicks, they get a course in what the word “militia” means. From what I know, it refers to the formation of militias regulated by the Federal government and following the Militia Acts. The Acts called for male citizens of a certain age range, and with few exceptions, to serve in such militias. Thus, the Second used the natural right to bear arms (based on English common law) to justify the need to serve in militias (to supplement a standing army that was still small) against various threats (rebelling whites, European invaders, slaves, and Native Americans). The regulation of these militias were explained in Art. 1 Sec. 8 and the various Militia Acts. ---
**Author:** ![Chihuahua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dec6dc/32.png) [@Chihuahua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chihuahua)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326/80 "2016-06-15T01:36:31Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > You have to start somewhere. Make manufacture illegal. Make selling illegal. Make ownership illegal. Make ammunition sales illegal. Send teams door to door nationwide with gunpowder-detecting dogs and if they find weapons, seize them and imprison the owners. It wouldn’t be long before guns started filling up the dropoff bins at police stations. You do realize that the exact reason many people own guns is to protect themselves from people like you? What you are describing is a fascist tyranny of Orwellian scale. The exact reason people own guns is to protect themselves from the tyranny of an out-of-control government. And your idea of saying we can just “make them illegal and imprison anyone who disagrees” is the exact opposite of how a democracy works. We can’t make manufacture, selling and ownership illegal because we are a democracy and people WANT to own guns. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/repealing-the-2nd-amendment/757326.md?page=5)