Ok. Finished reading it. Based on my understanding, it was trying to analyze 2nd Amendment from five perspectives: 1) Textual - I don't think the author says much here. The impression I have is that he also agree that this amendment is poorly drafted. 2) Historical - He argues that historically 2nd amendment is designed to maintain the republican political order. Then he cited neo-republican thought from nowhere saying such republican political order needs to be maintained by the citizens participating in the actual law enforcement and hence individuals should bear guns. Sorry, I don't think I can buy this neo-republican thought from nowhere. 3) Structual - He argues individuals as another pillar of the Union in addition to thenational government and the states. Again, this is a re-hash of the neo-republican though in 2) 4) Doctrinal - He is saying the Congress has no power to regulate arms in states. I think I can agree with this. But that also means the state can set-up its own gun control laws. 5) Prudential - He cites the difficulty of quelching uprisings in Northern Ireland and Palestine to support that bearing arms against nuclear-armed states is quite an effectively means to fight a bad government. Ok., I can buy this. But then Soviet Union also crumbled without much violence. To conclude, I think the central idea of this pdf is to argue ctizens need to actively protect the republican political order in the Union. Therefore they should be allowed to bear arms. I can't infer this from the 2nd Amendment text, therefore I don't buy this. Anway, not sure why you wrote the paragraphy preceding this pdf link.
How do you stop psychotic criminals from getting ammo in Mexico, or making it themselves? How do you stop a market from forming where bullets are as easy to get as pot? It works as a Chris Rock joke, but not as policy. If someone else on the campus had a gun, then you could have limited the damage done by allowing people to protect themselves. There will always be people that go on killing sprees, and there will always be half-assed attempts to try to legislate the problem away and they will never work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_massacre "In 2005 there were indications that China was experiencing its own epidemic of school violence imitating the example set by the USA. In China, most school killings involve knives." Looks like the Chinese psychos have a harder time to replicate the massacre in their country...
It sounds like you quickly skimmed it with the idea of formulating a rebuttal. I don't blame you for this, of course, but I don't think you really read it. BTW, the author is a very liberal ACLU-type Law Professor at the University of Texas, not some gun-toting neocon waiting for the imminent rapture. As much as you would like to think otherwise, this is not some rightwing propaganda tract by a frothing-at-the-mouth shut-in in Alabama. The article was originally published in the Yale Law Journal. You also seem to be doing a very good job of conflating Republican and republican. The first reason I quoted was Section III, pages 17,18 & 19: [rquoter] As Ronald Dworkin has argued, what it meant to take rights seriously is that one will honor them even when there is significant social cost in doing so. If protecting freedom of speech, the rights of criminal defendants, or any other parts of the Bill of Rights were always (or even most of the time) clearly cost less to the society as a whole, it would truly be impossible to understand why they would be as controversial as they are. The very fact that there are often significant costs -- criminals going free, oppressed groups having to hear viciously racist speech and so on -- helps to account for the observed fact that those who view themselves as defenders of the Bill of Rights are generally antagonistic to prudential arguments. Most often, one finds them embracing versions of textual, historical, or doctrinal arguments that dismiss as almost crass and vulgar any insistence that times might have changed and made too "expensive" the continued adherence to a given view. "Cost-benefit" analysis, rightly or wrongly, has come to be viewed as a "conservative" weapon to attack liberal rights. Yet one finds that the tables are strikingly turned when the Second Amendment comes into play. Here it is "conservatives" who argue in effect that social costs are irrelevant and "liberals" who argue for a notion of the "living Constitution" and "changed circumstances" that would have the practical consequence of removing any real bite from the Second Amendment. As Fred Donaldson of Austin, Texas wrote, commenting on those who defended the Supreme Court's decision upholding flag-burning as compelled by a proper (and decidedly non-prudential) understanding of the First Amendment, "t seems inconsistent for [defenders of the decision] to scream so loudly" at the prospect of limiting the protection given expression "while you smile complacently at the Second torn and bleeding. If the Second Amendment is not worth the paper it is written on, what price the First?" The fact that Mr. Donaldson is an ordinary citizen rather than an eminent law professor does not make his question any less pointed or its answer less difficult. [/rquoter] The second reason is his well documented historical framing, which you speciously dismiss out of hand. In section "B" for instance, which you dismiss as 'being out of nowhere' the author provides around 30 citations in discussing several real events that were relevant to the formative USA. As far as your general dismissal of historical positions outside of direct examination of the text, I assume you take the same tact when it comes to other issues. For instance, I assume you find the decision of Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion to be fraudulent because it is not specifically enumerated in the text of the due process clause, upon which that judgement rests?
I doubt I typed the capital case "Republican" anywhere in my response nor do I imply anywhere that republican is the same thing as Republican. I have no legal training. I only know that we have a common law legal system such that precedents are the authorative sources for interpreting any stature. I notice that there were precedents of restrictions to what type of arms we can bear, so what prevent any judges from interpreting the amendment to restrict ammo? Do you know of any court precedants that says such a restriction contradicts 2nd Amendment?
neo-republican. There is no such term in the common lexicon. There is a commonly used term neocon and you spoke derisively of this 'neo-republicanism' in the same way people speak of neocons. I am not aware of any new republicanism movement or philosophy. If a new, revised political philosophy of republics exists without my knowledge, then I apologize to you. Actually, we don't have a common law system. The constitution is superior to all legal decisions and case law. [rquoter] This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. [/rquoter] The court has ruled quite a bit on what are 'de facto' gun bans; laws which make the ownership of a usable firearm legal but essentially impossible. For instance, laws making it legal to own a gun with a license, but not making the license available are not acceptable. Laws which make it prohibitively expensive or difficult to own ammunition would fall in this category, as it would turn a gun into something that was functionally not a gun. I'm not particularly interested in looking specific decisions up at the moment, but if you want I'm sure you could find related info. edit: Parker v. District of Columbia
If you are correct, Congress must find another way to curb the use of handguns and non-hunting shotguns and rifles (automatics and semi-automatics). Here I am, a despicable moderate to moderate conservative, and I have ultra-leftist views on handguns. Go figure. I guess I've seen too many gunshot victims during my lifetime. If I were ruler of the world, I'd put a few historically relevant handguns in the museums and melt the rest. Let the suddenly starving gunsmiths manufacture weapons for the federal government. After all, war is so much more glorious than a street mugging.
Get a Constitutional Ammendment negating the Second Ammendment. Short of that you you won't get your wish. Needless to say as I make some of my living in selling to your "muggers", I disagree with you. I think most of my customers would take offense at you assuming that they are all criminals as well. I am a member of the ACLU and the NRA, so I guess I am your exact political opposite. If I were ruler of the world, I would do absolutely nothing that didn't involve directly preventing abuse of one person or group by another. The government which governs best, governs least, as Mr. Paine said.
This massacre should have no effect on how we legislate guns in this country. How many people per year are killed in armed psychotic killing sprees? A dozen? Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands die from more mundane fire arms use, not to mention car accidents, smoking, and a zillion other things. As horrific as each of these incidents are, they are exceptional enough that we shouldn't be re-ordering our society in a vain attempt to prevent them. Now, if you want to make gun control laws to reduce the more prevalent gun crimes (like single murders, crimes of passion, suicides, armed robberies, accidents, etc), please go for it. But what's the point of trying to stop the Columbines and the V-Techs? You are probably 1000 times more likely to be shot by your own wife than by some loner teenager who wants to get back at the world.
It indeed is difficult to argue Tom Paine's logic. I wish I had some keen political sword to cut this Gordian knot. Whereas I am loathe to trample on other's rights and perogatives, there must be a solution to the proliferation of street weapons that bedevil our population in inverse proportion to economic status. In short, I wish I had an answer.
This is exactly right. Don't legislate based on anomalies. Any gun legislation should be directed towards reducing the day to day gun violence which is far far greater than these periodic killing sprees, but gets 1/1000th the attention. As for curbing extremely high level of gun violence in the US, I certainly don't have the answer, but I have a few thoughts. I do think gun ownership helps serve as a check on authoritarian government. I don't want government to have a monopoly on weapons. People think freedoms and rights come without costs. If we suspended the right of habeas corpus it could prevent a terrorist attack, but I don't want to live in a country that allows the government to lock up people without a system for redress. The right to own guns also comes with a cost- higher levels of gun violence. Wingnuts that pee their pants at the thought of a terrorist attack and are ready to throw the Bill of Rights under the bus (except for the 2nd amendment), for a little more security, should be hooted out of the public square. Freedom is not for wussies. If we want to keep the right to bear arms, but want to to reduce gun violence, we should look to societies and models that have been effective at balancing these two conflicting goals. From what I know, it seems that Boston was successful at drastically reducing their homicide rate by focusing heavily on a relatively small group of people who were responsible for most of the gun violence in the city. I'm all for more severe penalties for illegal posession of a firearm and for any crime comitted while in posession of a firearm. Finally, I think we should look to Canada. Socially, Canada is about as close a model of the US as we're going to get. Albeit, with a much smaller population. They have a relatively high degree of gun ownership, yet their homicide rate is a fraction of that in the US. Why is that? I suspect it is a complicated answer that has a lot more to do with a more robust social welfare system and a much smaller percentage of people living desperate lives filled with anxiety. And less to do with the % of the population that owns guns.
I appreciate that you point out the entire Bill of Rights should be embraced including the 2nd admendment...That is consistency and I applaud that. You are right. I had to second guess myself in whether or not my defense of Bush "doing something" about terrorism may infringe on other "rights"... I don't agree with everything Bush has done, but I firmly stated I applauded his willingness to have a post 9/11 mindset when others may not... The 2nd admendment is precious to me, but you have to embrace all the rights fully without infringement of political slantness to live the life that America is all about...and I think I must examine that. We all should free of political leaning... You can't have it both ways...You can't say: Bush is trashing our rights even if it means he may be saving lives in his tactics against terrorism,...I don't want to live that way"...then say..."the 2nd admendment should be infringed to save lives"...
