> Limit second amendment more to prevent more shootings.
I've always wondered the validity of a "constitutional freedom" that allows random everyday people to own and operate tools that are essentially killing machines.
I've always wondered the validity of a "constitutional freedom" that allows random everyday people to own and operate tools that are essentially killing machines.
That's not true, though. U.S. laws and their enforcement are extremely punitive compared to most other western countries. It seems the values are very specifically centered around the right to own guns, not around protecting individuals from society in general.
That's not true, though. The US is a lot less punitive regarding cars compared to most other western countries.
Not sure why you put quotes around constitutional freedom.
The reason for the amendment is such that when someone or someones come along and attempt to abridge your rights you can kill them with the killing machine.
As simple as that.
It's weird to me that advocating for the cessation of an absolute right to self-defense is a mainstream political position.
It's not as if history is one peachy peace-and-love orgy.
The other side here is basically just people supporting and voting for the laws they think will improve society, a.k.a. democracy working normally.
On the other hand, the moral majority can make the law and then murder people who don't follow it. This is called "democracy working normally".
Your position just comes off as saying "in its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges".
There are also certain demographics that are much likelier to own guns, so "is armed revolution necessary" is really more a question of "is this particular group of people unhappy".
So much this. Growing up, it was so strange to see people pulling out a gun on someone for walking on their lawn in Hollywood movies.
Isn't that what highly trained and professional law enforcement is for?
At least that's what they're for in my part of the world.
That works fine and well until the police are the ones kicking in your door to drag you away.
Fortunately for us all, that's not a thing that ever happens.
Since it clearly needs said, the 2A is not about day-to-day life. It's about large-scale societal failure modes.
In a situation in which you have to shoot someone to save yourself, it's implicitly understood that the law enforcement won't be there for at least another 15 minutes.
Also, who will call them? You may have to shoot your opponent first, just to be able to call the police. At least in the leg or something, if killing makes you squeamish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
Every adult should have the means to protect who they care about.
> At least that's what they're for in my part of the world.
I really wish the Jewish populations of Warsaw had known this. If only they had called on the professional law enforcement to help them! And then the Tutsi made the same mistake in Rwanda 50 years later - shouldn't people have learned by then?
Point is, sometimes it's the "professional law enforcement" that's coming to kick your face in, and asking them to defend you doesn't work so well. And even when they aren't the ones doing the kicking, their priorities might not match yours - as Koreatown found in the LA riots.
No, the reason for the amendment was the perception (possibly true) that reliance on citizens militias for internal and external security was an essential guarantee of liberty, as otherwise the government would have no choice but to rely on professional forces (army/police) that would become culturally distinct from the general population and become oppressive either on their own or on behalf of the government which would become more attached to it's security services through whuhbit applied force, and which could withhold that ability or use it in ways the political authority did not approve of unsatisfied, than the general public. Combined with the perception (false, as it turned out) that the only thing needed to protect this model was to assure that the government's understandable desire to regulate weaponry didn't make it impractical to rely on militias of the citizenry for this purpose.
The idea was that it would be impossible to oppress the general public if the government had to call up the general public to do the oppressing, whereas if there was a distinct warrior tribe whose whole profession was applying force as ordered by higher authority, the government would be much more able and inclined to be oppressive.
Unfortunately, even those who hold themselves out as defenders of the second amendment have forgotten it's purpose.
87 deaths from a truck ramming attack. The existing licensing system was obviously insufficient to prevent this attack. What do you suggest be done to prevent attacks like this in the future?
If that's not your intent, can you clarify what your intent is? I'm probably not the only one who read it that way.
If it's motivated purely by the desire to shoot people with cool badass assault rifles, then banning things that look like assault rifles would solve it. If it's just the desire to shoot people, then you would have to ban all firearms.
However, if it's caused by the desire to kill, with no regard for the mechanism, then banning guns would have no or little effect: they would move to the next-easiest node in the attack tree.[1] If you ban all trucks, then attackers would try to burn down high rises, or poison water mains, or release sarin gas in subway stations, etc etc.
The observation that these other attacks are exotic and weird is only weak evidence for to the question if mass shootings are for the shooting, or the killing.
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1: https://www.schneier.com/academic/archives/1999/12/attack_tr...
I'm in favor of gun control but I don't think it's clear whether it would actually make it meaningfully harder for people who want to kill lots of people indiscriminately-ish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-ramming_attack#List_of...
That said, there's certainly another conversation over whether we should consider how valuable human life is compared to the conveniences modern tools like firearms and private vehicles give us. Or I guess we've already collectively decided that the answer is no.
I disagree with this formulation of the question. It isn't either or. For a lot of people, that "freedom afforded to us by constitutional degree" is what allows to protect the value of their own human life in the case of an immediate danger, as well as that of people close to them.
I think the amendment seems fairly clear to me. I, too, disagree that it should be enshrined in the constitution, or even that it should exist as a right in such an unrestricted form. But there's no doubt that it's in there, and we already have a process for changing the constitution.
If I were a Supreme Court justice, I would push to invalidate all laws that limit the ownership and carrying of guns or any armaments by private citizens. This is really the only thing that would force us as a nation to come to some sort of consensus on what the bounds of gun regulation and legislation should be, on a constitutional level.
This is reasonable as a principle of justice, but it means that we are prevented from achieving consensus on the bounds of Congress's and the several state's power to regulate the keeping and bearing of arms unless we amend the constitution to make those boundaries clear. My approach above is a bit scorched earth, but I think there's a consensus to be found between the anti-gun people and the reasonable-gun-control people that might exclude the gun rights absolutists, but result in some sensible middle ground.
Some of the citizens overthrowing the government would be in the military, though, no? Since the military is made up of normal people that live among civilians. It's more likely the military would split into factions, with the revolutionaries gaining control of a sizable chunk of tanks, airplanes, etc. Or maybe the military would stage a coup.
However, a truly tyrannical government would have long purged guns from its civilian population as evidenced by every tyranny ever.
It'd be a mess.
Very unlikely. Biggest part of military training is brainwashing you to always following orders. People that resist brainswashing are quickly discharges as "unfit for duty".
The US military has both Republicans and Democrats in it (though probably a larger percentage of the former). If there is any sort of internal conflict, it would likely split along those party lines. Also, the US military does not advocate blindly following orders. The person receiving the orders should only obey lawful orders and should resist and disobey unlawful orders ("I order you to go shoot all those unarmed civilians over there!")
Could you point out the brainwashing sessions in Navy boot camp perhaps?
I do remember a constitutional law class we all had to take where we were specifically taught that we had an absolute duty to refuse unlawful orders, maybe you were confused and for things backwards?
Look at the Chinese response to the protests in Hong Kong. Are they flying bombers over the city and setting up artillery? No, they're using forces of infantry, police, and paramilitary thugs who are far outnumbered by the protesters. If they actually leveled one of their own cities the entire government would collapse on itself.
However, given a sufficient percentage of the population which is interested in doing this, it would be very difficult even for the US military to completely conquer.
While I'm sympathetic to the argument of weaponry as a balance-of-power between government and governed [1], in the modern era it's hard to see its application to civilian-grade firearms as anything more than a fantasy. (If one wants to examine this seriously, I suspect the weapons of choice for a modern insurrection would be things like IEDs, micro-drones, and hacking/encryption.)
Still, I think the argument is sound for a right to self-protection independent of government. There just isn't an obvious "bright line" as to what level of destructive power is reasonable for a private citizen, as one progresses from muskets to AR-15s to RPGs to hydrogen bombs. (It is also an open question as to whether regulations like licensing, mandatory safety training, and civil liability count as "infringement", to say nothing of denying weapons to known criminals or the mentally ill.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley#Weapons_and_de...
It's "too powerful" for civilians if it's fully automatic or explosive (RPGs, hand grenades, bombs, etc.)