Thmm
There's quite a but to unpack there and I'm fine with doing that, but you haven't addressed any of the criticisms I've made of your ideas and the fault of them. It's disenguous to say "why won't this work?" and then just keep trucking along in the wrong direction after the fault of your applied logic is demonstrated.
I think our basic disagreement is that I believe in rights of individuals and restrictions on the power of the collective, not the other way around.
Wrong. You have the right to defend yourself.
Your criticisms rest on a flawed premise, i.e. that there are risks associated with disarmarment in this schema that are greater than the current formulation. I'd argue that 2A was unclearly written and a bungle from the get go, as was the 3/5 compromise and not granting universal suffrage. The framers were a disparate group trying to hammer together something workable and what they came up with was a hodgepodge of Enlightenment era ideals blended with inter-state disagreements chiseled down to something ratifiable. There was an implicit communitarianism to the language of the first clause of the second amendment that I believe has been overshadowed by the universalization of the second clause. I'm sure they believed it would be understood by contemporary people based on the prevailing culture, and certainly were limited in their ability to imagine the technological advances that would modify weaponry, particularly at such an early stage of machinic innovation.
Reckoning with the theory of 2A, situating it in its context and reinterpreting it based on the type of society we are attempting to build is a necessary starting point before we can get to the arguments from effect, which are basically risk probabilities. My response was intended in that vein, not as a continuation of the particulars of the initial thought experiment in the OP, which are, of course, flawed. But whenever anyone has a gun control discussion, there is vacillation between theory problems and practical implementation issues. These are distinct problems that need to be addressed separately. So my quoting of and respinding to your last comments is about parsing out the theory first.
That's a fair position to have. When you say "the rights of individuals," do you mean freedom from or freedom to?
Which data about what disagrees with what?
Freedom to do as you will with your resources, inasmuch as you harm no person or commit no fraud...Hobbs, Mills, Hayek...
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You said, "All of these are arguments that basically say the risk of change would also come with risks. The question is whether those risks are greater than the current risks. I'd argue they aren't."
So you're saying the current risks aren't worse than the risks of your gun control ideas. I'm saying the evidence disagrees with you. Gun removal doesn't reduce homicide rates. It does impede freedom.
the lack of correlation between firearm access and violence. Firearm access only increases the percentage of violence committed with a firearm...it's like squeezing a balloon, it just pushes out somewhere else. But the amount of air (violence) in the balloon doesn't change.
Good vid on some of the premises of liberty at the outset, but it skews toward Hayek's interpretation of Mill at the end there, which is contestable. Hobbes was writing in very specific times, speaking directly to a very particular perspective.
Regardless, debating this point of view is a topic for another thread. I respect it though and see its appeal. I think when it comes to technologies whose primary purpose is control over life and death, it expands the conversation beyond property rights and self-determination and into discussions of the common good. I can see how one might disagree with this idea and argue that rights and values are immutable and the relationship to them is not altered by technological innovation, but I don't think that's universally the case.
I'm not sure that there is a causal claim to be made about gun access and overall homicide rates in either direction. My central point is about modifying the distribution of and access to arms as a way of reducing risks of violence and death.
You live in a country where this type of comprehensive reform was carried out, not without its opponents along the way. There was a long trough of decline in fatal crime that took about a decade to manifest in the data, but could be attributable to multiple factors, of course. Having lived through it, what changes did you notice during implementation, if any?
I understand your point. I'm saying that reducing access to guns hasn't proven to be an effective measure for reducing violence anywhere in the world.
Let's clarify that a reduction in fatal crime only occurred after a steep increase, which happened AFTER the gun ban. Correlation doesn't =/= causation but in any case, it doesn't support gun control. Even if we remove the increased spike, the rates don't seem to change much.
To answer your question, the only change I noticed is that my law abiding friends could no longer attend the gun club. We didn't have a gun problem in the first place and the ban was brought in after our one single school shooting. Guns were legal for centuries before that with low rates of crime.
I know it's a change of topic but interestingly, homicide rate increased after we scrapped the death penalty.
that overall decline in violence has been observed in countries without the increased restrictions on firearm access, so one could say it is specifically non-causal. The number of AR-15s (and overall firearms) in private possession grew substantially during that time in the US, and overall violence has decreased.
It could be that the decrease could have been more if the number of firearms decreased during that time, but an increase in firearm access did not create an increase in violence.
The post you've made here isn't a 2A specific. It's a criticism of the validity of the constitution in modern times. That's certainly an interesting discussion to have, but it's far from being firearms specific.
Fwiw, my criticisms are based on the realities of enacting gun control. I live in a place where firearms are fairly strictly regulated, and there's been no discernable dip in violent crime since their implementation that can be attributed to gun control legislation.
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The first part of the amendment doesn't get much attention because it isn't being attacked. The second part is.
That is very much wrong. Unless you think that for this one simple sentence, the framers were (for the only time in the Constitution or Bill of Rights) referring to the people and the state as the same entity. Those aren't incidental commas. A correct reading of the text is very straight-forward. "Because we agreed that the State (the government) must have a standing army to protect itself from other States, the right of the people to bear the same arms as the State, to protect themselves from the State, shall not be infringed."
The War for Independence was started BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT TRIED TO CONFISCATE PRIVATELY HELD CANNONS. The first debates about the 2nd Amendment after ratification were whether or not private citizens were REQUIRED to possess muskets and cannons, not if they were permitted.
To say that they couldn't imagine modern machinery is to deny the existence of the Puckle Gun (1718, 57 years before the American Revolution) or the destructive power of cannons loaded with grapeshot. A 3 lb Galloper was man-portable and capable of mowing down a schoolyard. Imagine being able to go down the hardware store and buy 500 lbs of explosives. You could do that when the 2nd Amendment was written. During the War of 1812, the government relied on privately owned warships - each carrying a dozen 16 lb cannons, to fight a hostile State (Britain).
Read the letters that the Founding Fathers wrote. There's an entire volume of books containing the letters that Jefferson and Adams wrote to each other, with the full knowledge that these letters would be historically important. There's no doubt that they considered the 2nd Amendment to be a guarantee to the citizens to privately hold Warships and Cannons. You think they'd give a shit about a rifle that fires 30 rounds in 45 seconds?
I already solved the issue with my previous post: Don't be scared of my suggestion homies!
I have the Jefferson/Adams letters and would recommend them to anyone. They're very well written and demonstrate well the divergences between two very distinct points of view on the American republic. But I don't recall much on gun or warship ownership in their correspondence. I have the book in front of me now if you want to cite something specific.
Your reading of 2A is not quite so clear as you're making it seem. This is the actual text:
"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."
Like most things in the Bill of Rights, it's a negative right, placing limits on what government can do rather than expressly granting a privilege to the people or the state. Your reading is predicated on the state being the most likely bad actor a well regulated militia would have to protect against, but even that is taking sides in a debate 2A didn't exactly settle. The odd mismash of language in the sentence is a reflection of the debate at the time between federalists and Anti-federalists who were mostly quibbling over federal power over the local militia, acknowledging that pretty much everyone was armed anyway.
The first clause suggests that the ability to collectively assemble a disciplined militia is critical to the existence of a free state. The second clause of the amendment goes on to limit the government's ability to prevent restrictions of the people being armed for this purpose, at least in the eyes of the federalists. The anti-Federalists were the ones pushing for an armed polulace as insurance against the state. 2A somehow leaves both interpretations intact, but in either case, opposition to enemies foreign or domestic is predicated on collective, local resistance. The atomized individual standing with his musket against the rampaging federales is nowhere to be found in its language.
Your mention of the puckle gun is ahistorical as it was never used, barely manufactured, and unlikely to have ever been heard of by any of the early Americans. The galloper gun was powerful, but not exactly any wonder of machinery so I'm not sure of its relevance here.
Your mention of the use of private warships during the war of 1812 seems to coincide with my communitarian reading of the calling of the militia rather than contradict it, but I'll agree with you that any lack of restrictions of armament would have necessarily been extended to ships due to the admiralty and maritime clause giving the courts (and the Constitution) jurisdiction over what people did at sea. So...where can i get my nuclear sub?
The two clauses exist in the way they do in order to make it clear that 2A is both a state's right as well as an individual's right. Most of the original 10 amendments were their to define individual rights by limiting the power of the government. IIRC 2A and 10A were the only two that defined state rights, but 2A went an extra step to define both a state right and an individual right.
It was the states' right to arm their militia to defend against the federal government, other state militia's, and foreign enemies. It was the individuals' right to arm themselves to defend against all of that plus the state and others within the state.
And the puckle gun was not the only high rate of fire gun available prior to the Bill of Rights. Whether or not they were commonly owned is rather irrelevant. The point is they existed, and we have evidence the writers of the Bill of Rights knew of their existence yet chose not to ban them explicitly. The invalidates the claim that they couldn't imagine the types of guns available today, so 2A shouldn't apply to those weapons in today's society.
There is no evidence the framers knew anything about the puckle gun or any other machine gun. There were literally less than a half dozen made in England 50 years before the Revolution. We know that cannons and other high power ordinance existed, but not in any way that could have been useful for mass murder barring slowly wheeling a very expensive cannon into town and firing on a building. It's an apples to oranges comparison.
Regarding states rights to organize the militia, that is overstating somewhat the intentions of the Amendment. Militias were local volunteer forces cobbled together on behalf of the state. This is what the original Articles of the Confederation said:
Article 6
"No vessel of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such number only, as shall be deemed necessary by the United States in Congress assembled, for the defense of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any State in time of peace, except such number only, as in the judgement of the United States in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defense of such State; but every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of filed pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage."
Here you can plainly see the language presaging the second amendment, again focused on community arms stores and assembly for collective defense. The federalist argument ultimately won control of these state militias by later incorporating them into the national army, but that wasn't until some time later.
My argument is for a simple restoration of the principles of a communitarian relationship to arms. As I've said a few times, the specifics of what I propose in my OP are obviously flawed, but if we accept that guns have a place in our society, is there a better way to mediate that relationship than treating it the same way you would a candy bar?
There is evidence they knew of high rate of fire repeating rifles. I don't have time to look it up right now, but they were considering their use for the military and ultimately decided against it at the time due to the cost of the weapons.
It doesn't matter what laws the articles of the confederation set. The south lost the war, and the articles of the confederation was replaced by the constitution.
He's going the originalist route. A militia back then could be all able-bodied men available for the defense of their town. The states had militias for 18-45 year olds and they were required to purchase certain equipment, to include the common firearm of the time. We no longer have militias in the way the Framers knew of. You can completely ignore the prefatory clause on the “militia”. The actual protected right is the right of the people to bear arms.
Cops kicking in doors, and the people being forced to go along with the outcomes of their actions. What could possibly go wrong?