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Second Amendment

UserGoogol said:
You have the right to keep and bear arms, not the right the right to freely trade arms. As long as you can still have them, the 2nd amendment rights are not being touched. Thusly, gun laws which restrict gun sales are totally constitutional. (Although of course you need there to be interstate or international commerce for the federal government to get involved.)
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I want to bear arms. Well, I want to have one gun in my house in case I am attacked or assaulted therein. How can I do this if I cannot buy a gun? Steal one from somebody who has two? Make it myself? Fabricate it in metalworking shop? I live in a city and state where posession of an unlicensed gun is illegal. You cannot get a license unless you can demonstrate a commercial purpose for having a gun (not my reason given above). If you are caught in posession of a gun, even in your own home, you automatically get a minimum sentence of 1-year in jail.

Is the 2nd amendment being subverted or is this sort of gun control legal within the constitution?
 
Patrick said:
All the self-defense crap is just such a bogus lie.

You're a dolt - guns are used in self defense millions of times a year. See for example http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html
Scram and come back after you get maybe just a few of the relevent facts into your skull.
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Patrick- nothing makes me smile more than to see YOU call ME a DOLT.

That said, perhaps my post made certain assumptions and lacked clarity. I'm not saying guns should be outlawed or that people do not own guns for self-defense. I'm referring to the crazies -- people like you -- seemingly oppose any and all restrictions on firearm ownership. You can still defend yourself with only one, or two, or maybe even three guns, right? So a law limiting individuals to only one per month sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

Or do you think a citizen without a criminal record should be able to buy 25 uzis with no questions asked? I mean, there's no chance that he would sell them out of his trunk at the park, right? And people do after all use uzis for legitimate ends, right?

Get a grip.

Anyway, suppose we limit abortions to one a month?

Or your right to criticize Bush to once a month?
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Limiting abortions to one a month? That doesn't sound too oppressive. It stirkes me as meaningless. I do not mean to sound provocative (Okay, I do) but, where's the harm in an abortion?

Same goes for blasting Bush. If you can't distinguish between a neighbor criticizing Bush and a neighbor stockpiling weapons, then you have serious, serious problems.
 
You have the right to keep and bear arms, not the right the right to freely trade arms. As long as you can still have them, the 2nd amendment rights are not being touched. Thusly, gun laws which restrict gun sales are totally constitutional.

Completely fatuous. Like saying the first amendment says you can read books if you have them, but the government can restrict book sales. Nothing brings out the loonier libs quicker than second amendment discussions.
 
The 2nd Amendment can only be understood as a product of its time. Democratic philosophy had long regarded a standing army as a tool of tyranny. The Constitution allows the federal government to raise an army, but Congress cannot vote funds for it more than 24 months in advance. The idea being that Congress could refuse funds to an army being used by the President to oppress the people. A Navy is provided for without such restrictions - it was regarded as the hallmark of a modern nation, protecting trade and the homeland but not a tool to be used against the people. But that left community defence against invasion or banditry to militias - potentially as dangerous as a standing army if used factionally.

And so the 2nd Amendment. If the militia is called out, it could not be called out selectively, and thus could not be used factionally by, say, only calling up the Irish and not allowing the Swedish to serve. A militia is recognised as necessary, and as belonging to the entire people. The use of it against gun-control laws is pure sophistry.
 
Patrick said:
You have the right to keep and bear arms, not the right the right to freely trade arms. As long as you can still have them, the 2nd amendment rights are not being touched. Thusly, gun laws which restrict gun sales are totally constitutional.

Completely fatuous. Like saying the first amendment says you can read books if you have them, but the government can restrict book sales. Nothing brings out the loonier libs quicker than second amendment discussions.
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No, because the sale of books is a kind of speech. (Speech is just the exchange of ideas, after all.) To contrast, the sale of guns is not a kind of bearing them.

Although I'll openly admit I thought of that idea on my own fairly recently, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone found some serious errors with it. But that isn't one of them.
 
The 2nd Amendment can only be understood as a product of its time. ......The use of it against gun-control laws is pure sophistry.

You are partly correct in the first part (in a way that you don't intend) - the last part is baloney. In the late eighteenth century the main threat to an individual in the anerican colonies were those for which an organized defense was most useful - attacks by british or indians, riots, etc. Because of the long lost civil order and morality that prevailed at that time, one was vastly less likely to be the victim of, say, a home invasion robbery. It was for that reason that the wording uses as an example the type of response useful for contemporary threats, but it's mischievous to go from there and say (even implicitly) such as "it was for indian and british attacks, and they don't attack anymore". What was recognized is effective self defense. The nature of threats has changed since then, but the principal is the same - effective self defense. In the eighteenth century, that was more likely than not the militia, in our own crime-ridden times, it means individual weapons.
 
No, that's a complete non-sequitur, because the sale of books is a kind of speech. (Speech is just the exchange of ideas, after all.) To contrast, the sale of guns is not a kind of bearing them.

Total nonsense - selling guns is as inseperable from people bearing them as is selling books inseperable from people reading them.

Give it up. There are better anti-gun-nut arguments than this (although still invalid.)
 
No, becuase selling books is a kind of speech, whereas selling guns is merely a way to get guns to bear. The government also obviously has the ability to restrict the use of guns. Stuff like armed robbery.

I would agree that some forms of restricting the gun trade would hamper the "right to bear arms." But not all. To pick some fairly benign examples, Congress has the power to grant gun companies patents, which restricts the gun trade. Furthermore, they can place taxes on guns. I would also agree that a ban on the sale of any guns would probably go too far. There's a line somewhere in between.
 
UserGoogol said:
No, becuase selling books is a kind of speech, whereas selling guns is merely a way to get guns to bear. The government also obviously has the ability to restrict the use of guns. Stuff like armed robbery.

I would agree that some forms of restricting the gun trade would hamper the "right to bear arms." But not all. To pick some fairly benign examples, Congress has the power to grant gun companies patents, which restricts the gun trade. Furthermore, they can place taxes on guns. I would also agree that a ban on the sale of any guns would probably go too far. There's a line somewhere in between.
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I feel compelled to (reluctantly) change sides and agree with Patrick. You sound like a total extremist.
 
Patrick said:
The 2nd Amendment can only be understood as a product of its time. ......The use of it against gun-control laws is pure sophistry.

You are partly correct in the first part (in a way that you don't intend) - the last part is baloney. In the late eighteenth century the main threat to an individual in the anerican colonies were those for which an organized defense was most useful - attacks by british or indians, riots, etc. Because of the long lost civil order and morality that prevailed at that time, one was vastly less likely to be the victim of, say, a home invasion robbery. It was for that reason that the wording uses as an example the type of response useful for contemporary threats, but it's mischievous to go from there and say (even implicitly) such as "it was for indian and british attacks, and they don't attack anymore". What was recognized is effective self defense.
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It's mischievous to suggest that "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" refers to home protection. The Constitution is about how a free state is organised - shanek can better point out why that's an oxymoron when regarded dispassionately, and that a carefully-crafted compromise is necessary. It's not about details like land-mines in your front-lawn. (I use blackberry brambles and holly for area defence myself, but the principle's the same.)
 
I openly admit that my idea could be very very wrong. I'm just trying to look over the constitution to see what sort of things Congress could do regarding guns even given the most all-encompassing interpretation of the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.

Also, just because the government can do something doesn't mean they should. Even if a total ban on guns was legal, it would still be somewhat over the top.
 
Cain said:
Limiting abortions to one a month? That doesn't sound too oppressive. It stirkes me as meaningless. I do not mean to sound provocative (Okay, I do) but, where's the harm in an abortion?

Same goes for blasting Bush. If you can't distinguish between a neighbor criticizing Bush and a neighbor stockpiling weapons, then you have serious, serious problems.
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So some rights are more equal than others?

And the pen is mightier than the sword.
 
Are you not familiar with the law of diminishing returns? I think it's fair to say a person does not own more than half a dozen guns for self-protection.

And of course some liberties are more important than others. The gun wackos even recognize this when they (mistakenly) assert that the Second Amendment preserves all the others.


I enjoy hitting your softballs.
 
A neighbor with a basement arsenal is nowhere near as dangerous as a racist with a web site, Cain.
 
Cain said:
What makes a racist dangerous again?
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Take a tour of Stormfront.org and find out.

It isn't the gun that is dangerous. It is what is in the mind behind the hand holding the gun.
 
The Constitution is about how a free state is organised

You are unschooled and clueless on this issue. The constitution's original articles are indeed about how the government is organized, but the first ten amendments, i.e., the Bill of Rights, are prohibitions against government acts. To flip this 180 degrees and say the second amendment is about government organization, rather than a prohibition of government infringement on the rights of individuals, is revealing of a statist mentality utterly alien to the U.S. and fundamentally uninformed.
 
Luke- Free speech is about free thought. Competing ideas are necessary for functioning democracyj; they vigorate the mind and bring us to (deliberative) action.

Gun ownership doesn't. People who express themselves through violence are either desperate or stupid.
 
Re: Re: Second Amendment

Nikk said:
What this means is that the amendment was drafted by a bunch of politicians who could not reach agreement about militias and the right to bear arms.
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Um, it was drafted by James Madison, singly. The only change made in the debates was to delete a clause allowing people to object to carrying firearms if it was against there religion; it was removed because it was thought that leaving it in would imply that the government could otherwise force people to own firearms and take up arms against invaders.

Try again.
 
I strongly object to the overuse of commas in the second amendment. We must regulate the use of commas for the sake of the children!
 
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