Gun control is not the same as a gun ban.
That’s only hard to understand if your argument is driven by a result inconsistent with that state of being.
What can’t the government do, per the Second? It can’t disarm the National Guard (which is what the militias have been called for over a century, btw). Broader interpretations have accreted later contrary to the writers’ stated intentions, of course.
I have recolored your parenthetical, which appears to contradict your sentences before and after. In the words of Sveriges-Riksbank-Prize-winning economist Paul R. Krugman, “Wow.”
I have to agree. Whatever gun laws are to look like today should be determined based on their utility given today’s technology and today’s circumstances.
And the Second Amendment reads like nothing so much as a double pander: “We’ll talk about a well-regulated militia to appease the law-and-order types, and say something vague about the right to bear arms to appeal to people who want a gun for themselves. And it won’t really matter, because the *state *laws will be the actually enforceable ones. It just helps get the Constitution ratified if we have meaningless stuff like this in an attached Bill of Rights.”
Certainly gun control advocates endorse banning entire categories of guns, by design, capacity and firepower. The mere fact that you might in the end be allowed to own some pathetic toy that might technically be called a gun would not mean that for all practical purposes guns weren’t banned. Certainly banning the possession of weapons bestowing any parity with professional armed forces would undo the entire original intent of the Second.
By evidence of the beaten to death quote “I do not want to take away your guns. But I do want to ban…” (usually uttered by Democrats, BTW)
Banning anything is taking it away. perhaps I don’t own it now, but if they ban it they’ve taken it away from me forever by taking away my option to have it.
How about this one: “you don’t need [such and such] kind of gun, blah blah blah.”
The category of things pkbites is not allowed to own is huge and encompasses way more than just guns.
Must be horrible for you not being able to buy anything you want. :rolleyes:
Aside from the legality of it vs the Constitution, if you did manage to get your Supreme Court majority and pass serious gun restrictions, just what do you think would happen?. Let’s say your side gained both houses with veto-proof majorities and the presidency, and you tried to use that legislative power to pass for example an Australian-style gun grab, do you think would be likely to happen? Especially when a majority of Americans support the 2nd Amendment and the Republicans control most states?
The best case scenario is that there would maybe be a constitutional convention to re-establish the right to bear arms. Worst case is that you cause further serrious divides in the country and risk greatly inflaming the divisions in America’s ongoing culture war. If yiou care at all about civil. sivil society, you might consider the side effects of your policy proposals.
I would also add that the general population begins to look a lot more like a 21st century militia in the age of terrorism. This does not seem like a particularly good time to disarm the good guys, and the ability of the citizenry. To defend their country and themselves is what the 2nd is all about.
To answer the first part I expect fewer people will die. The statistics support this. Gun control saves lives. Lack of gun control kills people.
What’s more, gun control is popular in the US. A majority want it (see link above for a cite).
So I am not convinced of a push for people to get a constitutional convention going to re-enable gun ownership. If you think that is likely you are living in an echo chamber.
Australia’s gun grab worked (again, see cite linked above). Their country is improved. Never have I seen a case where a society is improved by increasing gun ownership.
Over and over and over the statistics do not support gun advocates that guns reduce crime and save lives. On balance quite the opposite. They are a scourge with nearly zero benefits.
As to the second part I quoted above…huh?
There’s absolutely no such thing as the Sveriges-Riksbank-Prize. :eek: Are you perhaps referring to the Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne?
Please. Let’s strive for accuracy. 
If I have a right to own it and it’s banned then it’s tyranny.
Have you forgotten that a (electoral) majority put Donald Trump in the White House? Any time a liberal/progressive insists that the country backs their proposals I :rolleyes:
You post this, but then you make arguments that are pretty clearly in favor of banning guns, not just “controlling” them:
You also claim that
I looked in your link, and didn’t actually see any data on that. All I saw was the sentence “Public-opinion surveys show widespread support for tighter controls on gun-ownership in America”. There are other links we can look at, like this Pew Research report from December 2014 titled “Growing Public Support for Gun Rights” (links that have actual data in them).
As you say, not all “gun control” equates with “gun bans”; there is undoubtedly very broad support for proposals like universal background checks, even by a lot of conservatives / Republicans / gun owners / supporters of an individual right to keep and bear arms. I’m sure you could also find substantial public support for ideas that I think are basically kind of stupid (like bans on “assault weapons”) or even pernicious (like “no fly, no buy”; that is, bans on gun ownership based on someone being on a completely unaccountable secret government list). But I don’t think the data shows most Americans are ready for “gun control” proposals that are actually attempts at broad-based bans on gun ownership, or that amount to attempts to “disarm” law-abiding people.
I think if Democrats / liberals / progressives start pushing “gun control” policies that are in fact more like “gun bans” than they are like “background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and crazy people”, they will hurt themselves politically. If I were a Trump-lovin’ Republican, I might actually be happy about this. But I’m not; I’m a liberal (who happens to favor protecting an individual right to keep and bear arms). Wearing my “pro-gun” hat, I’m not happy about “gun control” proposals that are actually “disarm the general population” proposals. And wearing my “liberal who really, really wants to beat Trump (and the whole damned Republican Party)” hat, I’m also not happy about “gun control” proposals that are actually “disarm the general population” proposals, for a whole other set of reasons.
And without a ban on guns, exactly what do gun control proposals hope to accomplish? Is a nation with 100 million guns any less dangerous than one with 101 million guns? Just what effect on crime do you really think something like a ban on high capacity magazines or slightly stronger registration requirements would have? And is it worth burning up political capital over? Is it worth damaging the social fabric of America even more than it already is?
And how many more elections do Democrats need to lose before they get the message?
Individuals who are OK with guns and identify as Democrats aside, I’m not certain that gun ownership isn’t somehow fundamentally inimical to the Democrats core ideology.
Whenever someone brings up the gun laws of another country (especially Australia) they are forgetting that those are different cultures. They do not have the same deep belief systems that we hold in the USA.
The gun bans/mandatory surrender of New York, California, and Connecticut are not being obeyed by many otherwise law abiding citizens. Can you imagine telling folks in Texas, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, etc. that they had to turn in their semi-auto rifles? You’d hear the second biggest fuck you in human history.
Not at all. Many Democrats are police, security, skeet shooters, hunters, etc. Now, if you are a true “gun nut” with dozens of guns, most looking kinda paramilitary? Then you very likely vote GOP and are a single issue voter.
The Gun nuts are single issue voters. I know several, all of whom are actually fairly liberal on things like abortion rights, etc, but vote GOP only and always, to protect their guns. It doesnt matter what the Democratic platform says.
What do you think the Democrats’ core ideology is?
I think it’s simpler than that. Some people are pro-gun, some people are anti-gun. This does not map to the rest of one’s political ideology.
But if the post-Gingrich GOP want to be pro-gun; then, given the way many “conservatives” and even some “libertarians” yell and curse at anyone who disagrees with them on pretty much any big issue, some of the more ideological anti-gun people are naturally going to look to the Democrats to stand up for them.
Yeah, it’s refuted . . . Understand it was a dead theory when it was inserted in the federal courts in 1942. By then the protection that you claim the 2nd was intended to extend, (repelling federal encroachment of state militia powers), was crushed by the Dick Act with nary a peep from the states claiming the 2nd’s protection. Your theory is claiming the 2ndA protected something that had been extinguished decades before.
Scalia rewrote nothing. All Heller did was to invalidate the two lower federal court opinions where the “militia right” and “state’s right” were inserted in the federal courts – Cases v. U.S, 131 F.2d 916 (1 st Cir. 1942) and U.S. v. Tot, 131 F.2d 261 (3rd Cir. 1942) respectively. No Supreme Court precedent was disturbed . . . actually it was quoted and a foundational principle was brought back into respect.
The Court reaffirmed that the right to arms is not granted or given or created or otherwise established by the 2nd Amendment so the right in no manner depends on the Constitution for its existence.
That simple reaffirmation invalidates your fixation of the declaratory clause because arguing that the right is conditioned upon or qualified by words that the right in no manner depends upon is constitutionally illegitimate. Arguing that the right can only be exercised within the official militia is also illegitmate. Since the state militia is a structure entirely dependent on the Constitution for ITS existence, the right secured by the 2nd Amendment can not be linked to it (again, the right is not in any manner dependent on the Constitution).