I'd rather they clarified "well-regulated militia".
(A silly example, but hopefully effective in showing the trick of language.)
It's pretty clear that the founding fathers thought civilians should be able to own deadly weapons. The purpose for this was defense not only of the state, but of the individual.
But even though I am a gun owner, I think the second amendment is extremely dated and should be ignored. So what if the founding fathers thought civilians should own guns? However intelligent and knowledgable they were, they have been superseded in all dimensions by two centuries of scientific and technological progress. If gun ownership decreases crime, OK. Tweak the laws to increase gun ownership. If it increases crime, OK. Do the opposite. If some middle-ground licensing thing works, do that. I find firearms fun to shoot, and I could see how they could be useful in self-defense, but what I really care about is the well-being of people. It's best to do whatever helps people, not what some centuries-old text says.
Fortunately, if the Talmud and D&D have taught us anything, it's that people can interpret any rule to match their existing view. In the long run, judges will rule in favor of public safety no matter the text of the constitution.
What about this ruling? Is this in favor "of public safety no matter the text of the constitution"? It sounds like the cop was trying to get meth off the streets, isn't that a matter "of public safety"?
> ..., but what I really care about is the well-being of people. It's best to do whatever helps people, not what some centuries-old text says.
The problem, as you point out, is that not everyone interprets "well-being of people" the same way. For some, it means largely sticking to this centuries-old text.
Yes, exactly, you got it exactly right: whether the founding documents were ever useful, what governing principles do we want to live with now?
We obviously constrain people's agency in lots of ways that are non-controversial, like requiring that people drive on one side of the street or the other, or requiring that people not dump toxic waste in public parks. How do guns fit into that picture? How does speech, for that matter?
These are good and important questions to think deeply about, and I'm so glad you raised the issue so articulately.
My background, by the way: not a gun owner now, but I've used them enough to have a pretty good familiarity with them (and was once licensed to do armed security work, even). I'd fully endorse gun ownership restrictions, background checks, etc. I have never seen any rational argument against such laws; to me, it just goes to show how the NRA has done an amazing job conning a lot of people into becoming their own private gun lobby army, heh heh.
> whether the founding documents were ever useful, what
> governing principles do we want to live with now?
Stability is also important of course, but a reasonable balance seems to have been struck. The constitution does indeed evolve with the times, while still remaining more or less the same document, upholding the same basic ideals.
chroma's insight was that the question we should be asking is not "what do these centuries-old documents tell us to do?" but "how do we want to live, in the world we have now?"
[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-nras-true-believe...
[2]: http://www.salon.com/2013/01/14/the_nra_once_supported_gun_c...
[3]: http://www.shmoop.com/right-to-bear-arms/charlton-heston-nra...
Thanks for providing all the links.
Sometimes, an organization's need to survive outweighs or compromises their stated goals.
As for your example sentence, you're saying that the two halves of the sentence are entirely unrelated, when it's clear given the subject matters in the constitutional phrases that they are related. Are there any other such examples from the same lawmakers where two halves of a sentence are supposedly utterly unrelated to each other?
Time having passed, police/DHS are ramping up their domestic firepower and increasing their militarized responses to mundane crime. Criminals being (on the whole) the targets, little has been done in response. However, a similar violent act was nearly perpetrated on regular citizens at Brady Ranch last year, and there was a very tense armed standoff whereby the federal agents backed down, having been given the message again.
Alas, many confuse the lack of frequent armed resistance with no resistance. Resistance is rarely necessary, when the other side gets the reminder and acts according to it. There is, unfortunately, a growing tendency to dismiss that reminder again, and there is, unfortunately, a growing number of citizens AND government agents who are waiting for, if not looking for, another heavily armed violent encounter.
It's a pity that your national dialogue around defence from oppression sits around "firearms" rather than "behaving ethically". So what if Waco and Ruby Ridge and Brady Ranch all happened - the US still has the highest number of prisoners per capita (by a factor of five over other western democracies - a rate that really took off around the time of Waco);police are still militarising and buying tanks, throwing in SWAT teams; making bigger and more encompassing three-letter-agencies. The edifice barely even stumbled; business as usual. If anything, the love of firearms and solving problems by force is encouraging the militarisation of police and heavy-handedness with the outcasts of society.
Laws are changing, slowly. The next Presidential election should prove interesting in this regard.
Interestingly, those promoting defense from oppression via "firearms" are "behaving ethically" - licensed gun owners are among the most law-abiding & ethical citizens (popular quote: "an armed society is a polite society"). That Waco & Ruby Ridge & Brady Ranch all happened IS significant, because they were followed by a significant drop in violent raids, militarization notwithstanding.
Don't conflate resistance to oppression with incarceration rates, as the two categories practically do not overlap. The militarization likely has more to do with police desperately wanting to minimize their risk (statistics don't matter to a cop when he's the one at grave risk of being killed), and a criminal subculture which is he11-bent on violating clear laws (if criminals won't "go quietly", and won't stop engaging in unlawful behavior, that leaves the state little choice but resort to the natural foundation of law: force and incarceration).
Law-abiding? Ethical? I don't think there is any actual basis for your claim (except that you would like it to be so, maybe).
After all, Cliven Bundy--who I think you mentioned earlier--broke the law for decades. When the democratically-elected government came to enact its penalty for that law-breaking, a lot of white guys with guns came from all around the country to stop the justice system from doing its job.
This is such a throwaway slogan. Go check out the worst spots of Africa. Plenty of arms, not much politeness. Also, apart from not being true, it also encourages politeness for the wrong reason: fear of arms. Politeness should be due to respect of people, not fear of what they might do.
It's just as easy to say "an unarmed society is a polite society". There's not much difference between the US and Australia when it comes to politeness, and our society is unarmed. Japan is unarmed, and politeness is a keystone of their society. The British are unarmed, and their stereotype is one of unsufferable politeness.
Don't conflate resistance to oppression with incarceration rates, as the two categories practically do not overlap.
I wasn't conflating them, I was using it as yet another metric of US government oppression, which the armed population isn't stopping. Your last paragraph is also stating that the police are militarising due to the armed population, which is kind of my point - rather than prevent oppression, the armed population is actually doing more to increase it.
Also, I'm not sue what you mean by 'significant drop in violent raids', given that SWAT raids are skyrocketing, an order of magnitude more than they used to be. It's not really a victory if there's only a brief pause before business-as-usual continues.
Whether what a "well-regulated militia" meant in 1776 has any relevance to 2015 is also a topic upon which many, many essays have been written.
It also makes it clear that no interpretation of that phrase could undermine the right.
The typical response equates "the people" with "well regulated militia" by observing that "well regulated" meant equipped & trained, which all able-bodied males were expected to be (per the Militia Act of 1792, each was to buy standardized weapons & gear and participate in local training).
The typical dissenting response equates "well regulated militia" to "standing army", explaining the right as "of course active soldiers have a natural right to carry exactly and only what weapons their commanding officers order them to", which hardly constitutes a "right" requiring enumeration.
An alternate response I'm growing fond of enhances the "the preamble was explanatory but ultimately meaningless" argument others gave here. The Founding Fathers had a strong dislike for standing armies, but grudgingly realized that one would be required because an armed populace was inadequate to the task of advanced national security. Citizens being an uncooperative & cranky & poor bunch, there would be a need for a well-equipped, highly-trained, severely-disciplined military body ... a standing army, necessary to protect the states individually and the country as a whole; the citizenry should be able to do the job themselves, but we can't be sure without formal troops. Should a standing army be created, they'd be faced with arguments (like we're seeing right now) that there would be no need for an armed population because a standing army was ready to protect the country...and then the government could proceed to disarm the people at large, leaving a situation that the Founding Fathers had just fought a prolonged war to eliminate. Ergo, the right as enumerated is best understood as "The existence of a standing army notwithstanding, the right of the people to own and carry weapons shall not be infringed."