Saying "it is the way it is" is not an argument for what should be happening. If that's the extent of your position then I'm not sure why you even bother posting. It also doesn't deal with the core problem of your argument, which is that we should ignore the amendment if we don't agree with it. If anything, the only time the Court should be end running anything is when they are extending rights. At least then they can serve as a bulwark against the other branches being excessive. The Court should not be removing rights enunciated in the Constitution. It defeats the whole point of making the Amendment process so rigorous.
Yeah - I agree on the regulation aspect. I don't think the 2nd Amendment prevents that. My concern with the argument that the 2nd Amendment protects the right to own guns is simply that guns in their modern form (assault rifles, shotguns, even modern handguns) didn't exist when the 2nd Amendment was created any more so than nuclear weapons did. If the argument is that the 2nd Amendment protects the right to bear arms, I don't see how one can argue that it protects the right to own a shotgun or an assault rifle but not something more powerful. If we get into the idea making a distinction based on necessity-for-protection or excessive-force or reasonable-weapons or whatever, then we are again writing things into the 2nd Amendment that aren't there or saying that the 2nd Amendment doesn't absolutely guarantee the right to bear arms.
I think that we agree that the Amendment does allow for regulation and that where to draw the line is difficult. But I don't see how someone can contend it doesn't give the right to bear arms. It's pretty clear IMO and frankly I think arguing otherwise is just plain silly. That doesn't clear up the above problems, but then again I don't think the solution is to ignore the Amendment as some have proposed.
I'm not talking about ignoring a whole amendment to the constitution as "archaic". To ignore the whole amendment to the constitution, the state would have to pass a law saying "It is forbidden to have any well-regulated militia or for the people to have the right to keep and bear arms, even pursuant to the purposes of the militia!" This is a restriction on handguns requiring registration, etc. in the District of Columbia. Not the same thing From a social standpoint though, you are right that I think many of the original purposes of the 2nd amendment now seem dated - which is why I don't see a particular social need to create a new body of law based on it on an ambiguous few phrases that can have a number of meanings. Gun ownership in this country is rather strong, and it's not going anywhere. And now the natural counter is something liek "whether there is a social need is irrelevant, interpret the law, the framers...etc." Well to that I show you all of history. What was the intent of the framers in passing the 14th amendment? To allow blacks to eat in the same restaurant as whites? No - it wasnt - i'm sure most of the gentlemen who voted for hte 14th amendment would be appalled at integration and happily endorse Jim Crow laws. 14th amendment jurisprudence is quite a stretch. As many have said, great cases make bad law. But What really happened in dismantling the Jim Crow south was that the court recognized a social/political reason to interpret the 14th amendment differently and did so. This is not to imply that the court was responsible for dismantling the jim crow south - it was more responsible for recognizing the social trend that others started - (seee gerald rosenberg's books).
But if we accept that the 2nd amendment does allow regulation - to the point of banning certain kinds of weapons (nukes, for example) - then it becomes irrelevant in discussing whether people have a right to bear arms. The framers knew nothing of modern weaponry and thus couldn't have made distinctions within modern weapons. If we determine that the 2nd Amendment allows us to ban nukes, then it allows us to ban guns as well, no? And if that's the case, then the debate hasnothing to do with the amendment, but other concerns. It just seems to me that both sides in the banning weapons debate uses the 2nd Amendment improperly. It either allows everything or it doesn't - if we interpret it to be somewhere in between to ban what we'd like to ban, then we are writing in what we want it to say. There's a legitimate debate in the weapons-ban stuff in terms of safety, security, individual rights, etc - I just don't see the 2nd Amendment really being particularly relevant to it.
Ok, we are really talking about two seperate arguments here: The second ammendment always refered to a right afforded to the states or a collective right. The second ammendment applies to individual rights, but is archaic, and so is no longer relevant. As such we should ignore it. If you look at the text written by rocketsjudoka and the discussion leading up to it, he are talking about argument #2. If #1 applies, then #2 is not applicable. If it is a collective right, then nothing constitutional is involved. It seems like your response is interchanging these two arguments freely for best rhetorical advantage.
"Arms" could also mean pointy sticks and stones. I personally would not support a ban on pointy sticks and stones..
I think it is a collective right, but that doesn't mean that it's not a constitutional right - why are the two mutually exclusive?
I apologize for being tedious. Of course they don't have to be mutually exclusive, but re-read what it was that rocketsjudoka wrote and which you responded to. His comments, in my reading, clearly presupose that it is an enumerated individual right in the constitution, and that we are choosing not to follow it for whatever reason. If it is a collective right, then we this is not a case of 'picking and choosing what parts of the Constitution we are going to follow'. You could certainly start a parallel discussion on the appropriate judicial leeway in interpreting the 2nd Ammendment presupposing that it is a group right, but in this instance, it probably is a better idea to start your arguments without quoting the post made by rocketsjudoka. When you quote him to me (and I would presume to say, to most people) it clearly implies some intended continuity with the posts which precede yours.
It's a scary scenario when people make decisions on doing away with parts of the Constitution, because the question then becomes where does it stop? As I have stated earlier, "arms" should be regulated and only due to the broad term of "arms". It is still a protected constitutional right. We can save lives by taking all guns off the street, just like we can save lives by wiretapping everyone, and ethnically profiling middle-easterners who board airplanes...We don't because dispite the purpose of "saving lives", - we turn our backs on the Constitution... So with that in mind, we realize that "arms" in the arena of unregulated protection is offered to basically 3 types: handguns, shotguns, and longguns... In other words the same type envisioned to be specifically protected by the Constitution. The 2nd admendment applies to individual rights, and without it there is less of a safeguard for other individual rights...Remember Katrina and the police society breakdown among other instances/possibilities.
I had people steal gas out of my garage after Rita. You had to drive 60 miles for gas, 30 miles for water, and it took a week before there was a police presence on the streets. This, despite national asset mobilization after Katrina. God help you if you were in Cameron parish after the storm. Law and order is FAR more tenuous than people realize. What is going to happen when, not if, L.A. gets hit by a large earthquake? I guarantee the breakdown of society in the aftermath. Off topic, but we should have a division sized force of troops, perpetually ready to respond to disasters of all kinds. Massive airlift capacity, with mostly MP's, medical, and combat engineers as a backbone of the proposed force. It should be illegal to deploy the division(s) overseas except in extreme emergency (Dunkirk-ish). The National Guard is front line bondo at this point, and it takes too long to mobilize them in a pinch. What is our military really for, when you think about it?
Most of the reports of armed gangs rampaging after Katrina turned out to be completely false. The key to surviving was nto having a gun, it was being able to evacuate - not to excuse the piss-poor, embarrassing response by the government, of course. But anyway, you can give every man woman and child in the superdome a gun and that's not going to help them much - the problem was access to food, water, medical care, sanitation, etc.. You can't really eat a gun. I think it's really the exact opposite and that this sort of paranoia is not very productive. I have lived through blackouts and disasters etc here in New York and Ihave never seen anything even close to the "breakdown of society" - and further I doubt that I ever will.
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This actually puts things in some perspective for me, as I didn't know you were in New York. There seems to be a very real effect that as you approach more densely packed urban centers, the more it seems that people become reliant on community and society structures. I agree that you probably won't ever see the breakdown of society in NYC. But I have a hard time seeing how you can not classify Katrina the "breakdown of society" so while you in NYC may never see the breakdown, I don't think you can say the same for places outside of NYC This dovetails with my other NYC observation is that people in NYC seem to consider their city to be the whole of the country, which is certainly not the case and sometimes New Yorkers need to be reminded of this. And when you talk about paranoia not being productive, well maybe not but do we legislatively enforce productiveness? If I want to be unproductive and paranoid, isn't that within my rights? And in an only distally related point, I would also be interested to know what you think of Castle Rock v. Gonzalez. There is a reoccurring theme that people should expect police protection, but the Supreme Court seems to have ruled that you have no right to expect it.
I'm not talking about Katrina... I wasn't there. I am describing what I saw after Rita. Are you trying to tell me that human nature has changed recently? Really? And what disaster are you talking about? A blackout? a few buildings falling down? I admit that the chances of a large scale natural disaster happening tomorrow is pretty slim. The chance that it will one day happen is 100%. Having seen how our government is able to respond to a fairly small hurricane that everyone saw coming, and for which large amounts of resources had already been called up to respond to Katrina... Well, I suggest YOU put your faith in the organizational skills of the government. I fully recognize that the chances of me needing to draw a weapon in the event of an unforeseen disaster are not great, but they aren't zero either.
No, it hasn't changed - it has always been at a level that doesn't match the kind of paranoia that a lot of people have. But I agree - wow, soembody swiped a can of gas? my god - anarchy! If only you had opened up on them. have you ever been in a blackout on an island with 7 million other people? It's not exactly easy. There are no lights. Elevators dont work. Toilets do not flush - Restaurants and grocery stores are empty - so unless you have rapidly spoiling food in your fridge, you aren't eating. Streets are crammed. Subways do not run. It's not exactly a picnic. And I have a hard time seeing how the people stranded in the Superdome would have their primary needs addressed by having more guns - that doesn't seem to have been the issue. Not only that, but most of the people posting on this message board are generally not the kind of people (poor, black, underclass) who are likely to find themselves in that kind of situation.
What I don't understand is what is meant by a "collective right"? To me that seems to be saying that individuals don't have a right to arms but society does. That seems to me to be a contradiction as the people are composed of individuals and the Bill of Rights is about the limitations of government power in regard to individuals. While at the time of the writing of the Constitution there was no limitation regard to what states could do but that has since been overruled by the 14th Ammendment. The Second Ammendment seems clear to me that government cannot disarm the people although they could limit the type of arms and their use to collective defense.
The idea is that the Second Amendment details a protection afforded to states, not individuals. That it prevents the federal government from controlling state militias, like the National Guard. It seems fairly clear to me that this is kind of a tenuous rationalization designed to retrofit the real meaning to a desired outcome, given that the Bill of Rights is essentially a series of amendments protecting individual liberties. I have a hard time seeing how anybody who takes more than a cursory glance could believe that that is what the writers intended. My guess is that if people really do believe this is what they intended it is because it is what they want to believe; that it is a case of willful blindness.
Yeah, a can of gas in a neighborhood where normally I wouldn't worry about leaving my door unlocked. The point, is that within a single week, normally law abiding people will stop doing so. What happens after week two, a month? I don't know... maybe it's different in a city, but having a generator running makes you a loud, droning target. It's a pretty big deal when you don't know where you can get more gas, IF you can get more gas... and you need to keep food/medicine refrigerated. Fundamentally, the rules change... it's something you can feel. And again, this is after a minor hurricane, not say... a major LA earthquake. The strong will prey on the weak. That is human nature when law and order breaks down for an extended period.
