Should we repeal the 2nd Amendment?

[Lothian]

To reiterate JT's First Law: "The amount of serious consideration a post is due is inversely proportional to the area of the post occupied by smileys, emojis, and animated gifs."

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Interesting short article for Heritage Foundation, that is generally considered a conservative outlet.

I disagree that National Guard is the only qualified militia. There a a lot of people out there who are trying to form their own regulated militia, just in case elections don't go their way.

A well regulated militia in the meaning of the time was a militia under the direct auspices of the state or (in England and Scotland) one that was organised by a local grandée under licence from the state. Edit: None of those whackadoodle groups out in the back woods would count as either well organised or a militia.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

Sorry for not bringing clear. Gun rights folk often refer to the 2nd amendment as allowing them to have guns. As I understand your argument that does not give any rights, it instead says they won't be taken away. You mention codified rights and that is what I would expect. Guns seems an exception, in it does not appear to be codified. I am trying to understand where it comes from.

Hard to give one word answers to questions like this. I guess from both sides of the debate. I guess most pro gun people deny the right to arm for self defence to some groups eg, children felling, mentally ill.


I believe in self defense but I think that needs to be proportionate. There is in my view a risk when arming people for self defence that sone could use those arms for the wrong purpose and the more people you arm the more 'bad' people will be armed.
I guess I support arming people to protect a community but doing so by minimising those with arms.

And if, as implied by the amendment, the right to own arms (not just guns but any weapon), is based on the English Bill of Rights of 1688 which explicitly constrained that right both by restricting it to protestants (at the time members of the Church of England) and as may have been further constrained by laws enacted in parliament. There is absolutely no way that the second amendment can be honestly and truthfully argued to give a blanket right to own weapons.

 

[Thermal]

2A doesn't guarantee the right. It guarantees that the State will not squash that right, which is already a given.

Just read the words: It says the right to keep and bear shall not be infringed. The right is summarily noted, and the amendment says it will not trample it through legislation. The part about the militia is showing why a free state has an interest in not trampling this right.

None of this has to do with defining the right itself. It doesn't mean that it is an unregulated right, as some like to argue. Regulation is a great thing for an orderly free society, unless your ideal of freedom is anarchy.

 

[acbytesla]

2A doesn't guarantee the right. It guarantees that the State will not squash that right, which is already a given.

Just read the words: It says the right to keep and bear shall not be infringed. The right is summarily noted, and the amendment says it will not trample it through legislation. The part about the militia is showing why a free state has an interest in not trampling this right.

None of this has to do with defining the right itself. It doesn't mean that it is an unregulated right, as some like to argue. Regulation is a great thing for an orderly free society, unless your ideal of freedom is anarchy.

Can we agree to this? Regardless of how any of us might read the Amendment. It is ambiguous enough that SCOTUS can and has dramatically interpreted it differently.

 

[ZiprHead]

"Well regulated" in 1776 is not synonymous with "well organized" in 2024. Or 1924, for that matter. Probably not even 1824. It's synonymous with "well equipped". In the context in which the amendment was drafted, we can interpret the entire passage to mean "people equipping themselves with arms for defense of themselves and their community is their right, and also a good thing for the community, therefore the federal government will not try to prevent them from so equipping themselves."

Sorry, no.

Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary 1791


Sheridan's General Dictionary of the English Language 1780

 

[Aridas]

I'm not so sure it does, though.

If you want a more complicated answer - the legal right existed before the 2nd for some people, rather than being counted as a natural right of all men. Some colonial laws apparently required all white men to own a gun, for example, while also barring blacks and native Americans from gun ownership.

Which would mean the same thing with the 2nd, wouldn't it?

In practice and intent, the 2nd did not apply to all people, from the start, and still does not apply equally in practice.

To poke at an NPR interview, for a little bit of easily found context there -

Historian Uncovers The Racist Roots Of The 2nd Amendment

Among other points in that -

On the crafting of the Second Amendment at the Constitutional Convention

It was in response to the concerns coming out of the Virginia ratification convention for the Constitution, led by Patrick Henry and George Mason, that a militia that was controlled solely by the federal government would not be there to protect the slave owners from an enslaved uprising. And ... James Madison crafted that language in order to mollify the concerns coming out of Virginia and the anti-Federalists, that they would still have full control over their state militias — and those militias were used in order to quell slave revolts. ... The Second Amendment really provided the cover, the assurances that Patrick Henry and George Mason needed, that the militias would not be controlled by the federal government, but that they would be controlled by the states and at the beck and call of the states to be able to put down these uprisings.

<snip>

On how the Black Panthers responded to restrictions on Black people's ability to bear arms in the 1960s

What the Black Panthers were dealing with was massive police brutality. Just beating on Black people, killing Black people at will with impunity. And the Panthers decided that they would police the police. Huey P. Newton, who was the co-founder of the Black Panthers along with Bobby Seale, ... knew the law, and he knew what the law said about being able to open-carry weapons and the types of weapons you were able to openly carry and how far you had to stand away from the police arresting somebody or interrogating somebody. ... And the police did not like having these aggressive Black men and women doing that work of policing the police. And the response was a thing called the Mulford Act, and the Mulford Act set out to ban open carrying of weapons. And it was drafted by a conservative assemblyman in California with the support and help of an NRA representative and eagerly signed by Gov. Ronald Reagan as a way to make illegal what the Panthers were legally doing.

The darker side of the story of guns, the 2nd Amendment, and America is how guns have so often been used as tools of tyranny and oppression, rather than as tools to protect, and that such has largely been done by the same forces in the US that have been pushing the more recent radical reinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment as they seem to want to continue to use them for much the same ends, even if they sometimes employ DARVO in their justifications.

 

[theprestige]

You are right I certainly do have my own beliefs and have my own truths.

Exactly. Your own truths.

I don't believe that those beliefs are shared universally and I don't believe they are rights.

I think you believe in some moral principles whether they're shared universally or not.

[quoteThat is why I think rights need to be formally agreed in order to have legal force over a population.[/quote]
I agree that rights need to be formally agreed in order to have legal force. I'm not talking about the legal force of a right, though. I'm talking about moral value. I'm saying that the right to free speech has moral value, and that value exists (or doesn't, perhaps) for you, regardless of whether the local laws give it legal force at the moment. It's exactly this moral value, this truth of your own, that motivates you to advocate for giving it legal force. The right - the moral value - exists for you before it gets encoded in law.

I honestly believe that wealth taxes for the super rich should be higher. I think it self evident some people have more money than they need and could ever spend and that money could be used to make many lives better. That does not give me or anyone else the right to strip them of their wealth unless my new tax rates are codified and agreed.

I would use the word privilege or entitlement or even responsibility, in this context, to avoid confusion.

I would also say that in this scenario, you believe those people have an innate right to freedom from being stripped of their wealth without due process - a right that may not even be formally codified anywhere. You just believe it's moral. Even though you know not everyone agrees with you.

 

[acbytesla]

I would also say that in this scenario, you believe those people have an innate right to freedom from being stripped of their wealth without due process - a right that may not even be formally codified anywhere. You just believe it's moral. Even though you know not everyone agrees with you.

The wealth tax is the due process. BTW, we already do have wealth taxes. They are called "property taxes."

We have been seeing the horrendous problems that has resulted from the policies of favoring the wealthy and unbridled capitalism over the good of the population as a whole.

Republicans and Liberatarians call this freedom and liberty. But what it really is, is their freedom and their liberty to enslave an impoverish those without the same resources and connections. Their freedom to buy politicians and judges. Their freedom to leverage their wealth and power. Their freedom to pay their employees less than a subsistence wage. Their freedom to own society. And that continued freedom from any regulation or taxes only further entrenches their power and dominion over the rest of us.

Capitalism has run amok. And just like FDR saved it by making capitalism about the average Joe with necessary regulation, the GOP is trying to destroy it by making capitalism about the super wealthy.

How you tell that today's capitalism and the GOP isn't about what is best for society. Look at the industries, products and companies that are thriving. And then look at the ones that aren't.

Notice that few (if any) car companies compete to sell affordable cars to the masses. No, they want to sell luxury vehicles. Instead of stadiums and ballparks with 100,000 seats for the riff raff, they are now 60,000 seats that you have to buy licenses for. And with separate luxury boxes for millionaires. Instead of communities of three bedroom homes packed together, they build gated communities with 3/4 acres lots.

Specialty items for the wealthy sell, while restaurants for the middle class close. Private aviation is booming while the rest of us can no longer afford that family vacation. Private security has boomed to protect them from the booming homeless.

Look at the latest Billionaire must have bauble. The private yacht. The day where the super wealthy use to own maybe a 82 foot boat has been replaced not by maybe a 100 foot boat. No, dock space now goes to 300 feet, 400 feet 500 feet super yachts bigger than a typical destroyer.

You see, their selfishness and greed eclipses the needs and wants of the rest of society. This is what freedom means to them. Their right, (usually bequeathed to them by daddy or granddaddy) to waste and control all of of the resources. Not to mention get the rest of us to pay for them if they can.

 

[theprestige]

The wealth tax is the due process. BTW, we already do have wealth taxes. They are called "property taxes."

Yes, I know. That's clearly addressed by both Lothian and myself.

<whoosh>

I have no opinion about that.. In my opinion, you missed the point entirely.

 

[acbytesla]

I have no opinion about that.. In my opinion, you missed the point entirely.

Apparently.

I believe my response was a reasonable inference.

You said;

"you believe those people have an innate right to freedom from being stripped of their wealth without due process - a right that may not even be formally codified anywhere."

.

As if society is doing something very wrong.

So back at you. What was I supposed to infer?

 

[theprestige]

Apparently.

I believe my response was a reasonable inference.

You said "you believe those people have an innate right to freedom from being stripped of their wealth without due process - a right that may not even be formally codified anywhere.".

As if society is doing something very wrong.

So back at you. What was I supposed to infer?

Lothian said he believes people should not be stripped of their wealth without due process.

I responded that this implies Lothian believes in a right to not be stripped of your wealth without due proces.

You should infer from this that I am not objecting to, nor even interested in discussing here, such wildly off-topic matters as the alleged propriety of our tax laws.

I mean, a "reasonable inference" from what? Nothing in my reply to Lothian suggests I don't know about tax laws, or don't consider them due process, or have an problem with such laws.

 

[acbytesla]

Lothian said he believes people should not be stripped of their wealth without due process.

I responded that this implies Lothian believes in a right to not be stripped of your wealth without due proces.

You should infer from this that I am not objecting to, nor even interested in discussing here, such wildly off-topic matters as the alleged propriety of our tax laws.

I mean, a "reasonable inference" from what? Nothing in my reply to Lothian suggests I don't know about tax laws, or don't consider them due process, or have an problem with such laws.

I don't know. I read it differently. Fair enough.