Hacker News Reader

Comment by ct0 | Hacker News Reader

There are 2 schools of thought on the constitution. Living constitutionalists believe that the constitutional adapts or changes and can be fluid based on "modern" beliefs and the interpretation changes to allow for that. Originalists believe the text is strict and not up for debate and that the contract of the constitution is fixed. Most of what we are seeing is based on these 2 ideas in conflict.

View on HN

That whole debate feels like a distraction. If the majority wants gun control don't debate the meaning of the text, amend it.

The 2nd amendment falls within the Bill of Rights.

Maybe the "living document" view is the only obvious play, given past SCOTUS rulings?

N.B.: I've never studied law, so I may have no idea what I'm talking about.

The Bill of Rights is just as amendable as the rest of the Constitution.

Witness the various efforts to “repeal Citizens United,” which often (always?) require amending the First Amendment.

You need a supermajority to amend it, and even if the 64% number in another post is accurate, you need a supermajority of elected representation, which don't map directly to population. Specifically, states that are less populous have the same number of senators, and typically are against more gun control. Lastly, even if you had a supermajority of representation favoring more gun control, you have to get them to agree on the same type of more gun control, so realistically you won't see an amendment until something well north of 80% favor more gun control.

Some things shouldn't even be up to debate to begin with. It was never about number of deaths, it was always about basic human dignity. Without weapons, you are at the mercy of others. With weapons, you have power. I'd say not being a powerless subject of the powers that be trumps literally any number of deaths.

Just secede. The scale of the US doesn't make sense. The culture has many schisms. Give people who want guns their guns, give those that don't their peace of mind.

Living constitutionalism doesn't quite make sense to me, insofar as it means that the constitution means whatever we want it to say, which results in it not actually being a check on the government's powers. This isn't to say there isn't some ambiguity in the constitution, and that ambiguity can be beneficial. But the living constitution theorists tend to read more ambiguity in than actually exists.

This includes saying things like: constitutional review didn't exist until Marbury v Madison. This ignores that it was a thing under the various state constitutions, with it not being called out specifically, and that it falls naturally under the fact that SCOTUS has the power to decide all cases and controversies, and Stare Decisis combines with that to say that if SCOTUS decides one way on a constitutional issue, they'll continue to decide the same way on that issue, so if a lower court judge decides the other way, they'll get reversed when it gets appealed, probably summarily in a one line opinion of the Court.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com