The Second Amendment

Yeah, i can see how the all CAPS thing doesn't do much. The comparison to slavery=irrelevant. We aren't talking about "what if-" like in the twilight zone-("Imagine, If you will" ) We are talking of facts, and the fact is-If i am not mistaken- that slavery never was in the Bill of Rights. I do not believe that slavery should EVER be re-instituted, But aside from that, the Bill of Rights Should never be tampered with or altered in any way. Clarified, specified? Okay, that's all fine. My (not getting angry here, just emphasizing) BIGGEST deal Is that We still be able to own guns. semiautomatics? I would appreciate retaining the legal ability to own them, but if not so, okay. But I will not tolerate illegalizing handhelds/pistols. Ever. Handhelds can be used to kill, but really, if i am not mistaken they are -mostly- used in intention of self defense should the need ever arise.




I believe a good idea(potentially not as effective as proverbially shooting down a right in a hissy-fit over a couple of young adults who are angry at the world) could be to limit the flow of,say ammunition. Some folks(a minority, given) collect guns as a hobby. Just as some do knives. Why should they lose the ability to get them, Hm? Let me use an example(purely to attempt to show my point, okay?)



Say the subject of water. say their was a statement in the bill of rights saying we had the right to drink water. What if more people were using water to kill others than to drink it? Would you ban the water entirely?(ignoring that its necessary for life) Not EVERYone was drowning others with it. so why should they lose it along with the others.

Another variation of the above is to restrict certain Types of projectiles. Perhaps only allowing, say, non-lethal projectiles(which DO exist). That would certainly make deaths drop similar to other methods.

I AM okay with gun control, but I don't Like having 2/3 types of guns being banned. Restricted so tight that gun can't so much as blink in the wrong way without being melted down? HELL, yes.


SW: I didn't mention that. To own a gun is different from firing one. Related for sure, but not one and the same.

 

Guns aren't necessary to live unlike water....
That's such a stupid analogy.

Given handguns are the gun in about 90% of gun deaths they should be the focus of control.

 

(Well, that's quite an essential component of the comparison if you ask me… )


My problem is, I just don't see why guns are necessary. I don't know a single person (irl) who owns a gun, nor one who ever needed it. Guns, however small, are made to kill or at least badly injure someone - there are no good sides to a gun, it's an instrument purely to hurt and destroy. Guns just make it too easy to kill a person.

Why would any normal person need a lethal weapon in their possession? To rise up against a tyranny? That makes no sense, guns would even make matters worse I believe; there's no way every single person would stand up united against their government. There would be chaos, individuals will declare themselves “leader of the people”, only to be assassinated a few days/minutes later. I'd be like Lybia or Syria, the difference being that in the USA, a substantial part of the population (well, I'm generalizing a lot here…) already owns a gun. If my country would fall into chaos, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near anyone with a gun.
The world was a completely different place when the Bill of Rights was written, bluntly implementing rules that are hundreds of years old to modern society is pure madness.

 

you'd be surprised how reliable Americans are in uniting when we truly see a need. We're like siblings: in peace we slug it out on each other, but you try and hit any one of us and you've got everyone out to get you! IE: american revolution, WW1, WW2... The quircky thing is a democratic president is a recurring factor: they are incredible at working up our society against one cause... but thats another topic...

Most of the time, it isn't. But, restrictions can do every bit as much a banning. Once you ban guns entirely, in a nation with a very large pro gun faction.... gun-smugling mafia, anyone? jk... but they're alright as long as they get something, say they can keep pistols. If not... well... that pisses them off, causing them to smuggle more just to show that ain't gonna cut it. Even if they don't that'll just mean the devices in question will add to the contraband flow. maybe the total sales will shrink a tad, but its still there. Which means people can still get their hands on them. Which means eliminating a right for a very small effect. Face it, the people who've been involved are in an age group which is very angry at the world, for whatever reason. I am in that group so I would know. The way its expressed is different. Ntm they were raised in a society which pamperd them. Tell them no and its practically traumatizing. They wanna throw a tantrum. How does vary but i gotta go.

 

Why should the Bill of Rights not be tampered with in any way? Or, more broadly, why should the Constitution never again be amended? Going back to prohibition as an example, there is historical precedent for an amendment to supersede another. I argue that the country's founders intended for the Constitution to be amended over time, else they would not have included the mechanism to do so.

With respect to slavery, the Constitution allowed for Congress to levy a tax on slaves until January 1, 1808. Curiously, Article 5 states that this clause in Section 9 could not be amended before 1808. In 1861, Thomas Corwin proposed an amendment that forbade future Constitutional amendments which provided Congress the power to "abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." (i.e. he proposed an amendment that allowed slavery). Although this was done as a political effort to sway Southern states, it's noteworthy because the amendment passed and was submitted to state legislatures without a deadline. I suppose it could be revived and ratified today, and the new amendment would supersede the 13th Amendment. But I like to think that we live in a more civilized world today.

 

I'd take the pistol. Shotguns are large, unwieldy, and difficult to properly maneuver and handle in close quarters.

I'm a pro-gun guy, but I don't think anyone needs an assault rifle for home defense. Just because they don't need it doesn't mean they shouldn't be allowed to own one. I know it sounds far flung, I barely believe it could ever come to this myself, but the US Government (is supposed to) serve through the consent of the governed. The constitution was a document that was clearly designed to limit the power of the Government. Look at any of the first 10 amendments. They all state what the Government can not do. At some point the citizenship needs to actually have the means to defend their rights and the Government needs to know that they are ultimately answering to a (sadly ever shrinking) population that will actually stand up and fight for their freedoms(which are not granted by Government but imbued by our creator, whether you choose to believe in God or simply our evolution as free-thinking free-willed humans).

It sounds far-fetched, heck, it is. BUT without the second amendment the people are literally powerless to defend their rights. The entire founding of this country is based on the principle that the basic freedoms outlined in the bill of rights shall not be infringed upon by a tyrannical Government. Without the right to bear arms, what good is any of that talk?

This is not something that anyone would ever expect to be necessary because we live in a civilized nation that is more or less governed by people who were freely elected and still have some respect for our founding documents, but it's not unprecedented. In Athens, Tennessee, shortly after the end of WWII, a totally corrupt local government was rigging elections and using the local police force as basically their own personal army to enforce their power upon the people. A small group of WWII vets took up arms and overthrew the corrupt politicians.

That just one example and the only one I know of, really. I just hope I'm clearly representing the viewpoint people have about preventing tyranny because sometimes you hear the pro-gun people say "WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO FIGHT THE GOVERNMENT!" without really explaining their point very clearly.

At this point I also feel the need to address the comment that was made earlier about how the constitution was only written to apply to rich, white landowners and that therefore the second amendment is just as antiquated and out of touch with modern society. There is no doubt that injustices occurred across the entire western world in regards to slavery. Society was different back then, and even civilized nations held slaves, including Britain, which didn't abolish slavery until 1834. Slavery wasn't widespread across the entire country and it was almost entirely situated in the South. All of the former British colonies had abolished slavery by 1804 and the new areas being populated such as the northwest territories and midwest were being settled by revolutionary war veterans and set-up as free states. The south's major economies depeneded on slave-labor, which is why they fought so hard to preserve it.

So get this straight. The Constitution of the United States of America was drafted during the Constitutional Convention on Sept. 17, 1787. It was ratified by all eleven states and went into effect by March 4, 1789.

-The Northwest Territory was established in 1787 (prior to the ratification of the constitution) as a free state. This area would later become Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota and was settled by people who actually fought in the revolutionary war.

-In 1780 Massachusetts began emancipation efforts as well as most other northern states.

-By 1804 New Jersey was the last original state to begin emancipation.

-Power struggles between the House (majority free staters) and the Senate (majority of Slave states) led to a series of debates and compromises such as the Missouri compromise which designated everything north of a certain territorial boundary after the Louisiana Purchase as a free state, and added in Maine as a free state. California was admitted as a free state in 1850.

-Clearly it was the original states and the people who actually fought in the revolutionary war and helped make the constitution possible who were anti-slavery and fought to abolish it completely. The move to end slavery in states that had already been allowing it began just a few short years after the constitution became law.

-To state that the Constitution is somehow invalid because it only applied to rich, white landowners and just willful ignorance and blind re-writing of history. The constitution wasn't even enacted into law by the time the anti-slavery movement was already put into action for the Northwest Territories.

-The slavery that continued in the South was wrong, it was a clear violation of the very founding documents of the country (which is why the Southern states split from the Union and tried to write their own version of the constitution) and it led to a war that split the nation and pit brother against brother that caused 625,000 deaths (more than the American casulties in WWI and WWII combined!) and 425k of those deaths were of Union soldiers who were fighting in part to abolish slavery.

This is not to say that racial and gender bias didn't continue, because it did for many many years. Corrupt, racist, sexist, power hungry, lying, tyrranical thuggish politicians and law enforcers continued to perpetuate racial inequality across the country even though these acts were still in DIRECT defiance of the founding documents. If anything, this perfectly illustrates the potential of government to usurp the freedoms of the citizens.

Thank God we had a hero named Martin Luther King Jr. who rallied a peaceful protest movement that got the politicians in Washington to wake up and realize that "all men are created equal" means exactly what it says.

Anyway the short point is that just because people are corrupt and do evil things, it doesn't invalidate the truth that is stated in my country's most precious document.

That's all I have to say about that--- back to guns.

The problem with guns in America is there are far too many of them in the hands of criminals and thugs. Some people from other countries, and I have seen some of it in this thread, think that America is populated by rootin' tootin' cowboys who cruise around in their pick-up trucks shooting up neighborhoods. That is just the height of cultural ignorance to believe that.

The overwhelming majority of gun crime in this country is committed by gangs, thieves, drug dealers and inner-city scum who come from a culture that is so thoroughly decimated yet totally self-perpetuated.

That's a topic for another thread I'm afraid but my position is that the solution isn't to get rid of the second amendment or to implement massive, sweeping gun restrictions. Nor is the solution to arm teachers. That's just crazy talk. The solution is to address the cultural rot that is consuming our poor and inner-city communities and to get the guns away from the people that shouldn't have them (criminals, mentally ill, etc).

Adam Lanza's mother is at least partially responsible for the tragedy in Newtown. If she were a responsible gun owner and had her weapons locked up like they should have been those 26 people would probably still be alive today.

 

You're absolutely right about this. The founders knew that culture and society would change and the constitution needed to be flexible. We have the 15th Amendment as proof of that. (edited for clarity)

That said, the Bill of Rights shouldn't be tampered with because it specifically outlines the most basic and important aspects of our societies' freedoms. To change the bill of rights in any way would fundamentally alter the basic core of our society.

 

I think one of the reasons people feel the way they do about the Bill of Rights is because it has a fancy name attached to it. It's fine to argue that the Bill of Rights defines the most basic fundamental human rights, but it's worth noting that it took the 13th to officially abolish slavery, the 14th to guarantee blacks equal protection under the law, and the 15th to give them the right to vote. And that's just black men, to say nothing of the struggle for women.

If we remove the "Bill of Rights" moniker and consider each amendment on its own, in its historical context as well as that of current society, then I don't see why it should be taboo to discuss further amendments that might nullify one of the original 10.

 

I don't think chalking it up to marketing is entirely valid. The first 10 amendments establish the limitations of the Federal government defining what it cannot do to either individuals or the states themselves. The additional amendments address a wide scope dealing with some mundane details such as electoral processes and others dealing with specific conditions and/or activities. The fact that the first 10 deal with a specific purpose tends to unify them and amending them has some wide scope ramifications as opposed to just repealing prohibition.

 

That's a fair argument, and I do agree that a new amendment nullifying an existing one would have wide-reaching consequences (whether good, bad, both, or neither). My argument above is that the phrase "The Bill of Rights" has a certain permanence to it, while "the first 10 amendments" sounds less so.

But then, I also think it's funny that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are sacrosanct - never to be questioned - but the 10 Commandments are broken on a daily basis. It's an internal, understanding laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

 

whoa whoa whoa! I, at no point said that the constitution should not be amended. How did you get that from my saying that rights should not be destroyed? Just curious... I understand its meant to be flexible, but i consider the b.o.r. to be a sort of foundation, which ought to be a little less so, no? Not rigid, but deleting entire parts of a foundation *tend* to cause destabilization if I am not mistaken. Modified wouldn't cause said destabilization if they are not going to the extent of saying "So, we're scared as hell, so we're gonna take this away and It'll fix eeeverything right up!" Then wonder what went wrong when results don't turn out as expected.

NTM: If we allow them to get rid of one right, who/whats to say they'll stop at that? Congress/gov't as whole isn't "for" the people atm if you catch my drift. showing them that they can change even rights at their whim is bound to go wrong in some way. Goodbye, free internet!

And as for the 10 commandments: I can see where the humor of that on lies Thing is from what I've read of them(atheist here) half of 'em can't not be violated


[quote=mucgoo;3272498]Guns aren't necessary to live unlike water....
That's such a stupid analogy.
[/quote]
*ahem* IGNORING the fact that water is nesesary for life. perhaps pay attention next time? The reason I used water is it was the first word i thought of.

 

doublepost

 

Perhaps I misunderstood your previous post. I think it was when you said (bold emphasis is mine):

I challenged that statement by arguing that the Bill of Rights comprises the first 10 amendments, and that there is historical precedent for a new amendment to nullify an existing one. Nevertheless, if you agree that they can be clarified or specified, then you don't really believe that they shouldn't be tampered with in any way.

 

clarifying/specifying: here's what I consider it to be: Rewording the definition of a word/phrase for those who are too busy or ignorant or-in some cases- just plain too stupid to understand. In this case it would be modifying the underlying clauses. Like we have the right of free speech, but we have to use said right along certain guidelines, such as not making another person feel threatened etc. The right is still there, but its been....clarified, made less "blurry' so to speak. I can see how you may have misunderstood now that you point out my word conflict. Will edit when possible to avoid future issues other than the one at hand...

 

Following that example, do you argue that we should keep the Second Amendment, but that it could be clarified with certain guidelines if people feel threatened?

 

wow, supermonkey, you are uber patient. remember though, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink!

of course the second amendment, as written, is woefully outdated. that's one reason the u.s. supreme court interpreted it for us in 1939 with u.s. v. miller.

laws of the land (read: bill of rights, constitutional amendments, et. al) are subject to interpretation by the judicial branch of government. our three-pronged approach (executive, legislative, judicial) is supposed to limit power and suppress tyrannies, but apparently no one counted on the power and tyranny of lobbyists and commercial interests.

i hate when people trot out the 2nd amendment after a mass shooting. some people get hysterical, and go buy loads of ammo (seriously, a friend who works at a firearms and ammunition business said they sold out of everything in the days right after sandy hook).

but back to '39 and the u.s. v miller. in this case, the supreme court basically took a "collective rights approach," saying congress could regulate sawed-off shotguns because there wasn't enough evidence to suggest that the shot-gun had a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."

so, in essence, they upheld a collective rights theory -- that citizens do not have an individual right to possess guns, and that local, state, and federal legislatures can regulate firearms without implicating a constitutional right.

this interpretation stood for 70 years until 2008, with district of columbia v. heller. in this case the plaintiff challenged the constitutionality of a 32 year old handgun ban in d.c. the decision was 5-4, but they went with an opposing"individual right theory," and ruled that the second amendment established an individual right for citizens to possess firearms. which meant, of course, that the d.c. ban was unconstitutional. they did however state in the decision, that regulations for weaponry that cannot be used for "law-abiding purposes" would not implicate the second amendment, including regulations prohibiting criminals and the mentally ill from firearms possession. this individual rights approach was strengthened again with supreme court case law in 2010.

no one is going to take away your guns. it's a huge and thriving industry. but, as in other industries, those who favor collective rights will butt heads with those who favor individual rights, with the prevailing position being assured of a challenge.

 

it was not my intent to bring this thread to a standstill. and, contrary to a previous statement, i'm in fact quite interested in how the second amendment frames the great gun debate, or i wouldn't have come out of sporadic lurk to contribute. it's just frustrating to me when the 2nd is used as the de facto argument for why we need to resist gun regulation of any kind. hence my previous citations.

i was hoping someone might jump in with a salient argument as to why individual rights trump collective rights in this debate. because thus far i've not heard or read a persuasive one.

also, to wit, i read the following in the NYT this weekend, and while the considerable commercial interest in this debate can't be stressed enough, i was wrong about the robustness of the firearms industry.

"Threatened by long-term declining participation in shooting sports, the firearms industry has poured millions of dollars into a broad campaign to ensure its future by getting guns into the hands of more, and younger, children. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/us/selling-a-new-generation-on-guns.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

I tried to make the same point in the original gun thread(for some reason it kind of shifted to this thread). The retort invoked the second amendment...

 

Individual rights trump collective rights, as they also should.

 

you call that an argument? it's just an opinion unless you say why they should, and back it up with logic and information.