Simple enough, I suppose, if we interpret the right of “the people” as actually saying “each and every individual person”. Because, “the people” is a collective noun, as is “the nation”. Or perhaps we shouldn’t have phrased it “We, the People”.
And a “well-regulated militia” implies a state if not actually insists upon it. After all, who is to do this regulation, if not an authorized body, a body authorized by we, the people.
And I wonder if you realize that most of the people you are arguing so strenuously with are not about “banning” guns. We are puzzled by the insistence that only total banning or total “freedom” are our only options. Many of us want to see regulation of auto emissions, in order to sustain a more healthy world. Do you then insist that we want to ban cars?
You seem to crave certainty, absolutes. Sith happens. But it just ain’t so. Licensing concealed carry is an “infringe”, should we insist that everyone has the right to concealed carry? Children, the mentally infirm, hippies and Republicans? Or is some infringement necessary, worthy and reasonable? Well, if that is so, then your fearsome demand that a specific semantic interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is the only permissible reading puts us all in rather a tight spot. Your position is rational, but not reasonable. And the rational can be the enemy of the reasonable, just like the perfect can be the enemy of the good.
Suppose there are two countries. In the first every year 1,000 of them die due to automobile crashes.
In the second every year 2,000 die from automobile crashes.
Suppose also that you are severely afraid of dying by car and want to avoid it as much as possible. Which nation do you choose to live in?
Well that’s obvious, right? 2,000 is twice as great as 1,000. Pick the first country!
But what if country #1 has a population of 10,000 and country #2 a population of 10,000,000?
In country 2, your odds of dying by car crash are 1:5,000 whereas, holy fuck, what the hell is happening in country #1 that 10% of their population bite it each year in a car? That’s a serious problem that needs addressing right now and why would you think about going there?
And that’s why you analyse the odds of something happening instead of the sheer number of times it’s happened.
Well, if there are 15 rural cowboys and all of them are dead, and a thousand “inner city” people and 200 of them are dead, yes, it’s probably the cowboys who have the problem.
If you want to debate by tossing around large numbers, rather than giving those numbers some context by adjusting them per capita, the number of US gun deaths looks even worse.
What matters to me is my own chance of getting killed. If the number of gun-totin’ yahoos I encounter every day is far greater in one country than another, then that country is far more dangerous.
Too many read “The People” with the invisible addendum “as incorporated in their state governments”. This would seem to be contradicted by the usage of the text, as for example when the 10th Amendment talks about “The People” and “The States” respectively.
State officers who oversee and train gun owners is fine. What isn’t fine is the stance many anti-gunners take, which is that the sole standing order for 99% of the population should be “stand down forever”.
Agree that many people just want gun laws that seem reasonable. The problem is that reasonable is in the eye of the beholder. The Second Amendment embodies a broader principle, that the government shouldn’t have the power to tell people what weapons they can or can’t have (but that government troops can), any more than the government should dictate what you’re allowed to read or what religious beliefs you hold, or what groups are allowed to hold meetings. All gun control plans, whether modest or severe, start with the premise that yes the government can prohibit what weapons people own- which would sort of defeat the purpose of the 2nd.
Well there are hardliners who call for “Constitutional Carry” i.e. no permit laws, which some states actually have. And no one claims that those who are not incompetent (children, the insane or those who have been convicted of felonies) should be allowed responsibilities they cannot live up to. That’s a much broader issue than guns. But the power to license is the power to de facto ban, and our system of law and justice is built on the presumption that people have free will and are morally and legally responsible for their actions. That they should be punished after the fact for committing crimes, not held under permanent prior restraint because of what they might do.
In fact, if you examine the image sourced here, the comma is pretty iffy. Looking at the other commas on that line, they seem to be quite clearly written, but that last comma is not as obvious. It should be born in mind that this was written with a feather dipped in goo, so those gaps in the phrases may well have been the spaces between refreshing the ink, and some of the confusing commas may have been the scriber touching the tip to the parchment out of habit, because there seems to be a surfeit of commas in the text.
Either way, the “well regulated militia”, even when we consider that “regulated” means well trained and disciplined, cannot reasonably be ignored. Why is that inconvenient qualifier in there? Is the right to have guns in some way supposed to be contingent on that? The link I provided in a previous post which caused the Lumpster to cry out in anguish, suggests that the Second was probably a way to appease the slave states, telling them that their slave patrols were safe from federal interference. Howsoever one looks at it, it is very difficult to support the idea that the Second was about “watering the tree”.
You know, the overwhelming number of people in DC are just fine with restrictive gun laws. The amount of restrictions on guns in this city has had no correlation whatsoever with the murder rate.
Plus, the one FFL in the city has to do business out of a government-subsidized office in a police station because he doesn’t have enough customers to make enough money to rent or buy his own place of business.
Thanks, eschereal; I did look for such an image but I have very poor Google-fu. :o
Comparing with the comma before the “shall” in the Sixth Amendment, I’d lean toward intended comma (though of course it doesn’t really matter). Note that the doubtful comma starts in precisely the same place as the comparand comma starts. Moreover, checking some of the text I notice no punctuation-free space as large as the separation at the doubtful comma.
That comma in the Sixth Amendment is also, at best, unnecessary. I hypothesize that the scribe, when doubtful about a comma, made just a tiny comma to “hedge his bets.”
If you see this as an issue of principle, that’s fine with me. I probably jumped the gun (ha) in responding to your comment, but I’ve been sensitized to the “DC and Chicago are violent places because not enough good people own guns” argument – as though access to firearms will make this city peaceful.
For DC, at least, there’s been absolutely no correlation between gun laws and crime that I can tell. Murders were very high under restrictive gun laws, then murders were very low under restrictive gun laws. The laws were loosened, and murders stayed low for a while, and now they are up by nearly 50% this year.
I thought that DC had dragged its heels for years while being sued, finally passed a supposed carry law that in practice made it next to impossible to carry lawfully, dragged its heels for more years while being sued some more, and only just recently have the appeals courts ruled (yet again) that yes, DC really does have to have a real carry law.
Not quite. The current case is Wrenn v. DC. At the district level, Judge Skullin ruled that DC’s permit system was unconstitutional. He denied a request that his ruling be stayed. Even still, the district refused to comply and Gura asked for DC to be held in contempt. Before ruling, the appellate court took up the case and issued a stay, which mooted the contempt request.
A few amici briefs have been filed thus far, I believe the deadline is Thursday. No word on when the final ruling will come out. Palmer took over 5 years because, to avoid the obvious conclusion that DC gun laws were unconstitutional, the judge simply refused to rule. Effectively kicking over the game board and going home.
Personally, I don’t think there’s any correlation or connection, other than the fact that there are an awful lot of burglaries in DC and I suppose more legal firearms could theoretically be stolen. But, there’s just very little interest in firearm ownership here. As I mentioned earlier, the only FFL in town has to work out of a taxpayer subsidized office because he doesn’t get much business.
More or less, yeah. But again, there is so little interest in gun ownership here that aside from people who find it a matter of principle, the CCW issue probably has no impact on crime one way or another. The implication that DC would be a much safer city if more people could carry guns like they do in states like Wyoming with very high gun ownership is sort of irrelevant, because very few people here want to carry or own guns.
Where do you get that very few people in DC want guns? Granted if they value gun ownership chances are they wouldn’t be living in DC. And given how deliberately obstructive the permit process has been up to now, few people have seen any point in trying. See Emily gets her gun for the story of one brave soul’s journey through the bureaucratic maze.
First of all, Emily is a drooling idiot who can barely be trusted to fill in the circles on an SAT test correctly. Note that, for example, she felt personally threatened by having to meet with a firearms instructor, and couldn’t follow basic directions to make an appointment with the FFL dealer.
Again, the gun laws in DC have been progressively loosened for the last several years, and firearms ownership is roughly 4% after several years of those new laws. After more than six years of law changes, there remains only one firearm dealer in DC who has to work out of a taxpayer subsidized office in a government building because he couldn’t afford to pay the rent on his own office – and he moved his office a few years AFTER Heller was decided. (Note also that other dealers had struggling businesses before Heller, but called it quits.)
This one dealer was interviewed in 2014 about his workload: “There are not a lot of people in the District going out and buying firearms to register them in the District. It’s a little sparingly that they need my services. There might be anywhere from maybe three to six a week sometimes.”
Note also that DC gun laws were changed after the imbecile “journalist” had her reading comprehension so strenuously challenged in 2011. If I were an IRS official, I would audit her every damn year because she’s clearly incapable of most major tasks a reasonable adult can perform on their own.
I’m not super well versed in DC gun culture, but it is not a stretch to believe that the administrative hurdles suppress demand. You say that laws have been loosened which is true - but they are no where near what they are in nearby jurisdictions and they are still burdensome enough that would dissuade people with casual interest. And that’s mere ownership. Carry is essentially prohibited. The laws in DC are some of the most if not the most restrictive in the country.
If the restrictions on owning a firearm in DC were applied to other enumerated fundamental constitutional rights, I think there would be significant outcry in protest.
