If the constitution is wrong, it needs to be changed, is just that simple.
It is my personal opinion that the reason we don't is because enough people disagree with modifying it, and so it has to be curtailed slowly (rightly or wrongly.)
Yep. And there are two methods for doing just that. But they both require a fair degree of consensus, and in the US the consensus in recent years has shifted toward more freedom regarding firearms instead of less.
(a) the US seems to working its way to tyranny just fine with the 2nd amendment intact.
(b) many other countries seem to do a pretty passable imitation of freedom without a 2nd amendment.
Update:
(c) on closer examination, it almost seems like an "opiate for the people" kind of thing: people being lulled into thinking they are free because they can kill innocent children with their high-powered weapons when the fact is that actual armed insurrection against the government is as ludicrously impossible with those weapons as it is without.
At the same time, real freedoms have been largely eliminated, habeas corpus is gone, 4th amendment largely gone, freedom of speech going away, freedom of assembly AWOL, elections manipulated and legislators bought, the president can have anyone incarcerated indefinitely without charges and without a trial, or summarily executed by simply labeling them a "terrorist" (and those labels fly looser every day). Focusing on these issues will have a much larger impact on actual liberty than trying to prevent meaningful gun control.
Yet, yay, we are "free" because we have our Glocks. Yeah, right.
>Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms.
But ok; I am going to pile on the other hundreds of comments making noise and tell you what I think America should do.
Decriminalize all drugs first (or at the same time). Then change the constitution and proclaim nobody should have guns except the police/military and some special cases (some bodyguards, bank guards); despite the popularity of "guns don't kill people" is pretty clear that where guns are the number of gunshot victims are always higher. Anyone who thinks they can overthrow the USA government from inside is delusional, before there is even 1000 people organized all forms of communication would be shout down; even internet. Your only hope to overthrow the USA government if such thing ever is required is that some generals and soldiers of the USA army itself revel.
Obviously this change would need to happen gradually; first the high caliber guns and then progressively the others; the government should pay for the guns so citizens have one more incentive to give them away.
And you're making a classic mistake here. Revolutions don't succeed in the face of unified military opposition. In any country. The scenario in a successful US revolution would be a schism or complete mutiny of the armed forces.
Well, I don't expect someone to understand when he lives in a country full of drug traffickers and communists. Probably gun control is the right thing for you.
Let me give you a history lesson; the people you call "drug traffickers" were actually formed as guerrilla and is still called a guerrilla today (FARC and ELN groups); to start a revolution against the government, unfortunately it didn't go so well so the years flied by and they slowly became a rural mafia that kidnap and kill anyone that gets in their way and had long forgot what their purpose is. Another situation that can happen in any country, including America. So yeah, you are very naive about the possible conclusions of an armed revolution.
As if you could actually know something like that better than I.
>But instead you decided to call me names.
Which was entirely appropriate after your last comment.
And yes, I'm aware of the genesis of drug traffickers in Columbia. Your condescending attempt at a "history lesson" isn't required.
The level of arrogance is too damn high.
And you avoided many points, like civiliant against civilian violence in the scenary of a civil war.
I don't think I'm being particularly arrogant by pointing out your knowledge of my country is of the primary school variety. Even if you had a more average grasp of US society and politics, you still wouldn't know as much as an American. That's just basic common sense, something which seems to be in short supply on your end.
>And you avoided many points, like civiliant against civilian violence in the scenary of a civil war.
That's not a "point" at all. How does it relate to the discussion?
"Overthrowing the government" makes it sound like an offensive operation, which is indeed fairly impractical. However, the real value of a large armed population is that it makes martial law and military occupation extremely difficult. It's a defensive advantage against an oppressive government. Look at the difficulty the US military has faced in its attempts to occupy Iraq, with a much smaller, poorer, and less sophisticated armed population. If the US government wanted to simply commit genocide against its population, sure, it could use chemical or nuclear weapons with little chance of civilian resistance, but there's not a huge advantage for even the most insane oppressive regime to do that.
> Then change the constitution and proclaim nobody should have guns except the police/military and some special cases (some bodyguards, bank guards).
Constitution or not, this is a deeply disturbing recommendation for many reasons, the most obvious of which is the fact that many people use guns for subsistence or income supplementation.
As far as bang-for-your-buck legislation goes, we should look elsewhere if we want to decrease bodycounts.
It's probably different in your country, with no crime or violence or anything.
And you can keep playing to the hypothesis that someday you will need a revolution and guns will be useful, in real life in the present there is just people dying because you have associated your national identity with abusing gunpowder.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Ush...
>"it just doesn't happen often enough"
There is nothing positive about guns; your group illusion of "self-protection" is quickly diminish by the fact that legal guns many times end up in the hands of the criminals, provoking accidents or in hands of mentally unqualified people... so even 1 death is enough.
>There is nothing positive about guns; your group illusion of "self-protection" is quickly diminish by the fact that legal guns many times end up in the hands of the criminals, provoking accidents or in hands of mentally unqualified people... so even 1 death is enough.
The idea that "even 1 death is enough" to take away a basic human right is just plain idiotic. How many times have assaults and murders been deterred by a gun? That doesn't show up in homicide statistics, does it?
Human rights as popularly known are the global rights established by the UN and I am pretty sure they don't mention guns. Or it must be a list of human rights you created yourself that I am not aware of.
Eh, actually they show up in homicide statistics as, you know, homicides.
>Human rights as popularly known are the global rights established by the UN and I am pretty sure they don't mention guns.
The UN has no particular legitimacy in the recognition of rights. Human rights are intrinsic, so to a certain extent they're subjective. Clearly you don't believe the right to self defense is a human right, but I think most people would disagree with you.
Just like you have your own human rights maybe this is from your own statistics too because the cdc.gov and other recognized institutions show nothing about the legality of the weapons used in murderess.
Human rights are the rights that should be respected by anyone; if you need some sort of self-defense by definition you are taking actions derived from a violation of your rights; so your self-defense is already out of any kind of human rights paradigm.
And self-defense is one of the most ambiguous concepts there are; if Palestinians could use an atomic bomb in Israel it would be self-defense? I think it would be, but it also would be wrong, very wrong.
USA is the developed country with the highest death rate by gunshots[1]; as much as you like to believe your own words data is not at your side.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re...
There's no logic in that statement. I have a right to self defense, and for the state to deprive me of the means of self defense is a violation of my rights.
>USA is the developed country with the highest death rate by gunshots
Irrelevant. I don't care about suicides or legitimate shoots. For the purposes of this discussion only murders matter.
We have an attachment to the document because that's the blueprint for our government. A nation of laws and not men. The founding fathers some people are more attached to than others.
Many people (like me) believe if you're going to have a written constitution the meaning of the document is fixed, so you have to use secondary sources to be clear on how it was understood when it was ratified. Thus the arguments about "what did the founding fathers really mean".
>The hell what they meant, they were wrong!
No, they weren't. They understood tyranny, having lived under it. You'd think after the 20th century people would be a little leery of investing too much power in their government, but I guess Santayana was right after all.