I upvoted your comment, because you implicitly raise a very popular, and I believe very dangerous point: That results justify taking away rights. Dangerous, because the 2nd amendment is not the only one that can be sacrificed for safety.
While there's a gray area where there can be disagreement as to whether it is sufficient justification, after a certain point, pragmatism must prevail. Using the 2nd amendment as example, lets say we allow guns and rifles. And grenades? RPGs? Tanks? Chemical weapons (nerve gas, not pepper spray)? Biological weapons (smallpox, not guard dogs)? The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a bioengineered plague, is a good guy with a bioengineered plague?
It should always be ignored. If the states want to ban people from having tanks and jet fighters, they can adopt a new amendment. There's already a process to account for these types of things.
Yes. Maybe not simply video but what about a deep-fake video designed to deceive people that is indistinguishable from a genuine video? At some point unique cases arise that require careful judgement. This is what the judicial system is for, to provide "judgement" on things which were not anticipated by the law.
Sometimes those unique cases were only once unique but become ubiquitous due to changes in technology, geography, climate, or society.
right to privacy is an example. There's talk about this all over the place but it was only evident that people had an expectation and desire to exercise this right after it started getting abused by technology and technology companies.
The bill of rights contains what it does because the founders had just had experience with many of those rights being curtailed.
Citation needed. There's a constant debate about what the "framers' intent" of any part of Bill of Rights actually were. You say it was to prevent government tyranny (presumably including a future tyrannical U.S. government). I say it was specifically to ensure access to a fighting force specifically to fight the British and foreign threats in order to establish a new government.
>"To disarm the people...[i]s the most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason, father of the Bill of Rights
>"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty .... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." - Elbridge Gerry, contributor to the Bill of Rights
>"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist." - Alexander Hamilton
>"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." - Tench Coxe, delegate to the Continental Congress
Now, let's go to Madison, the father of the Constitution and all that. He firmly opposed a professional (i.e. standing) army when he wrote the constitution. Tool of tyrants, yadda yadda. However, President Madison who exists 30 years in the future, comes out and says "I could never have believed so great a difference existed between regular troops and a militia force, if I not witnessed the scenes of this day." in response to 2 state militias getting demolished by the British Army.
IDK. They put the 2nd amendment in, and then immediately undermine the philosophical point of governance it's meant to make. Democracy is weird, government is hard, and coming up with 100% accurate statements about the unified sentiments of a group of dozens/hundreds of people from 250 years ago is impossible. I guess that's my point?
That doesn’t follow from this:
“Both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists opposed a standing army and saw it as a tool of oppressors.”
Either you support the 2nd amendment as a means of national defense or your support handing the tools of oppression to the government, per the founding fathers.
The most effective ways of fighting a modern military are bombs (IEDs), air superiority, and nuclear deterrence.
This really isn't true. Look up Destructive Devices and the sale listings for tanks and jets.
i.e "the kind of explosives most non-experts in non-military settings are best served by are free to use for personal use (state law notwithstanding)"
e.g. Free movement across the US was fine while it was on foot, horseback, or even train, but once commercial flight allowed for coast-to-coast movement in a couple of hours one can't apply the same rights.
I see it's already been addressed, but private citizens owned warships, cannon, artillery pieces, and even semi-automatic rifles at the time the second amendment was written.
No, it became absurd because it's underlying purpose was abandoned and the governments in the US at all levels adopted professional armed internal and external security services, and thebwholet point of having an RKBA to support the viability of well-regulated militias was so that those militias would be what states and the federal government would rely on exclusively, beyond very minimal cadres, for armed security services.
The whole absurd mythology around the RKBA being to provide the ability for citizens to provide a reserve capacity to fight the professional Government forces in the event the government becomes tyrannical is a product of trying to rationalize the amendment once it's underlying premise has been abandoned.
> you can't carry an RPG or a machine gun or most kinds of arms that have been invented subsequently to it's introduction.
I'm not convinced there is a fundamental reason why bearing most modern heavy weapons within reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions is incompatible with public safety; clearly “carry everything everywhere” maximalism isn't, but then that's never been understood by the courts to be the scope of the RKBA even when it concerns whatever weapons the court felt were within it's coverage.
You actually can, subject to local regulations, and it is permitted in some States. An American can own a ballistic missile if they register it and store it safely. Even in the 1990s, buying a truckload of high explosives was cash and carry.
Most Americans are surprised to the extent this is true because, as a practical matter, it has never been evident in most of the country. Just because you legally can does not mean anyone exercises that right, outside of very rare outliers with money to burn.
I'll never understand how a significant amount of the population can entertain the idea that "gun rights" are central to liberty, or that unlimited liberty above long term survival of the species is somehow desirable.
Compare it to the 'do no harm' in medicine: say a doctor kills a healthy patient, so that his organs can save five others. At first, many lives are saved, but when this becomes widespread, how long until no-one dares come near a hospital? Or how likely is a patient to admit to having suicidal thoughts, if it results in police going through their private home, confiscating guns, or even committing them for their own good?
Absolutist, 'ideological' positions such as do no harm, and doctor/lawyer-patient/client confidentiality, are important guards against unwanted second-order effects.
Other provisions are less loosey-goosey. The first and second amendments are categorical prohibitions. You can’t establish a national religion even if you think the results will be tremendously beneficial. The taxation clause is similarly clear. We needed an amendment to create the income tax, even though it was necessary to a modern state.