Thats an interesting point. There is actual hatred for country folks.
I get it though. My folks are from a village in India. We sometimes get shit on by city folks too. Some country folks like guns. But its not a "right".
I get it though. My folks are from a village in India. We sometimes get shit on by city folks too. Some country folks like guns. But its not a "right".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_Unit...
If its not a right, then the government can pass much stronger gun laws, including confiscations, etc. But still allows good citizens to own guns for hunting and stuff. Maybe even limit the number of guns per person, control the type of gun, etc. Just give enough so that country folks are happy with simple hunting rifles and cant do much damage.
The semantics are important because it illuminates the philosophy of rights and the Constitution, and perhaps that illumination may help you to understand how many people see it differently.
Right now they cannot because the constitution doesn't allow it. If you repeal 2A, then they (Congress) will be able to do much more about guns.
The Constitution is written from the opposite direction, that all power lies in the people and the Constitution is the mechanism by which we grant limited authority to the government. In fact, this was a big part of the debate around passing the Bill of Rights in the first place, that it would confuse this issue. Repealing the 1st Amendment would not remove our right to free speech. It would simply remove the codification of that right and we would revert to natural law which still would include free speech. In order for the government to infringe on our natural right to free speech we the people would have to pass an amendment explicitly granting the government the authority to do so. The same of course applies to the 2A.
This is essentially the philosophy of the founders and the limited government crowd you're going to be arguing against if you want to regulate guns.
I'm hoping that you'll see that this isn't just a semantic difference in the mechanism by which you might accomplish gun restrictions, but a deeper difference in the belief system around the philosophy of law. I'm not trying to change your mind about the 2A here, but to help you relate to the small government crowd with the way you talk about the law. You're not trying to revert a power granted to us by the government, you're trying to subvert natural law.
We have given up our natural right to kill another person. I am suggesting we should give up our natrual right to bear arms.
The idea with natural rights has always been that we have unlimited rights (and actually enumerating them can be problematic) but we give some up to live in a society where we can pursue life liberty and happiness.
I am saying Americans via their representatives should give up their right to bear arms, remove it from being enumerated, and then allow strong legislation that outlaws weapons just like we have done with murder. If an amendment is needed then so be it "Congress HAS the right to strictly control guns in order to protect life".
Does that make sense?
Yes, they are.
> The founders believed rights were natural.
They may have had a moral belief that certain rights were natural, and that may have been the basis for them incorporating the rights into the Constitution, but moral beliefs are not the same thing as material facts.
"We the people of the United States... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America"
All powers, including the power to establish the Constitution in the first place, are derived from the people.
Section 8 explicitly lays out which powers we the people are granting to the government: borrow money, regulate commerce with foreign nations, establish a post office, etc.
If powers are not explicitly granted to the government, it doesn't have them.
A little nitpicking: in US it is actually a right.
It might seem weird for the rest of us but then again in their defense they never had a Srebrenica, an Auswich, a Rwanda in the last century so I guess it can be seen as an insurance:
They're paying a few lives every year to protect against genocides.
(And to be perfectly clear: I don't want that system here where I live, I just try to understand their situation.)
I see what you are getting at. But honestly, if the gov wants to do a genocide, they have tanks and bombers to do it. No AR15 will help against that anyway.
To control a population you need boots on the ground.