Splitting this off from the main thread:
So, to start with guns... there are so many assumptions in this that we going to need to correct.
First, the amendment does say "shall not be infringed", but it also says "a well related militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" which no one on the pro-gun side can seem to explain the meaning of. If you dig into the history even a little bit, you'll find that idea of the second amendment as allowing individuals to fight against the tyranny of the state was never true, the founders always thought of that as the job of the state militias; the states would resist the tyranny of the federal government and the second amendment was to ensure that federal government could never disarm the states. In fact, the founding era was awash with gun control laws at the state and local level that no one thought were a problem.
The idea that the pro-gun people hold to now didn't even exist until the latter half of the 20th century. Even as late as the 1960s or 70s you can still find the NRA advocating gun control laws for safety. Much like evangelicals talking about abortion, watching gun rights rhetoric about the second amendment honestly feels like watching Victorians advocate the "ancient traditions" that they just made up out of whole cloth that day.
Secondly, I think we have to admit that "no restrictions on any weapons, ever" isn't s position that lends itself to compromise even if there was strong trust between the two sides. In fact, i think it's fair to say that, if the lack of trust stems from this position, then the pro-gun side is to blame for the fact that they don't trust the other side.
Finally, we really have to address the fantasy of armed resistance to the federal government. I mean, great, you have drones now. Do you have consistent access to the satellite technology necessary to make them work? Do you have access to the detection technology to find your targets? It's, quite frankly, insane to think that a bunch of guys who cosplay with small arms are genuinely going to take on the professional US military with is multi-hundred billion dollar budget. What really keeps us safe from government tyranny is the fact that our soldiers are citizens and anyone who's spent time with them knows that they're the ones who would be fighting against tyranny of the federal government if it decided to use them to oppress the population.
First, the amendment does say "shall not be infringed", but it also says "a well related militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" which no one on the pro-gun side can seem to explain the meaning of.
People on the pro-weapons-rights side have very clear explanations of the meaning of this. They just don't agree with you.
In particular, there is this assumption on the weapons-restrictionist side that:
"a well regulated militia being neccessary..." is placed as a limiting condition on on "the right to keep and bear arms...".
The federal or state governments can reform, defund, or functionally abolish the well-regulated militia
The traditional status of the militia as all military-age citizen men does not have any implications for the rights of that category of citizens.
It's OK that this reasoning is applied by people who have no intention of accepting a mass-service militia.
Needless to say the weapons-rights side does not consider these assumptions to be correct.
In general, they see "a well-regulated militia being neccessary..." as specifying the purpose of the 2A (and potentially making it clear that it protects military weapons) or establishing an additional right (the right to be part of the militia or the right of the militia to exist) but not as a limiting factor on the "right of the people to keep and bear arms", and definitely not as one that lets it be nullified by government policy to neglect / shrink / not-operate the militia.
Additionally, the weapons-rights side views some form of right to keep and bear arms or right to not be unilaterally disarmed as a traditional or fundamental human right that predates the American constitution.
If you dig into the history even a little bit, you'll find that idea of the second amendment as allowing individuals to fight against the tyranny of the state was never true, the founders always thought of that as the job of the state militias; the states would resist the tyranny of the federal government and the second amendment was to ensure that federal government could never disarm the states.
Digging into history has refuted this to me.
It's true that things were presumed to be less individualistic and that arbitrary revolts against authority were not so favored as certain people would like them to be. I don't think that the 2nd Amendment addresses use of force / alignment / revolt itself. (contrast the German constitution which explicitly establishes a right of revolt if the government is Nazis.)
The Founders seem to have seen "the people, as a body of individuals distinct from states" as the ones benefitting from being independently armed. They do not seem to have described this only in terms of state governments revolting against the federal government.
It would seem totally obvious that a state government could be the tyrant itself and/or is empowered against the people by having a force like a standing military. People in the early 19th century talked about a right that bound both federal and state governments.
The second amendment doesn't say "right of the states to arm and maintain their own militias", the Constitution says "states" when it means "states".
In fact, the founding era was awash with gun control laws at the state and local level that no one thought were a problem.
There were a fair number of them, but none of them resembled what we have today. Modern-style gun laws didn't emerge until, well, the modern era around the turn of the century.
I'm not sure I'd say "awash" is the right word.
Laws that attempt to deny to citizens a contemporary military or paramilitary service rifle are a post-WWII phenomenon.
Even as late as the 1960s or 70s you can still find the NRA advocating gun control laws for safety.
I agree that the NRA is not the end-all and be-all of ideological purity and coherence among weapons rights advocacy organizations.
I would say that the modern gun restrictionist movement is largely a post-WWII phenomenon (supported by the massive increase in state capacity), and the organized political opposition to this took time to develop.
The idea that the pro-gun people hold to now didn't even exist until the latter half of the 20th century.
It's true that ideas often develop over time, but you can very clearly seen continuity with the past here. The main innovation is the general sense of distrust.
Frankly, I think that this is mostly an artifact of organized political projects to defend these rights mostly emerging in the 70s. This merely mobilized sentiments that had been around since the early 19th century at latest.
Much like evangelicals talking about abortion, watching gun rights rhetoric about the second amendment honestly feels like watching Victorians advocate the "ancient traditions" that they just made up out of whole cloth that day.
I mean, my point of view of Evangelicals talking about abortion is, "they finally came around to what we, the universal Church, had recognized as the correct position back in the second century AD".
I often think this form of rhetoric involves a politically motivated denial of continuity, or the conflation with rediscovery, formalization, renewal, or development of a genuinely historical tradition with making something up out of whole cloth.
More generally, though, I think that's just a largely false accusation. The disenchantment with extreme state capacity and emergence of aggressive weapons restrictionist politics post-1950s lead to increased attention to civil rights.
I mean, great, you have drones now. Do you have consistent access to the satellite technology necessary to make them work?
Most Ukrainian drones do not use satellite communications.
Do you have access to the detection technology to find your targets?
First, that's an incredibly broad category and the answer is often "yes".
Second, this is also a matter covered by the 2A and an avenue for political pressure and development during peacetime.
It's, quite frankly, insane to think that a bunch of guys who cosplay with small arms are genuinely going to take on the professional US military with is multi-hundred billion dollar budget.
The generic response to this is "muh <all the times that major national militaries struggled to defeat guerillias>"
In any event, the US military budget is merely a product of the wealth and numbers of American citizens.
Meanwhile, I think that this is partaking of the fallacy of focusing entirely on a direct confrontation which is a fantasy of weapons restrictionists, not of weapons rights supporters.
I would focus much more on independence than on revolt/confrontation.
What really keeps us safe from government tyranny is the fact that our soldiers are citizens and anyone who's spent time with them knows that they're the ones who would be fighting against tyranny of the federal government if it decided to use them to oppress the population.
I see very little reason to have confidence in this idea (and the founders definitely didn't).
2087
kianamaiart
romaincrisis
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
