Pitt/Clooney: NRA 'Hijacking Gun Politics'

The 3/5 compromise shows clearly that the implicit notion of inferior blacks in some measure was something the founders would see into the future for the long haul. I don't blame them; blacks were slaves at the time. But a plain-text reading of the Constitution without amendments clearly shows the planning horizon didn't go as far as the advances the 20th century have brought.

I mean, if you don't like the 3/5 compromise, the Third Amendment and the Second Amendment are both linked to militias and the need to station troops in civilian houses. It clearly shows the founders did not envision a future without revolutionary militias sustaining the country under assault from foreign powers. Again, why would they, they had just seen the country survive because of those militias. Still, clearly shows they never imagined America would become what it is now.

This was patently useless by the end of the Revolution, never mind the onset of the 20th century.

again, living breathing constitution, and while the founders might have been brilliant, I wouldn't credit them with the omniscient vision of the future you do (in fact, I wouldn't really credit anyone with that).

 

No where did I credit them with omniscient, Paul Atreides like, future vision. I just don't believe that the founders thought that weaponry had reached its all time pinnacle in their lifetime. Do you think weapons will never develop beyond the level they are at today? It isn't like I am granting them some sort of super powers, just the same degree of sense to know that technology improves that I possess. Given that one of them was Ben Franklin, that hardly seems like a big leap.

 

I would think that they would have had an inkling, but I find it hard to grasp that they would have been able to foresee just how powerful weaponry would become.

You have to factor in the fact too that technological advances and changes are really more rapid these days. The human race has advanced more in the last fifty years or so than it has for a collection of centuries, and that includes ballistics. I agree with you on the assertion that the founders might have had an idea that weaponry would get more powerful, but I doubt that extends all the way to assault rifles (which I think is where you were trying to go with that in response to mc mark).

 

Both of those actors have made a mountain of money from films that glorify both violence and semi automatic guns, and that goes double for Pitt's ball and chain.

 

So you think people that understood the development of technology from the stone hand axe to muskets and cannon could not conceive of weapons that do the same thing more accurately and more quickly? Maybe I have more faith in the intelligence of the founders after all.

 

The development of ballistics technology took about more than a good million years to go from stone hand axes to muskets. Technology has sped up exponentially. If you think a bunch of 18th century men dreamed of a world of assault weapons, and nuclear bombs within a couple of centuries, you can use it to whatever means you wish. It's not far from what "originalist" thinkers on the Supreme Court do anyhow.

However, the other amendments and Federalist papers clearly indicate the founders, brilliant as they were, were limited by the times they lived in. They never grasped a world where America was a dominant world power that didn't need soldiers stationed in houses to protect itself, a place where communication was so rapid that an explicit right to privacy might be needed, or a world where armed militias and citizens would no longer be the norm for defense of the union.

So to come off and extrapolate that they saw a world with weaponry this powerful this soon is a dubious leap of logic, at best, considering the Constitution was quickly overhauled by changes that occurred even immediately after the Revolution.

The Federalist papers and Madison explicitly reference the need for state militias to battle a possible tyrannical federal government.

That's been rapidly outpaced by the demands of the modern age. Would the founders have envisioned a federal army as complex as the US military taking over security of well, basically the world, rather than bastions of citizen-fighters and militias? Surely they must have had the cognitive ability to do so---after all, the US military is merely a bigger and more complex version of a militia. Unfortunately, the Federalist papers clearly indicate this is not the direction with which they wrote the Constitution, even if it was a trend they might have observed from Roman or Greek history. They might have even envisioned such an entity vaguely, and warned against it (Federalist #41 is quite good on this), but it's hard to say that they saw something as complex or as expansive as the modern American military, even if it would have essentially been, as assault weapons are, continuations on a trend that could have been observed in the past.

 

Who wants a lousy 30rd when theres 100rd drums?

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This..

The Founders probably envisioned improvements in weapons technology but they probably didn't envision highly mechanized standing armies.

 

Clinging onto to the Founder's will is taken on myth-like proportions as if they're some all knowing sages who were never corrupt nor unethical.

They were pretty brilliant to have come up with a 200 yr old living document, except case law and judicial review has made its execution vastly different now than it was intended before.

This is richly ironic since most of the Constitution in the Breast Pocket types would've likely wanted to cede from the union and write up another piece of paper.

I get trusting another side or reaching consensus is hard and damn right impossible, but until we pop out hot tub time machines, quit fondling the Founders balls when they're still dead and we're dealing with our first world governance problems with the size and scale of at least a hundredth power and still growing.

 

DO WHAT I SAY, NOT AS I DO.........

 

So then you believe that how actors behave in movies is how they behave in real life.

 

No, I think if they are so determined to see reduced gun violence, they would refuse to make any film which glamorizes firearms. Remember, the movie industry has voluntarily removed cigarette smoking from the majority of films being made out of concern for public health. They should apply the same standard to firearms.

 

The Irony of guys that made themselves incredibly famous and wealthy from having been in very violent movies that glorify gun wielding and murder and now are lecturing people on this?.

Anybody ever watched From Dusk Till Dawn, True Romance, Thelma & Louise, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Out of Sight, Inglorious Bastards or any of these??

They glorify people with guns and criminals and these guys have made themselves famous and wealthy by glorifying violence and now when we have kids emulating that behavior they blame the guns?!

 

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i don't get the whole one cause thing---can't we blame the media, the guns, rampant militaristic culture, mental health, dysfunctional male social roles, and work on solving all of those things?

random fact---

why no "white male" or really "male" mass murder headlines?

There is something terribly wrong with the way boys are being raised and treated, but nobody has spent one second looking at this except for in a random Woman's Studies journal.

Not that that would also stop you from examining and rectifying issues with the media being showed these boys, the mental counselling they require, and the guns they must be restricted from.

 

The repeated term I see you use there is "guns". So even though you talk about glorifying gun wielding you don't think we should blame guns?

Anyway if movies were so influential consider how popular Lord of the Rings was and I am not aware of rashes of sword, axe and bow related massacres breaking out after those movies.