not sure how you went from guns to antitank missiles but if the government starts using tanks on it’s citizens I suspect another revolution will occur.
Guns are a constitutional right that has withstood many court challenges. We have the right to defend ourselves using the same types of weapons law enforcement uses in self defense.
As others have noted, there’s no real debate over whether owning guns is a fundamental right alongside freedom of speech or religion or assembly. It clearly is - it’s listed alongside those other rights in the Constitution.
The debate is whether or not gun ownership should be included in the Constitution.
That’s an interesting interpretation. I think most people would argue that citizens only need the level of guns that other citizens have in order to defend themselves. I think most people would feel it’s acceptable for government forces, like the police or military, to have a higher level of arms that citizens can’t match.
“Second Amendment Solution”? You can’t be serious. First of all, it’s worth noting that no modern democracy has ever had or needed such an idea. Has America ever made use of said solution? Has any other democracy lept to arms to defend itself from a tyrant taking over from within? Would doing so even help if said tyrant had any semblance of control over the country’s military (and if you reject these premises, I welcome you propose a likely scenario where a tyrant takes over a country with neither the support of a significant portion of the populace nor any military muscle).
Hell, specifically in the case of the USA - how many militiamen armed with rifles do you think it would take to best one air force squadron? Oh right - all of them. The second amendment solution only makes any sense if the civilian on the street has access to the same military hardware the military has. And that’s completely untenable. Ridiculous, even - the way warfare has changed in the last century means that most machines of war are not just things we don’t want every Jim, Bill, and Dave to have, they’re also things that Jim, Bill, and Dave couldn’t begin to afford (unless we’re talking about Walton, Gates, and Koch). Even ignoring all the theoretical and practical problems, a second-amendment solution given the way war is waged today is, on principle, simply insane.
And beyond that, what’s left? We have tools which are built explicitly for killing and that are very, very good at that job and very little else. We make people get licenses and extensive training and testing for cars, and if you use a car correctly, you’ll probably never hurt anyone. If you use a car while intoxicated, you lose your right to drive. I don’t know if there’s even a law against using a gun while drunk. There is no reason for guns to be treated as a right. Whatever validity the second-amendment-solution argument might have had in the past, it is no longer the case.
If I can’t own a nuclear bomb, then no one should be able to own a gun.
Reminds me of the old Tom Lehrer song “Who’s Next?” for some reason.
According to my state’s constitution, from the age of 18 to 45, I was a member, whether I wanted to be, or not.
I’m not rich enough to hire someone every time my car needs maintenance. I change the oil myself, change the tires, replace the brake pads whenever it is needed. It is a privilege to be able to afford to pay another person for all your maintenance needs. I do my own gardening and housecleaning too, because I can’t afford a groundskeeper or maid.
Similarly, I can’t afford a personal security detail to protect me and my family. But I can afford the education and tools necessary to protect myself when required. Being able to say “someone else will protect me” is a huge privilege that most people don’t have. Therefore I support the right of individuals to own, carry and use the proper tools for defending themselves and their families when necessary.
I think citizens should have a right to personal arms within the prevailing social/civic matrix. The right is absolute; the implementation is subject to the realities of the time and place.
A rural region with a sparse population and a high degree of self-sufficiency is a different reality from an urban condo or apartment. The right needs to be interpreted differently for each and all such variations, with safety of other citizens given at least a high a priority as the nominal individual right to self-protection.
Start walking up to every soldier & LEO you see and ask them if they would obey orders to search everyone and all homes for guns or weapons with the use of force if necessary?
Their brothers house or person? Their parents house or person even if the president signs an executive order ?
I would also like to hear how the criminals & killers & crazy’s would obey the law and refuse to get black market weapons. And there will be a flourishing black market.
Fact, no law or agreement by law abiding citizens to give up all guns is going to keep guns from those who want them for whatever reason.
If any group is allowed to keep firearms, then the governments ability to confiscate all other guns is a pipe dream. Manny law abiding citizens will break that law because of the very fact that they try to take them. Very few people I know think the LEO’s can protect them from bad people.
This is not England or any other country that has made the forces of government the only ones to be able to have self defense firearms. I would think there are more than a few law abiding citizens of England or Australia that still have hand guns.
This is the USA and it is different in many ways. I feel that people who want to make it some other place are just afraid of being responsible for them selves and have deluded themselves into thinking that others can provide for their safety. It is a big country and on a daily basis there are multiple times that a person must be responsible for themselves or they & maybe more family members are going to die.
This can be anyplace on the planet.
YMMV
The language has changed somewhat in the last 200+ years, and “well-regulated” was originally used in a different sense. You can see this if you read the Federalist and anti-Federalist papers. They used the term “disciplined” for what we now mean by regulated. In the various comments on the subject one reads in the Federalist and anti-Federalist papers, what emerges is that there was concern over the clause in the Constitution giving the Federal government joint authority with the states over the militia. It was feared that the Fed could preempt the militia, ordering disarmament. The Second Amendment (which in earlier drafts was much clearer about it protecting individual possession of firearms) was passed explicitly to prevent this. Arguably, what the Second Amendment is saying is that the people have to have actual guns, and experience with them, to be able to use them effectively; the citizens can’t just have a paper right to be armed that is never actually put into practice.
I’m not sure it’s a modern enough example for you, but there was the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island in 1842. Rhode Island had a property (land) requirement for voting, leaving an increasing number of male citizens disenfranchised. When repeated attempts to get the legislature to change that were ignored, Dorr and his followers organized an unsanctioned convention that declared itself the new state government, and the matter briefly came to armed rebellion. Technically, the rebellion failed but the state government took the hint and broadened the eligibility to vote. It was a case of “ballots or bullets”.
On a smaller scale, the Battle of Athens (a.ka. the McMinn County War took place when armed veterans performed a citizens’ arrest of a corrupt sheriff who was blocking access to the polls.
In the US, denying people the vote is pretty much the definition of tyranny, and in the above two cases it took an armed revolt to get the authorities to reconsider things.
Yes, fundamental right. Just like it says on some piece of paper I read somewhere…
The US constitution defines it as a right.
I recognize that fact, but I also think it should not be a right. I think the 2nd Amendment should be overturned.
Sure. Which is why gun death is really quite common in places like Great Britain, Germany, France, or South Korea.
Oops. Turns out that gun control laws actually do a decent job of keeping guns out of everyone’s hands, including criminals.
That’s not a fact. That’s a baseless assertion based entirely on intuition which is directly contradicted by the available evidence about gun death.
Which is why it’s important for me to be paranoid and a constant threat to all those in my environment. Because, you know, there’s no such thing as a police force. Or any sort of law enforcement. It’s all up to me. I’m delusional for thinking I can rely on anyone but myself.
I’d hate to have your worldview. It seems incredibly dark and violent.
And that’s an honest answer I can respect. Happily, there is a mechanism for changing this as we did for Prohibition.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
However, if you ask what the jurisprudence is TODAY in the US, it clearly is a right.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly.
[QUOTE=btthegreat]
Depends if you are a card-carrying member of a local or state militia.
[/QUOTE]
This always was a silly argument, and either ignorant or disingenuous. Now it’s just kind of sadly out of date.
There is a flourishing “black market” only because it’s so easy to buy guns legally and resell it.
You can make an argument for gun rights, but they aren’t as fundamental as the others you listed. That’s why other countries without our gun rights are still free countries. You take away freedom of speech, and you’re living in a dictatorship, as you can’t object. You take away freedom of worship, and you’re living in a theocracy. You take away freedom of assembly, and your back to a dictatorship, because you can’t voice your ideas where anyone will hear them.
Take away guns, and people get along fine and are free to do what they want. They feel oppressed? They kick out their government at election time. Guns are not as fundamental to a democratic state as these other rights.
I understood it to be the case that you contributed to a common fund which paid a security detail to protect (and serve) your community? A ‘privilege’, huge as it is, that is enjoyed by most citizens (though some may not feel so protected, served, or, indeed, privileged).
[QUOTE=BigT]
You can make an argument for gun rights, but they aren’t as fundamental as the others you listed. That’s why other countries without our gun rights are still free countries. You take away freedom of speech, and you’re living in a dictatorship, as you can’t object. You take away freedom of worship, and you’re living in a theocracy. You take away freedom of assembly, and your back to a dictatorship, because you can’t voice your ideas where anyone will hear them.
[/QUOTE]
Not at all. There are several western European nations that have censorship (at least by US standards), yet they are free, and not all countries allow a universal freedom to assemble either. These things aren’t hard and fast ‘rights’ in all nations, and many we’d consider ‘free’ yet they don’t look at them the same way as we do.
There ARE really no ‘fundamental’ rights when you come down to it, nor any universally acknowledged formula for what is or isn’t ‘free’. In the US, to date, the ‘right’ to keep and bear arms is and has been considered ‘fundamental’ by a majority of citizens. This doesn’t mean there can’t or haven’t been checks on it…just like there are on our own speech and even assembly. It’s not a universal do anything you like sort of ‘right’.
Really? Try and do it than and see how it works out for you. 
Like I said and have said in many of these threads, there is a mechanism to get rid of or modify an Amendment to the Constitution, and if it’s REALLY the case that people don’t want or think it’s necessary then it’s do-able. It’s been done in the past and can be done in the future. Knock yourself out.
That is cherry-picking the data. Compare Switzerland and Mexico, and you might come to a different conclusion.