> Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator
This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".
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It's also not cool to characterize people who have assault rifles or support the 2nd amendment as rednecks. I'm certainly not one. It's actually kind of offensive to even use that term anyway if you ask me.
If anything the war in Afghanistan has proven that technology is no match for resilience and grit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare?wprov=sfla1
The common refrain goes “about as well as the Taliban,” who currently negotiating an American withdrawal after 18 years of serious U.S. military attention.
The point is to increase the cost of violence against the population. The Swiss bunker / guerrilla strategy.
Also, there is no reason to suspect asymmetric vectors like autonomous drone armies would accrue solely to state actors.
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" said Mao.
There have actually been recent cases where federal agents were held off by armed citizens and later deemed to be in the right by the courts. It's not hypothetical.
I’m not saying that the outcome would be the protesters would not be successful, in saying that the government would roll in the tanks immediately and without hesitation.
So, no, it doesn't make any sense in the current age to say you own guns to protect yourself from the government.
I do not actually agree with the premise that, in this modern day, governments can no longer be overthrown. Civil wars are not won on the basis of "who started with more guns?".
You don't win revolutionary wars through brute force, you win them by getting public opinion on your side, which makes the current government in place illegitimate.
So you mean that living standards drop back by 100 (or 1000) years?
But seriously - asymmetric warfare works best against scrupulous adversaries who claim the moral high ground and stop short of "salt the earth" warfare. China doesn't, the CCP won't mind starving out an entire city or state to get them to stop resisting, just like the Soviets didn't.
Basically, the US president is in the constant implicit position of being able to hold the entire US hostage from a flying doom fortress† like some kind of supervillain. The only people who can really stop a “crazy president” scenario are people either high up in the Secret Service or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who would 1. Have the authorization to be in the president’s presence during DEFCON 1, and then 2. Have the personal trust/authority to tell the president’s bodyguards to buzz off for a minute.
† The “doom fortress” part applies more to the subs than to AF1, but if you treat the two as a unit, it works.
Overall crime, no, there is no correlation, but there is for guns used in crimes, which dramatically increases the rate of deaths and severity of those crimes.
The fantasy of standing up to The Gubment comes from two things:
1) a rambo fantasy. a serious overestimate of your own skills where now YOU are the one in charge
2) a supposition that "if it ever came to that" the military and the police wouldn't actually pull the trigger.
We know this is nonsense from historical analysis. From the other side you can look at how the Vietnamese people defended themselves from invasion and if you really think those conditions exist here then you've never been to, say, arizona where this sort of thinking is prevalent.
Edit: I wanna be clear that i don't think this is a good thing. I wish there was some way citizenry could hold their government to account directly like in the 1700s but I think we live in a different world now. One where people enjoy not having a random street war kick off on a tuesday when they'd rather be at a coffee shop.
You chose to use term "redneck". When used like you did that's clearly a snide derogatory term that blankets a certain class of disadvantaged folks. Not only is that term insulting when used by you to a whole class of struggling people but you also then applied the implication of that term to a whopping 30% of Americans.
That's probably not the case for HK.
Except that an army cannot fight on 10 fronts at the same time. When you have a whole country turning against you, you can't be there at every single place every second with a regular army. On the contrary a regular army would be beaten up in no time.
You also have to take in account that it's much more likely there would be rogue generals turnings against the power in place so general + armed people is a good catalyst.
Exactly, if the same logic for guns were used on other things then you'd have people up in arms saying nobody should be able to drive cars because of how many people kill others with them.
The Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and the illegitimate communist government was ousted right?
"Firearm prevalence is significantly related to total violent crime (B = .600, p < .05). With each unit increase in firearm prevalence, the expected count of the violent crime index increases by .600. This also indicates that the percent change in the total violent crime is an 82% increase for every unit increase in firearm ownership. The prevalence of guns does significantly increase the violent crime in the county. This finding is consistent with previous research on firearm prevalence and crime both in the United States and internationally."
[1]: http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/jpj_firearm_owner...
As an American living in Switzerland, this is not a fair comparison. The Swiss strategy involves mandatory service (with the backing of the government), short and long term preparations against an outside invading force (with the backing of the government), highly regulated gun ownership (with the backing of the government). It's always wielded with the backing of the government against an outside force.
In stark contrast, the U.S. mindset around gun ownership has always been about wielding the weapons against the government itself. Instead, what this effectively means is that this will be an easily hijacked ideal if, in our politically charged era, portions of the government are viewed as "illegitimate" and one part of the government backs a coup with gun-toting civilians against "the government" (the part not liked).
No, you can't fight the People's Liberation Army with your tricked out semi automatic .223, no matter how many drum magazines and bump stocks you attach to it.
If the US had the desire and stomach to wage total war against the people of Afghanistan (gladly we do not), there would not be a lingering quagmire.
Of course not. But the Beijing government is not going to be overthrown from Hong Kong. Hong Kong is very small and very far away from Beijing.
And the whole situation, Hong Kongers protesting the removal of some of their 'special' rights isn't exactly winning sympathy among mainlanders.
The US supported the anti-communist opposition, and the Soviets withdrew and Afghanistan returned to democratic elections.
Like all things politics, its all how you spin it. Perhaps the real loss was what happened after the US spent over $1T to spread democracy in Afghanistan, they began electing the Taliban as their democratic leaders, and we ultimately went to war against the Taliban costing even more. That firmly established the US believes in democracy so long as we also support the party that wins the elections.
Even the previous US civil war isn't a great example because that was a regional war before modern technology. You could have guerilla forces hiding out in southern backwaters that the Union wasn't familiar with. It would be much harder to do that in a country as massively surveilled as the modern US.
These wars would not be the same, and this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the scope of the conflict.
Just like it worked out for the US in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq?
A criminal mind would use the tools available and a gun makes throwing rocks (chunks of lead) at people deadly more often than using your hand.
Look at criminal states, those leaders use armies instead of guns because they have an army available.
Truth is, we have no idea what a US civil war might look like. There would be military defections as well as citizens joining the government. With no understanding of what the factions would look like, it's difficult to forecast blindly (not that you couldn't make projections based on certain groups leading the antagonists side and how the public at large might react).
I'm certainly not endorsing any of these actions and I believe the government responses were warranted, but there is a clear history of rebellious armed civilian groups being huge problems for governments.
And on the flip side, the Russian troops there were badly equipped and half starved at times too - Boys In Zinc by Svetlana Alexievich is a depressing series of accounts from there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:War_crimes_in_Afgha...
Gun owners of the US cling to this ideal even while experiencing the worst spate of mass shootings in its history. There is no solution to this other than disarming.
It's made for TV but I thought it did a surprisingly good job. I don't know whether you actually could chase and collide with the plane normally designated Air Force One in an EC-135, but certainly I'd bet on military pilots to give it their best shot if their commander explained the consequences otherwise.
So yeah, the assumption is great but too simplistic. It's the same when people say "if we have guns we can stop mass shooters". Very few (if any) shootings were ever really prevented by a citizen and their gun even when the shootings happened (repeatedly) inside military bases where the shooter was literally surrounded by trained and armed military personnel.
There is no realistic way for Americans to stand up to the entire US State with violence. Not without some very wide spread belief in the failure of the state, believe that would probably be easier to get with non-violent protest (and it still wouldn't be easy).
But that is kind of besides the point. A lot of people are arguing "they may have overwhelming force, so roll over and give them what they want." No thanks?
As an American, the thought of an actual armed uprising feels so outlandish in 2019 that I'm pretty certain that no one in government takes it seriously (c.f. the steady erosion of civil liberties)
The argument is not that a rebellious citizenry will necessarily win a war, it's that it will draw out a bloody civil war so long and so expensive as to be a form of mutually assured destruction, the risk of which acts as a check in and of itself.
The U.S. failed in Vietnam and has struggled in Afghanistan since 2001 against insurgents with little more than rifles.
The thing to keep in mind is that the U.S. Revolution was not what we would call today a grassroots movement. It was based in the pre-existing State-level representative governments. It wasn't a mob of people spontaneously deciding to take to the streets and push the bastards out, it was a functional system of government deciding to shave off the layer above.
When the States decided to switch from a looser confederation to form a more perfect Union, they wanted to keep that option open to repeat the process -- it was not originally about John Doe using his musket to chase off the local tax collector but about the State of Virginia using its own Army of Virginia to drive out anyone trying to interfere overly much in its business.
Incidentally, most States still have standing forces that report to the Governor.
The argument is not that a rebellious citizenry will necessarily win a war, it's that it will draw out a bloody civil war so long and so expensive as to be a form of mutually assured destruction, the risk of which acts as a check in and of itself.
As a Swiss American, I agree. Today’s Second Amendment debate is perverted.
My argument was to the point of the Second Amendment, its intent. America is currently on an extreme end of the gun-debate spectrum.
>Firearm prevalence in the United States is difficult to determine because there is no database that collects information on firearm ownership and prevalence. Thus, analyses that study firearm prevalence have had to develop proxies for firearm ownership. As a proxy for firearm ownership, the current analysis used the percentage of suicides by a firearm from 2000 to 2010.
Little tricks like this are why people lose faith in science.
Also, "the world" is too homogeneous a group to predict it would all simultaneously go after China for some single incident.
Who is in the world? What would their motivations be for "reacting" to China? And more importantly, what counter-motivations exist that could sway them from doing so?
If you take all this into account, you'll find the group willing to go "against" China for anything is actually very small.
Edit- Added section responding to the "world" comment.
There is a substantial portion of the US that hunts or otherwise use guns as protection (for them and livestock) from animals.
Additionally, there are many parts of the US where police may really be 30+ min away.
The 2nd Amendment was arguably about having volunteer state militias where the citizens supplied their own guns, but because of quirks of history and grammar, that isn't the only reason gun ownership is allowed.
Americans, on the whole, are also pretty distrusting of government, even in the best of times.
The more interesting scenario to consider, IMHO, is a civil war between a controlling but “not the US” majority, and a resisting minority. For example: what would happen if there were a modern Red Scare, but one with a basis in reality—i.e., if somehow >50% of the US (including our political leaders) were subverted by China, became believers not just in Communism but in the CCP’s propaganda about Communism necessitating political unification and erasure of separate cultural identity, and so the belief that the US should volunteer to be annexed+absorbed by China?
If the majority of the US believed that... what should the rest of us do, at that point, to stop this from happening? Is the correct answer just “the US is a democratic nation, so if the majority of the population wants the US to stop being a democracy, that’s the ‘democratic choice’, and if you believe in the ‘power of democracy’, you should support it”?
Assault rifles are select fire, that is capable of automatic fire. These are legal to own/transfer provided they have been previously registered with the ATF and made before 1986. They also tend to be quite expensive, tens of thousands of dollars, and the process to get one is rather lengthy, usually the better part of a year. This is primarily governed by the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Firearms Protection Act of 1986.
You may be confusing the phrase "assault rifle" with "assault weapon" which is often used in politics and media. Assault weapons are semi-automatic, but what is and is not an assault weapon tends to come down to jurisdiction and a combination of features (pistol grip, stock configuration, etc). Regardless, these are much more readily available and considerably cheaper.
Laws governing firearms in the US are actually quite complicated, and the terminology is also pretty verbose. Hopefully this helps.
You don't really need militias. If a majority of the people oppose the dictator and the military man are from these families then your coup is going to fail. That's why dictatorships with strong oppositions try to lure a portion of their population against another portion or hire an army from another country.
In a nutshell, the current US army is not going to attack their fellow citizens anytime soon for the eyes of a dictator.
The response from the international community has been crickets chirping.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-...
A US civil war would be incredibly messy, but it would not be easy to predict any sort of outcome. Everyone would interpret for themselves what "sworn to the constitution" meant for them and pick a side. There would certainly be more than 2 sides too, given how different the 50 states are.
It's make-believe, but I guess it makes Americans feel a little special to know that if you elected some dictator you would have a chance to stop them. Your political rulers know far and well that civil war is the last thing anybody wants. Your judicial and political system in place should, before any Hitler came to power, stop them and prevent coup d'état from happening.
It's worrying that we, people living in highly progressive and democratic societies, would have to fear a dictator suddenly coming to power and having to protect ourselves against it. Why anyone would follow such psychopaths and throw away democratic society with free will? But I admit, humans are highly illogical and emotional creatures, that are deep down still driven by the primal urges that are the same as they were thousands of years ago. Just because we dress in fancy suits and dresses doesn't mean we aren't capable of what the Nazis did less than hundred years ago but I'm hopeful that we as species are still slowly progressing.
I wonder what a government response might look like after a few continuous years of dealing with clearly-organized civil unrest and violence. After it, perhaps, decides that waging direct war on its own citizenry is acceptable for the sake of the State. Or that such agitants have forfeited their right to citizenship.
A demonstration like happening in Hong Kong likely wouldnt ever happen. I use the nevada rancher incident as an example.
Govt agents backed down from armed "militia" to avoid the bloodshed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff
Govt agents
Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. On paper, none of them stood a chance. How’s everything played out, in your opinion?
The US is not a democracy and you have just outlined why. Small autonomous regions were created to limit external influence and allow people to live their lives in peace. A lot of stuff now happens on the national level that was never meant to happen on the national level.
I don't understand this sentiment of "even with guns it's not gonna work so let's just roll over and take it".
If you personally don't think you'll be better off that's fine, but surely you get that if someone WANTS to fight tooth and nail in self-defense he should be given a chance to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
I think it's weird how American gun advocates didn't get upset when SCOTUS took some white-out to the amendment they claim to hold so sacred.
After Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq it literally boggles my mind that anyone still believes that.
In fact Afghanistan twice, the Mujaheddin defeated the Soviets the same way.
† Presumably, doctrine for a “Looking Glass” mission would have AF1 plan flight paths that bring them near still-executive-controlled surface missile batteries. Unsure if anything before a modern 5G craft could bring those batteries directly under its targeting control, though, rather than relying on the pilot making contact with living hands on the ground.
With persistent surveillance, some will be reluctant to take up arms knowing the feds could capture you later at a time of their choosing.
The CIA also has a document (sorry, I don't remember the name) detailing ways that civilians can sabotage efforts by doing things like holding extra meetings, etc.
I wonder if anyone would stay in the military to better thwart it.
The 2nd amendment made a lot of sense when weaponry consisted of horses and rifles, not computer-guided missiles. If there was ever a true US dictator, the 2nd amendment would mostly be used by the oppressed to rob, attack, and oppress one another.
If memory serves me, the Russians gave up against the Mujihadeen forces(who had help from the US; the Soviet Union was also going broke). The US came back with it's tail between it's legs after fighting Vietnam guerillas and farmers. Military might isn't everything.
Practically speaking, I don't think today's Americans are equipped to provide a credit threat against a dictator and may never will.
"China has now assembled its largest-ever active force of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops and other anti-riot personnel and equipment in Hong Kong."
"the reinforcement includes elements of the People’s Armed Police (PAP), a mainland paramilitary anti-riot and internal security force under a separate command from the PLA"
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-army-hongkong-milita...
Thereby ruining the very thing they want to control and profit from.
That's the thing that the "They'll just send in the army, LOL" folks don't seem to get: bombed out cities and a population under armed guard aren't very economically productive and, on top of that, you need to station military units there to keep a lid on things which is also costly.
Disarming is a solution. If everyone would come together as one and hand their weapons in because THEY wanted to.
Do you really think forcibly trying to take guns from people is a solution? Damn, talk about absurd.
https://medium.com/@tgof137/gun-ownership-rates-do-not-predi...
The US has arguably won only one war in the last 70 years (being at war or at least armed conflict for most of those 70 years) with the largest most powerful military in the world.
It's not why we have the 2nd Amendment. 2A applies only to militias, and the Constitution explicitly gives Congress power over State militias to suppress insurrections:
"The Congress shall have Power To... provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions" [1]
Further, the Militia Act of 1792 allows the president to commandeer them as well, and this was famously used by George Washington himself to quell the Whiskey Rebellion.
2A is just a relic from a time when the US had neither the resources nor the political will to create and maintain a standing army. It's been co-opted very recently by the Right to rile people up and drive them to the polls (while incidentally enriching themselves), but it's completely outdated. The only reason anyone thinks otherwise is that Scalia legislated from the bench in Heller to resurrect it.
[1]: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...
Yes, absolutely. If it's a true revolt.
The reason for this is because if the rebels have support of the population then they can get intelligence and material support from said population. They will be able to walk circles around military bureaucracy.
Were as the USA Military is dependent on the USA population for economic support. No economic support means no military sustainability. Sure they have stockpiles of weapons and whatnot, but there is more that is need to run a successful campaign against domestic guerrillas then just stockpiles of weapons.
The reality is that in order to overthrow the Federal government all the American people have to do is just choose to stop paying their taxes and refusing to do business with the Federal government. The Federal government would be dead within months.
Firearms are redundant. What they are useful for, however, is to prevent politicians from getting bad ideas... like using the military against their own population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_partisans
>The partisans made significant contributions to the war by frustrating German plans to exploit occupied Soviet territories economically, gave considerable help to the Soviet Army by conducting systematic strikes against Germany's rear communication network, disseminated political work among the local population by publishing newspapers and leaflets, and succeeded in creating and maintaining a feeling of insecurity among German forces.[1]
It’s not very difficult to attach a hand grenade (or even a pipe bomb) to a quadcopter drone and use it to attack a military checkpoint or a politician’s entourage. It’s simply much harder to defend than it is to attack nowadays, and centralized power is offset by scattered, decentralized resistance.
Finally, you might be able to convince a unit based in one state to attack another, but you’re unlikely to have the loyalty of all generals in a civil war.
And it's likely hard to get troops to shoot their own countrymen.
As direct evidence, over the past few decades the US has been unable to stop a vastly smaller, vastly less armed resistance in various regions of the world.
Maybe you underestimate the power of a few armed people against a military. And in any case, if it came to people vs military (which I do not think is anywhere close to happening), armed people do much better than unarmed.
The 2nd amendment isn't necessarily a way to win a fight one-on-one. It creates an idea in any leader in government not to even attempt to start killing people by force, because of the potential bloodbath and resistance that would ensue.
IEDs are also pretty effective.
But judging from the downvotes most people assume the only thing they need to effectively stop a mass shooter or fight a war is a gun.
It is not meant to be used in a stable state. It’s a Hobbesian point of last resort, to be used when democracy has failed and autocracy/tyranny is in effect. It’s a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency, so to speak.
I've posted this here before: The US military has an urban warfare document that states the number of troops required to secure N population. It's based on their experience and the experience of others in past wars in holding urban terrain. If you add up all of the military, police, national guard, fbi, etc... you aren't even close to the number the US military says are required to secure the US. Even if they hired millions of people to do so, they would still leave large swaths of the US unsecured (like the rocky mountains) where insurgents could operate.
I don't know why when this is brought up people imagine citizens would stand face to face with the US military. Like they would be so dumb as to stick their face in front of a gun and ask they be shot.
The US military says they can't secure the US from an insurgency. If you think otherwise, I would seriously like to hear what you base that on.
FYI we spent over $1T to spread democracy in Afghanistan pre-2001.
This is untrue, and the Supreme Court has ruled several times on it. The states, which mostly modeled their Constitutions on the Federal ones, have a significant majority of them giving the people explicit individual right to bear arms.
Or read the Federalist Papers, or look at common law leading up to the constitution, or realize that the Bill of Rights was added at the states request to protect individual rights, not collective govt sanctioned rights.
We’re seeing this play out in the Middle East, most recently with a drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil production.
As this vox article states correctly, Hong Kong used to make up 1/5th of their entire GDP. But with expansion and growth in cities across the country, it is now but a minor component of their economy. In the grand scheme of things it isn't a large enough chunk of their economy that they couldn't afford to lose it. Especially not if the balancing act is, bomb this one city and regain political stability vs massive instability for the greater entity.
[0]https://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6857567/hong-kong-used-to-be-1...
Here's the thing - from an ethical standpoint, it never makes sense to actually fire it. If you're dead, well, you're dead - there's no sense in murdering millions of citizens of an enemy nation.
At the same time, by its very presence, you've made it very seemingly difficult for your enemy to ever engage in a nuclear first strike because they'd be signing their own death warrant.
Could the US military defeat a bunch of armed citizens? Well, purely by the numbers, probably. It'd be really bad for morale though, and a lot of innocent people would die, and realistically, there's not really much of a country left at that point anymore. Without a check, the Government can do whatever it wants because it always has a cheat card, but with the check, the government has to at least pretend to respect the citizens.
> ...it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time
Personally, I'd expect the main skirmishes in a US civil war to be factions of the military fighting against each other.
This assumption did not work out for the Confederacy in the Civil War. What makes you think it would work today?
I think they do- but we are so far removed from people actually caring about providing a credible threat as of now. Once people lose their access to basic amenities though, everything changes. And the type of people that do see the government as a threat now, already have organized militias, rudimentary training, military connections, and stockpile weapons and food. The right to organize into a militia is a constitutional right, and extremist elements have certainly been taking advantage of that.
And logistically speaking, we have very porous borders and inevitably foreign entities that would seek to assist an insurgency. The American Revolutionaries had the support of the French, and the Southern confederacy had the support of the British.
It's not really technology holding us back, in either situation. Fear the day technology is good enough that the few can act without the restraint of civilization.
Everybody does not die in a nuclear war. You want your survivors to have a better chance. Leaving whoever nuked you mostly untouched is highly counterproductive to that.
Even if Union's military was to use multimegaton nukes on rebelling cities, and red army kept 100% loyalty, the military would've still lost due to logistical exhaustion.
Armed forces rely on much more reliable supply train to function effectively than any kind of insurgent force. Armor and air force is useless unless fueled, oiled, armed and well maintained.
There is another one you are missing: deterring people from violence against other people, given the knowledge they might be carrying a gun. In a similar way to how nukes are actually used in 21st century.
Let me make sure I understand your basic premise: the ability to defend yourself against a tyrannical dictatorship made sense until the government developed better technology, now it's pointless so just give up your guns?
Aside from being completely contrary to the American spirit of defending yourself from tyranny, it's based on the bogus premise that the advanced military technology can be used effectively against its own people. Where is the military going to fire those "computer guided missiles?" Into every rural home and every urban apartment window of everyone they suspect has guns, with thousands of civilian collateral casualties? Are tanks and fighter jets going to roll in and level entire economic hubs like cities? Are they going to destroy their own infrastructure? Are you envisioning "the rebellion" would set up a nice neat base in some remote location for the military to aim its tech at? Do you think the real men and women of the military would follow orders to destroy its own hometowns and families? How long before regional coups? How big do you think the US military is, relative to the armed civilian population? You are also aware that soldiers and police wear recognizable uniforms, while "the rebellion" doesn't?
I don't think you've thought this through.
In the Bundy incident(s) no shots were fired. I believe that's because as much as the Bundy group believe their own bullshit (about land rights and white supremacy and whatnot) they also know that this is a fight about taxation currently and that they can keep enough support on their side by making that the principle issue. The government isn't going to go in hot to collect taxes, because jesus christ that's a terrible look for them and they don't want another Waco.
The whole incident involve those yahoos is a mess, but a really great example of a militia strong arming the feds (it sucks that the feds screwed the pooch in the trial of the 2016 standoff and let them get off because of procedural misconduct).
No, we have the second amendment as a safeguard against the government, at the state or federal level, relying on a separated class of professional armed personnel for internal and/or external security, with the idea that by retaining the capacity for the mass of the citizenry to be mobilized for that function, political pressure from the citizenry will be sufficient to avoid professionalization of more than a small cadre. In this way, tyranny would be prevented because you can't have a tyrant supported by the armed forces against the general citizenry when the armed forces and the general citizenry are exactly coextensive, and the armaments of the armed forces, while standardized by government, are held by the citizenry at large.
The second amendment was not created so that the amateurs with small arms would serve as a counterbalance against professional, better equipped troops of the standing army and internal security services. That's just a more recent rationalization by people who like to play with guns and fantasize aboit fighting off tyranny, but who either fetishize the professional forces and their separate authoritarian culture that the founders feared, or who just can't be arsed to do the boring work of a militia that is the primary security services of the state, or—frequently—who have both of those features simultaneously.
Unlike the Taliban or the Viet Cong, the US citizenry, even armed, would be like chaff.
edit: so many downvotes. I guess I hit a sore spot. I'm sorry the truth hurts, guys and gals. :)
The United States is a democracy. Democracy does not mean only direct democracy. Representative democracy, democratic republics, and federalism are forms of government compatible with democracy.
https://reason.com/2018/01/17/the-united-states-is-both-a-re...
We are very, very far away from a civil war or anything resembling what is going to happen in Hong Kong. But if things do ever start to skid in the wrong direction, we'll end up doing the same thing that others have done.
Put up a fight with or without "militias", and then after it's crushed, when the economy collapses, money is worthless, and crazed libertarian warlords rule the land... mass migration. The irony will not be lost on latin America.
This is a pretty weak appeal to authority. My rejoinders are Dred Scott and Korematsu (or anything about the idiotic "right to contract"). The Court isn't always right.
> or realize that the Bill of Rights was added at the states request to protect individual rights, not collective govt sanctioned rights
Well, 9A protects individual rights not enumerated, but 10A protects State rights not enumerated. States were entirely consumed with their own rights; that's why we've had to apply the Bill of Rights to States via incorporation & 14A.
> Or read the Federalist Papers
Madison does talk about the right to bear arms in the Federalist Papers [1]. But he was talking explicitly about States vs. the Federal government. He also later saw how bad militias were at being an army (a point Washington argued over and over again) in the War of 1812 and changed his position in favor of a strong, standing, Federal army. Let's pull some quotes here (emphasis added):
> The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition.
> That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray both...
> that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm...
> Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.
> To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.
> Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
> Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.
First, Madison repeatedly emphasizes local and State governments as a key component of repelling tyranny. But he also exclusively conceives of such resistance solely through the local and State militias.
2A is absolutely not about individual rights. No Founder ever talked about it in this way. It's about militias.
Active duty personnel cannot be considered citizen soldiers because their service is not compulsory and they are full-time professionals, not merely civilians in service.
Reservists might be considered citizen soldiers, if you're a bit loose with the criteria that service must be a compulsory civic duty.
As I watch our govt in action I think this is the norm and to be expected.
I am shocked the judge actually let the Bundy's off TBH. I wonder if it wasn't just an appeasement thing. Usually testing the crowns authority ends up poorly
Around the time of the founding, there was privately-owned field artillery (and rifles were still in limited deployment).
The second amendment made sense when calling up the militia/posse comitatus was an essential feature of how the government at all levels dealt with internal and external security threats, such that it was not planning to meet such needs with fully professional forces is most cases.
Note that this was true, in both internal and external cases, for much of the life of the Republic though less so over time; for external security the idea was essentially written off after Vietnam with the adoption of the all-volunteer force. For internal security it's just about as dead, though there's not an equivalent milestone.
Wait what. Did you mean, literally any rifle that isn’t some antiquated bolt-action one or something like a sniper rifle? Because iirc pretty much any even remotely non-vintage rifle/handgun is semi-auto, aside from a few novelty/specialty guns.
While there was a fair amount of war wariness among the public, continued resistance by the Confederacy was not something the North would have tolerated, especially since they clearly had the upper hand at that point.
That's the real (failed) purpose of the second amendment, to prevent the use of a professional armed force for internal and/or external security, with it's invariable separate subculture, so that the views of the masses of the people and those of the armed forces would not be distinct.
The US military is very good at wreaking havoc in places where you can just crusie-missle a square kilometer and not have any problems. That becomes difficult domestically: you can't just arbitrarily wipe your own cities off the map cause, you know, those cities are the ones who generate you income/GDP and have your actual population in them. There's no point in being a dictator of a wasteland.
Army National Guard 345,153
Army Reserve 219,054
I believe a significant number of soldiers also only do 4 or 8 years and then return to civilian life, they aren’t a permanent military class like the Roman legions or whatever. As you mention a lot depends on what you consider a “citizen soldier” though.
And even with that, the American Revolution relied on backing from one of the top two European powers at the time to succeed.
If we descend to such a state where an American president is (a) willing to completely annihilate the population, (b) can either bypass congress or get their approval to do so, and (c) can mobilize our military to perform the annihilation, then perhaps your point is correct.
I wouldn't exactly hold my breath on that.
The VC were utterly crushed, leading the NVA to get more directly involved in the South rather than using them as a catspaw. To the extent that the combined operation had success (which it clearly did) it was because of the NVA—a regular army—and the backing they had even further up the Communist food chain.
Basically, yes. Do you honestly think people would have any chance against probably the most powerful army in the world? Sure, they could try fighting a guerilla warfare, they'd even inflict some casualties against the enemy but it's unlikely that in the end they'd succeed against an army that is professional, highly skilled, better equipped, has better offensive and defensive capabilities, knows a lot more about tactics and logistics and has trained for this type of situation on a daily basis.
> Are they going to destroy their own infrastructure?
Would they even consider it their own infrastructure? Or would they consider it infrastructure currently held by rebels, which needs to be either seized or destroyed?
> Do you think the real men and women of the military would follow orders to destroy its own hometowns and families?
I suspect a lot of them would destroy towns if they we're told that these are now enemy bases. This has been repeated in many parts of the world throughout the history, even recent one. If they wouldn't, they'd be defectors and it really wouldn't matter whether the war was fought with modern weapons or sticks and stones.
Are you expecting the whole US to join this insurgency/rebellion/civil war? Most of the gun owners today already support Trump - a man who idolizes authoritarianism.
Instead of a scenario where the entirety of the U.S. police force quells a rebellion made up of 100% of the gun owning populace, it would be more likely that the dictator gets the gun owning populace on his/her side (not far from today's situation!) as reward for supporting the authoritarianism policies under the guise of democracy.
That's a big if. How many Arab Spring revolutions crumbled under this assumption?
Besides, look at today's political climate - the majority of gun owners are backing the man who is the most authoritarian. You don't have to be worried about a gun owning populace if they're "voting" for you already.
A) Infrastructure. a huge portion of the US military might is not deployed in the US.
B) Bombings and collateral damage. The military may not give a fuck about the infrastructure of another country but bombing US cities is damaging their own infrastructure. Litterally cutting of their nose to spite their face.
C) Getting soldiers to shoot at other humans is hard. Getting them to shoot at other Americans is even harder.
D) We sure wiped the floor with the Koreans and Vietnamese without the first 3 points right? How hard could a country an order of magnitude larger, with much better armed citizenry be?
Sure the OP scenario of sudden-dictator is bizarre, that's not how it works. If the U.S. ever falls to dictatorship, it will be like a frog boiling in water, and there will never be a single trigger point to erupt the populace into violent revolt.
Just look at what we have today! The majority of gun owners are the staunchest supporters of our most authoritarian president ever. You don't need to worry about a violent revolution when the gun owners are "voting" for you already.
War is not rational. People will destroy all sorts of stuff if something close to their identity is under threat.
Blowing up a home or two harboring a "terrorist cell" during a meeting I'm sure will be deterrence enough for a lot of those gun owners.
> Are they going to destroy their own infrastructure?
The infrastructure is the exact kind of ground that can be held much more securely against pistols and rifles using the U.S.'s advanced weaponry.
> Do you think the real men and women of the military would follow orders to destroy its own hometowns and families?
See the Arab Spring for reference on this one
> How long before regional coups?
I'm sure a civilian populace will experience war fatigue waaay before a trained, well paid, well fed military.
You're coming up with a hypothetical scenario where it's the entire US government against the entire populace. In the real world it doesn't happen that way - the populace is divided between the rebels and the government supporters.
Besides, look at today's political climate: most of the gun owners are the one's backing our most authoritarian leader! If, somehow, we were to slide into dictatorship you can be sure the leader would make whatever promises necessary to get the gun toters on his/her side.
Switzerland is a good model. The NRA loves to point at rates of Swiss gun ownership. If the USA implemented all of Switzerland’s gun laws I think you’d be okay.
Absolutely untrue.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
I don't need to refute it any further with additional quotes., it's a ridiculous statement.
Furthermore the mentioning of the recent Heller case in the Supreme Court is not an appeal to authority. Read the majority and minority opinions, they are comprehensive in every argument for and against the individual/collective interpretation of the right and arguments for your position are handled expertly by the majority.
For protecting against your own government, it really doesn't make that much sense. Your own government has to have support of your own military, which gets its members from the population: the military is made of your own neighbors. If your military is committed to the government and doesn't mind shooting their own family and neighbors, then you have a problem that arming people with small arms isn't going to solve: the rebels just aren't going to be that numerous. More likely, the military isn't going to support this action at all, and will mutiny and either implode as different factions within the military fight each other, or the military will stage a coup and take over the government (this has happened before many times, in other nations). In short, if the military supports the dictator, the armed opposition really has no chance of winning. If the opposition has a chance of winning, they don't need weapons because the military isn't going to support the dictator.
Unless they don't have the support because of the rebellion's guns.
If anyone wearing a uniform is being shot by their neighbors, military support for the dictatorship is going to dry up quickly.
Some counter examples are the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) or possibly even the Kent State Shootings (although there it was the State causing violence).
No matter where the violence comes from, the message tends to get lost from the reaction to the violence. Sure, even Gandhi talked about needing the capacity for violence for non-violence to work, but the moment things break down; the message may still get across or it may be totally drown out.
This is the heritage of gun control in America -- racism and hate written down and codified in law.
Relying on very expensive advanced weaponry is the modern equivalent of relying on mercenaries, and Machiavelli told us why mercenaries are bad.
Compare
* armed citizenry gathering illegally and getting slaughtered by a superior military force
* weaponless non-violent citizenry gathering illegally and getting slaughtered by a military force (which would have been superior to the citizens if they had been armed)
You've already conceded that the armed citizenry is no match for the military. At best your point about morale is equally true in both cases. At worst arming the crowd gives a boost to military morale because armed opponents gives them a way to rationalize their slaughtering.
Finally: if the slaughter of innocent citizens still matters to a critical mass of other citizens, it's vastly more powerful for them to hear that the citizens had been unarmed. And if there is no longer a critical mass of other citizens to organize against the military, then you're screwed either way.
I just can't figure out what the benefit to arms would be in this case, especially given that there obvious downsides to arming a population.
If Hong Kong had to rely on force of arms to win its independence, then it's defeat is nearly a foregone conclusion. They just do not have the capacity to stand up to the LARGEST ARMY IN THE WORLD.
Maybe, MAYBE an armed conflict in Hong Kong would sway the U.S. to intervene, but the U.S. is so averse to armed conflict right now and, frankly, today they have a very antagonistic view to foreigners. Not likely they'd be willing to take a bullet for the people of Hong Kong.
If the protestors in Hong Kong take up arms, it will only provide an excuse for Beijing to escalate.
In 1924 in the Soviet Union all firearms were banned except for smoothbore shotguns which pose minimal In the danger outside of close range. [2] This was greatly expanded with increased penalties and also eventually applied to knives as well. The culling of opponents and directed starvations began around 1929 leading to the deaths of millions of Soviets.
In 1966 China laid out the foundation of their now famously strict gun laws. That was the same year that Mao began the "Cultural Revolution" leading to the deaths of millions of Chinese.
Ultimately their civilians, by the time the worst came, had no way to pose any resistance. And so they died.
---
As for our situation, I think we can appeal to the declaration of independence: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
You're comparing a transient discomfort for a relatively tiny number of people entering the country illegally, to events where millions of citizens were systematically and intentionally killed or starved to death by their governments.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disarmament_of_the_German_Jews
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_in_the_Soviet_Unio...
IIRC, the minimum force is 1 soldier per 50 citizens. That's enough for the military to be so prevalent in an area that it would be impossible for insurgents to operate. For the US that would be 6 million soldiers (+ soldiers for the unpopulated areas). Those numbers usually don't include civilian police forces, but even if you did include them, the US military would be millions of people short.
But yes, the insurgency needs support from the people. Not a majority, but a network and general support must exist in order for it to survive.
The only effective bombing campaign that subdued a citizenry outright in military history were nukes, and if we ever crossed that line as a nation where the government nuked it's own citizens to quell rebellion, we are never coming back from that as a nation. It would leave a scar on humanity. Whatever would be left of the United States after that event would curse the people that did it.
So to your point, the 2A is not antiquated, if the US government had any interest in having an intact territory, at some point it would need to get face to face with the people, and the presence of firearms in the citizenry acts as a check against this possibility, and an escape option for the citizens of it ever got there.
Hong Kong can't much influence whether Tianjin is ruled from Beijing or not. But it can influence whether Hong Kong is ruled from Beijing! Being far away makes it hard for Hong Kong to reach Beijing, and it also makes it hard for Beijing to reach Hong Kong.
For Beijing, the destruction of some parts of one urban may be exactly the price they're willing to pay to maintain their grip.
Who do think we've been fighting in Afghanistan for the last 18 years? Impoverished farmers with AKs and explosives.
>>>I truly do not get it.
Insurgents win by undermining the legitimacy of the government, and moving into the vacuums that are created. You don't do that be attempting to fight force-on-force against overwhelming conventional power. You do it by targeting the mayors, governors, police chiefs, district attorneys, tax collectors, etc.....basically all of the key leadership of low-level government, and law enforcement. Without the support or at least tolerance of the population, ANY army will have exploitable vulnerabilities in essentially hostile territory.
Curious how you think that would alter the conclusion? If anything organized resistance would be more effective then, because you already had state militias and rough technological parity with the military.
This demonstrates to me that you understand the political power of an armed citizenry, the same group that you used the first half of your post to discredit by suggesting "blowing up a home or two" would be enough to suppress them.
With supply lines halfway across the globe, and a military most of whose personnel don't speak the language, don't know the country, don't know the culture, etc. And, in most of time we've notionally been trying, only a fairly small deployment compared to our total military force.
It's not. The same "militia" that justifies the second amendment can be federalized by Congress per Article I to "suppress insurrections" (or since 1792 by the President).
The 2nd amendment was actually put in by pressure from slave owners, who needed weapons in order to police slaves. After slavery was abolished, people kept the order of slavery by using tools (guns).
The common "idea" that the 2nd amendment was created for "freedom" can be traced back to a guest post in NRA newspaper written by a teenager which was then promoted heavily by the NRA.
source: https://news.streetroots.org/2019/05/31/thom-hartmann-why-we...
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/...
I feel like you're treating all guns as equal, when that wasn't true in the civil war and is completely not true now.
Why would you draw that conclusion, when pretty much every available case study (re: drone strikes and terrorism) clearly shows otherwise?
>>>Besides, look at today's political climate: most of the gun owners are the one's backing our most authoritarian leader!
Is he really our most authoritarian? How authoritarian would you rank him compared to Obama, the first President to order a drone strike to kill an American citizen without due process? [1]
I still believe that, even if he failed to persuade the gun owners, a dictator's armies win against an armed populace.
I'm pretty sure I read those case studies differently than you do. Why, do you suppose, the military continues to make drone strikes if they are ineffective?
> How authoritarian would you rank [Trump] compared to Obama
Waaaaay more authoritarian. By his own admission, even. Trump praises, celebrates, and socializes with dictators on a much greater scale than Obama.
And if the single largest signal you're drawing from Anwar al-Awlaki's killing is that Obama is authoritarian, then I think you need to step back and examine that situation more broadly.
You are placing waaaay too much faith in technology. Look at the Saudis: one of the worlds highest military budgets, and stockpiles of first-rate western hardware.....they are getting absolutely routed by Houthis, who run up desert mountains with just sandals, an AK, and a mouth full of stimulants.
>>>Sure, they could try fighting a guerilla warfare, they'd even inflict some casualties against the enemy but it's unlikely that in the end they'd succeed against an army that is professional, highly skilled, better equipped, has better offensive and defensive capabilities, knows a lot more about tactics and logistics and has trained for this type of situation on a daily basis.
What is the data that is driving you to this conclusion? Are you ignoring pretty much every counter-insurgency experience the US has had for the last 50 years? [2][3]
>>>I suspect a lot of them would destroy towns if they we're told that these are now enemy bases.
I suspect you don't know actual American military personnel very well, especially officers and NCOs, and how seriously we take the Laws of Warfare, AND the Constitution.
[1]https://www.snafu-solomon.com/2019/09/pics-of-houthi-rebels-...
[2]https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/05/why-america-lost-in-afg...
[3]https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2015-0...
>The Jews of Germany constituted less than 1 percent of the country's population. It is preposterous to argue that the possession of firearms would have enabled them to mount resistance against a systematic program of persecution implemented by a modern bureaucracy, enforced by a well-armed police state, and either supported or tolerated by the majority of the German population. Mr. Carson's suggestion that ordinary Germans, had they had guns, would have risked their lives in armed resistance against the regime simply does not comport with the regrettable historical reality of a regime that was quite popular at home. Inside Germany, only the army possessed the physical force necessary for defying or overthrowing the Nazis, but the generals had thrown in their lot with Hitler early on.
You could even argue that armed push back from the Jews would have resulted in more popular support for their extermination and would have hastened and worsened the Holocaust.
>As for our situation, I think we can appeal to the declaration of independence...
The Declaration of Independence is irrelevant here. We aren't talking about any legal, moral, or ethical reason for opposing despots. We are talking about it from a practical perspective. It is wildly less practical today than it was in the 18th century because the growth in military might of today's government has far outpaced the firepower available to the citizenry.
>You're comparing a transient discomfort for a relatively tiny number of people entering the country illegally, to events where millions of citizens were systematically and intentionally killed or starved to death by their governments.
And just like with the earlier examples, things start slow. The temperate of the political water in the US is rising and like a frog, no one has yet jumped out of the pot. That doesn't spell doom yet, but it also doesn't forecast great things if the political environment continues to worsen.
Certainly an insurgent in a dictatorship has not won back his liberty. Therefore an armed populace, in my mind, does not prevent a dictatorship.
Have you heard of the Viet Cong?
I didn't grow up in the US, but being exposed to US political discourse, I always took for granted this right wing talking point (though I thought it was ridiculous from the outset). Thank you for providing clarity and a decent looking source on something that, as you point out, makes no sense once you think a little longer about it.
Also have to factor in the massive defections of trained soldiers and officers from the military. The service members I know are not loyal to a person or group, they are loyal to the idea of the republic.
I normally wouldn't respond to a post like this, but if you are thinking about hurting people that you disagree with, please seek out some help. This sentence honestly reads like a warning flag to me for someone who has reached their limit for debating peacefully with others.
If the rich and powerful consolidate autonomous labor under their control, this removes the self-interest of keeping people around, and would allow them to unleash whatever level of violence is needed, all the way up to genocide.
"The means of defense against a foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." —James Madison[1]
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." —Thomas Jefferson[1]
"What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." -Thomas Jefferson[2]
[1]https://theshalafi.blogspot.com/2010/07/few-quotes-by-foundi...
[2]https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...
It’s likely any successful revolution or insurgency would have outside backing.
Vietnam was backed by the USSR, the taliban receives support from Pakistan, the insurgency in Iraq was supported by Iran, and so on.
Just like we ourselves destabilized Syria and Libya by supporting insurgencies there.
As demonstrated by the 2016 elections, there are other countries out there even now who are eager to interfere with the US.
In a theoretical future US dictatorship, perhaps support for an insurgency might come over the border from Canada and Mexico. We are dealing with a hypothetical situation far from what today’s international and national politics look like, of course.
I love numbers so let's talk about those using the Iraq war as an example.
Here's an estimate of the number of casualties in the Iraq war: https://www.iraqbodycount.org/
Roughly 200k civilians, 90k combatants.
According to wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-National_Force_%E2%80%93... 5k western coalition forces died.
Even if these numbers are wildly inaccurate, I don't like those odds. Yes, it is difficult for the army to actually completely squash the insurgency, but there is a very messy grey zone between "winning" and "losing" where those in power relentlessly oppress the rest at relatively little cost to themselves.
I'm not saying, by the way, not to resist oppression, I am simply saying that the weapons that civilians cannot buy are very very scary, and it is probably wise to pick one's battles.
Which sounds like a deterrent.....until the insurgents use autonomous vehicle technology to pilot dump trucks full of fertilizer explosives into the enforcers.
https://hugokaaman.com/2017/02/14/the-history-and-adaptabili...
https://hugokaaman.com/2019/03/13/islamic-state-the-cross-pr...
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/Eng...
Wiki provides numerous examples of early commentary here. [1] I find the most compelling and clear to be that of Judge Thomas M. Cooley, which I'll include at the bottom due to its length. In brief form: he posits that if the law were constrained only to the militia, and not the masses of people that may comprise it, then it would be quite a pointless amendment as the very government it seeks to protect individuals from could undermine it by inaction or neglect in regards to the formation of that militia.
What happened in 2008 was DC vs Heller. [2] After DC banned guns in 1975, a police officer found himself in a situation where he was able to have a gun during his line of duty but was left unarmed in the increasingly dangerous and deteriorating neighborhood that he lived in. He petitioned the NRA for help fighting the law. They refused, so he went to the Cato Institute. They (Heller along with 5 other citizens) filed suit, it made its way to the supreme court, and the supreme court unambiguously affirmed that it's indeed an individual right.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United...
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
Full quote of Judge Cooley:
"It might be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent. The militia, as has been elsewhere explained, consists of those persons who, under the law, are liable to the performance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon. But the law may make provision for the enrolment of all who are fit to perform military duty, or of a small number only, or it may wholly omit to make any provision at all; and if the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of this guaranty might be defeated altogether by the action or neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms; and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose. But this enables the government to have a well-regulated militia; for to bear arms implies something more than the mere keeping; it implies the learning to handle and use them in a way that makes those who keep them ready for their efficient use; in other words, it implies the right to meet for voluntary discipline in arms, observing in doing so the laws of public order."
Is that why I had to vouch for the comment, because you misread it and became offended?
You're right, I don't. But, if Americans don't need to fear that they'll have to fight the US Army, why have the 2nd amendment at all? Who would they need to protect themselves against?
Black Panthers carried guns to protect protests, and having guns created a situation where cops could not rush in and beat dissent into submission. There is a strong argument that without the second amendment, the Civil Rights Act would not have been passed, and we would still be living in an institutionally segregated society.
I don't own a gun and don't feel I need one because I'm a privileged urban white. Gun control has historically been used as a tool to disarm Black Americans: the NRA supported gun control in response to the Black Panthers! (https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-...)
Any discussion of gun control in America must account for the self-defense rights of Americans who do not have adequate protection from the police.
Like cutting the head from a hydra, this would spawn dozens of new "terrorist cells" in response. Military is made from the citizenry, and without moral authority, command would lose power and become opposed by many of their own forces (in addition to the general populace)
That's not what I said. I said the military probably wins numerically. For what it's worth, numerically the civil war should have been over in about 6 months and an entirely lopsided victory by the Union. "Probably" should most certainly to be understand as "the most likely but not certain outcome". The US probably would have won Vietnam if they had continued fighting another decade - would it have been worth it though?
And the time element is part of the issue. It turns out if you show up, massacre of a bunch of unarmed folks in a day or two and then do a halfway decent job of suppressing it, well, Tiananmen square.
In the US, when we've had the military fire on citizens, the response was a bunch of upset, armed citizens said "We'd really like to see due process happen." And then unlike Tiananmen, the perpetrators were arrested and tried in a civilian judicial system because that was less terrible than an armed population getting rather upset.
Remember, this is the whole reason why the founding fathers were pro individual ownership of firearms - they had been the victims of military massacres, military troops being quartered in private houses, and eventually their own government hiring mercenaries to enforce the peace through force. Part of why the British chose to hire foreign mercenaries for swaths of the war instead of use their own troops was because they were concerned about morale and defections. Likewise, the first thing the British wanted to do once things started going south was to lock up all the ammunition and arms so the citizens couldn't put up any trouble.
No, clearly not. Iraq and Afghanistan are proof of that.
The argument that the US military could so easily wipe the floor with a domestic insurgent militia that Second Amendment is obsolete hasn't been credible for 20 years. Widespread gun ownership does block several mechanisms of descent into dictatorship.
It would be like equating WWI Germany with WWII Nazi Germany...but who knows, maybe people do that.
It should be noted that the Bill of Rights was originally interpreted to only limit the actions of the federal government, not the state governments. It should also be noted that one of the major events on the road to the American Revolution was the British government's attempts to disarm the militias in Massachusetts, which resulted in the Battles of Lexington and Concord, so the theory that the government might permit the militia but outlaw its arms was not mere theory but an actual historic act well-known to the drafters.
The modern controversy is whether or not the right in the Second Amendment is a right to keep arms is inherently a military right [1] or if it protects personal arms entirely separate from military contexts. The text isn't particularly helpful, and I suspect in large part because for the people who wrote it, there wasn't a separation between the right to personal use versus the right to military use--if you could use them, you were a member of the militia.
[1] I'm using military as a catch-all term here, which would include militia, civil defense, police, and other similar occupations. In the 18th century, these duties would have been performed by the military or the militia, as dedicated police forces had yet to be invented.
It's astonishing how many people these days have suddenly become armchair generals to push back against the very foundation of the freedom of the United States in the form of this tired argument.
The firebombs and the nukes didn't subdue the citizenry. They were still willing to follow their cause to the death. You can't win against that unless you're going to kill each and every last one of them.
The nukes showed their leader that his people would be destroyed with little cost to the enemy and convinced him to call it off.
Tyranny always has public support. The evil wizard lord of a kingdom scenario has never and will never occur in reality - someone despised by everyone cannot come into power... That doesn't mean the tyrant has the majority of public support, but I'd find it hard to believe any tyrant has less than 30% when coming to power.
Does he really want to do that, seeing as how I have a gun and he doesn't?
One of the few things we can say for certain is that tyrants don't like having their targets armed. Would having arms have saved the Jews, the Soviets, the Chinese, etc? That's impossible to answer. But it'd certainly have given them more options and opportunities, rather than fewer.
You realize everyone in this comment thread can see my comment, right above yours, right? Willfully misinterpreting what I've written to seem hostile when in reality it's you who suggested Americans should kill each other.
You must need a win, and we've all been there, but insurgency isn't what the 2nd Amendment was about, it never was, and lying won't change that fact.
A small armed resistance in the US would be incredibly ineffectual. At best preforming unless but inspiring attacks, but more realistically simply dying in droves.
You can look at hundreds of past insurrections for inspiration, but grassroots military might has almost nothing to do with their success.
PS: Just look back on the US Civil war which included actual defection of large chunks of the military etc. They started with territory and an actual military including trained officers, cannons, and warships yet still lost. Now picture what would have happened if the southern military had stayed with the north.
Not to detract from your excellent point but when it comes to personal defense against crime, this applies to everyone who doesn't have private security. Even if the police are 100% on your side, they can't help you if they aren't at your side. When seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.
On the other hand, if your battle plan involves using up an entire truck for each enemy soldier (or squad?) neutralized, I feel like you're gonna have a hard time scaling that up to open warfare.
By deterrence, did you actually mean motivation?
Killing someone's family and friends often radicalizes them, and I would say it very rarely pacifies them.
I mean look at the example of the HK protests: the police didn't stop them by kicking some people's teeth in [1], they actually fueled them by doing that.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000006702862/hon...
Edit: Thought I would reply to your Heller stuff too.
It's an appeal to authority because it's selective. The precedent when the Court decided Heller was set by Miller [1], which reads at the outset (emphasis mine):
> The Court cannot take judicial notice that a shotgun having a barrel less than 18 inches long has today any reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, and therefore cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees to the citizen the right to keep and bear such a weapon.
If you're gonna invoke the Court, you have to invoke the whole thing. And to that end, there's a long history of the Court backing up the individual's right to bear arms under some pretty dubious logic. All of which is to say the Court is and always has been a political institution. No Justice since John Marshall has ever known what the Founders thought, because they weren't them. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to get one over on you.
That supposes that the Founders would forever rule and be unified, with no possibility of anyone else ever ruling. That obviously is idiotic.
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
How do you explain "Militia" and "State"? How does 2A not refer explicitly to State militias?
High profile cases like that are high risk high reward for the prosecution. You can't let private militias start dictating how the country works, but you also can't fire up extremists and provide sympathy for their cause.
I don't think the second amendment enters into the equation.
One of the big differences between US gun culture and Swiss gun culture is that in the US we believe in a certain right "to enjoy arms", to keep and bear them in an undisciplined and disorganised way.
I prefer to focus on the Black Panthers use case because there is an interesting cognitive dissonance in the modern left in that anti-racism and gun control are both promoted by the same ideological groups. Tends to be more persuasive in my liberal social bubble as I see a growing lack of empathy for rural Americans.
My personal litmus test for gun control legislation is: "Would this law meaningfully decrease access for a black single mother who is a victim of domestic violence and does not have confidence in a timely police response?"
Interestingly, that would be most of them, with the supreme court ruling that the police does not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...
You assume that all members of the US military would fight on behalf of the government. All members of the armed forces swear an oath to the US Constitution, not the federal government, so it's pretty much certain that a non-trivial proportion would defect from the will of the government if the orders were contrary to the oath sworn to the US Constitution. At that point, that superior training, discipline, logistics, intelligence, force projection, everything is also in the hands of the insurgency against unconstitutional orders.
The second amendment hardly helps that much, as if shooting those we think are wrong* is going to do anything good (or trying to go after the military, who is much better trained and armed than we are).
* e.g. would Trump supporters be justified in going after progressives with their guns if they thought they were harming the country? Or vice versa?
Whatever rights they wanted to give the states in the Constitution, they gave to "the states". The right to bear arms was specifically given to "the people", to prevent disarmament.
Judge Navarro admonished the government for “flagrant prosecutorial misconduct” and withholding “potentially exculpatory” evidence, including FBI logs on surveillance and sniper activity, threat-assessment reports indicating that the Bundys were not dangerous, and internal reports about misconduct involving BLM agents.
>> Because iirc pretty
Thanks for the compliment! Let's address what was said, and what I meant.
Here's the part of the post I was responding to specifically: >>It's also not cool to characterize people who have assault rifles or support the 2nd amendment as rednecks.
Now, most gun people will go out of their way to inform you that AR-15s and similar civilian weapons aren't "assault rifles", even though that's what most people are talking about in these kinds of discussions. You can't (technically) own a full-auto weapon in the US. Based on my general understanding of guns in the US, when most people see an AR-15, a "Modern Sporting Rifle" but I hate that term so I just described the gun, they think it's an "Assault Rifle" but that's not true.
I don't really know what you're point is here? The original (now flagged) post was pointing talking about redneck 2A-loving gun nuts. I was pointing out that 1- I don't like rednecks, 2- not everyone who owns a gun is a redneck, and 3- the Afghanistan War and a second US civil war would be very different conflicts.
ALSO, fwiw, there's plenty of modern bolt-action rifles being produced theses days because they're reliable AF, and if you're good at hunting you shouldn't need a clip (yea yea, "true Scotsman", whatever). Also, there are plenty of shotguns that are not semi-auto. There's all kinds of guns!
It doesn’t matter how advanced your technology is, there’s a certain point where numbers win.
You’re also assuming that military personnel themselves wouldn’t defect and side with their fellow citizens in such a situation, which would also make a lot of the same technology available to the hypothetical resistance.
When you look at those numbers, it becomes clearer why pushes to disarm the population when there isn’t a problem present such a huge threat to the country.
But they wouldn't get access to the ammo needed to use those guns, which are stored in a central community location to combat an unwanted suicide problem (and aren't they semi-auto anyways?).
They also aren't bought, but part of ones' militia service. You know, that first clause of the USA's 2nd amendment that the pro gun lobby says to ignore.
The studies in your link are after "controlling for poverty and urbanization", "after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation", etc.
I'm not a statistician enough to argue the methodology of the papers, but I'll say given that the trend only emerges after lots of adjustments, it makes me a little skeptical. At least, it would be pretty easy to let some bias or motivated reasoning slip in.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
The militia is always in its construction open to everyone, whereas the gun community is seen as a kind of subculture today.
The militia brings people together in a context where the underlying story about arms is not one of power, violence or even self-defence but rather one of duty, personal discipline, safety and cooperation.
The militia provides a way for people to learn a lot about firearms and firearms safety before buying a gun, as opposed to the situation in the US we have today where often the requirements for an intro course include one's own gun.
As a social institution, militia would not necessarily have to be government funded.
That said, your point is important and something many people don't seem to understand: those foreign leaders we in the West like to describe as tyrants, dictators, despots, strongmen, etc, are generally at least popular at home, and often adored.
The difference between the civil rights movement and say, the ELF is that MLK jr, smartly pushed for nonviolence and all armed violence was encouraged only as a retaliatory measure.
I agree that the message can and most likely will get drowned out with escalation to violence, but if the courts fail you, if the state fails you, the only recourse you really have is a credible threat of violence. If that violence is in the form of disruption or rioting or if it's simply, non compliance backed by guns- without that threat, you will be ignored, or worse.
2019: Jeremy Connolly, Wallace Wilder, Bobby Ray Moore, Raymond Lewis Williams, Channara Tom Pheap, Dennis Carolino, Chad Michael Breinholt, Riley Eugene Peay, Michael Tuck, James Crowe, Amari Malone, Michael Lopez, Jared R. Nelson, Schaston Theodore Lamarr Hodge, Mike Parsley, Uzzle Jerome, Rashad Cunningham, Jovany Mercado-Bedolla, Jamie Fernandez, William Lloyd Jones, Thomas Michael Reynolds, Cole Steele Jessup, Charles Roy Pearson, Anthony Wayne French, Jerry Orlando Weaver, David Ingle, Scott Souders, Aaron Luther, Cole Steele Jessup, John Michael George, Freddrick Andrews Hadden, Manuel Charles Carter, Mark Johnson, Jose Mendez, Jason Xavier Salas, An unidentified person, Kevin Jenkins, Toussaint Diamon Sims, Detravian Allison, Donald Babbit, Allan George, William Biggs, Kaizen Crossen, Derrick Davidson, Marvin Alexis Urbina, James Lee Kirkwood, Riche Antonio Santiago, Marvin Urbina, Robert Clay Wilsford, Connor Betts, Aigon Andrew Wallace, Cortney Ronald Staley, John Clark, Oscar Ventura-Gonzalez, De'Von Bailey, Deshon Downing, Mario Benjamin, Delano Williams, Lenny Blaine Griffin, David Willoughby, Eric Toon, Margarita Victoria Brooks, Andre Leach, Jamaal Simpson
Guns are not a good defence against many wild animals. Get some bear spray, it is dramatically more effective and will not kill somebody as easily if you accidentally shoot a person in the dark!
Point taken about the civil rights marches though
There are several things wrong with the above statement ...
First, in many (most) states of the United States, you can indeed purchase a fully automatic weapon / suppressor / grenade launcher / "destructive device" / etc. You'll have to pay a $200 transfer tax, submit to registration and fingerprinting and either get local CLEO signoff (Sheriff, Chief of Police) or purchase as a trust. Interestingly, you also sort of give up your fourth amendment rights as you grant the BATF right to check on the "device" at any time, for any reason.
Second, military (automatic) weapons in Switzerland are distributed by the Swiss Army and are kept in local possession under those auspices. A swiss cannot simply walk into a gun shop and buy an MP5 on a whim - regardless of background check.
Finally, and most importantly, Swiss gun laws were dramatically reworked in the past year as part of a general normalization of Swiss and EU regulations. There was a referendum and it passed - many aspects of Swiss gun laws that you may romanticize are now a thing of the past.
> “Security of a Free State.” The phrase “security of a free state” meant “security of a free polity,” not security of each of the several States as the dissent below argued, see 478 F. 3d, at 405, and n. 10. Joseph Story wrote in his treatise on the Constitution that “the word ‘state’ is used in various senses [and in] its most enlarged sense, it means the people composing a particular nation or community.” 1 Story §208; see also 3 id., §1890 (in reference to the Second Amendment ’s prefatory clause: “The militia is the natural defence of a free country”). It is true that the term “State” elsewhere in the Constitution refers to individual States, but the phrase “security of a free state” and close variations seem to have been terms of art in 18th-century political discourse, meaning a “ ‘free country’ ” or free polity.
TL;DR: I don't like the "State" thing, so I'm just gonna ignore it. He does the same thing for militias too, albeit in many more paragraphs so I won't quote it here. All in all it's classic Scalia: using weird old newspapers and irrelevant centuries old laws that incidentally agree with him in order to reinterpret the constitution in a way that aligns--coincidentally--with his political beliefs. The kind of thing you'd only find convincing if you don't need convincing in the first place.
And for what it's worth, the dissenters agree with me:
> The opinion the Court announces today fails to identify any new evidence supporting the view that the Amendment was intended to limit the power of Congress to regulate civilian uses of weapons. Unable to point to any such evidence, the Court stakes its holding on a strained and unpersuasive reading of the Amendment’s text; significantly different provisions in the 1689 English Bill of Rights, and in various 19th-century State Constitutions; postenactment commentary that was available to the Court when it decided Miller; and, ultimately, a feeble attempt to distinguish Miller that places more emphasis on the Court’s decisional process than on the reasoning in the opinion itself.
But importantly, this is nothing new. Justices uphold weird stuff all the time (if you want to read something particularly heinous, read Buck v. Bell, good god). And people will cite them as appeals to authority. But as someone super wise once said:
> the Court is and always has been a political institution. No Justice since John Marshall has ever known what the Founders thought, because they weren't them. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to get one over on you.
Possibly says a lot about what the government does or does not consider a threat.
You dropped this when you quoted me. I wonder why...
To think that we should resort to violence instead of using the systems in place for peaceful negotiations is insane.
Also, interesting how you only quoted slave-owning inspirations of Southern Democrats, who buried their heads in the sand, preferring to talk high mindedly in their ivory towers about the Constitution than actually fix the immense problems facing the people they purportedly wanted to help.
Jeremy Connolly: Armed with a knife. "The KBI says police shot Connolly after they found his 71-year-old grandmother, Linda Kromer, stabbed to death inside his home in the 2000 block of Harold Avenue. Officers heard noises in the basement and found Connolly in a bedroom with the door closed. He was armed with a knife." https://www.kwch.com/content/news/Man-dies-from-injuries-in-...
Wallace Wilder: Probably not armed. "Wallace Wilder died Wednesday afternoon after being shot at his Gordo apartment in Pickens County. He had long ago been diagnosed as a bipolar schizophrenic and even was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity in a Tuscaloosa County killing in the 1980s..." https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2019/08/man-killed-by-ala...
Bobby Ray Moore: Armed with a gun. "Authorities have identified a man they say was killed after pointing a loaded gun at San Joaquin sheriff's deputies in Stockton." https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/stockton/man-shot-a...
While we do have a terrible problem in the US with police shootings, it's unhelpful when misleading claims like this are made. Where did you get this list of names? Did the source claim that all were unarmed?
As such, dictatorship and imposition of rule through force has to be considered in light of other political options. Oppressive government does not generally start with an all out war to subdue the populace, using strategic weapons like missiles and bombers. Insurrections are managed with lighter arms not because totally destroying the enemy is not a military option but rather because it is not consonant with the relevant political goals.
The right to bear arms isn't about what you do for all out war -- that's when you move from citizen soldiers to building armies -- it's about trimming the distribution at the lower end and improving the odds of the citizenry being able to make it up the food chain in a reasonable amount of time. (Knowing what guns are actually called is a surprising advantage there.) Even Hitler started small, and disarmed the citizenry early.
In short, until the 14th Amendment (and even for some time afterwards), it was generally held that the Bill of Rights only bound Congress. The 1st Amendment starts with "Congress shall make no law," explicitly limiting it to the federal government. While the other amendments don't explicitly mention Congress or states, the original proposals did explicitly include mention of states in some of them, which were struck out before being accepted by Congress.
The first link implies that somewhat, but I would guess we need a historian to map the meaning over time.
Not yet.
Trying to warp this specific Amendment written 220+ years ago to serve as guidance for modern times is a farce, and has been manipulated by special interests into causing the murder of hundreds of thousands of people.
Thomas M. Cooley recognized that, but didn't draw the better conclusion; that the Second Amendment needs to be revoked.
2008 was a substantial setback, but it isn't the end of the conversation. The Second Amendment will be the thing our grandkids shame us most about.
You're going to have to go much further right than you seem to think to arrive at a conclusion of, "I need to commit acts of terrorism against my own country because I believe the US government is tyrannical."
Wars are comprised of many battles, which may or may not cause one side to "win." Wars are over when both sides agree to stop. What compels a side to agree to stop? Many, many things. The US won every major battle in Vietnam, yet there isn't a clear cut winner. The CSA probably would have been an independent nation had Lincoln not been reelected in 1864, a victory Lincoln himself didn't think would happen.
The point being, an insurgency, yes, ultimately wants to "win", but winning includes things like protecting food / water, freer movement, slowing down an advance, creating safe areas, disrupting the enemies ability to wage war as effectively, or just general annoyance of the enemy. If this can go on until the opponent ultimately loses the will to fight, or offers acceptable concessions, it's a victory. It doesn't have to be an overwhelming, parade-in-the-streets type victory, it just has to make the enemy lose the will to fight the insurgency.
Brutal, bloody, horrible war where literally tens millions of people will die in agonizing pain.
Why the hell is "the best country in the world" thinking about and holding onto it's gun for this?
You're right, but it's not due to a lack of trying. Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Beto O’Rourke all support mandatory buybacks.
Lastly, popular support is from the factions, not the people - in medieval europe most of the people had no factional representation politically, all the power had been entirely concentrated in the various estates.
1. See Lord Vetinari in like every discworld book ever.
Why does the USA order strikes on terrorist targets, knowing full well there will be blowback? Because, on the whole, the strategy works.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d6etv5/hi_im_beto_oro...
Sounds like you just made a great reason for concealed carry.
“You have the watches, but we have the time”
Not quite a tank, but it is an armored military vehicle.
And it definitely makes it less safe for the rest of us in society.
If someone has threatened you with a gun or you live in an area with increased gun violence, I would expect that greatly increases the chances that you'd want to acquire your own. This cohort would already be at a much higher risk of gun death before they owned a gun as well.
There has never been a placebo controlled double blind study on gun ownership. Probably never will be because of ethical concerns.
It probably does increase risk, but I expect the effect size is much lower than 2-3x.
Your statement is forced just to make the point. I don't think the gun control topic was ever related to law enforcement or military personnel carrying guns. It's more about having guns easily accessible to violent and repeat offenders, mentally unstable people, etc.
Good article on this:
https://www.mic.com/articles/24210/gun-control-myth-the-seco...
Here's a list of coups. Many were successful. I'm not sure why you are trying to argue that coups don't work. The Arab Spring is a recent example of this very thing, isn't it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_d%27état_and_cou...
>Very few (if any) shootings were ever really prevented by a citizen and their gun even when the shootings happened (repeatedly) inside military bases where the shooter was literally surrounded by trained and armed military personnel.
The first part of your second assertion that "very few shootings were ever prevented by a citizen," is also easily invalidated by a google search.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/in-missouri-a-good-gu...
https://www.conservapedia.com/Mass_shootings_prevented_by_ar...
Where did you get that information from?
You can’t say that the Americans who want guns for self defense are better off without them because statistically, across the population, they increase danger.
This is being dishonest. Since the registry was closed in '86 there have been no additional automatic weapons added to circulation (for civilian owners) so prices start around $10k. They are basically unobtainable for people who don't have $10k to drop on a hobby and don't want to commit a felony with a coat hanger.
Maybe another litmus test should be "does this meaningfully decrease access to guns for a person who is planning a mass shooting?"
I don't have any stats, and I suspect more single black women die than people at the hand of mass shooters, but you see my point - it's a game of tradeoffs and focusing on a single dimension is myopic.
During Tet, the VC was crushed and ceased being an effective fighting force in the south. The NVA was forced to pick up the slack.
The eventual takeover of south Vietnam was by conventional military forces.
My military-trained father-in-law accidentally discharged his handgun inside the house while cleaning it. The bullet ricocheted and could have killed anybody.
It was a manufacturing defect. All those guns were recalled and replaced 2 months later.
Of course, the text is vague enough that everyone will simply draw out whatever meaning they find reinforces their biases. Given that the most fervent upholders of the amendment today were draft dodgers back in the day, it is safe to say that protection of country is no longer important in their reading of the amendment.
At any rate, even if we accept that the clause is prefatory, that doesn’t make it meaningless, it has an effect on how gun rights should be maintained (so that the populace can overthrow the government or protect against foreign invaders, it is not protected for self defense, sport hunting, target practice, etc...).
To overstate the point: You can’t conflate “bought a black market gun, keeps it illegally, has no training, and engages in felonious behavior on a regular basis” with “endured numerous comprehensive background checks, bought high value guns (some specialized) at retail, took hundreds of hours of training from prominent instructors, keeps them for sport and defense, obeys all applicable laws, is a practical expert in said laws, and has committed no crimes”, then when the former happens to kill someone illegally, proceed to average the two and use that to assert “see? owning guns is bad”.
A couple months ago a friend of a friend was killed because a boy from school brought a gun from home to their house to show off and was playing with it. He thought it was empty. It wasn't. Now a girl is dead, a boy's life is ruined, and their families are devastated.
This happens all the time.
Police statements are predictably found to change under a thinnest level of scrutiny.
“Justifiable” use of force varies from department to department, police force to police force, state by state. It does not mean “the only or best option available” as any less controversial action would be equally as justified. US police, in aggregate, are known to escalate situations into something more dangerous or hostile than all of the options available. Of the 17,000 distinct autonomous paramilitary forced in the US, there is no way for a citizen to know what “threat matrix” they are currently being evaluated under, and if there even is a way to no longer be perceived as a threat without being eliminated, especially when the police are already operating under bad information that you are unaware of. Finding police actions “Justified” is a term used to resonate with the preconceptions of citizens, but actually means 17,000+ different things which no citizen knows the details of, only that particular department and scarred prosecutor.
Speaking of fear: Mayors, governors, prosecutors and juries are afraid of their police, just like they were afraid of the Mafia. This is not talked about. Equally dubious “I feared for my life” situations can happen to you and your family and law enforcement can rely on people like you believing the police statement verbatim.
Police are held to a high moral standard culturally, but are not trained in a way that reflects this. In a criminal investigation due to use of force, the person under scrutiny would be convicted of their statements changed so much. Police are able to operate under an abstraction of “justified” which is available at the discretion of the their supervisor, the DA, prosecutor, or a jury under randomly generated prosecutor instructions applicable in that one specific jurisdiction that nobody was aware of before that day in a private grand jury trial, before continuing to a less private jury trial with the same issues.
FBI has analysis of police in nationalist groups. There is no way for a citizen to differentiate any officer from another.
With this in mind, there is a lot less latitude to accept the deaths as stated. Cherry picking a few of the deaths and concluding so easily that its “justified” from description alone just neglects the inefficiency of the system. There are limitations in any of our abilities to judge the outcome. There are imperfections in our system of checks and balances.
Other developed countries have many people with knives and guns and the US is a total aberration in how these situations are handled.
If they'd rather die free than old that's their choice to make and they deserve to be able to make it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
According to it 385 people were killed and 1338 injured so far. 8 of the mass shootings were in schools. Now you're saying that if faced with the choice of having fewer or no mass shootings, and being able to stop a small fraction of them (or worse, stop a large fraction but even the small one still causes thousands of victims) while the rest cause hundreds of deaths and thousands injured you'd pick the second?
As for the coups, I never said they don't work so please don't move the goalposts. I said that the dictator rarely gave up just because his opponents had guns or even the backing of the US military. When I replied to OP's comment it said dictators would back off if faced with armed population.
But if the point you're (contrivedly) trying to make is that guns are not the problem I can only strongly agree. Guns, games, etc. seem to not be a problem in the rest of the western world. So the problem must be something or somewhere else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am-Qdx6vky0
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/man-shoots...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nra-employee-shoots-himself_n...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-accidently-shoots-self-wife...
(I won't even mention the circular argument in the parent comment)
The militia wouldn't have been mentioned if it wasn't relevant, and it's only relevant if it's a limitation to the individual right to bear arms.
My point though (and I hope yours) is that giving a long list of people killed by the police under the apparent header of "unarmed" is counterproductive if the people who were killed were not in fact unarmed. Misleading approaches like this (unintentional or not) turn off people who would otherwise support your cause.
Fourth rule: always identify your target.
Even despite the dark, you can attach a flashlight to your firearm that allows you to quickly identify the target before shooting at it. Most modern guns have that capability.
Link 1: Guy said it was unloaded. Gun safety rule #1 is treat every gun likes its loaded and clear every gun when someone hands it to you so you know personally that it is in fact unloaded.
Not doing either of those things is incredibly stupid and irresponsible.
Link 2: "The man was showing his girlfriend that loaded guns are safe when he died" - The guy was playing with a loaded gun. No legitimate gun safety demonstration would claim that a loaded gun is ever safe. That's not responsible gun handling.
Link 3: Doesn't describe the incident in detail but he pointed a loaded gun at a living thing so its gross negligence.
Link 4: Another questionable gun safety demonstration. Once again no detail but he pointed a loaded gun at a person else it would have been physically impossible for a person to get shot.
It is not standard practice to have live rounds around when you are doing a safety demonstration. They make clearly marked training rounds that have no propellant in them for the purpose of demonstrating loading and unloading a firearm. Using live rounds is not justifiable as "responsible" behavior.
Its disingenuous to use examples of people doing incredibly reckless things in order to argue that "responsible gun owners" regularly shoot themselves or others.
Gun handling is like being the only car driving on a road during the day with clear, calm weather, no animals, and no pedestrians around. It makes it so simple that all you have to do is maintain a sane speed and drive between the lines and there's no way you can get into an accident. Handling a gun is always like that unless you're on a battlefield or something. If you follow simple rules its impossible to hurt someone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 prohibited school and employment segregation and gave minorities voting rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968 prohibited housing discrimination and criminalized hate crimes
It appears earlier armed defense was carried out by various groups in the Black Power movement, including the Freedom Riders and Black Armed Guard led by Robert F. Williams.
The Black Panthers were ideologically inspired by Williams, but I had conflated earlier action with the later-formed group. Thanks for pointing that out!
Yeah, that "how little you've respected honest discourse and conversation" comment seems a little self-revealing especially when coupled with that latest edit.
This is definitely "I was just threatening you as a hypothetical, bro!" territory
Another contributing factor is that mass shootings themselves are rare, and the rate of citizens carrying is low compared to the firearm ownership rate.
What about any of the other rifles that fire the same exact cartridge but are not AR-15's? .223REM/5.56x45mm NATO, .308WIN/7.62x51mm NATO, etc... There's no talk about banning certain cartridges.
Are we just talking about banning a specific shape of a rifle? Why?
Do the people talking about confiscations and bans even understand these things?
It is certainly somewhat arbitrary, but I think it functions as an example of a group that is often physically disadvantaged vs attackers, institutionally disenfranchised, and has reasonable apprehension at the idea of relying on police protection.
Similarly, I like to think about economic legislation in terms of "how would this law affect the chances that a child born into the poorest neighborhood will one day become wealthy?". I think by framing it in a way that lets me imagine a hypothetical individual who is currently least-empowered, it allows me to consider things with a bit more empathy as I can imagine myself in their shoes rather than abstractly thinking about groups. Its hard to reason about fairly balancing many concerns of many groups with various levels of power simultaneously, so I think iteratively looking for laws that would empower the least-empowered can function as a sort of shorthand for moral reasoning.
The militia certainly are relevant but how they are relevant is the question, not the answer. There are a lot of ways to argue about that, but the right of keeping and bearing arms is literally called the right “of the people” — it isn’t assigned to any other body and the founders certainly had the language to do so if they wanted to.
How we keep and bear the arms is a great question. To my own mind, it would be better if training were more front-loaded. Right now, you buy a gun to be able to get training — seems backwards. It could also be much better if more people held guns through equitable ownership of trusts with firearms homed at a range or other secure location. The net effect would be fewer, more varied and better maintained firearms. The trust also provides a locus for training standards, liability insurance and cooperation with law enforcement.
This isn't the scholarly debate people make it out to be; there is a clear meaning, and it's been muddled over the past 30 years by special interests who have corrupted the original intent of the law.
The problems the second amendment was written to solve don't exist anymore, so the second amendment shouldn't exist anymore.
It can be helpful to remember that when you go way out of bounds like this, you discredit the position you're arguing for. Assuming you're right, that means you're discrediting the truth, which helps no one.
There isn’t anything scholarly or muddled about reading the “the right of the people” to reference a right held by people and not by states or the federal government.
Until then, an attempt to ban all guns is not only a politically infeasible waste of energy, but also seems like a racist attack on the self-defense rights of the disempowered.
The debate's supercharged, mostly for good reasons (mass shootings are very high stakes). But the rhetoric around subjugating the people by confiscating their weapons is overheated. America has the chance to show that there's an alternative to completely outlawing firearms that adequately accommodates all lifestyles in our country. But we have to be reasonable and not jump down bonkers rabbit holes like "owning a gun is immoral and makes you an ignorant, self-serving hick", or "AOC wants to personally confiscate your gun and slap you".
That's why I think Heller did so much damage. Cities like Chicago and DC were enacting handgun bans to try and cope with escalating gun violence. They weren't mounting an assault on 2A. Leaving policy decisions like this to local and State governments is exactly what the Bill of Rights was meant to do. This way a state like Oregon can say, "there's mountain lions here, you might need a gun", or Indiana can say, "we have deer hunting, so you can have a hunting rifle in season and keep it locked up at some repo off season", or Chicago can say, "you can't have a gun here, violence is out of control". But Heller robbed us of a core policymaking tool. Actually it's pretty ironic that an originalist like Scalia dismantled a policymaking tool that the Founders themselves wrote into the Constitution. But whatever! We can overturn Heller and get it back I guess, in like 40 years or something.
PS. I'm 50/50 on handgun bans. The danger is that it's just another way to lock up young men of color, so I think anyone adopting them needs a mitigation that isn't felony or incarceration.
First, I don't believe banning guns will stop mass shootings any more than banning drugs stopped mass drug use. There are millions out there and a well kept gun can last a couple hundred of years (and still work).
Second, how will you accomplish the confiscation? You know there are people who will resist. How many police (and bystanders for that matter) will die trying to follow that order? I have no idea, but probably a lot more than zero.
Third, based on how our federal, state and local governments are treating our population, or world for that matter, I don't think removing that sort of deterrent would be advantageous to stopping it. Broken justice system, militarized police, surveillance state, corrupt politicians selling out our livelihoods. Those things aren't naturally going to get better and we can't seem to vote it away very effectively. I don't know what our options are anymore, but these things are likely going to get a lot worse for us.
Fourth, we are living in a surprisingly, unnatural time of peace and prosperity. WWI went from the assassination to full mobilization in a month, followed by depression in Germany, followed by a world depression, resulting in the Nazi's coming to power, resulting in the holocaust and 80+ million dead; all within 30 years. That's peace to holocaust to Cold War between 1989 and now. Drastic change happens fast, and the world is due. Just because a gun ban formula looks attractive now, it very well may not in the near future.
For a starting solution, I think rebuilding our mental health infrastructure would help, but I don't see our generation's politicians doing that. It was before my time, but apparently we had a much better one in the 70s. I can tell you we certainly have a under treated mental health problem today. Do you think Sandy Hook would have happened if Adam Lanza had a facility to live in and be taken care of? There is no way to know, but I think it's unlikely.
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/trauma-and-violence/guns-vi...
There are very few guns that aren't based on, derived from, or exactly the same as military weapons. Many of the most popular hunting rifles and shotguns around the world, even those very traditional in style, would qualify as this.
Scalia's opinion is the law of the land, and the reasoning is sound. Unless you're a SCOTUS justice, your opinion on the matter isn't really relevant.
There are people who have been trying to sell a bill of goods about the NRA and gun owners in general for a long time. It simply isn't accurate.
Once you've done that you will realize that it was VERY specifically written to deal with a problem going on at the time. Hell, there are even comments in this very submission that also describe.
Fact: The external case and bullet dimensions are functionally identical
Fact: The chamber dimensions in respective rifles are close enough, +/- machining tolerances, that "very dangerous" is inaccurate fearmongering
Fact: 5.56 max pressures exceed .223 pressures (to the tune of ~12.5%), but both are subject to the vagaries of exact loading
So while it's not a good idea to fire 5.56 out of a cheap .223 rifle, it's not a death wish to do so out of a .223 engineered to accept the additional pressure.
Curious where you're getting your information?
> Curious where you're getting your information?
The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute
https://saami.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Unsafe-Arms-and...
page 8:
In Firearms Chambered For: 223 Remington
Do Not Use These Cartridges:
5.56mm Military
---
Also literally first entry in FAQ on SAAMI site: https://saami.org/faqs/#ammunition-firearm-chambered
Can I use 5.56x45mm, 5.56 or 5.56 NATO ammunition in a firearm chambered for 223 Remington (223 Rem)?
NO!
It is not safe to shoot “5.56” “5.56 NATO” or “5.56x45mm” (“5.56”) ammunition in a firearm with barrel marked as being chambered in 223 Remington for a number of reasons. The main reason being that a barrel marked as chambered in 223 Remington will have a shorter throat into the rifling than a “5.56” barrel which may cause increased pressure when the “5.56” ammunition is fired in it. This can result in serious injury or death to the user and/or bystanders, as well as damage to the firearm.
However, it is safe to use SAAMI-compliant 223 Remington ammunition in firearms with a barrel marked as chambered in “5.56.”
If you are unclear about which ammunition is appropriate to safely use in your firearm, consult the firearm owner’s manual or contact the firearm manufacturer for further guidance.
> So while it's not a good idea to fire 5.56 out of a cheap .223 rifle, it's not a death wish to do so out of a .223 engineered to accept the additional pressure.
I can't find the manual online, but I'm sure that in my previous, not quite cheap, Tikka T3 Super Varmint manual it was written the same. It's only truly safe only when manufacturer says so (like it was with now discontinued Ruger Precision 223/5.56, if I recall correctly)
I concede I'm not likely to convince you. But I implore you not to be taken in by one of the most hollow Justices in the post WWII era. Originalism/Textualism is itself an appeal to authority to the Founders, and its sole purpose is to mask a reactionary conservative agenda by mythologizing a group of people whose overarching concern was how to write a founding document that both enshrined human rights and the will of the people as the source of the American government's legitimacy, while also granting assurances to the South that they would be able to own other humans in perpetuity. It is at best misguided and ignorant to try and present this era as unusually enlightened, but when you consider how women, indigenous people, abducted and enslaved people, and immigrants of most nations were butchered, raped, subjugated, denigrated, bought and sold (yes, by Founders), it's full on repugnant. I urge you to look past Scalia's admittedly charming sophistry, which I promise you conceals a richer, more optimistic and inspired world exorcised of centuries-old ghosts in powdered wigs.
He claimed he unloaded it and checked he unloaded it.
A couple weeks later every single one of those guns was recalled and replaced by the manufacturer. The gun, itself, apparently had a defect wherein it could pop a round loose, hold it where you couldn't see it, and then chamber it if you knocked it a bit. I have no idea how this could possibly occur, but the manufacturer actually claimed this and wound up having to spend enough money that something wasn't right with those handguns.
Fortunately, he adhered to standard discipline and made sure the gun was never pointed at anybody. So, when it did go off, nobody was in line of fire. However, it did ricochet and still could have caused quite a bit of harm.
Always adhering to discipline doesn't make probabilities zero--it just minimizes them.
My point was that the supposed "responsible gun owners" also get it wrong.
Else it's more like a No True Scotsman (where a "responsible gun owner would never accidentally mess with their gun, because anybody who does such things is by definition not a responsible gun owner").
If a cop showcasing "gun safety", an NRA employee, and other such cases with more experience and more training than the average gun owning person, are not "responsible gun owner", then I don't know who we can trust to be. And why we should listen to anybody saying "with me it's OK, I'm responsible". After all that's what the cop was saying before he shot himself...
>Its disingenuous to use examples of people doing incredibly reckless things in order to argue that "responsible gun owners" regularly shoot themselves or others.
It's disingenuous to construct an abstract category of "responsible gun owners" vs the "unresponsible" rest, when even the self-proclaimed "responsible" owners, and even safety/gun experts, mess up.
What we do know is that gun owners regularly shoot themselves or others. Even some claiming to be "responsible" (which is something that all do, only an idiot would claim to be irresponsible or admit to it).
Not to mention the whole point is moot. Even if "responsible gun owners" were 100% issue free, the law doesn't give guns to people who are "responsible gun owners" only, it gives them to anybody who passes some basic checks and wants to buy one. Nor does the law follow up with people in their homes to see if they really follow that "responsible gun operation" that they say they do.
But that's a legal perspective.
From an engineering perspective, you can certainly shoot it.
With risks somewhere between "It will behave exactly like .223" and "It will explosively disassemble your gun."
But we're not talking about rocket science here.
Machining dimensions / tolerances + chamber / barrel design + round pressure = risk
All of which are variable enough in practice to make this a grey area.
You're feigning ignorance and acting as if they are highly trained people dealing with incredible complexity and unmitigatable danger. Its as simple as it sounds. They pointed loaded guns at other people and/or themselves. Its really easy not to do it 100% of the time. Everyone knows its not ok whether they use guns on a regular basis or not.
Everyone should be able to recognize the unusual amount of irresponsibility they showed. You pretending they were above average because they had gun related jobs doesn't make it so.
The No True Scotsman fallacy doesn't apply. Its a form of unfair gatekeeping. That's not the case here. These people were ignoring everything about gun safety so its perfectly fair to say they don't fall into the category of people that are responsible.
Your lack of trust that anyone can be responsible with a gun is a separate issue. You should be able to recognize by the actions that led to the shootings that these people are not experts.
That's the same tired argument of C advocates regarding memory safety faults in C: "just program carefully, just don't double free / don't go over buffers, etc". As if those doing those things are consciously doing them, and can just decide not to.
And even less so is that case that someone teaching about gun safety, consciously shot himself with a loaded gun. The reality is that people with the best intentions and training can mess it, and that even more so for people don't have the best intention and training. Also people are faulty, memory is faulty, and just "you're doing it right, just do it wrong" is a naive non-solution.
>The No True Scotsman fallacy doesn't apply. Its a form of unfair gatekeeping. That's not the case here. These people were ignoring everything about gun safety so its perfectly fair to say they don't fall into the category of people that are responsible.
If these people (gun owning NRA employee, gun safety demonstrator, and tons of similar examples) can those things happen to them (and ignore safety), anybody can do it.
Even more so when gun safety isn't the issue. Even the most fanatic and OCD-level gun safety follower could just get their gun, when in some anger episode, and kill their spouses. So there's that too.
And it happens by the tons -- unless you're in the mafia or street gang, it's more likely to get it by a gun owning family/friend than by e.g. burglars.
>You should be able to recognize by the actions that led to the shootings that these people are not experts.
That's not even wrong.
Google this. Get a factual basis under your feet and our conversation can continue. Figure out what Britain was trying to do at the time to the then-colonies, what laws it was passing. Go read federalist paper #46, understand Madison's contemporary writings of the time to get a better view of the mindset of the author of the Second Amendment. Read other contemporary writings, read opinions on the various Supreme Court decisions.
Do some homework, then ask the question again because while I could give you this lesson with my viewpoint already embedded, you need to arrive there on your own if your mind is actually going to be changed.
Your belief is contradicted by recent evidence.
> Why does the USA order strikes on terrorist targets, knowing full well there will be blowback? Because, on the whole, the strategy works.
No, it doesn't. They've been doing that for 20 years in Afghanistan, and we still have headlines like:
"Afghan government controls just 57 percent of its territory, U.S. watchdog says" (2017)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/02...
"As talks to end the war in Afghanistan continue in Qatar this week, and amid continued political disarray in Kabul, there seems to be one clear trend on the ground: The Taliban are consolidating control. The longer the war drags on—now in its 18th year—the more the balance of the conflict tips in the insurgent group’s favor. While there has been fierce debate in the West and in government-controlled areas of Afghanistan about what peace talks with the Taliban mean for women’s rights and the future of Afghan democracy, the view from Taliban-controlled areas suggests a harsh reality that few in the international community seem prepared for: If peace talks succeed, the Taliban will effectively formalize, and likely expand, their control over vast swaths of the country. If peace talks fail, however, the outcome will likely be far worse, with renewed fighting and a precarious government in Kabul."
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/04/afghanistan-taliban-pea...
There was nothing particularly egregious about that particular statement. I didn't feel a response was necessary.
>>>To think that we should resort to violence instead of using the systems in place for peaceful negotiations is insane.
Soap box --> ballot box --> ammo box.
There is a spectrum of methods for effecting change. If people are reaching for the ammo box, it SHOULD only be because all attempts to utilize other methods have already conclusively failed.
>>>Also, interesting how you only quoted slave-owning inspirations of Southern Democrats
They were the first ones I came across in a 30-second Internet search for "Founding Fathers on the Second Amendment" or "Founding Fathers on tyranny". A further search for non-slaving owning Founding Fathers reveals [Thomas Paine, Samuel Adams, John Adams].
"In a state of tranquility, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny." ~ Samuel Adams[1]
Thomas Paine doesn't have many juicy tyranny/2A quotes. John Adams seems to take the position that the militia should be an extension of the state security apparatus (my reading of his quote).[2]
But anyways, this is all getting away from why I replied at all: you stated there was "no such thing as an American spirit of defending yourself against tyranny" and implied anyone stating such is a liar. That is a blatant falsehood. Positions from the nations founders on tyranny are so easily accessible and, IMO, fairly clear on the subject. So what sort of information have you been exposed to that would ever lead you to hold such a strong, and objectively erroneous, position?
[1]https://www.azquotes.com/author/99-Samuel_Adams
[2]https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Adams#A_Defence_of_the_Co...
What you're saying is equivalent that you could go on a car that weighs 5.65 tons on a bridge that can carry only 5 tons, (given that for such bridges the both standard body and constructor explicitly says: "do not do that").
Is it possible? Of course. You even could reload your ammo with nitroglycerin and it still will fit into the rifle.
Yes, there could be some protection built into construction, but this risk worth it?
Even in locations where firearms are heavily restricted from the civilian populace, the police remain armed. The funny thing is that individuals wanting bodyguards hire armed bodyguards. The fact is that LEOs and private bodyguards carry guns because they are an effective method of stopping an attacker.
> Your statement is forced just to make the point. I don't think the gun control topic was ever related to law enforcement or military personnel carrying guns.
The lack of relation is purely due to the limits of your rational thinking and ability to apply logical principles.
> It's more about having guns easily accessible to violent and repeat offenders, mentally unstable people, etc.
The most recent talk by presidential candidates(even if their actual election is gratefully a longshot) has shown that to be a lie.
With the level of saturation, not providing safety education is the most irresponsible course.
The police and bodyguards are there specifically to deal with dangerous situations and attractive targets. You are not authority, not trained, and not a target that attracts attacks. You don't need the gun, you want it "just in case", makes you feel "bigger". What else must you be allowed to use just because someone else is? There are bigger hurdles to clear for many other things that are less critical than obtaining and using guns. Why not have some formal training, medical checks, background checks, exams, etc. for getting/using something close to an assault rifle?
> carry guns because they are an effective method of stopping an attacker
No, the effective method is to prevent the attack altogether. Something the rest of the western world is far closer to, even without guns. Education is a wonderful thing. It's the inability to educate and prevent this kind of behavior that makes you live in a society where you "have to" walk around armed "just in case". Instead of preventing a fire, you're letting it start and then soaking the house in water. That's just what you do when you failed at every other step and there's literally nothing else to do.
> The lack of relation
Now you're just hiding your failed argumentation under a layer of insults. Is it working yet? Nobody asks police/military to not carry guns, surgeons to not use scalpels, pilots to not fly planes, or physicists to not fire lasers. Just make sure guns (and all other examples) don't get in the hands of people who can't make or understand a rational argument, let alone take life or death decisions.
> The most recent talk
The most recent mass shootings have shown that unstable people (especially children) with easy access to guns leads to tragedy. But by all means, if "the talk" said something else don't let reality spoil it.
Again, guns are not the problem with the proper brains behind them. Just look at Switzerland or Germany if you need proof.
Where you say, “The problems the second amendment was written to solve don't exist anymore, so the second amendment shouldn't exist anymore.”, you present a claim in a vague way, difficult to argue for or against, because you don’t say what the problems were or how you know they were solved.
This is not about me doing my homework or lacking necessary knowledge — my unwillingness to fill in the gaps in your argument is not indicator of some insufficiency on my part. Telling me to “Google this” and get a “factual basis under my feet” is simple rudeness, and besides the point.
The only reason you perceive what I've written as rudeness is because you're bringing your ego to bear on this conversation, not your intellect.
Further, what you are attempting to do is akin to a zip bomb. "Spend hours crafting a response for me so I don't have to do any research or provide any understanding of my own, please!"
Gladly, but my rates are ~$500/hr. Let me know how you'd like to proceed!
If you do nothing else, please watch.
This is not appeal to authority. You keep misusing that term in this thread to belittle things you dislike. Appeal to authority would be to say an argument is right solely because an expert said so. No one has made that argument. The things people are pointing out to you are quotes and historical facts. There is no other evidence than these to demonstrate the point.
So much of what you say is wrong. A good source with a lot of historical references is the 1982 Congressional Research Office report on the matter, with hundreds of citations for you to check. Some quotes:
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." (Richard Henry Lee, Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress, initiator of the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which passed the Bill of Rights.)
"The great object is that every man be armed . . . Everyone who is able may have a gun." (Patrick Henry, in the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution.)
Yet you claim "2A is absolutely not about individual rights. No Founder ever talked about it in this way."? I just gave you two Founder quotes; there are many more. There's a lot more in that report that proves you wrong. The state constitutions they wrote also prove you wrong.
The research report traces the right to bear arms from around 800AD through many places that formed the right as the founders understood, and provides ample quotes from Founding Fathers to show that they did intend individual rights. It's also why the vast majority of the states, when copying the bill of rights into their own constitutions, also give individual rights. As evidence, here are a few of the state constitution rights from the original 13 colonies. All states are covered in [2]:
Connecticut: Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state
Delaware: A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and State, and for hunting and recreational use
Georgia: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but the General Assembly shall have power to prescribe the manner in which arms may be borne
Massachusetts: The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.
New Hampshire: All persons have the right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state.
Pennsylvania: The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.
Rhode Island: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
So either all these states didn't understand the original intent, even though many of them had constitutions written by the same people, or the modern interpretation is wrong.
[1] https://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndschol/87senrpt.pdf [2] http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/statecon.htm
The one that got basically wiped out despite foreign backing (though the regular army that was their most direct supporter—the North Vietnamese Army—intervened and ultimately won the war after they were crushed)? Yeah, heard of them.
They kind of prove (or at least demonstrate) the point the grandparent post was making, though.
First, the founding fathers did not ensure that slavery would be allowed in perpetuity. In fact, the slave trade had already been outlawed (and later the US Navy even sent ships to Africa to interdict slavers leaving the continent -- I wrote a paper years ago on the USS Constellation's involvement there), and the seeds of the civil war were sown in the 3/5ths compromise, which ensured that the south would never be able to muster the power to keep slavery legal.
No one holds up pre colonial times as bastions of freedom and enlightenment. We fought a war then, and there is no question that many things that were not good happened then.
But it's also not sophistry to analyze the intent of the framers of our country's original documents in ensuring that we follow the law. The Constitution is the law of the land, and it means exactly what it says -- which is that the right to keep and bear arms is a natural and individual right. It does not say that having a militia is a right, it does not say that owning handguns is for self defense. It says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. There is only one statement stronger in the Bill of Rights, and that is "Congress shall make no law" in the first. The militia clause isn't dependent on the right. The militia clause gives a reason for this right (and keep in mind that 10 USC 246 is still in effect to this day), but the right is not dependent on it.
Scalia clearly lays this out, gives the proper English lesson, and explains why the amendment means precisely what it says. That's not sophistry. Oddly enough, your argument above actually is the exact definition of sophistry.
If you don't like the Constitution, it has a mechanism to change it. Try it if you feel it's necessary, but don't make up stories about how it doesn't mean what it means.
Your argument regarding surgeons and scalpels looks superficially reasonable at first, but no one has proposed restricting scalpels to ordinary people. We shouldn't prohibit external defibrillators or occupant firehoses because these are items "for professionals".
The comment about "the talk" is also a huge strike on your position. That statement was about the policy positions of candidates for the highest elected office. If you're this out of touch, then hopefully you do not participate in the presidential election(if you are a legal US voter). The country is better off without you.
I will reluctantly get into Scalia's "proper English lesson", but it's just ultra boring, big chunks of quoted text, and ends with him being wrong. But here we go anyway.
Scalia tries to show that 2A was meant to apply to all individual persons, not groups of people, not subsets of people, and certainly not just militias:
> What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention “the people,” the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset. As we said in _United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez_: “ ‘[T]he people’ seems to have been a term of art employed in select parts of the Constitution… . [Its uses] sugges[t] that ‘the people’ protected by the Fourth Amendment , and by the First and Second Amendment s, and to whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and Tenth Amendment s, refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.”
> This contrasts markedly with the phrase “the militia” in the prefatory clause. As we will describe below, the “militia” in colonial America consisted of a subset of “the people”—those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to “keep and bear Arms” in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause’s description of the holder of that right as “the people.”
This is wrong. Constitutional rights didn't apply to women, children, immigrants, people of color, or Native Americans. If you disagree, consider that women largely weren't allowed to own property or attend school beyond a young age. When the Founders wrote "[pP]eople", they were not referring to all the people, so Scalia's argument that using "the militia" would inappropriately create a subset is wrong. "People" was already a subset, and the Founders were clearly aware.
That's his whole argument for 2A as an individual right.
> First, the founding fathers did not ensure that slavery would be allowed in perpetuity. In fact, the slave trade had already been outlawed (and later the US Navy even sent ships to Africa to interdict slavers leaving the continent
The slave trade was outlawed because Virginia wanted it outlawed. It was a net exporter of slaves, and they feared both rebellion and economic ruin if the trade continued. The morality of it was just a smokescreen. [1]
> ...the seeds of the civil war were sown in the 3/5ths compromise, which ensured that the south would never be able to muster the power to keep slavery legal.
The exact opposite is true [2]. The South wielded outsized power precisely because of the 3/5ths compromise, which actually led to Missouri entering the Union as a slave State. It also extended slavery to territories stolen from Mexico. Not only did they keep slavery legal, they expanded its reach.
> But it's also not sophistry to analyze the intent of the framers of our country's original documents in ensuring that we follow the law.
I agree, which is why I think Textualism is idiotic at best, and a smokescreen concealing a reactionary agenda at worst. I also think we should consider that many of the Founders were downright evil when divining their intent--3/5ths compromise is probably the best example, but my definition of evil encompasses "enslaved others", and that's over a dozen depending on how you count [3].
> The Constitution ... says ... that the right to keep and bear arms is a natural and individual right
It's ironic for you to use the words "it means exactly what it says" and then use a phrase that exists neither in the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights. Let's quote 2A again here:
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Let's also quote the 1st draft of 2A:
> A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the People, being the best security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.
This one is even more focused on militias and military service. 2A was always--from its inception--about militias.
> a. “Well-Regulated Militia.” In United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, 179 (1939) , we explained that “the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.” That definition comports with founding-era sources. See, e.g., Webster (“The militia of a country are the able bodied men organized into companies, regiments and brigades … and required by law to attend military exercises on certain days only, but at other times left to pursue their usual occupations”); The Federalist No. 46, pp. 329, 334 (B. Wright ed. 1961) (J. Madison) (“near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands”); Letter to Destutt de Tracy (Jan. 26, 1811), in The Portable Thomas Jefferson 520, 524 (M. Peterson ed. 1975) (“[T]he militia of the State, that is to say, of every man in it able to bear arms”).
...
> We reach the question, then: Does the preface fit with an operative clause that creates an individual right to keep and bear arms? It fits perfectly, once one knows the history that the founding generation knew and that we have described above. That history showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to suppress political opponents. This is what had occurred in England that prompted codification of the right to have arms in the English Bill of Rights.
Scalia asserts that the operative clause can't work if the prefatory clause doesn't include everyone. His evidence for this is that the Founders understood the history of tyrants taking away the people's arms, and that without an individual right to bear them, 2A fails at its purpose. He argues the Founders would not have done that, and maybe that we should assume they didn't mean to if they inadvertently did.
But this ignores the Whiskey Rebellion. The Pennsylvania militia was commandeered by Congress and then-President Washington to suppress political opponents.
He also ignores the Federalist papers. In his Federalist 46 citation, Scalia conveniently omits all of Madison's references to States, including his assertion that State organization of militia would be the key ingredient in repelling Federal tyranny. To quote Madison there (emphasis mine) [4]:
> The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition.
> That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterrupted succession of men ready to betray both...
> that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm...
> Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger.
> To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.
> Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.
> Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.
First, Madison repeatedly emphasizes local and State governments as a key component of repelling tyranny. But he also exclusively conceives of such resistance solely through the local and State militias. That final quote says straightforwardly that "it is not certain, that with [arms] alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes". Madison writes "the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves" they could overturn the throne of every tyranny in Europe. This completely devastates Scalia's case, which again is that the Founders knew an individual right to bear arms completely outside a militia was the only way to secure a free State. It's no wonder he left it out.
And if that's not enough for you, he also ignores the Constitution itself. Article I, §8 reads "The Congress shall have power to... provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions." And "insurrection" means (a violent uprising against an authority or government). That is exactly "suppress[ing] political opponents".
That's his whole argument against 2A applying only to State militias: a bunch of cherry-picking and some circular logic (2A establishes an individual right to bear arms, because without such a right 2A can't work).
Another way of reading 2A is that States have the power to regulate the ability of the People to bear arms for the purpose of maintaining a militia. The nice thing about this reading is that it's consistent with the rest of the Constitution, the Federalist papers (all of them), and the acts of the Founders themselves, and it doesn't mean 2A is self-defeating. The downside is that it doesn't really show there's an individual right to bear arms. Scalia forewent that reading (and incidentally decades of precedent), clearly to establish an entirely new individual right to bear arms.
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This is sophistry. Omitting key facts. Relying only on definitions that serve your position. Americans deserve better than to have our heritage rewritten by Justices with an agenda. It's time we stop holding Scalia up as any kind of hero. He is at the very least complicit in a wave of mass murder and suicide brought on by the wide availability of firearms, not only because of his deceit here, but also because of his focus on the past (remember, Heller was about DC trying to control gun violence in their city). He (and the other conservative Justices) had an opportunity to reinvigorate shared sovereignty and redeem states rights as fundamental policymaking tools (where they once were thinly veiled advocacy for slavery and later segregation). They failed us.
Oh I almost forgot:
> If you don't like the Constitution, it has a mechanism to change it. Try it if you feel it's necessary, but don't make up stories about how it doesn't mean what it means.
2A is super far down on the list of things I would change. Reversing Citizens United with an Amendment is up there, revoking corporate personhood is up there, publicly financed elections, ERA with orientation/identification clauses added, proscribing religious-based discrimination (e.g. you can't refuse to serve someone because your religion says you shouldn't... or at least you think your religion says you shouldn't), fundamental right to a clean environment, child/felon/universal suffrage, proscribing the death penalty (thought we got this with 8A but noooo). We can fix an activist judge with another activist judge; no need to waste an Amendment.
And just imagine how much better our society would be with those Amendments. Are we better for the post-Heller reading of 2A? Obviously not. What a truly terrible mistake.
[1]: http://abolition.nypl.org/print/us_constitution/ (careful, asks you to print the page)
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise#Impact...
[3]: https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-and-Sl...
They're not talking about 2A.
> So much of what you say is wrong. A good source with a lot of historical references is the 1982 Congressional Research Office report on the matter, with hundreds of citations for you to check.
I sincerely hope you're not saying a document written by lobbyists (NRA's in there) for a committee chaired by Strom Thurmond is an authority here.
> States blah blah
Yeah, my position is that 2A lets the States regulate the right to bear arms. So that's fine.
> This is not appeal to authority. You keep misusing that term in this thread to belittle things you dislike. Appeal to authority would be to say an argument is right solely because an expert said so. No one has made that argument.
More than one person has said "the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution and Heller is the law of the land" (paraphrasing). That's a direct appeal to the authority of the Supreme Court as experts. But the Court is wrong all the time, and is deeply political.
The amendment's English is crystal clear. The first clause assumes that the people have an individual right to keep and bear arms, and that right is not to be infringed. The rest of what you have written is pure sophistry.
Your true agenda has finally come through with your argument that guns cause crime. Firearms have been available in the US -- almost utterly without restriction -- you could buy them by mail order -- up to 1968. We even had semi automatic firearms in the revolutionary war. We didn't have mass shootings and "waves of suicide" (also sophistry) until very recently. If guns caused crime, the west should have been a blood soaked orgy of it -- and yet it wasn't, except by Hollywood's reckoning. Japan bans guns almost completely, someone murdered a bunch of people with a sword (also banned) just recently, and in another incident someone burned down a venue and murdered a bunch of people that way. No guns required.
Also, without the 3/5 compromise, the slave states would have counted their slaves completely, and that would have given them significant additional numbers in Congress, which would have enabled them to keep the slave trade legal. I don't give a flying rat's ass what Wikipedia has to say about it.
I also love your final words, where your political agenda becomes clear. Nothing you wrote cares about the actual law, your entire argument is trying to cram a political argument into a quasi-historical misunderstanding to attempt to abrogate the Constitution's words.
Scalia was the exact antithesis of an activist judge, anyone who has read anything he wrote with an unprejudiced eye knows this. His general position on everything he ever ruled on was that the Constitution meant exactly what it said. He was widely reviled by the left for his refusal to go beyond the words of the Constitution.
"If you somehow adopt a philosophy that the Constitution itself is not static, but rather, it morphs from age to age to say whatever it ought to say — which is probably whatever the people would want it to say — you've eliminated the whole purpose of a constitution. And that's essentially what the 'living constitution' leaves you with"
Your argument does not respect the rule of law, does not respect the Constitution, and does not respect the country you live in as you want to change it illegally with activist judges. That's unfortunate.
Heller didn't change anything for 80% of the US where the Constitution was already respected as the rule of law. It simply forced those who did not to accept a badly watered down reading of the document (as Justice Kennedy's vote was required, and that was as far as he was willing to go). It really didn't even change anything in DC in practice, frankly -- DC's gun ban has always been perfectly ineffectual, the only people who follow it are Virginians like me who carefully follow the law and don't commit crimes. The criminals in DC do whatever they want, pre and post Heller.
https://thefederalist.com/2018/11/29/second-amendment-always... https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=900115...
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