It was intended as an accusation of incorrectness, not dishonesty, but if that was unclear, I apologize. I look forward to reading your post later.
Abolishing the 2nd amendment would simply turn thousands of people into criminals. I think this line of questioning and the point of the thread is counterintuitive. The philosophy behind the 2nd amendment seems to be something like each individual is allowed to protect themselves instead of needing the protection of others/gov. We can’t protect ourselves from the gov if we rely on the gov for protection, something along those lines is the whole ideology behind this obsession with guns. People immediately feel threatened when anyone proposes anything limiting, restricting, or regulating the sale of arms. This is mostly because the right wing media has planted ideas into peoples heads that any form of gun control is a systematic effort to disarm everyone. There needs to be a real debate on gun control. If a hunter needs to take a class that specifically involves educating them on arms, how to use arms, and how to respect arms. Then why the hell shouldn’t a child need to take a test before purchasing a semi-automatic?
As for the actual thread question, I suppose murder rates would depend on how we decide to act after getting rid of the amendment. If we prohibited sales of guns and did nothing else, I’m sure the rates would be much higher than if we went around criminalizing every gun owner and literally busting into their house and taking their guns. If we made guns inaccessible to regular people, then gun murders would drastically drop. I base this on the fact majority of gun use where someone is killed is Suicide and Homicide. According to the FBI there is very few justified homicides with arms / self defense with a gun. So it comes down to whether or not we’re willing to take a slippery slope of banning guns and save a few hundred thousand peoples lives, or do we want to continue on this path so ensure our absolute individual freedoms.
Almost no one feels the need to carry a gun on their person in 2018. The number of people who do is about as close to “almost no one” as it was half a century ago – they just make a lot more noise these days.
It takes considerable effort to get a state to pass legislation allowing people to carry firearms, especially in the face of such passionate opposition to guns by the left, yet most states in the U.S. have passed legislation to allow people to carry handguns on their person, either openly or concealed.
“Almost no one” isn’t much of an argument. “Almost no one” gets killed in school shootings either.
And why are they making more these days? If the demand weren’t there, they wouldn’t be, yes, no?
Its worth noting that the police weren’t paramilitary units in the 50s and 60s either, but they’ve become so by necessity.
Criminal activity is, if not currently at the same level it’s been for the lasts fifty years, certainly more widespread than ever before. Thus more people want to protect themselves from it. You reap what you sow.
There are something like 15 million CCW permit holders in the country, probably a million-ish LEOs, and I don’t know how many people who carry illegally.
Since the conversation has been all over the place and I don’t want to get into any of those threads of conversation, just going to respond to the OP.
Over what time period? Initially I don’t see much of a change. As more restrictions were passed and specific bannings in some states or cities I’d say…depends. Unless you are talking about Federal bans along with some reasonably grounded mechanism with which to go through first voluntary turn ins and then ramping up to making it illegal to own a gun outright you are going to have some states/cities/counties that will decide to allow the things while others crack down. It’s not going to be any sort of instant or even relatively quick shift. So…in the first decade I’d say there won’t be much change (aside from the fact that over those time periods it’s already changing generally downward, with a spike in the last few years upwards but not to anywhere near the levels we’ve seen in the past). After that I think, yes, there will be a slow decline that will be more than what we are already seeing wrt drops in murders and violence per capita. Eventually it will level off somewhere but I think it would be less than today, and less than the current downward trend…but it won’t be zero, ever, and will still almost certainly be higher than other countries we are usually compared too. Our non-gun murder rate is a lot higher than most of those countries after all, and I don’t see that changing any more than it’s own current downward trend.
I doubt the suicide rate would change much, at least again initially. We might see a small decline in the medium term as guns become more scarce (maybe a dip in the first decade, and a noticeable decline in the second), but I think eventually it will rebalance lower than today but somewhere closer to the total today than the non-gun related suicides today. The US is in the middle of the pack wrt suicide rate and I don’t see that dynamic changing simply because there aren’t any guns (it might change for other reasons)…folks will simply shift preferred methods.
Cite please.
In prelude, I have no illusion that any of the following reflects how constitutional experts, legislators and judges evaluate the topic.
I tend to uniformly side with individual freedom, and that legislation restricting that freedom needs a demonstrable purpose for imposing on those freedoms and should do so as lightly as possible. Simultaneously, though, societies do evolve and advance over time and what was an essential freedom one century may be of little import in the next, and what is considered an essential freedom now might have been simply unfathomable in earlier times. The U.S. Constitution is something of a broad-stroke document, describing limitations on government power in somewhat generalized terms and expecting specific legislation to follow and clarify, evidenced I figure by later amendments including a phrase like “The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
That said, it seems reasonable to me to apply the following standard:
- Is the proposed legislation addressing a realistic problem?
- Is the proposed legislation abridging an individual liberty and/or a constitutional right in a way that injures the premises of “secure the blessings of liberty” / “a more perfect union” / “establish justice” and other fundamental concepts on which the nation was founded?
- If (1) and (2), is the attempt to address the problem worth the abridgment? Will losing the freedom in question damage the health and viability of the nation?
It is unclear at best to me that the Second Amendment is preserving American freedom, or that its loss or alteration will undermine American freedom to a degree greater than the obvious problem - ten to fifteen thousand gunshot homicides a year. I have no problem noting that the U.S. is probably about as violent as other westernized democracies, but the guns allow the violence to be far more routinely fatal, and to what benefit? The original purpose is satisfied by a permanent military, and even if we recognize (as is reasonable, I’ve no problem admitting) a right to defend oneself with deadly force, how do semi-automatic rifles serve this purpose better than, say, revolvers or shotguns? Are there a lot of personal- and home-defense cases with semi-automatic rifles? I honestly don’t know. Having fired and been lightly trained on the use of semi-auto and even full-auto rifles, they strike me as impractical for close-order defense, indeed more useful for threats a hundred or more meters away.
But practicalities are of little import when the Second Amendment has in recent decades taken on a false significance it previously had not enjoyed - the notion that as an amendment, it was the only guarantor and protector of all the other amendments, and the constitution as a whole. As best I can tell, it has never been the case that the Second Amendment’s purpose includes protecting against the tyranny of the federal government or any particular state government. Aside from a nonbinding reference to abolition in the Declaration of Independence, I’m not aware of any legislative or constitutional concept that recognizes a right to violent overthrow of the government. I do, however, see references to “treason”, “rebellion” and “insurrection”, and none is described in positive terms, but rather as how the government is free to act in opposition, prevention and punishment.
“Second Amendment remedies” (or “solutions”) as a concept has been in NRA literature for some time, though given national prominence (as best I can tell) around 2010 in the rhetoric of Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle. For the first time, people running for public office were openly (if occasionally coyly) suggesting that killing public officials was occasionally necessary and even patriotic, and not in a poetic “watering the tree of liberty” sense, but as a valid response for an individual unsatisfied with the outcome of an election. It encourages a belief in fantasy, where being a gun-owner is being a hero/patriot-in-waiting, and restrictions on gun ownership are self-evident steps toward that awaited day. I’m inclined to ask anyone who professes that gun ownership is necessitated by the possibility of tyranny if they view Lee Harvey Oswald as a hero. Oswald, after all, viewed General Walker and President Kennedy as “fascist”, did he not?
More to follow.
I wasn’t feeling especially well yesterday, likely the onset of a cold, and since I dozed off repeatedly while writing my previous post, I’m certainly not in a position to take offense at anyone who dozes off while reading it. Nevertheless, to continue and hopefully return to my original point: the theory I was trying to articulate is that regulations on a civil right must take into account how critical the civil right is to a free society and how much harm is caused by the abuses of that right, which the proposed regulations presumably address. Two of the rights covered by the First Amendment protect expression and the practice of religion, but obvious both are subject to regulation:
Right to Expression: Doesn’t extend to expressing military secrets in the presence of an agent of a hostile foreign power, i.e. treason or espionage. Doesn’t extend to expressing one’s plan to return to work or school tomorrow with a gun and kill everybody. Doesn’t extend to expressing detailed descriptions of all the tortures one plans to inflict on, say, a former spouse. Doesn’t extend to expressing the claim that the product you’re selling can cure cancer, when you know it does not.
Right to Free Practice of Religion: Doesn’t extend to virgin sacrifice, consummation of child marriages, ritual torture of humans or animals.
Thought not explicitly described in the text, a current (though disputed) view is that the constitution implies a right to privacy which extends to the right to abort an unwanted pregnancy. A great many Americans view this as a horrific abuse, akin to an annual slaughter of about a million unborn children. There may come a time soon when similar implied rights cover the consumption of recreational drugs, or the right to a painless medically-supervised suicide. These will also be viewed by many as harmful.
But are they harmful enough to require regulation? The demonstrable and permanent harm that Americans inflict on other Americans (and occasionally on themselves) with guns is obvious enough, I hope. If the country adopted a nationwide standard comparable to the Canadian model, I find it hard to see how the resultant loss of freedom (and I’m not denying a loss of freedom will occur - any regulation has that effect) will harm your society and it may well help quite a bit in that fewer of your citizens will end up dead. If someone else’s calculation concludes that the harm of regulation is worse than the benefit (or that the benefit simply doesn’t exist, i.e. instead of 10-15 thousand murders with guns, you’ll just have 10-15 thousand murders with now-illegal guns, or knives, or baseball bats, or what have you), that’s fine. The arguments will be presented to judges and legislators sooner or later who, I hope, will do their best to find that elusive balance.
Of course, if one’s response to any of the above is, in the words of comedian Jim Jefferies; “FUCK OFF! I LIKE GUNS!” then that’s okay, too.
Hmmmm…
How many people carried guns legally and illegally in the 50s and 60s?
And what necessity is that? A more armed populace?
Well, yeah. You put a bunch of guns out there, and suddenly it’s dangerous.
That’s less than 5% of the population that has a CCW. And, given how many on this board talk about having a CCW because it makes it easier to transport their guns, rather than carrying all the time, that cuts that number down even further. I’d be very surprised if the number of CCWer’s that carry all, or even most of, the time is significant.
That’s not how it works. 2A is not needed in order to have guns. Legislatures would have to pass laws then to prohibit guns. Just getting rid of 2A would not “simply turn thousands of people into criminals”.
According to the article below about 3 million people carry a firearm on any given day. So about 1% of the population.
I don’t know what you consider “significant”. Do you consider the transgendered population “significant”?
Here’s the original post by eschereal that got us on this topic:
Your WaPo link says “The result has been an explosion in the number of concealed-carry permit holders in the United States, from 2.7 million in 1999 to 14.5 million in 2016. That figure doesn’t account for individuals living in states without permitting requirements.” (which is itself a fairly recent trend for the most part)
There are also individuals, such as our own Bone, that would avail themselves of the right to carry if their state allowed such freedom, but do not.
Given that information, do you think eschereal’s post is closer to correct or incorrect?
Thanks for your thoughtful post. Quite like you, I think the RKBA is important, but I can understand if someone looks at the situation and reaches the conclusion that some additional restrictions are worth the resultant loss of freedom.
Since you brought up the Canadian model, I was recently poking around looking for statistics. I found this infographic which says that 30% of Canada’s murders in 2015 were from shooting. That surprised me quite a bit. For all the gun control they have, I would have thought that % would be lower.
Anyways, thanks again, it was a pleasant post to read.
I am saying that SA claimed that “almost no one” felt the need to carry a gun half a century+ ago. I can understand how/why he feels that way, but his assertion is based on a feeling, not solid statistical information. Lacking reliable data from that time period, I am asserting that his assertion is baseless. The “almost no one” from his youth is not measurably different from the number of people who feel the need to carry today.
tldr:bs
Glad to see you’re getting some use from that Statscan link I gave you. (Honestly, no snark this time.)
That part of the infographic doesn’t surprise me at all. Killing someone with a knife or your fists when you are close enough to look them in the eyes is much more psychologically difficult than pulling a trigger from a distance.
The part that surprised me was when I went digging and found that 59% of those shooting deaths where with handguns. I’m fairly familiar with the Canadian black market, and IME handguns aren’t cheap or as easy to acquire as rifles. So out of 608 murders in 2015 in Canada, there where 178 gun homicides, or which 105 were with handguns, which was honestly higher than I expected.
It still beats the 13,286 people killed by guns in the States during the same year though.
Significant as in terms relative to total population? Not really.
And CCW’s became much easier (or possible) to get, it is no surprise that that number has risen considerably. much more than a decade ago, no one in ohio could have had one, and now there’s half a million. I’m sure other states had similar changes.
That doesn’t mean that many more people are carrying. As mentioned, many just got it for the convenience of going to or from the range, or being able to carry it at odd times when they are carrying large amounts of money.
They do allow you to concealed carry, so long as you can ‘demonstrate “good cause” to carry a weapon.’ That “good cuase” is more than “I want to”, or “it makes me feel safe”, but if you are the type of person who needs a gun, you can convince someone else of that. Maybe you tell them that you are concerned about all the guns in the hands of criminals.
Now, personally, I would be willing to get rid of “good cause”, and replace with “good training and demonstration of responsibility”, as that would be more important to me than knowing that you plan on using it.
It’s at least as accurate as the post it was responding to. Depends on your definition of “almost no one”. I would put the number of people that carry on a regular basis at less than 1% of the population. There are no really stats to say one way or the other, but from what I have seen here and amongst my acquaintances, less than 20% of CCWer’s carry regularly.
Yesbut Canada only has a tenth of the US population. However, yes, the Canada murder rate is 1.68 as compared to 4.88. About a third.