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For what it's worth, the largest firearms lobbying group in the country, and generally its members, agreed with you up until a coup and marketing campaign in the late 1970s [1][2][3], if the "liberal media" is to be believed.

Oh, yes, the NRA has pulled a huge con job on a vast swath of the American public; in effect turning many of us into little lobbyists for the gun manufacturers.

Thanks for providing all the links.

Not to mention NRA not only didn't support DC v. Heller, but actively opposed it by filing a motion brief in support of the government. After all, without gun control to fear, who would buy NRA memberships?

Sometimes, an organization's need to survive outweighs or compromises their stated goals.

It's also worth noting in the debate that armed civilians aren't doing anything against actual government oppression. Police are militarised in the US now, and are sending SWAT teams against civilians with alarming regularity. That 'armed population guarding against government oppression' hasn't done a thing. I do heartily agree with the idea that we need to make our laws in the modern context, not in the Founding Fathers context - after all, it took 80 years to rid their republic of condoned industrialised slavery, and even then that was a byproduct of other issues.

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?

Au contraire, civilians DO push back against oppression, and when they do the government gets the message and stays back for a long time. A couple decades ago, the government attempted to stage some high-profile violent raids (Waco; Ruby Ridge) over some very petty issues (alleged failure to pay a $200 tax; cut a gun barrel 1cm too short), and were immediately resisted with significant firepower; the attempts were spectacular failures, and while the intended targets mostly died in the conflict, the government refrained from such behavior again for nearly 15 years.

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.

What you have just described is not "pushing back against oppression", it's "fighting like a dog when your back is to the wall". Laws aren't changing, SWAT teams and tanks are still proliferating amongst the police, and

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.

In the USA, it's axiomatic to not consider armed active resistance until your back is to the wall. Thing is, when that point comes one does not fight like a dog (unarmed), but with such firepower that the oppressor feels compelled to use SWAT teams and tanks ... and even then hesitates to do so.

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).

"licensed gun owners are among the most law-abiding & ethical citizens"

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.

an armed society is a polite society

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.

Wow, thank you for the clearest response I've ever seen on the 2A puzzle!

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?

My understanding is that if you can get 2/3 of Congress to agree with whatever governing principles you want to live with now, you can amend the constitution. It's far from clear to me (a bleeding heart liberal) that 2/3 of the people, let alone 2/3 of Congress, want to see the 2nd Amendment rights re-amended.

Well, it needs 2/3 of Congress to propose it, and then 3/4 of the states to ratify it, so it's a bit harder than that, but your point stands. The constitution does indeed have provisions to change with the times, provided the nation agrees.

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.

I think you'd find very little informed support for that claim about a reasonable balance. The US is on the very far end of rigidity in its political system among the western nations. Heh, no less a progressive extremist than Antonin Scalia himself said that, if he could amend the constitution, it would be to make it easier to amend.

Oh, yes, change happens veerrryyy slowly. Agreed, 100%.

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?"

> 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.