Regarding Mike’s use of stats, I’m reminded of Churchill’s observation that he would never trust any statistics that he hadn’t falsified himself.
Or take a trip to Thunder Ranch to hone their skills and learn to use firearms as defensive tools.
‘Urban Rifle’ course. Mmm…
Personally, I think the First Amendment referred to one-page-at-a-time, hand set type screw presses and the FF would possibly have reconsidered had they been privy to the bandwidth at our disposal today. :dubious:
Getting back to the OP for just a second, there is almost nor eason to repeal the 2nd Amendment. The high court and lower courts treatment of, decisions concerning and interpretation of the second amendment make it very easy to eliminate guns. In fact, California’s Constitution contains no “Right to Keep and Bear Arms”(RKBA), provision.
Further, the California high court has interpreted that The 2nd Amendment RKBA clause refers to trained militiamen, i.e.-State and Federal troops, not the common man.
Sam
Yes, until another 100 years go by and the country is totally disarmed and completely unable to mount an armed insurrection against a goverment gone wild. I honestly believe that part of the reason the laws were crafted to allow gun ownership was to keep the idea of a completely controlled society out of the minds of those in a position to make it happen. If the citizens are completely without weapons what keeps the shadowy people with great power from controlling everything?
Bolding mine.
Okay, I read it again. Care to explain?
Why can’t we have passive resistance in such a situation? And don’t laugh it off, this is a serious question.
The answer to this question hinges upon how you are defining ‘classic liberal’? If you define the phrase as Milton Friedman did, then the answer may be yes. If you are defining the phrase as Glenn Beck might then the answer may well be no.
No.
For the same reason you have to ask us not to laugh; it’s naive and the world doesn’t work that way. Do you think passive resistance would have done any good against the likes of Hussein, Stalin, Castro, Amin, the Iranian Mullahs and so on?
I think a good analogy here would be the recent theft of the painting Scream. It was stolen from a museum in a country where even the police don’t carry guns (they keep them under lock and key in their cars, apparently). Needless to say, the museum guards had no guns either. So someone comes in with a gun and controls the whole place: guards, customers and employees alike. And they brazenly make off with two highly valuable paintings virtually unchallenged. (Or virtually, hell…they were unchallenged!)
What chance did anyone have to stop the thefts or to protect innocent bystanders from whatever the robbers decided to do? And what role did the fact that museum guards and even the police were unarmed play in their decision to pull off the robbery in the first place?
There are simply too many people in this world who are more than willing to take advantage of pacifists through the use of force and/or weaponry for pacifism to work…and attempting passive resistance will likely only get you (or your family) imprisoned or killed for even trying it. Passive resistance only works when you have governments that are controlled by the people. When the government controls the people, you do what you are told to do, and you behave the way you are told to behave, or you pay the price.
Passive resistance works great if you’ve got a semi-rational government in charge, but a brutal, totalitarian regime ain’t gonna care squat about folks using passive resistance.
So you’re saying the California Supreme Court has determined that a constitutional amendment was needed in order for the United States and its individual states to be able to maintain a militia, and a “trained” one, at that? Sounds to me like more judicial activism where you have judges using twisted logic to in effect create laws where none would have been possible by the will of the people.
I would have thought, since virtually every country of any size has a military, that it would go without saying that we would have the right to maintain an army. I don’t really believe this is what the founding fathers had in mind. The overwhelming desire of the founding fathers was that the people rule the country, not the government. They knew from past experience what happens when you have an armed government and an unarmed citizenry, and it’s my belief that they felt an armed citizenry would be a deterrant to take over by the government, just as they felt all the other checks and balances they built in would limit the ability of the government to achieve too much power over the citizenry.
I figured someone would say that. But if they’re that brutal, then they’ll care even less about crushing armed resistance. Let me point to Marley’s wonderfully written post.
As you can see, there’s not much difference between whether you have guns or not when you’re attempting to stand up to a brutal, totalitarian regime. You’ll still be crushed if the military still supports the regime. At least that’s my view of it and I have yet to be convinced otherwise.
But again, I support the way guns are handled now. I think that personal and family protection is a valid reason for the second amendment. I just don’t like all this “preventing government misbehavior” BS.
You have to understand that the California Supreme Court has always been packed with far-left judges. It will come as no surprise, then, that they issue rulings that attempt to disarm the population.
No, read what I said again.
The California State Supreme Court( I think it was the state supreme court*) invalidated the 2nd amendment by stating that in today’s day and age the RKBA was to be applied only to the National Guard and that the citizenry don’t necessarily has a right to bear arms. Since our state constitution lacks an official RKBA clause, the citizens of the great state of California are not owed the latitude that other states are when gun ownership is considered.
If you’re really interested, I can dig up some case names and decisions for you.
Sam
Yes, but a long established democracy rarely becomes a brutal, totalitarian state overnight. So while an armed populace would have a difficult time over throwing a hideously corrupt regime, they might well be able to slow the advance or even stop a despots climb to power. After all, the last thing someone trying to consolidate their power wants is a large movement, which can generate lots and lots of bad PR (in the early days of the coup when it’s trying to show that it’s better than the previous regime). Non-violent protests can work, but a heavy handed response to a violent uprising is going to breed more dissent that it suppresses.
Well, I’m sorry, Sam (GaWd), but I did reread it and it appears to sound like the California Supreme Court has either invalidated or attempted to invalidate the 2nd amendment. Your words were:
“Further, the California high court has interpreted that The 2nd Amendment RKBA clause refers to trained militiamen, i.e.-State and Federal troops, not the common man.”
This sounds to me like they are saying the 2nd amendment does not provide a constitutional right to the citizenry to own guns, and I’ve extrapolated from that that they are saying that Californians therefore don’t have a right under the U.S. constitution to own firearms.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by including California’s constitution in the discussion. Are you saying that since there is no right-to-bear-arms provision in the California constitution that they have ruled no such right exists because the 2nd amendment of the U.S. constitution only applies to militias?
If so, it still sounds like more of the same to me. They appear to be trying to invalidate an interpretation of the 2nd amendment that has existed since its creation to suit their own purposes.
You don’t need to go to the trouble of looking up cite, although I appreciate you offer to do so. Perhaps if you could just clarify the points I brought up above it would help me understand what you’re saying.
I couldn’t agree more.
The same can be said of an unarmed populace using passive resistance.
I’m of the opinion that a non-violent movement will receive much more sympathy than a violent movement, and as such, will be more effective at generating bad PR, or at least just as effective as a violent movement.
You’re kidding, right? I’ll agree that a heavy handed response to a violent uprising will breed more dissent than it suppresses, but a heavy handed response to a non-violent uprising will breed even more dissent. Now of course, if you believe you can stop a strong non-violent uprising without a heavy handed approach, then you need to reread your history.
It all depends upon the ideological stance of those in power. Passive resistance alone didn’t end Apartied in South Africa, it took international sanctions as well.
Opinion noted, however, I think that if the non-violent arm is a bunch of PETA-like nutbags, then they’re not going to make much progress.
Hmm, the crack down of the folks in Tiananmen Square pretty much ground the pro-democracy movement in China to a halt as I recall. As for putting down a non-violent protest without a heavy hand, I can’t think of any examples where it’s been done (though it’s entirely possible that it might have happened), but what if the government simply ignores the non-violent protest? After all, one of the ways a protest of any gains momentum is by the attentions paid to it by those in power. If they choose to ignore the protestors, then the movement could lose steam, since they wouldn’t be getting any kind of reaction to all their efforts.
Starving, My point was very simple: The rights to keep and bear arms as put forth have been curtailed by the rights of the state of california due to the absence of a state constitution RKBA clause, and it will only be a matter of time until this happens more often. The law office I work for authored a ballot measure to change this, but it won’t be on the ballot this year.
I’m not a lawyer, and cannot explain the intracacies of the multiple decisions supporting this(both state and federal), or how exactly it works out on a constitutional level, but it does. And will continue to.
A case called Nordyke is the current 2nd Amendment case in the laps of the Federal Supreme Court right now.
Sam
P.S.- Sorry about the “read it again” I had intended on deleting that as I thought it set the wrong tone and forgot.