Yes but not in the way it's interpreted, it was (afaik) intended to prevent the state from having a standing army as the founding fathers believed, and rightly so IMO, that a state with a standing army can use that army to subjugate its citizens or that it leads to military rule. Indeed, that's why i said once the structures were in place to prevent the above from happening the 2nd amendment became largely irrelevant (I'm not an expert on the American structural makeup so maybe I'm wrong on that). Indeed, i get the impression though that it will never happen as there's lots of money behind the pro-gun movement, as sad as it is Americans are just going to have to get used to people losing their lives from firearms.
Isn't the interpretation more relevant than the intent though? I mean, in the context of today. And is intent even relevant at all for something created in a different world, 230 years ago? It's like a grown man whining about wanting to be a superhero because his mummy told him he could be anything he wanted to be as a toddler, and needs a slap and told to grow up.
Yes, but you're looking at it from a rational person's point of view. Fact is that it's not free of ambiguity, so people can choose to interpret it how suits them best. I can't imagine that even the most pro-gun campaigners out there, the ones arguing for further deregulation of guns, because they want explosive ammunition, RPGs and maybe the odd cannon, could truly believe that this is what the the founding fathers had in mind when they penned the constitution. My kid knows that when I say she can't have two cookies, I don't mean that she can have three instead, but she may choose to interpret it in this way because hey, three cookies. (And yes I've compared the collective intelligence of humanity to that of a toddler more than once today, and I apologise for potentially causing offence to toddlers everywhere)
Apart from the "The crowd would have been safe if they'd been armed!" thing, which was basically inevitable, my favourite exchange has been something like this: "No-one would be talking about truck control if he had driven a truck into the audience!" "You mean those things that require extensive testing and licensing, plus registration, to own" (In fairness, you don't need any of that to own a truck, only to use it in certain circumstances, but it is an amusing counterpoint) "You need to educate yourself on the difference between a right and a privilege!!!!!" If that doesn't basically sum up how many Americans view firearms, I don't know what does. One thing I will say, though, is we need to stop looking at gun control through the lense of mass shootings. While mass shootings are pretty common in the US, they still only make up a small proportion of gun-deaths (even ignoring suicide statistics). But of course, no-one really cares about minorities and poor people killing each other. Also, isn't it funny how quick the NRA are to advocate banning a niche product that is generally made by 3rd parties rather than the companies they 'represent'.
Yeah... I don't care any more. There are too many tragedies in the world, in areas where people are actively trying to avoid said tragedies, to be bothered about an inevitability in a region which is actively courting said incidents. Let's instead mourn the 23 dead in Mogadishu this week... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/28/mogadishu-people-dead-car-bomb-outside-somalia-hotel
Pretyty awful. I listened to several interviews with survivors and relatives of the dead on the world service last week.
Yup. It's another day in paradise for us in the Western world. So what do they do, in the richest country with (theoretically) the highest standard of living? Introduce guns! Because in a modern democratic civilisation, we need guns! The older I get, the more I resign myself to the fact that people sometimes just get what they deserve.
Isn't that half the issue that this isn't the case? The victims in the latest incident in Texas were in a Sunday church service - somewhere that is meant to be holy and sacred and generally peaceful - they didn't deserve to get brutally murdered by a nutcase with a high powered rifle - they were getting on with their lives as the would usually do. I assume what youre leaning towards is that 'America deserves this' because its so obsessed with a passage of law that is from a bygone time when it was actually relevant - lobbyists dont help that one either - but the people who seem to always end up on the recieving end of this gave zero to do with the legislation that allows a person with a criminal reccord / mental health issues go and buy a semi automatic rifle.
I won't suppose to speak for Nexxo but i read that sentence as meaning it's a regrettable inevitability, it's just that saying I resign myself to the fact that it's a regrettable inevitability that people sometimes just get unlucky sort of sounds a bit odd.
I think thats what I was agreeing with? I dont really know.. Its just a bit morose that mass shootings have to be inevitable because of political kickbacks.
I would suspect the majority of people in that church owned guns and voted for Governor Greg Abbott - who in 2015 was asking Texans to buy more guns in order to overtake California as the biggest purchaser of new guns in the US. If there were any church-goers who didn't own guns, didn't support widespread & barely-restricted gun ownership laws and didn't vote for politicians who are flag-bearers for the NRA, then they were indeed unfortunate and they and their families have my sincere sympathies. For the rest, I guess they should have tooled up before they went to church - after all, open carry is perfectly legal in churches in Texas. Am I really that callous and heartless? Do I think gun-supporting citizens deserve to be shot? Of course not. And it is a tragedy that an 18-month old and a 5 year old died, plus numerous other children that have no capability to shape the world around them. But this is simply no longer news-worthy. From a forum administration point of view, I wish that we could separate the numerous facets of Brexit and the numerous separate episodes in US politics into separate threads so that they can be discussed separately and in more detail; and instead create a 'Latest US Gun Carnage' thread to combine commentary on Las Vegas/Texas incidents as well as the numerous other ones that will follow over the following weeks and months.
Both the news article and the onion article it references are worth reading: https://www.indy100.com/article/the...-springs-texas-mass-shooting-massacre-8040011
I don't even need to click the link to know which Onion article it'll be... 'No way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens...'
