Different from what? Do you mean it's not necessarily a URL? Or do you mean clicking on it could take you somewhere other than where you would go if you chose "copy url" and manually pasted it into the address bar? (And if the latter, is that true even on a forum like this that makes you post comments as plain text?)
Javascript or no, the href attribute of an <a> tag does not have to be a URL in order for it to be clickable. (Whether or not it will do anything useful is another matter.)
> Or do you mean clicking on it could take you somewhere other than where you would go if you chose "copy url" and manually pasted it into the address bar?
This is possible with Javascript - capture the click event before the browser's <a> tag handling and load any page you want.
> is that true [possible] even on a forum like this that makes you post comments as plain text?
No. /u/mynewtb was talking about clickable hyperlinks where clicking on them takes you to a different place than the tag's href. On sites like HN, where all comments are plain text, there are no hyperlinks in comments. On sites like Reddit, you can use Markdown to add clickable hyperlinks to your comments, but you can't add <script> tags in order to manipulate what clicking the pyperlink does.
In either case, an attacker would have to do XSS in order to change where you go when you click a link.
This attack / trick is entirely feasible within first-party content or third-party content that is allowed to use external Javascript or inline <script> tags (for example, HTML email).
I'm not a gun owner. Indeed I'm very much opposed to people being able to own guns and hope that someday they will be banned in the U.S. I do understand your perspective and why this is upsetting to you.
For me I see it as a step toward people being more anti-gun ownership. Societies evolve and social views change. Our views on marijuana, smoking, etc. have changed over the decades. I hope I am now seeing the beginning of the end of acceptance of gun ownership.
While we are on opposite sides of this issue I encourage you to continue to stand up for your rights and fight for what you believe in. Let Reddit and Youtube know you are upset about this. Be active and vigilant. I will too.
That's why we have principles and constitutional rights. So that our rights aren't taken away on a whim of societal change.
I'm from NY and I've never owned a gun and I probably will never do so. But even I would be against repealing the 2nd amendment.
The fact that people here are so openly talking about repealing the 2nd amendment and taking away more of our rights is really concerning. And it's self-defeating. It'll only make americans more wary of losing our 2nd amendment rights and increase gun sales.
The reason I think people are talking about repealing the 2nd is because the NRA won't budge an inch. Extremism begets extremism. If people can't get sensible gun regulation, extreme gun regulation starts to seem more attractive.
Conservatism, I though, was all about making slow and slight tweaks to society, rather than radical changes. But refusal to allow even the slightest evolution or deviation on some issue, like gun rights, leads to the opposite: at times it feels like we are heading towards outright civil war.
In the face of an obvious societal problem like gun violence, real conservatism would say sure, lets make some small changes to gun regulation, see how that goes for a few years or decades, then re-evaluate our position to see if society is better or worse off. Instead, seemingly obvious minor tweaks to gun regulation get cast as the first giant step towards impending repeal of the 2nd amendment. Maybe we are past the point of no return, I don't know.
The "sensible gun regulation" isn't, that's the thing. Indeed, the people calling for it are so proud of being so ignorant about guns and gun laws that they often can't even accurately say what class of guns they want banned, they've coined a term - "gunsplaining" - to mock those who point out when they don't know what they're talking about.
Features of the current US pro-gun-control movement include the notion that it's somehow absurd handguns, which are used in the vast majority of US gun homicides, are more tightly restricted than rifles. The idea that the gun used in your deadliest school shooting, the VA Tech massacre, is basically useless and ineffective. The belief that the AR-15 is some kind of super-powerful danger rifle too powerful for anything but murder (it's actually a tad underpowered as hunting rifles go). Also unyielding, full-throated defence of the elected official in charge of the police department which ignored all the warning signs about the Parkland shooter. Pretty much only pro-gun folks seem to be questioning any of this.
To give some idea about the quality of this debate, the founder of gun control group Moms Demand Action literally pointed her followers at a photo of a scary-looking black gun, trying to make it look like some incredibly dangerous killing machine, and demanded they pressure the retailer into not selling it to under-21s https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/969572513154936833 It was actually a .22 LR bolt-action rifle, probably the least effective long rifle in widespread use it you want to kill anyone or anything, that was optimised entirely for competitive target shooting. I can't think of any other country off-hand that considers 18 year olds incapable of buying and owning those. Her follow-up was to accuse the NRA of misogyny for pointing out how stupid and clueless this was, with the help of Media Matters for America.
The campaigns for "sensible gun control" basically just use the term as a talking point that avoids having to actually explain and justify what they're calling for; after all who could be against sensible, common-sense restrictions other than some gun nut whackjob?
I don't think this is a terribly good counterargument, personally. To me, the gun control movement is basically reacting to several high profile mass shooting cases. Your argument to me seems to be the equivalent of countering, say, a mother who lost a child to a drunk driver, with an argument that they shouldn't be concerned, because they don't know about the technical details of engine displacement or the neuropharmacology behind ethanol. That would be nonsense.
Obviously, with drunk driving, no one tends to blame the tool, either, as gun control movements often are doing. It is worth pointing out that automobiles are fairly regulated, though. There is a "street legal" definition for a car, you have to have an operator's license, and there are things you cannot do in a car -- elsewise, your license gets taken away. For better or for worse, America's one of the few places out there with a relatively high minimum age to purchase alcohol -- 21 -- and drunk driving was one of the reasons it ended up this way (https://www.boston.com/culture/health/2014/07/17/why-21-a-lo...).
I personally think it's fine to counter over-emotional focus on the tool (after all, 99% of AR-15 owners are just normal, average folks who don't commit mass shootings or indeed violence of any kind). Ultimately, though, "what they're calling for" is a reduction of gun violence. If "they" don't get a reasonable counter-answer to their concerns (and in my opinion, the NRA is doing a poor job here, themselves often being overly-emotional in response), it's entirely possible the regulations "they" want will result in the end.
Well, people who get caught driving drunk a few times can have their license taken away or a blood alcohol interlock put on their car.
What if gun owners who didn't keep their guns locked in gun safes had their bullets replaced with rubber ones, or had mandatory trigger locks installed on their guns?
I dunno, I'm just spitballing here, but cars are heavily regulated, licensed, the whole nine yards, and if we had a tenth of that applied to guns, we could probably do a lot to reduce gun deaths and gun violence across the country.
One of the ideas floating around after Parkland that seems to have gotten bipartisan support (even the National Review warmed up to it! -- https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/gun-control-republica...) is a "gun violence restraining order". This provides a framework for those close to someone, and law enforcement, to temporarily restrict their ability to purchase weapons. I think (as the National Review columnist says) there is broad conceptual agreement that someone can demonstrate through their conduct that they should not possess a weapon. Parkland was a clear failure in this regard -- the perpetrator was this close to being "Baker Acted" (Florida's involuntary institutionalization law).
From my perspective, I welcome ideas like these. Limited access control ideas along the line of this framework is where I think the focus needs to be.
Some discussion also could be reserved for equipment like "bump stocks", that at first glance seems to solely be designed to circumvent existing law (it is highly illegal to modify a semi-automatic into a fully-automatic gun). Again, treating these type of equipment like the extremely highly regulated machine gun class is something even the National Review agrees with. (https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/10/bump-stocks-machine-g...)
This is an old misconception, and incorrect. All Spitzer-tip (pointed) boat tail bullets are prone to destabilization upon impact with anything hard in their path, deflecting easily off of surfaces (eg. wood, metal, bone). They were not designed to tumble on impact, but to fly straight, fast (high ballistic coefficient).
The same shape (Spitzer-tip boat tail) is used for virtually all modern target and hunting rounds. 5.56 (and .223) is basically a glorified varmint round. Certain 5.56 rounds, however, are designed to be frangible, which causes the bullet to break up on impact and causes more wound channels. Hunting ammo in 5.56/.223 does not do this, as it is designed to stay in one piece.
You're mocking the intelligence of gun control supporters and doubting their sincerity and credibility. As you seem to be knowledgeable about the subject, and seem to believe that only persons such as yourself are qualified to have an opinion on the matter, what would you consider to be actually sensible gun regulation?
I don’t know if OP is stating that only s/he is qualified. But that if someone wants to explain knowledge of guns enough to control them, they should spend some time understanding their subject.
And saying someone is stupid isn’t mocking. (Although it can be)
It’s like old men legislating abortion laws who know nothing about female specific health topics.
The tone of the comment seems intended to dismiss through ridicule, but that's beside the point. Its thesis that that one should have knowledge of guns and gun culture to have a credible opinion on gun legislation, so I'm merely asking that be followed up on, with an opinion on gun legislation from those with credible opinions.
I see a lot of dismissal of gun control advocates in threads like these, but arguments regarding gun control from those who claim authority on the matter tend to devolve towards strident defiance - "if you try to take my gun I will shoot you with it." That doesn't make for constructive discussion.
Most firearm violence is committed using handguns and most illegal guns are obtained through straw purchases. The best thing we could do would be to implement universal background checks (i.e. require background checks for private sales) but in a privacy-conscious and convenient way that will maintain support from the pro-gun side. Some kind of app or mobile website that allows the background check to be conducted for free on a smartphone, perhaps using token-based authentication to avoid the need to share personal information.
People who sell guns want a way to perform background checks on the people they sell to, but there's no way to do it because only licensed dealers can access NICS. As long as the private background check system has the same privacy invariants as the existing paper system for dealers (primarily that it is not possible to look up which guns someone owns, only to take a serial number and see who owns it) there won't be significant opposition.
The registry is a non-starter. A significant fraction of gun owners will see registration as a precursor to confiscation. A smaller fraction fear that the registry will either be public from the start or significantly breached within a short time frame, such that gun owners will be selectively targeted for harassment or burglaries.
Given what New York has done recently, I presume that a lot of gun owners will also simply refuse to comply with any registration orders. And, as usual, the black market guns will remain nigh-untraceable, especially among those who are barred by law from owning them.
The best you could do is a database of last-known locations, maintained entirely without cooperation by owners, that will probably consist mainly of business locations of licensed firearm dealers and crime scenes.
> A smaller fraction fear that the registry will either be public from the start or significantly breached within a short time frame, such that gun owners will be selectively targeted for harassment or burglaries.
It's not clear whether there is, in fact, any obvious or easy improvement on what the US has already. If there was it'd likely have happened already. I mean, I live in the UK which has outright banned handguns and doesn't consider self-defense justification for gun ownership, but that won't fly in the US - it's unconstitutional and goes against the principles the country was founded on, and it'd require an lot more trust in your police force and a much less rural population - and probably wouldn't be enough to satisfy gun control supporters anyway.
Surely the burden for coming up with a reasonable, sensible gun control proposal should be on the people who're insisting we could have one if it wasn't for the pesky NRA and their gun nut supporters?
I already put it out there. Gun licenses and gun registry.
Without that there is no room to enforce regulation. The NRA and the gun culture will never budge on these two items, so they make an outright ban inevitable.
People can call things reasonable or unreasonable, that's fine but try to argue that registering a gun or obtaining a license is such an undue burden for the individual gun owner vs the harm of vast unchecked gun profileration for the rest of society.
> The NRA and the gun culture will never budge on these two items, so they make an outright ban inevitable.
> ...
> NRA supporters are gun nuts. I am a gun owner.
Well I don't want to give an inch more to gun control proponents because they have already made their intent clear, they believe that a completely gunless society is much more admirable than what we have today.
It's like this, imagine if a British politician Nigel Windsor calls for the 'assassination of the Queen' and overthrowing of Monarchy. Upon failing to achieve support on that, he proposes bill such as "Full budgetary accountability of Queen's security" or "Transparency of Queen's Expenditures" where Queen's security details be made published or "How about we reduce the number of Queen's guards by just one".
Who in their right mind would believe that Nigel Farage wants "sensible expenditure on Queen's security" since we know that at the end he wants to overthrow the British Monarchy?
This is the same case with gun control. We know that most gun grabbers don't own guns, have never owned guns and will never own guns, it's not in their culture. They also fantasize European countries regarding Healthcare, gun control, hate speech, discrimination laws and Australian style complete gun confiscation. Now they say "Come to a reasonable gun reform or a complete ban is inevitable", which to gun right proponents sounds like "Publish Queen's security detail or else an assassination of the Queen is imminent", I'd say if they could ban guns, then they would have.
> Well I don't want to give an inch more to gun control proponents because they have already made their intent clear, they believe that a completely gunless society is much more admirable than what we have today.
This is exactly my point. You point to extremism as justification for yet more extremism in the opposite way. This won't end well for anyone. I'm not sure how, but as a society we need to find a way just sit down and walk things back. I'm willing to work towards a compromise. It seems you would rather not budge, and so the extremism continues.
There are plenty of people like me who don't care about 100yr old rifle historians, or hunters, or sport shooting, or the rest. We just want our kids to not get shot, and think that the current level of gun violence is far too high. Where can we turn to? Gun lovers and the NRA specifically don't seem to be able to offer any response at all beyond "my cold dead hand" and "don't give an inch".
At a federal level, it's not that easy. If there was an easy way to ban them, the ATF would have already. It's really hard to define a bump stock in a way that wouldn't either ban a lot of other things, short of classifying them as machine guns. If you classify them as machine guns, at this point, you pretty much have to let people who already have them enroll them on the NFA registry (federally, there is no legal basis to confiscate property that was legally acquired and legal to acquire when acquired), which is not necessarily what you want either.
I would view it as a fundamental parts of the system not to be flexed with. You're also never going to get back anything you give up.
You could easily live through 50+ years of incrementally handing over bits and pieces of your right to bear arms to the government before things turn ugly. It's San Francisco relaxing its building codes since it hasn't had a big earthquake in 100 years.
>NRA won't budge an inch. Extremism begets extremism. If people can't get sensible gun regulation, extreme gun regulation starts to seem more attractive.
You realize that "sensible" is both subjective, and cuts both ways, right? Have you ever noticed that the "compromise" touted by gun control advocates is always, 100% of the time, entirely one-sided?
That isn't compromise, that's capitulation. Compromise would be "Okay, universal NICS checks for all gun sales, but private citizens can access it for free". Compromise would be "per the full faith and credit clause, CCW permits are now legally recognized in all 50 states and become shall-issue, but there will be a standardized framework to get them".
Compromise is unambiguously not "ban bump stocks" and everyone who disagrees going "okay!".
So long as gun control compromise is a one-way street, I remain a dues-paying NRA member.
Requiring citizens to ask permission for a sale means they don't really own their firearms. It also breaks plausible deniability in a confiscation scenario.
NRA won't budge an inch? What do you call the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Hughes Amendment of 1986, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1994, not to mention all the state based bans on everything under the sun from a pistol grip to a "shoulder thing that goes up to two year waiting periods to possess a simple handgun.
As mentioned, the NRA did not support those initiatives, secondly the NRA today, right now, is not willing to compromise. As a gun owner, this hurts us all.
Common sense gun regulation is a benefit to safe gun owners and less people will die from misuse, less criminals will have access to guns, less mentally unstable people will be able to go on killing sprees.
This is all in benefit to gun owners. How does sensible gun control (not bans) hurt a legal and safe gun owner?
This is false, the NRA has compromised as recently as last year. Here's an article from their website congratulating the concealed carry reciprocity act being coupled with the background check fixing bill - https://www.nraila.org/articles/20171206/house-passes-concea....
That's what a compromise looks like, gun owners get easier concealed carry rules and everybody gets safer gun purchases via enhancements to the NICS system.
> NRA won't budge an inch? What do you call the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Hughes Amendment of 1986, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1994, not to mention all the state based bans on everything under the sun from a pistol grip to a "shoulder thing that goes up to two year waiting periods to possess a simple handgun.
Not sure of the first two off the top of my head, but the other two of the named examples are things that the NRA vociferously opposed, and (especially Brady) fought to repeal after they were adopted, so not exactly examples of the NRA budging. Ditto with many of them state laws you wave your hand at.
The NRA may lose sometimes, but thats different than budging.
Last year they allowed Fix NICS to be coupled with the concealed carry reciprocity act, so one side gets enhanced background checks and the other side gets an easier time concealed carrying - https://www.nraila.org/articles/20171206/house-passes-concea....
> The reason I think people are talking about repealing the 2nd is because the NRA won't budge an inch.
Because the anti-firearm crowd won't budge an inch either.
All the evidence points towards gun-free zones failing to reduce violence. Will the anti-gun crowd work with gun owners to expand where law abiding citizens can carry?
> If people can't get sensible gun regulation
Without making this partisan - you can't have strict gun control without strict border control.
Should we try and meet the conservatives in the middle and help them secure our southern border?
This isn't a game or a horse trade, I win one, you win one.
"I'll agree not to shoot your kids today, but only if you let me beat up your cousin instead." That's more or less what your argument sounds like to me. Can we agree that gun violence is a problem in the US, on a level vastly higher than many other parts of the world? Can we talk about how to move towards a society with less gun violence? Let's work together to find things that will help reduce gun violence. I'm willing to give up a lot of things I care about to move that way. You seem to only be willing to head that direction if you get something else you want in return. And it's especially jarring when the thing you want in return seems a to always move things back in the exact opposite direction, expanding access to and availability of guns.
You don't trust "anti-gun people" so you therefore don't want to enact policies that you think will reduce gun violence? You seem to be saying you'd rather have more gun violence than work together with "anti-gun people". I don't understand that, on a fundamental level.
I never said anything about "gun free zones". I'm not sure what they are, I don't know how effective they are, but I don't see how they hurt either. To me, it seems like more guns, easier and cheaper availability of guns, more destructive guns, less strict and less comprehensive / universal background checks are all things that lead pretty clearly to more gun violence. That's why I'm against those things. I'm willing to change my mind. But the NRA is too busy disparaging victims of gun violence.
I really don't see how arming teachers helps. I've heard arguments for it, but those arguments really just don't ring true to me, and it seems that more guns will lead to more violence. I haven't read studies that seem credible and support what you are saying. Do you have any? I've looked, and there is a lot of really contradictory stuff out there. I'm willing to support anything that will reduce gun violence, in general.
I've been thinking about this thread for a while, and I think what bothers me is this. If you think expanded background checks (for example) will help reduce gun violence, why will you only support it if you get something else in return? Why can't we find things both sides thinks will help, and enact those things? Why must you hold those things hostage until you get some other thing that the other side fears will make the situation worse?
> You don't trust "anti-gun people" so you therefore don't want to enact policies that you think will reduce gun violence?
You have it all wrong. I don't believe they will reduce gun violence.
I'm saying if anti-gun people were trustworthy I'd be willing to try some of these policies - then if they didn't work we could just stop them - no harm done.
> but I don't see how they hurt either.
And that's the problem: You are happy to infringe upon a fundamental right without clear evidence that it's a big win for society.
That mentality needs to be opposed at every step.
> To me, it seems like more guns, easier and cheaper availability of guns, more destructive guns, less strict and less comprehensive / universal background checks are all things that lead pretty clearly to more gun violence.
But the actual evidence for these is not at all conclusive.
Because the US doesn't have a cartel problem so they are not going to have the same demand Mexico does. I really do not know where you are trying to go with this.
Mexico has a demand for guns. US has a supply. The guns go south. US cutting its supply will not increase the demand internally to the level of Mexican cartels, and even if it did it is a stretch to think Mexican cartels can run guns as effectively in the US as they do in Mexico.
We have much more enforcement and LEO structure all around than Mexico.
If your solution is a wall at the border you have completely lost me.
> so they are not going to have the same demand Mexico does
The US has a higher demand for firearms than Mexico does - it's just local manufacturing more than meets the local demand.
> it is a stretch to think Mexican cartels can run guns as effectively in the US as they do in Mexico.
They do just fine running drugs and people. I don't see why guns would be any harder.
> If your solution is a wall at the border you have completely lost me.
Gun bans at the city and state level have been found utterly ineffective at reducing violence - in large part because people run guns over the state/city border.
Why would you expect a nationwide ban to be any more effective?
It would still be easy to run guns over the border - just the border now is a national border instead of a state/city border.
The 2nd Amendment does speak of a well regulated militia and it being necessary for the defense of the United States. I'm in favor a well regulated militia. I'm not a lawyer and have no expertise on the legalities but I do know that amendments can be repealed. There is nothing unconstitutional about repealing an amendment. The Constitution details the mechanism for amending it.
> There is nothing unconstitutional about repealing an amendment. The Constitution details the mechanism for amending it.
I didn't say it was unconstitutional. The constitution makes it very difficult to repeal for a reason.
It's why only 1 amendment has ever been repealed and that amendment was written nearly 150 years after the founding of the country.
I'm fairly certain that the 1st and 2nd amendment are pretty much untouchable.
But I wish you the best in trying to get it repealed. The more you try to get it repealed, the more people will support the 2nd amendment and remind people that we actually have rights that we need to protect lest it be taken from us.
I grew up a Reagan Republican in the Canal Zone. At that time I never thought I would see the U.S. (much less conservatives) embrace torture, mass surveillance, things like the Patriot Act, renditions, and other such things that have become commonplace. People haven't been particularly assertive of their right to free speech. Few complained when Clinton instituted "free speech" zones at major political events. Now such is commonplace.
It does not stretch my imagination to see people being fed up with it being legal to own firearms with the lethality that is currently allowable. I may be wrong. Fight for your rights. Be vigilant. I will continue to advocate for repealing the right to own guns. I may never see my vision come to fruition.
"well regulated" meant "well functioning". Like "a well regulated clock".
> There is nothing unconstitutional about repealing an amendment. The Constitution details the mechanism for amending it.
You really think you can get 34 states to vote to repeal something from our bill of rights?
If you are a democrat mastermind and want to do that then your best bet is to get more and more states created out of the blue states to get more than 2/3rd of the states to vote to repeal 2nd Amendment.
So people can have guns as long as they're in a "well-regulated militia"? Do we want all gun owners to be in self-governed militias? I don't follow this line of thought.
The second amendment states that a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
I’m no expert on the legalities and legal interpretations of the 2nd amendment but it seems to me a case could be made that well regulated gives the government broad regulatory powers. The mention of militia could be interpreted to mean only members of the militia, clearly under the command of the military, can own guns. Of course a repeal of the amendment would be fine with me too.
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought to keep "the military" (British troops) from taking weapons away from arguably "self-regulated" militias. I think it's a tough case to make if you're arguing that the Constitution was referring solely to current members of armed services commissioned by the government.
Those militias were under the control of the colonial government. Indeed one of the colonials killed at Lexington was an ensign. That militia was the army at the time.
To complete the thought experiment, what would we have to do to form our own militia? Have a charter and elections? The colonial army at the time was not sanctioned by the king to bear the arms it did.
My interpretation of the second amendment is that the government has broad regulatory powers when it comes to gun ownership. Furthermore that the right applies only to militias and that in the present day militia would be an organization under government control.
Times change and interpretations change. I do not feel bound to interpret the Constitution by only considering what the founders meant. But for people who are originalists the well regulated meaning in the wording of the second amendment should imply broad government powers of regulation. It’s the only part of the Bill of Rights that grants a right to both the government and the people. It’s an oddly worded amendment. I imagine that the founders understood that a broad, unregulated right to own guns might not be the best public policy and hence threw in the well regulated wording. Also they mention it being necessary to a free state. If it is no longer necessary to a free state what then? Can a ban be placed on ownership? I don’t know how they would answer the question. I do know how I answer it.
> I do not feel bound to interpret the Constitution by only considering what the founders meant.
That's probably the place to end this back-and-forth. We aren't going to hash out "rule by men" versus "rule of law" a thread about banned subreddits. But I think the right way to be unbound from what the Constitution means is to actually convince people to amend it. There are significant justice implications to ignoring the laws of a country in service of realpolitik.
I go by what the Constitution means. It’s meaning changes from person to person. And from era to era. I don’t feel bound to interpret it according to how the founders would interpret it.
The second amendment means to me something different from what it means to you. As I’ve said all along In these threads, fight for your rights. Advocate for your position. I will fight to change public perception.
The point of the 13th amendment is to eliminate legal human trafficking once and for all. It's not reasonable to say that the meaning of that rule is allowed to change over time. And that standard has to apply for every part of the Constitution for the 13th amendment to have actual impact, otherwise it's just another holy text and can be ignored has a nice myth for simple people. But instead of people sinning by unclean food, the government is allowed to hold citizens indefinitely without trial because the constitution means something else now.
You can't seriously believe that the words of constitution have the same meaning and interpretation for everyone. Clearly what people think the words mean changes from person to person and even from era to era. Peoples' views change over time. The words don't change but how people view and understand the meaning of those words change. This is not disputable or revelatory.
I don't believe everyone reads the words the same. That's why the only objective way to read the words is to understand what they meant when they were ratified.
If the text becomes too arcane or unclear, the correct remedy is to amend the constitution, not backfill the meanings of the words from outcomes we already have in mind.
I don't think this is a slope you want to go down because the constitution is law. Do we want people to view the law subjectively, especially juries that decide on cases? "When the government is acting in your best interests unwarranted searches and seizures are ok, therefore we can come into your home any time we want as long as we are acting in your best interests." I doubt you would be ok with that. Sadly we have laws in place for exactly that sort of thing, and people are ok with it because are we are really scared of terrorists.
The second amendment states that a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
you misquoted it the text reads: 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.
emphasis mine, It is the right of the people that will not be infringed.
> The mention of militia could be interpreted to mean only members of the militia, clearly under the command of the military, can own guns.
Rhode Island's 1842 constitution starts like this:
> The liberty of the press being essential to the security of freedom in a state, any person may publish his sentiments on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty . . . .
So according to you, if the 'security of freedom in a state' is threatened, then the government can suspend the freedom of the press?
Or take 1784 New Hampshire constitution:
> In criminal prosecutions, the trial of facts in the vicinity where they happen, is so essential to the security of the life, liberty and estate of the citizen, that no crime or offence ought to be tried in any other county than that in which it is committed . . . .
So according to you, 'if the trial of the facts in the vicinity where they happen is not essential to the security of the life' (again, in wartime or any exogenous circumstances like 9/11 attacks) then this right of citizens to be tried in the county where the crime was committed can be suspended by the govt whenever they deem fit?
Or maybe, this 'justification clause' which was written in many different ways at many different places by the people of that time is actually 'one and the most important justification' for a right and not 'If and only if trial of the facts in the vicinity ...'.
Let me explain another scenario. The first amendment starts with "Congress shall make no law...". Today we clearly understand it to mean 'US Congress', but in the year 2256, People have created a new legislative body called Congress-22 and now they claim that first amendment only restricts Congress's power to restrict speech. On the other hand Congress-22 still has the power to restrict speech and religion.
Same thing goes with 'militia'. It used to mean "pretty much all able-bodied men from age eighteen to forty-five". This does not mean that it ONLY protects the right of 18-45 men to keep and bear arms, but it cover everyone's right to keep and bear arms.
The basic answer is no. I was referring only to the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution. I have a view of what that amendment means and how it ought to be interpreted in the present era. I don't think I'd answer yes to your questions on interpreting the various texts you quoted.
Are you implying that "right of the people" implies that it is not an individual right?
> First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the __right of the people__ peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Does that mean that first amendment is not an individual right to free speech, press or religion?
> Fourth Amendment: The __right of the people__ to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
How about now? You don't have the individual right against unreasonable searches and seizures?
> Ninth amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained __by the people__.
Again, the 9th amendment which claims that there are rights outside of constitution and they are retained by the people, just because they are not written in the constitution. Are these all the 'right of the states'??
Or my favorite one, the tenth amendment:
> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or __to the people__.
Here, it uses "the states" and "the people" separately. Clearly if second amendment meant it is a right of the states to keep and bear arms, then it would have mentioned it so, and not said "right of the people".
> Are you implying that "right of the people" implies that it is not an individual right?
I think you had me wrong it is an individual right. They neglected to include the of the people part in their quote. The 2A applies to the people not the militia
The reading of ehmu's comments doesn't make it clear that he/she probably agrees with your position on the second amendment? It's seems obvious to me. If it's easy to get confused with the intent of ehmu's two comments then it should be understandable that reasonable people can interpret the meaning of the 2nd amendment in different ways.
> That's why we have principles and constitutional rights.
You never had a constitutional right to owe a firearm. This is legal nonsense put together relatively recently, starting as answer to the Black Panthers arming themselves and then later some politics. Please look at https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/nra-guns-sec...
> From 1888, when law review articles first were indexed, through 1959, every single one on the Second Amendment concluded it did not guarantee an individual right to a gun.
And, in light of recent events: everyone not turning in their own guns and campaigning strongly for reversing this nonsense is an accessory to the mass murder of children. Everyone who used their money to support the proliferation of guns have blood on their hands.
> And, in light of recent events: everyone not turning in their own guns and campaigning strongly for reversing this nonsense is an accessory to the mass murder of children. Everyone who used their money to support the proliferation of guns have blood on their hands.
Do you support women’s right to terminate their pregnancy? Assuming you do, what would you think of similarly worded pro-life argument?
I think you’ll find such emotionally charged arguments are never effective and will convince no one.
It’s also uninformed, as there’s plenty of objective evidence to suggest that guns save more lives than they take[1–2].
I would recommend reading this article. It was written in 80s, when NRA was just gaining political steam, and long before Heller v. DC (after which, like it or not, there is definitely a constitutional right). And it's written by an unsympathetic liberal law scholar.
...because the text is in the Constitution in very clear wording. Trying to use syntax tricks to explain an alternate meaning for the second amendment results in nonsense, really. People who are against gun rights aren't for "well-organized militias" in general.
Very clear wording that took over 200 yeas for there to be a Supreme Court willing to agree with that interpretayption. Previous courts disagreed. Given this no one can reasonably think it’s very clear wording.
I have not read the Heller decision in its entirety. I do know that there are Supreme Court rulings that Heller contradicts. I do know that some legal scholars say the 2nd Amendment is poorly worded. I do know that views on how the Constitution should be interpreted have changed over time. I do know that it's not an obvious amendment. There is no such thing as we have lawyers arguing the meaning of the Constitution all the time. Nothing is very clear cut. Language is nuanced, intent is nuanced, and there are a ton of gray areas.
> I do know that some legal scholars say the 2nd Amendment is poorly worded... Language is nuanced, intent is nuanced, and there are a ton of gray areas.
Can I ignore or rewrite the 14th amendment because I find it confusing?
> I do know that views on how the Constitution should be interpreted have changed over time.
Yeah, people started ignoring parts they weren't comfortable with and finding new parts in prenumbras.
Your argument boils down to, "I don't know, everyone. There are a lot of gray areas, so we better just agree to do what I want."
That is not my argument at all. I have an opinion on what the 2nd amendment ought to mean. I advocate that others share my position. I've acknowledged numerous times that others don't share my opinion and I've suggested that they keep vigilant to maintain their rights. That's the whole point of politics. This is a political issue and people advocate for/against positions all the time. Sometimes attitudes that once were accepted become repugnant.
We best not just agree to do what I want. That would be absolute power and that would be horrible. No one deserves that much power. No one should be so arrogant that they think they are always right or that their opinions are beyond reproach.
I welcome discourse and debate. It's necessary for a properly functioning society.
The NRA/Republican Party's interpretation of the 2nd amendment is a total fabrication. The amendment was meant to apply to a standing militia organized by a state (potentially in opposition to the federal government).
The Founders weren't stupid. They did not intend for any random nut to have the right to carry a gun. The lethality of weapons available at the time the 2nd amendment was introduced is not even remotely comparable to that of the puniest modern handgun. Simply put, an armed individual didn't pose much of a threat back then. They could hardly envision the nightmares we have to endure today, or else they might have been more precise with the language in order to preclude exactly this sort of Al-Qaeda-esque interpretative perversion of a 'sacred text'.
That you're dispensing the carefully-crafted bile conservatives have vomited into our society is little more than a testament to their capacity to brainwash the masses.
> 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.
IANAL but it seems like it applies to people not militias
Wikipedia gives some historical context which makes it seem more clear that it's about people not state-run militias:
> Samuel Adams proposed that the Constitution: "Be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless when necessary for the defence of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of their grievances: or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures."
There is an interesting section that goes into the scholarly interpretation of the 2nd amendment in the Wikipedia article on it, and it's only been in the 20th century and after that we have gotten into what militia, well regulated and whether or not the people have the right or militias.
The main point the founding fathers had for the militias was to defend the country from foreign invaders and from a tyrannical government. I know people think we don't need to worry about tyrannical governments these days, but what if what happened in Libya, Syria and Egypt started happening here? How would we fix that kind of a situation?
Exactly! No one would break the law, that would be illegal!
And while we're at it, we can use it as an opportunity to crack down on minorities we don't like, and maybe do some good old selective enforcement, genius.
In the same way other countries who've banned firearms have carried it out? It's not like there's no precedent for this if you look outside of America.
America isn't other countries. Guns are as ingrained in rural America's culture as lifted trucks and beer. There would literally be armed revolts if the government tried taking peoples' guns away en masse.
Every time I see this argument come up people always try to frame it like it will be ‘nutters’ shooting ‘some’ people. You are very wrong, and that is the attitude that will get a lot of innocent people killed. This country is filled with rational, professional, well organized people who will kill before being disarmed.
> well organized people who will kill before being disarmed.
The collective noun for people who will kill rather than obey the law is "terrorists".
One of the conditions for peace in Northern Ireland was that political groups had to disarm in order to enter politics, because you can't do politics with people who are threatening to murder you. That's not a democracy.
One of the founding principles of the US was the right of its citizenry to protect itself from the overreach of the government, which was enabled partly through the right for citizens to own firearms and other weapons. They're a means of self defense, but more importantly as a way to keep the gov in check. No government can control millions of armed citizens--which is exactly the point.
Killing in response to being disarmed is probably one of the most "American" things its citizens could do.
You don't think trying to murder policemen because your country enacted gun controls to protect schoolchildren would be "nutters trying to shoot people"?
"Oh but I need this 1000 round per minute gun for pest control in my apartment! I'll murder people to protect my right to have it."??
I'm not sure where you got 1000 rounds per minute from, even a fully automatic rifle generally cannot fire that quickly (it would probably need to be belt-fed or you would be changing magazines more than thirty times per minute).
A semi-automatic rifle like the AR-15 is unlikely to surpass 100 rounds per minute.
The 1000 rounds per minute was intended to show that the post was knowingly exaggerated, however in part it was inspired by a "girl fires minigun" post I saw on Reddit. I can't truly recall but I think it was an M134 and that it did maybe 3000 rounds per minute.
Did you read the start of the thread that I was responding to.
The whole thread is reference to the parent saying people would rise up in armed revolt if the law was changed to tighten gun controls.
Assuming the national guard weren't sent in then as I understand it regular police would be charged with arresting those who refused to follow the legislation.
To me the meaning of that is clear - if the law is changed people will shoot (at) those who oppose them.
In this hypothetical case that would be police attempting to arrest them for unlawfully keeping controlled firearms.
You appear to be saying if tighter gun controls were enacted your family members who are policemen would leave their jobs in order to shoot anyone attempting to confiscate their controlled weapons? Do you think that's a reasonable position? Kill your own countrymen now in order to protect your right to more efficiently kill others in some intangible imaginary future scenario?
I think the implication was that a very large fraction of police/national guard/US armed forces would at least refuse to enforce such a law, if not join the rebellion itself. Indeed, I've never met a more adamant group of 2nd amendment supporters than my military friends.
But should such a dire scenario occur, I have always wondered how these small arms would fare against UAVs. The trouble is that we have precedent in this country that in a large-scale rebellion, it is taken out of law enforcement's hands and put into the military's hands.
>a very large fraction of police/national guard/US armed forces would at least refuse to enforce such a law //
Anything to support this? It's very sad to imagine that not being allowed automatic weapons at home, say, would turn LEOs in to outlaws. Do they perceive an actual threat? Do they not care about all the school massacres?
Are this large proportion of armed personnel in rebellion against the bump stock rulings that I understand were enacted recently?
The original context of this thread (starting with user yequalsx's comment) isn't about "tighter gun controls", but rather the a complete ban of all guns ("I hope I am now seeing the beginning of the end of acceptance of gun ownership.") I think that is the scenario -- actual confiscation of all guns -- user purple-again was addressing ("This country is filled with rational, professional, well organized people who will kill before being disarmed").
This is different from outlawing or more tightly controlling certain classes of weapons, which seems to be what you're talking about. I think not being able to easily purchase fully automatic weapons or crazier stuff like rocket propelled grenades, stingers, 20mm cannons, etc is something a minority of gun enthusiasts grumble about but pretty much everyone basically accepts. Nobody that I know of is revolting about that, cops/feds have no problem enforcing it, etc.
Right, but if the type of people having their guns taken away (say repeat violent offenders) or the type of guns being taken away (say automatics) are reasonable enough in the eyes of the people, you don't see a ton of resistance. Gun laws have been incrementally tightened many times in the past. It's lobbied against, voted against, and there is outcry by some gun owners, but not mass rebellion.
I think banning bump stocks, which are just a crude workaround of the longstanding automatic gun restrictions, are something we'll probably see without mass revolt or officers refusing to enforce.
I wasn't really attempting to express an opinion on how valid or likely this claim is, just to clarify what I took to be GP's point.
But for fun, I'll try to address the question. I live in a conservative state and do some work with public health policy, working with local politicians and have friends in LEO and military. Here are the common arguments/viewpoints (I am not endorsing them):
- The biggest proportion of gun deaths are suicides, so focusing on random massacres or inner-city violence, which are tiny blips on the mortality radar, is not a productive or a good-faith basis for banning guns.
- There is a (somewhat justified IMO) fear of a slippery-slope approach to gun regulation. It is not controversial or speculative to say there is a large contingent on the left that would like to totally ban them if it were possible.
- Guns are very limited in the damage they can do. A bomb in a high-school assembly could do a lot more damage than the most well-prepared shooter, and with much less risk to the perpetrator. At best, guns are not the most dangerous thing to be focused on and at worst, banning them could push psychopaths into more dangerous alternatives.
LEOs and military folks lean conservative. That means they tend to generally distrust or even fear the very government they work for. LEOs in particular are well acquainted with the damage guns do on a daily basis but frequently do not see banning them as a solution because:
- It is impractical
- The people killing each other with them are for the most part poor or (by definition) criminals, so no one cares about them
- The original intention of the 2nd Amendment was to protect the people from the government that, again, they distrust and fear, so even if banning guns would save lives, which they would dispute, it is a worthwhile cost to pay to protect against tyranny.
- There is a viewpoint that gun control actually increases violent crime, and therefore deaths, because guns serve as a deterrent. I have been in an extremely long-running debate with a local politician about whether this is the case.
As a result of all these arguments, I think a serious effort to confiscate guns would make many, many people in conservative states, including LEOs and military, very highly irritated. Irritated enough to rebel? I have no idea.
Again, I am not endorsing most of this, but there is one argument that resonates with me from a public health perspective. Gun homicide is an extremely rare cause of death. I personally feel that it would be orders of magnitude more helpful if the left would channel its energy into increasing funding for your friendly neighborhood National Institutes of Health.
It isn't clear who you're threatening to shoot. All you've said is "There is an organized group of citizens ready to carry out extrajudicial killings if gun laws change."
To the rest of us, that sounds like the violence threatened by a terrorist group--and maybe you shoot policemen, maybe you shoot your neighbors, I dunno, I'm not the one talking about keeping my guns around to be able to shoot my fellow citizens.
What's interesting is that rural America was in favor of increased gun control in the 1960s when blacks started to assert their right to own guns. Ultimately peoples' attitudes can be swayed and changed and it isn't really hard to do it. Witness our embracing of torture, taking shoes off to board an airplane, fear of sharia law, etc.
Yes, and blacks were taking up arms because they were literally being bombed. The whites wanted to control their rights to have guns so they could continue controlling the black populations with violent force.
So you highlight how gun control has been used as an oppressive tool in the past. What are we do to when only our corrupt government is allowed to have guns?
If you're going by second amendment rights, at this point it's more to the spirit of it for civillian fighter jets and tanks to be legalized than guns.
To some extent, I actually imagine it'd be safer for the average citizen.
* * *
From a more protectionist standpoint, you could say that an AR-15 or an AK-47 will allow you to stand up against your government. This isn't really realistic, however - no civillian weapon, especially not a semi-automatic rifle, will reliably take care of a tank, fighter jet, drone or military robot. [0]
> From a more protectionist standpoint, you could say that an AR-15 or an AK-47 will allow you to stand up against your government. This isn't really realistic, however - no civillian weapon, especially not a semi-automatic rifle, will reliably take care of a tank, fighter jet, drone or military robot. [0]
It gives you some leverage however if you need to get some ingredients for your IEDs.
A few guns might make the difference between efficient large scale killings like Auschwitz and a case where a large number of civilians get away and hide until the international community can come and help.
Yep, people with rifles and improvised explosives are completely ineffective against a modern military force. That's why the US was in and out of Afghanistan in less than a year!
Our "corrupt government" would crush us with jets, tanks, nukes, laser weapons, missiles, helicopters, drones, ships, chemical weapons, smallpox, and probably many more things regardless of whether we had AR-15s or not.
Libya and Syria are probably good examples of this not being the case. Libya had the benefit of NATO coming to the aid of the rebellion and stopping the airstrikes, Syria also had outside involvement. When a government goes to war with it's civilians other nations tend to get involved.
Even if that isn't the case, all those weapons are on the ground or in port at some point. Meaning an attack with small arms to get in there and preemptively blow them up will work. These weapons also have to be maintained meaning they need a base. You have millions of citizens with weapons and a military that's a much smaller fraction of that, with bases that have a much smaller fraction of personnel. The base is going to be overrun. There is also the chance of military personnel defecting, so that some of these weapons never get fired.
Chemical and biological weapons are a really bad idea. The problem is a civil war isn't going to be geographically defined in this case. There is no polarization along something like a Mason-Dixon line. You will end up killing people that don't revolt, which will probably make them rethink their not revolting. How would you feel if your family and friends were killed in an attack, and they weren't on the rebel side?
The other problem is even if you increase the military's size to win the civil war, you have the second problem of the very people that you could grab immediately to fight are probably going to be a majority of people who have been opposed to gun ownership, don't have weapons and don't know how to use them. It will take time to become proficient and the other side has both the weapons and training.
Even with advanced military tech, the numbers game combined with a guerrilla approach, and the fact these are civilians and it would be hard to identify civilian combatants from non-combatants, will make it a losing battle. We already haven't done well in Afghanistan or Iraq for similar reasons, and despite the enemy being technologically inferior, we have never been able to secure those regions.
You would have probably been against the American Revolutionary War then? Meh, let's let the British tax us. They're big and powerful. They're the Government.
And what about something like Vietnam? Who won that one?
And even if you're right, that the US government is just that big and bad. What if half the military defects and joins the revolt?
People have the right to defend themselves, and must be trusted to do so. Otherwise you get something like England. Say the wrong thing and you go to jail. The 2nd Amendment keeps the government in check. Eventually, given enough time, it will need checking.
Generally I am against loss of human life, be it in war or gun violence, but I'm not sure how I would have felt at the time of the Revolution, and I'm not sure you do either.
But really, that is just a weak strawman. The US government/military is MANY orders of magnitude more powerful than the British vs the colonists. The US military could nuke every single state capital in a few minutes, for example. If you take the argument to it's logical conclusion, we should have legal access to weapons equivalent to that of the military, which we already definitely do not.
I am just pointing out that an untrained populace armed with even military-style assault weapons is really just laughable if your enemy is the largest military that has ever existed with technology and weapons that could annihilate humanity. I just don't agree that it is productive to use that as an excuse against thoughtful regulation in the face of the actual, currently occuring epidemic of gun violence (accidents, suicides, school shootings, domestic violence, gang violence, etc) where people are really losing their lives.
You missed the part where I mentioned Vietnam, and the part where I asked what if half the military defects?
I'm against loss of human life too, that's why I'm pro-2nd Amendment. People can defend themselves. People can fight off tyranny. Given enough time, people will need to do that again.
Well, that would be why we have an amendment to the constitution that says 'the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.' As long as we follow that, guns won't be whites only.
what kind of magical thinking is that, that what the constitution says determines who has guns? anyway, it isn't the point. the point is that the majority are if anything more likely to support a tyrant than not, so the idea that gun nuts will save us from a tyrant they have at least a 50/50 shot of supporting is silly, and that's without considering the possibility that they'll save us from a tyrant who actually isn't a tyrant at all.
Pretty much anyone can get a gun, right? Because of the Constitution, right? Where's the magic thinking?
You say most people would support a tyrant, which may not be true but let's go with that. Given that, why wouldn't you want the opposition to that tyrrany to have guns? Your take seems defeatist. You want to just try to live peacefully as tyranny spreads?
One doesn't need a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms in order to keep and bear arms, only to do so legally. Expecting a tyrannical US regime to respect the 2nd Amendment in order to legitimize the means of its own demise seems shortsighted, and other countries manage to have revolutions and coups without a legal firearms market.
> I am just pointing out that an untrained populace armed with even military-style assault weapons is really just laughable if your enemy is the largest military that has ever existed with technology and weapons that could annihilate humanity.
Tell that to the Nazis. They were the military superpower of their time.
Except for the nuclear option every armed enemy can tie up >10 soldiers if they are going to try to keep people alive for slave labour/selective genocide/etc.
Edit: my point is that the Nazis had a giant technological advantage as well as a giant army and even powerful allies and still they were vulnerable to all kinds of sting operations.
Third reich army was trained. It was army. This is not an example of "untrained populace". This is example of well trained army from country with great military tradition.
The fight against nazi was ultimately won by armies, not by "untrained populace".
> Third reich army was trained. It was army. This is not an example of "untrained populace".
Yep. That is my point.
> The fight against nazi was ultimately won by armies, not by "untrained populace".
Also true. But local groups (and of course SOE operations) helped tying up their resources so they couldn't help on the eastern front or start the invasion of Britain.
From Wikipedia[0]: The following afternoon, on 8 May, ... At this time there were no fewer than 400,000 German troops in Norway, which had a population of barely three million.
The Brits weren't actually that far ahead of the civs in the ARWar, it was mostly a numbers issue, not a tech issue.
Vietnam wasn't on US soil, home-base would be infinitely cheaper.
> And even if you're right, that the US government is just that big and bad. What if half the military defects and joins the revolt?
The higher up they are the more nonexistant that chance gets, and the higher up you are the more likely it is that you have a kill-switch to any devices that can be used against the nation.
> People have the right to defend themselves, and must be trusted to do so. Otherwise you get something like England. Say the wrong thing and you go to jail. The 2nd Amendment keeps the government in check. Eventually, given enough time, it will need checking.
Actually, you have the US. People have been arrested for bible burning, [1] promoting Communistic views, [2] Japanese Internment Camps, [3] and more. It's absolutely anti-democratic, but the 2A supporters never will speak against these practices.
I don't think it's fair or accurate to say folks wouldn't speak out against those things.
Your argument is that people shouldn't have guns because we probably couldn't beat the government. I'll take my fighting chance. It's better to die free.
It's never going to be en masse. Australia enacted sufficient gun control to drastically limit mass shootings by introducing licensing, purpose and registration requirements as well as banning semi-automatics. There was a buyback scheme which most people complied with.
I do wonder if American resistance to sensible gun control will cause a flip straight over into hard restrictions, but it's difficult to see what the trigger event for that would be. Left-wing paramilitaries? (right-wing paramilitaries are seemingly tolerated!)
"sensible"? Since massive amoutns of guns have found their way to the public since the 1990s the crime rates across the US have been dropping dramatically. And even so the US isn't even close to the top of the list worldwide in per capita murder rate even though lots of people have weapons.
If anything those numbers show that there is at the very least no correlation between numbers of guns and crime, and may well indicate more guns means less crime. Since the US constitution protects ownership with the "shall not be infringed" clause and the stats show there's little downsides why stomp on people's rights?
At one point (1920 I think) there was an amendment which made alcohol illegal. It went on for 13 years and then was removed.
So there is a legal framework to add/remove amendments from the US Constitution, they are amendments after all, they were not there originally (I think 3 years after).
It was removed, but also (and maybe because) it was nearly impossible to effectively enforce. Gun restrictions would very much experience the same problems. There are millions of guns and gun owners in the US and many of those people are firm believers in their right to own a gun. They'd likely bury them in the yard or, as the old joke goes, "lose" them in a boating accident, before turning them over to authorities.
I personally would _never_ willingly turn mine in--they're for my and my family's protection and have saved my life before. I am certain many gun owners feels this way as well. Trying to enforce such a rule would be difficult, if not impossible.
I didn't really comment on if it was enforceable, just that in a logical manner there is a path for amendments to be removed, added or changed.
Doing minimal research on prohibition since I had no context into what triggered it: "Prohibition also united progressives and revivalists. The temperance movement had popularized the belief that alcohol was the major cause of most personal and social problems and prohibition was seen as the solution to the nation's poverty, crime, violence, and other ills." [0]
You could replace alcohol with firearms and the part about removing them being "solution to the nation's poverty, crime, violence, and other ills". I bet there are a lot of people that would believe that prohibiting firearms would help solve those issues.
Just because laws are not easy to enforce doesn't mean they can't happen. There are still counties in some states that are 'dry'.
I think he was alluding to the fact that although there is a legal way to make guns illegal, it won't actually get rid of guns, in much the same way making alcohol illegal didn't prevent people from drinking.
Do you understand that outside of obvious moral ethics - that a law against murder doesn't stop someone from murdering. It only gives lawyers a way to punish it.
It's the punishment that is the deterrent.
Why should law abiding gun owners be punished again?
Adding punitive laws is not a deterrent. Enforcing those laws is. We don't enforce many guns laws, then you come in yelling about adding more laws.
The logical conclusion isn't that laws have no meaning if they're broken, it's that they have no meaning if they aren't enforced, and we're not.
Parkland could have been avoided in at least 6 different ways. So tell me how your new-laws that make illegal things illegal-er would stop people with no criminal record from being bad.
A person is law abiding until they aren’t. It’s about keeping people from having ready access to so much lethality when that person decides to become a bad actor. Banning guns would lower the likelihood of a bad actor having as much lethality as they currently are easily able to acquire.
Parkland could have been avoided in a 7th way too. Without access to guns it wouldn’t have been as lethal.
Average national response time is 10 minutes, even in cities the median is 5min, but can be as high as 30min for some remote areas.
In certain situations there may be no police response at all, as was the case in 1992 Los Angeles riots or practically any major natural disaster.
The ‘let the police do it’ argument would only logically work with incredibly pervasive and invasive surveillance technology and/or police robots (https://goo.gl/wpMV8).
Even so, 2nd amendment would be even more relevant to balance the killer robots.
That might be a good argument in theory, if it wasn't for the part where US police don't have to protect citizens and all the population that are outside of effective police coverage. It's not the argument gun control campaigners seem to be making right now. They mainly seem to have gone for the approach of supporting police officers standing by and doing nothing as kids are murdered one by one. Given that, I suspect you're going to have a hard time convincing people who don't already agree with you that they should give up their guns and let the police take care of everything.
This isn't like organizing roles at a startup company. We're talking about an individual's right to defend themselves against someone bigger and stronger, someone with a weapon who wants to take your shit or fuck you or just fuck you up.
You put much faith in the Government, and I put it in the individual.
What happens when your police force is turned against you, becomes incompetent, gets lazy, or just doesn't show up?
It's idealistic. Life is a struggle for the individual, no matter how much we'd like to forget it or offload our worries.
Guns also equalizes the power disparity between a man and a woman. I see gun ownership as female empowerment, but the left never seems to mention that.
So ask the threat to wait a 5+ minutes while you call the cops?
Should we DRM 3D printers (DMLS@home is coming) to a walled garden of things? The 2nd Amendment is not separable from general purpose computing. Who needs "assult crypto" anyway?
It's a valid question. If we had something like phasers instead of firearms, I'd be more than happy to use those exclusively. The problem is we don't really have a good alternative. Tasers that shoot tend to be one shot solutions, and even then they don't always bring down targets, or they might prove as lethal. Rubber bullets you can fire multiple of, but they could cause serious damage too, especially if shot in succession, and there is no guarantee of taking the target down. There just isn't a solid alternative right now.
That is too simple.
The conclusion is the laws only work as long it is percieved better to follow than not, either by force, violence or social coercion or their actual concequences.
Drug laws for example does not really work, since some people self medicate no matter if there is a death sentence. Others don't care since they probably wont get caught.
While other laws kind of does work, people can rationally choose to follow them because the concequences of doing so are the "best" available option.
People do illegal things. This isn’t surprising nor an argument against making something illegal. If it could be shown that banning guns and making it illegal to sell guns didn’t decrease the frequency of their usage to commit crimes then I would no longer be advocate for banning guns.
Except that there is no correlation to gun ownership and crime.
We know the places that have more guns don’t have more crime, we can’t call correlation to that, but we do know adding guns doesn’t increase crime - because that’s been true since the high crime peak of the early 1990s where crime has been falling with guns skyrocketing.
It’s painfully childish to claim that it’s some surprise that where guns are that there is more gun-crime. Something can’t be abused where it doesn’t exist - the joke is that people look at gun-crime compared to overall crime.
Rape rates in Australia are 40-45% higher than the USA. If you’re a rapist, it’s much safer to “work” in Oz, does the rapist getting shot in the USA contribute to “gun-crime”? On paper, yes.
Adding guns probably doesn’t increase crime rate. It does the mass murder rate. It is precisely gun crime that I abhor. Thus I'm opposed to their availability.
Can't wait for the citation from an actual study (try the CDC, they've put out at least 3 since 2013)!
You should be able to easily show that rural USA with it's murder rate on part with Europe is definitely not the place where all our guns are... oh wait...
I don’t understand your sarcasm. I agreed with you that the crime rate has not gone up due to an increase in gun ownership. But guns in their current form certainly increase the lethality of those with bad intent. This isn’t deniable.
My claim is that the mass murder rate, the rate at which we have mass killings in the U.S. would go down if buying/selling guns were illegal.
Bumpstocks were banned in multiple steps, here in MA where they have a list of ALL people registered to own a firearm they sent a letter out "if you own a bump stock after x date, you're committing a felony". They got back 4 devices. In the WHOLE state. Even though everyone received a letter.
> Not everyone owns a bump stock. Anyway, you can also destroy it yourself.
This is an absurd comment. The parent stated that four units were returned state-wide. Asserting the ability to manually decommission them attempts to give the appearance of undermining the parent’s statement without actually addressing the issue.
I don’t think anyone here, even you, likely believes that even a majority of these were destroyed by the owners, let alone all but four.
Parent makes it sounds that most gun owners are not law abiding when they are. A gun ban will effectively confiscate guns from good people. Like it did in other countries.
Law abiding to not law abiding if new law / repeal of amendment happens, and they gave an example of a relavent instance.
Is your argument that you believe most/all law abiding citizens that currently own guns will willing destroy/turn over their guns of new laws pass against ownership?
Looking at reports on Australia it seems the effectiveness on turning in guns was anywhere from 40-80 percent. Effectiveness for prohibited guns was at 70%, so ~30% went from law abiding to not law abiding.
When we say majority of gun owners are ‘law-abididing citizens’ we mean they’re good and moral people, and not that they’re obedient subjects.
Your argument seems to be focused on semantics, which is fine, except you’re missing the point of this statement.
There’s very much a difference in disobeying a natural law like murder and an arbitrary, reactionary, and most of all, unconstitutional, law that’s designed to limit freedom and achieve nothing.
Civil disobedience is amoral. In fact, when the law in question is unjust or unconstitutional to disobey it is a virtue.
definition of words matter, word choice matters to avoid confusion it may cause.
if the original argument is that mostly good/moral people are the gun owners, i wouldn't know where to start on how they got that data, and came to that interpretation as both words are relative.
How about starting with the fact that are more guns than people in United States, and yet gun violence (excluding suicides) is on similar level as other developed countries, and on constant decline?
Major sources of gun violence are no different than in any other developed country, which unfortunately is in a big part fueled by the global failed drug prohibition, and committed with very much illegal firearms.
UK, for example, despite its strictest gun control, has much of the same problems, committed with more primitive tools, only leaving you to bleed out slower, but ending up just as dead (stab wounds are often more lethal than handgun calibers).
The surplus or deficit of guns does not affect the number of people already predisposed to capital crime. The law, unsurprisingly, only affects those that are willing to abide by it. Left defenseless, suspect by default and at mercy of the King.
Clearly, by the way of deduction, legally owned guns must then be in the hands of good & responsible people, for the most part. That, btw, includes 22% of Democrat voters (to 35% Republicans).
I don’t actually think that guns magically make people good or responsible (though they make other people more polite).
It’s likely just a correlation having to do with how firearm owners autoselect, based on range of personality traits and other criteria (like gender).
The statement “401(k) owners are on average good people” is probably equally true, though we don’t collect any data to disprove it, as far as I know.
Nevertheless, there’s some comfort in the fact that of the 370 million guns in United States, all but very few will more likely be used to save lives, rather than take them.
A grand experiment in freedom & liberty, nothing alike anywhere else in the world.
> Nevertheless, there’s some comfort in the fact that of the 370 million guns in United States, all but very few will more likely be used to save lives, rather than take them.
That's based on a false dichotomy; many won't be used at all, and many of the rest will be used for entertainment, not to save or take lives. And some will be used for multiole purposes (often simultaneously), potentially including both saving and taking lives. (A criminal who fatslly shoots a cop to make his escape from arrest on a capital offense, is, after all, both saving and taking a life, as is the cop who, being slightly faster in the same situation, fatally shoots the criminal first.)
I’ve tried to word around it carefully with ‘will more likely to be’, but obviously that’s true.
I think the number of firearms in US is quite remarkable, considering the fact that in my home country, Poland, only a single person in hundred owns a firearm.
If gun control was in any way effective at reducing crime, it should be very easy to demonstrate, with such significant differences in saturation.
Or... you can keep it and ignore the law. The above comment was highlighting the futility of this kind of ban, so I don’t see what voluntary disposal would do to realize it.
I would like it to be illegal for people to own guns. Those who violate the law (as the ban would be in the form of a law) would go to jail. Current owners would turn in their guns and those guns would be destroyed.
The 2nd Amendment is oddly worded. It does speak of a well regulated militia. I'm not a lawyer or a legal expert but it seems to me that banning the ownership of guns except for members of the militia should be constitutional. I could be wrong. It also seems to me that for those who tend toward original intent interpretations (majority of current Supreme Court) would agree that the founders only saw it fit that people be able to own guns with similar firepower and lethality as muskets. So I could see a law saying that we can own guns but they are quite limited in comparison to what is currently legal to own.
There are far more people in the country now versus 250 years ago. The population density is far greater. We are much more of an urban society. In such circumstances I see no necessity for allowing gun ownership. I don't think the propensity to assholeness has increased but by virtue of having far more people now than in the past the number of assholes has greatly increased. It's best that the lethality of devices we can carry be very much curtailed than what it currently is.
> It also seems to me that for those who tend toward original intent interpretations (majority of current Supreme Court) would agree that the founders only saw it fit that people be able to own guns with similar firepower and lethality as muskets.
You'd be wrong there. The Supreme Court agrees that the founders saw fit that people are armed with weapons similar to those used by the military, with certain restrictions.
And those weapons at the time were....muskets, bayonets. They had no vision of the M-16, AK-47, etc. The statement of the 2nd Amendment begins with, "A well regulated militia..." So let's well regulate it.
According to Wikipedia:
In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that, "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence" and limited the scope of the Second Amendment's protections to the federal government.[11] In United States v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment did not protect weapon types not having a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia".[12][13]
As I stated, I have no expertise in this matter. If it requires a repeal then that is what I would favor.
So, obviously, the First Amendment only applies to quill pens and manually-operated printing presses. Right?
"The statement of the 2nd Amendment begins with, "A well regulated militia...""
If the First Amendment had read "A well-educated legislature being essential to the governance of a free state, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed" you would argue, what? That only well-educated people should have books? That only the legislature should have books?
No, you wouldn't. Neither would anyone else, because that would be a contrived and nonsensical interpretation of the language.
Well if the first amendment were stated differently than what it is then people would interpret it differently. I fail to see your point on that.
There is much that the writers of the constitution didn’t foresee. I think it’s ridiculous, in many cases, to try to seek what they originally intended. Society is far more complex now than it was then. I mentioned their views for the self described originalists. These people tend to have a very broad interpretation to what the second amendment means but narrowly interpret other parts of the Constitution.
The 2nd amendment has had many cases before the Supreme Court. It wasn’t until 2008 with Heller that it was interpreted to mean an actual right to own guns. As far as I understand the history of the legal interpretation if the second amendment. It appears the modern interpretation is out of sync with what the founders intended.
My interpretation of the 2nd is that not only does it make explicit the right to own and carry arms, but also the right to own any and all arms of military relevance. You can't fight off King George XXIII if he has war machines imaginable only by the likes of Tyssot, Swift, Mercier, or Restif, and you still only have your musket from the 1770s.
At the time of drafting, the founders hadn't yet encountered the Pawnee vs. Cheyenne/Lakota style of total warfare, and had barely even invented hit-and-run tactics. As such, it would have been prudent to amend the amendment at least once in the last 230 years. I'd prefer that laws banning chemical, nuclear, radiological, and biological weapons would have constitutional backing, that torture and other war crimes be banned explicitly, and there be some concession for denying deadly munitions to antisocial maniacs and bellicose outlaws.
Reinterpretation is not the proper channel towards rational arms policy, or to resolve any other problem with the document not anticipating societal progress. Amendment is the prescribed remedy. There have been calls in the past to convene an Article 5 Amendments Convention, as it is the only way to propose an amendment when the Congress won't, but we've never actually had one. Perhaps it is time?
The Second Amendment did not limit the type of arms it applied to, and the reason that it's preamble referred to the dependency of the security of a free state on a well-regulated militia was because it was in the context of the best universal opinion at the time that large standing professional armed forces for either internal security or international conflict were a mechanism of tyranny, and that having a free country absolutely required a dependency on avoiding those and instead relying on mobilizing the armed populace (with all the weapons of war) to deal with internal and external threats.
Leaving aside gun laws, we've long since completely abandoned the premise of the second amendment on a far more fundamental level with our professional militaries and paramilitary police forces.
Only because Miller was not properly heard almost 100years ago.
Short barrel shotguns were extremely common in world war 1 trench warfare, and that’s what Miller was charged with. Too bad he was dead before the supreme court heard that case.
Please man, the pre-Heller 2008 argument of “well regulated” where you need to pretend means “lots of regulations” and not the real meaning of “well trained and in good working order” is tired.
Leave that nonsense at Reddit.
I used to... I still find it interesting how the “collective right” angle is pushed post Heller and MacDonald with the obviousness that’s always been there of “can you read the rest of the right past the first few words?”
How would you regulate the training---what if you fail the training that's required to be part of a well-regulated militia? If the right to bear arms would be only contingent to being part of a militia, would the failure void your right to bear arms? (serious question)
Why in your interpretation of government subsidized training/ammo is it a requirement?
If the constitution is a document that explains the natural rights of citizens, and is restrictions on the government (which it is)... Then saying A well-regulated militia being necessity to a free state - would imply that government is obligated to train and supply ammo - any requirements for this to be part of your rights would be null considering the next words are "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Note that it says "the right of the people" (as a whole), not the right of "people" (all of them).
The right is not there for everyone. It's only applicable inasmuch as you are part of the militia, and can be restricted if you're not.
Regulating the militia (just like saying what e.g. is due process) is up to the law, and can be arbitrarily restrictive as long as the overall right of the American people to form an armed militia is not infringed. For example, prohibiting hunting would be just fine.
I’m not a lawyer, never claimed to be an expert. Heller is a recent ruling. Previous rulings contradict Heller in some aspects. See, the way the Cinstituion is interpreted over time changes. It’s not like we are bound by a ruling for all eternity.
The reasoning is not tired. It’s how I interpret the text. Fortunately for your position my interpretation doesn’t matter since I’m not on the Supreme Court. Indeed, even decades after Roe v Wade people still argue against the reasoning used in that ruling and desire change.
It’s not nonsense to advocate for one's position just because there is a Supreme Court ruling against that position.
Using words that don't mean what you think they mean is a bad argument.
Sorry, well-regulated means well trained and in good working order.
Militia - is you and I, and anyone else of able body that can fight for defense of self and country.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. - that's the part you apparently didn't read. Of all the bill of rights, they all apply to people directly - except of course 2A where you say "people" is collective inexplicably.
Hey, I'm not arguing. Keep using arguments that very old, very tired, well defeated by logic and precedent. It makes my job as someone who cares about civil rights easier.
I quoted a Supreme Court ruling in which the justices said there was no such right enshrined in the 2nd amendment. Thus there are people who are learned in the law who disagree with your position. Is it really hard for you to imagine that well educated, knowledgeable people can come to a different conclusion than you on what the 2nd amendment means?
I’m claim neither to be well educated or knowledgeable. I do claim that when I read that amendment it seems to give the government broad powers of regulation over gun ownership.
As I’ve said through these posts, fight for your rights. Be vigilant. We are on opposite sides but open debate and discussion is good for a democracy. Maybe my view will prevail in the coming decades. Maybe not. Societies evolve and views change. Only by people of like mind to you being willing to advocate for your rights will my position be prevented from becoming normative.
> I’m claim neither to be well educated or knowledgeable. I do claim that when I read that amendment it seems to give the government broad powers of regulation over gun ownership.
I highly recommend that you either stop holding these ill-informed opinions by your own admission or stop prefixing your every post with the same disclaimer.
I doubt that you are an expert on all topics you post about. I'm actually well educated. So now I am claiming this. Mostly in mathematics, physics, logic, and history. I'm not an expert in any area outside of mathematics.
However, just like you, my lack of expertise does not preclude me from having an opinion and stating those opinions. Since there are experts who agree with me that the 2nd amendment gives the government powers of regulation it's hard to credibly claim that my position is ill informed. Even if my reasons are ill-informed why should I stop from engaging in conversation? That's the best way to learn.
I've not denigrated anyone or suggested that anyone was ill-informed or otherwise try to diminish those who disagree with me. I'm not so full of myself that the act of dissent from my position causes me to lash out or attempt to quash said dissent. In fact the contrary is true. Several times in these threads I've said to those with whom I disagree that they should fight for their rights and remain vigilant.
Stand up for your beliefs. I will stand up for mine. I hope someday that gun ownership will be viewed with horror by the general populace. My position will not win out if well reasoned individuals who disagree with me remain vigilant and proactive.
While the military arms at the time were muskets and bayonets, that was not the only technology available. Many colonial troops had rifles of their own that they used. These rifles were superior to the British musket in many regards and helped the colonial troops win.
Surely the founding fathers were aware of this and knew that the second amendment would allow citizens to have weapons that were more deadly than the standard military firearm at the time. In fact, this trend even continued well into the Vietnam war. It was really only in the past 50 or so years that the military has eclipsed the citizens in terms of standard issue firepower.
So no, the founding fathers were not aware of the M-16 and AK-47[0], but they also had more than muskets and bayonets, and were perfectly content to have a citizenry that outgunned the military.
[0] - I should note that the M-16 and AK-47 are essentially illegal in the US at this point, along with any weapons of similar firepower, so that point seems moot anyway. The only people able to acquire them are incredibly rich collectors.
Many, many more recent cases have conflicted with Cruikshank and chipped away at its jurisprudence. The court was not well run or fair in those days.
Miller is especially bad case law too, he was dead by the time it was heard and essentially no one even argued that side of the case - it was a total sham.
There are two "militias", the national guard, and the unorganized militia...
When I read the Federalist papers, I interrupted it as Hamilton and Jay were trying to describe a defense strategy of the country, which included internal, and external threats. When I read it, I got the feeling they both were very much against the state of affairs we have today. They advocated for a small professional army, and a large reserve of men if needed.
I personally feel this is the right model, today our DoD budget is 600 BILLION dollars! Every social service other first world countries have, we can't afford. That is directly a result of our military spending. If we spent less getting into conflicts we probably don't need to be involved in (I still do not understand what the national interest in Afghanistan and Iraq is), and we had a very large reserve of men. We could maintain the defense readiness we have today, but also have publically funded education, healthcare etc.
I do concede that the requirements of training are much different though. A model like Switzerland's militia might be preferable. In their model, each citizen has 1 year of conscripted service. It's spread out a bit but is an adequate amount of time to train someone properly. It also provides a method for "weeding" out individuals who should not be a part of this reserve. Their gun laws are also far more strict. Gun ownership is more of a privilege there. I don't know how much of that we can do here, but I think it's a good example of how to build a militia in modern times.
> Every social service other first world countries have, we can't afford. That is directly a result of our military spending.
The US spends a lot on its military, but it's only about 15% of central government spending. When you look at spending as a percentage of GDP, we (3.3%) are not that far off from European powers like France (2.3%) or the UK (1.9%) whose defense we essentially subsidize through NATO. We just have a much larger economy so that 3.3% turns out to be a really big number.
There's no obvious (to me) fiscal reason why our social services have to be so poor, so I have to assume we just suck at allocating the money (possibly intentional).
I can't recreate your math, but I don't think that's important for the point.
By your numbers, there's a 1% difference. On the scale of the GDP, that is a HUGE number. I think looking at the absolute numbers matters. Free higher education for everyone would cost $75 billion (according to Bernie Sanders). Trump asked for an additional $116 billion dollars for defense. I don't see the logic in arguing if we can afford $600 billion, and another $116 billion, while at the same time arguing $75 billion is impossible and would bankrupt the country. We're clearly making priorities.
the 15% turned out to be a lowball, it's more like 17% if you use the 2015 numbers from wikipedia[0]. I got the %GDP numbers from wikipedia as well[1].
> Free higher education for everyone would cost $75 billion.
this I find hard to believe. the US government estimated that ~20 million students would be enrolled in college/university in fall 2017. assuming enrollment would not increase if college were free, that $75 billion works out to about $3750 per student. this substantially undercuts even in-state tuition at the average community college, which already receives significant funding from the government.
although I pushed back on that particular claim by Sanders, I still maintain that we have an allocation problem, not a money problem. according to 2012 data[2] the US government spends almost exactly the same percentage of its GDP on education as the UK, and we are in the high range of money spent per student in primary and secondary education[3].
i'm no expert, but this doesn't look like the kind of thing where you can just throw money at it and expect it to work. we should figure out how to use the money we already have to produce more similar outcomes to those in Western Europe.
The original question was about your legal mechanism for implementation of a ban on private ownership on weapons. What change would you make to existing laws to enact this ban?
Additionally, what is your plan to deal with the potential for violent, armed resistance to this ban, and in what facilities would you put all of the violators of this ban?
When all the stories first started coming out about U.S. torture around 2005 the first stage was denial by supporters of Bush. The number of intelligence officials, the number of investigative reports, etc. is such that someone denying Russian influence is being willfully naive. The question isn’t if they did influence the election it’s just how much the influence really was. It is beyond question that the Russians were involved in shenanigans. The U.S. has regularly unduly influenced elections in other countries so I don’t begrudge the Russians for what they did. I do begrudge those of our leaders who don’t care.
Cap-and-trade worked well with acid rain. As with any policy if it is not written well, is poorly enforced, or poorly implemented it will likely fail. It can be implemented well.
The U.S. Acid Rain Program begun in 1995—the best example yet of how the cap-and-trade idea can work—saw allowance prices drop from more than $1,500 to less than $1 based on changes first proposed by the Bush administration. And acid rain may be less but it has not gone away.
The article indicates a reduction in acid rain. It furthermore indicates that much of problems with cap and trade stem from poor execution. Anything will fail if it is poorly executed, written to allow loopholes, or is poorly regulated. I think the problem is poor governance and a populace that allows such to happen. It can work.
Is it possible that 2 is a consequence of other factors? Like climate change or some other combinations of forces? Was the economy unable to support the number of forces due to climate change and as a result debasement of currency was seen as the best way forward?
Hyperinflation wasn’t game over for Germany. It had a brief empire shortly after it’s hyperinflation period.
Yes, but they are tied! I can't remember which emperor said something along the lines of "as long as i have the army behind me", but the scales had been tipping beyond the balance between gov / private citizens.
I think its hard to find out which came first, but the moment the government started minting 99% gold coin (and they got away with it) -> 95% gold -> 90% gold till its a worthless "gold" coin too many bad things got put in motion.
I do agree its a confluence of factors. Maybe they expanded too much -> need more money -> print money -> cant exactly fire all the expeditionary forces -> print more money -> squeeze taxes out of populace -> people are getting fed up so output and tax revenues go down -> empire is too big -> attacks on Germany and Europe from the barbarians -> print more money to pay military -> squeeze people - > ad nauseum.
There's an established economic principle that "bad money drives out good". So while I do not think that just printing money is the only cause, once it occurs its down hill. You have to somehow figure out how you will try and reign it all in (thats what they tell themselves at least).
As to the Germany example, the hyper inflation can be fixed though who can really tell how traumatizing and painful it can be to those going through it. For sure it caused some discord and animosity and some people attribute it to the rise of Hitler and so forth.
My point generally is that historians should look at the entirety of factors and weigh them together. It is all too easy to point a quick finger at the military expansion, or climate or whatever and not combine them all. Very few places look at monetary theory probably because its relatively new (really with Friedman's work in middle 20th century), but also because it muddles the simplistic reason.
I see this phenomenon on HN and Reddit quite a bit. Some expert will publish a paper and there is inevitably a comment of the form, “The conclusion could be a result of...therefore the paper is trash.” People act as though their initial ruminations on a topic qualify them to properly critique an expert's research.
I try to keep in mind that if I could think of a possible objection or insight with a few minutes of thought then the expert is surely aware of this too. I think it’s common for someone who has acquired expertise on one area to think their insights apply to other unrelated areas. For instance Paul Graham has famously bashed philosophers but he certain doesn’t know what he is talking about.
I don’t understand this mentality. Every sufficiently large collection of people in the history of the world has had taxation. The evidence suggests that taxation is necessary to have a functioning society. Reasonable people can and do question taxations levels but not on the necessity of having taxes. It is unreasonable to consider taxation theft.
It's libertarian extremism. It's simply the reverse of communism, where the taxation level is 100%, and the state provides everything. Under this model, the taxation level is 0, and the government provides nothing.
I actually have a hard time thinking the other way around.
> Every sufficiently large collection of people in the history of the world has had taxation.
That's not really an argument in favor of taxes, many things have existed for a long time. And many wars were fought purely or most importantly on taxes: most of the american revolutions of independence were largely about taxes or tax-like sanctions.
Taxation has always been a contentious topic.
> Reasonable people can and do question taxations levels but not on the necessity of having taxes. It is unreasonable to consider taxation theft.
There are many arguments and school of thought within libertarians and anarco-capitalists. I'm no expert, but the taxation is theft argument does have nuances.
Taxation IS theft, because it is involuntary, and unless you concede the tax man a privilege over yourself, he is stealing from you. To me this is a non-negotiable concept: you are one way or another being forced to give your labor under threat of liberty.
But the reality is there are ways in the which theft can be justified, the same way we tend to forgive a robber that eats for sustenance, theft can be justified to pay for the military that gives you freedom in exchange of their lives.
You can eliminate taxes 100% if you made contributions voluntary. This is utopic in today's world, maybe, but not in the next world, the one we get to design and work towards to.
Who-would-pay-for-roads is as dumb a meme as taxation-is-theft. I complain about taxes all the time, but I wouldn't complain as much if the publicly funded roads I drive on most weren't absolutely shitty and if the snow removal that's part of my local government budget was actually done anywhere near where I live. I wouldn't complain as much if my state wasn't going into debt for the next 70 years to do upgrades and talking about charging tolls for other upgrades. I wouldn't complain as much if any significant percentage of my taxes were actually going to roads, and not political agendas, pet projects, wars on drugs and unauthorized wars on brown people who don't like our foreign policy. And I wouldn't complain as much if I didn't have to spend days and hire professionals to figure out how much I owe the road makers. Fuck the roads.
It’s not a meme. It’s a proper question to those who decry taxation as theft. Without taxation who would pay for government services? Your complaint about the road system indicates that taxes ought to be higher or are currently misallocated. The ire is not at the concept of taxation it’s at the allocation and level of taxation.
The fact that a government agency fails to provide the services you're taxed to pay for does not mean they should get more money. I pay far higher taxes where I live now than when I lived in an openly socialist country that had better roads, faster police response times, better (and universal) healthcare. Every time I dig into specific government projects the amount of waste and corruption is disgusting. Wanting to throw more money at it is stupid, and the burden of proof is not on the people who want to be taxed less that it's actually doing anything.
You apparently missed the “or are misallocated” part and completely missed the point of what I wrote. It seems like you are doing some projecting. My post does not in any way imply a “throw more money” attitude. Also, the original statement I responded to was an attitude that taxation is theft. It was not a statement about whether or not taxes should be reduced. Indeed, in my first post I specifically mentioned that reasonable people can and do question taxation levels.
I have complaints about the roads in the area where I live, and also how my taxes are spent.
If I didn't have roads in the area where I live, I wouldn't complain about it, I'd leave.
There's a pretty big difference between these two situations. It's easy to focus on the bad side of taxes, but it's important not to forget that they pay for some very basic stuff that shouldn't be taken for granted. There are plenty of things we would disagree about spending taxes on, I'm sure, but it's rather silly to pretend that you disagree with the existence of taxes completely when in fact you depend on them.
You may have noticed that I'm not saying taxation is theft. I'm saying I'm against the massive portion of government spending that I think is rank with abuse, waste and misuse of power. I actually spent several days in the last year looking into what my property taxes are supposed to be paying for at the county level and exactly none of the services are being done near my property, except for one, and that one service complains about not having enough money even when they get massive bumps in their budget - no matter what they ask for, when they receive it it's not enough for them to fulfill their obligations. Taxation in general - no I think it's necessary one way or another for our society. But I think the vast majority of it is wasted without enough accountability or integrity. But I guess I can always vote against the people doing, right? Yeah that's working great. But it's just justified with, "but we have to have roads."
I wonder what would happen if we allowed everyone paying taxes to dedicate a small percentage to a field they feel is important and underpaid, e.g. by choosing a category like education, road infrastructure, social services, military... for planning reasons this could be done a year in advance.
Would that make people feel more agency and ownership in their nation? Or would it produce (small) chaos?
Wouldn't change my feelings much because it doesn't do anything to address my current problems with the system. I would bet the same amount I pay in taxes that all it would do is increase the demand for money by agencies without any increase in accountability or thriftiness.
The one rule that annoys me the most in local tax spenders is how you cannot give money back to the state that you don't need that year, because then you will get less next year as well since obviously you didn't need it. At the end of the year you can see employees spend money on the most ridiculous things since they have to spend it all. At this point I think it's because the money is not meant for their task at all but rather to stimulate the (local?) economy, and that is not done by saving.
I'm not sure how the rules would have to be changed to allow for giving money back (and use it to pay for state debt, but that is probably not politically wished for either), since there most probably would be side effects. Still, this rule.. (Germany, but I've heard about others as well)
Does somebody know why this rule exists?
At some point I complained to a state minister at some election thing, but I think he was too drunk to understand since he kept saying he didn't know what I was talking about and wanted to know who is doing this thing.
Yes, the parent comment was equally stupid. Parent comment doesn't wage the longest war in US history without ever voting on whether or not to wage it, make me pay for it, and then blame roads.
I think if you actually listened to the people making the roads argument instead of reacting to what you incorrectly think people are saying, you'd discover that most of them (myself included) oppose US military spending.
EDIT: Given the things you are complaining about, it seems like we're fairly in agreement about how we would like tax spending to be allocated.
It seems like you believe that removing/reducing taxes is more realistic than reallocating spending. It's a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but I can see how this is choosing a realistic imperfect solution over an unrealistic perfect one.
In fact, I'd agree with you if you could separate the issue of taxation from the issue of spending allocation, but unfortunately, you can't. Taxation isn't actually strongly correlated with spending in the US. Historically, conservatives have decreased taxes while increasing spending (largely on the military). If you vote for people who run on a platform of decreasing spending, what you end up with historically in the US is people who cut a few token programs (welfare, for example) and pump far more money into the military than was saved by their cuts, increasing the national debt. The result is that by pushing for tax cuts you actually exacerbate the allocation problems you've pointed out.
>> the issue of taxation from the issue of spending allocation
Yeah and I think that mismatch is exactly how it's gotten so bad. How is it that we still have "the war", undeclared, after 16+ years? It's because everything is now enabled through whether or not there's a budget for it, and you can pretty much accept the budget or shut down the government, and everyone keeps choosing to just accept the budget and not hold their party responsible for promising shit again.
Alternative viewpoint: traditionally taxation was done by the monarchs/oligarchs because they had the power to do so and in order to secure their position even further. This simply continued into the modern age. The evidence seems to suggest that consolidation and reallocation of resources through taxation is extremely inefficient.
I consider it unreasonable to claim it is unreasonable to consider taxation theft. It happening for a long time isn't a strong enough argument.
Taxation has been done by governments because all governments need money to function. Even in the monarch era localities needed money to run as well. It’s not the case that under monarchs taxes only went to the monarch to further his/her position.
The proper view is that government regardless of political system needs taxation to function. Calling taxation theft is unreasonable because the evidence is that it is a necessary aspect of having a society. It is not theft by any reasonable interpretation of the word.
I disagree that there is evidence showing it is a necessary aspect of having a society, though. What we have is evidence that societies with tax can function reasonably well, not that societies without tax are not able to function.
It is obvious that any system doing useful work needs resources, and money is a fungible way of representing those resources. However, in my opinion, it is unreasonable to say with certainty that taxation is the uniquely existent solution to this problem or even the best one.
Taxation has an inherent element of force to it, taking forcefully the product of someone's labour to redistribute it to other parties. I would say the element of forced redistribution qualifies it for at least some reasonable definitions of theft (albeit a theft with a good intent, under some definition of "good"). In any case, I am having a hard time drawing a clear line between taxation and, for example, Robin Hood-style redistribution, other than the current governments of the world being recognised as a sanctioned, official, good-enough Robin Hood occupying a local minimum.
Another problem of taxation is the well known market inefficiency of the very act of piling up resources in a central place and then trying to allocate them manually to where they are needed. There is plenty of empirical evidence that systems like this tend to swell in size for no good reason other than serving their own existence.
The wait time of someone without access to care is infinity. The average wait time for the overall population is not lower in the U.S. It is lower for those with access to the system.
All healthcare systems have to ration care. The U.S. rations care in an immoral way.
Yes, I don't like the fact that those who work hard and honestly cannot afford the necessary work. Another dear friend in Texas may need rotator cuff surgery. She and her hard-working husband have discussed the matter; they cannot afford it. It seems immoral that though she needs surgery she cannot afford it.
But there is more to the morality of it than what you state: Our system, for all its faults, naturally favors those who choose to excel in their field. By contrast, those who choose to steal from their neighbors by taking an easy route, whether by doing mediocre work, or by not studying, or by not working at all, will find themselves left out.
DON'T HEAR WHAT I'M NOT SAYING. I'm not saying everyone who is poor is lazy! My Texan friend is a hard worker. Where they might have gone wrong is the choice of career path and education. But many do indeed choose the easy route. Earlier this year I was seeking to help a poor family move, get a job, get education. I could see them consistently choosing the easy route, and they suffer because of it. Their daughter suffered most because of it.
My dear Texan friend likely could pay for her rotator cuff surgery if she or her husband had a startup in which they poured their lives and passions into. (I am hoping to help them do just that.) The United States is in the top 10 countries for ease of starting a business.[1] (To be fair, New Zealand is single payer and is first. I'm not saying the system is perfect.)
Rewarding career excellence it seems to me has a broader impact on the culture around. Better workers pay more into insurance to help others. And better workers improve the systems and products that they touch.
Don't hear me say however that I think the system is perfect. I am a Christian and my command from Jesus is to help the needy, and we don't do that as well as I'd like. That's why I am aiming to bring better healthcare and careers to people in the poorest of nations. I have a side project I'm working on for the people of Haiti, and I don't see any reason it would fail to help many dozens or thousands (or millions?) of needy.[2] I have high hopes that in 20 years many more people in Haiti will be able to afford health care, and not because their government made it much more affordable or available. There is little hope of that in a corrupt nation like Haiti.
So I'm hoping to take the skills I have excelled in to help others to help themselves to improve their own skills, so that they too may be able to enjoy the same benefits I have.
TL;DR: There is more to morality than helping those who cannot pay. Our system seems to be, whether knowingly or unknowingly, guided by the "if a man will not work, he shall not eat" principle, and the moral response for those living under such a system is to both work hard to better one's own life and the lives of everyone who uses the products of one's skills; and to lend a hand to one's neighbor on an individual level, to help them to help themselves.
We all are guided by some form of absolute morality; please ensure yours takes into account all factors.
Yeaaah, I remember you having very odd, non reality based objections to geology yesterday, too. Now I know why.
I would suggest that you re-evalute your ideas, they seem utterly crazy to me. We aren't all born with the same skills, even if we all work as hard and smart as we can we aren't all going to make six figure salaries so that we can afford medicine. Someone has to dig the ditches and take out the garbage, and you should not be using twisted religious logic to condemn your garbage man to death.
Straw man attack. I don't condemn garbage men, and I said so very clearly if you would go back and re-read. I want them to in their spare time pick up Lean Startup and learn what they need to start a business. You're on the YCombinator website. You of all people should agree.
I repeat: We are all guided by absolute morality.* Ensure yours takes into account ALL factors.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get my business off the ground. Can’t spend my whole day here chatting. People in Texas and in Haiti lack healthcare and I’m aiming to do something positive about that.
* Edited to add exhibit A, the statement above by yequalsx: "The U.S. rations care [does so] in an immoral way."[1] That is a statement of absolute morality on the part of yequalsx. I didn't bring up morality, they did. Their belief is absolute; it is not relative. They do not believe that what is good for them is only good for them, but that this morality must be obeyed by the entire world. That is an absolute standard.
The hole in this absolute moral standard is it seems to fail to take into account those who either steal or who miss out on opportunities due to a lack of awareness. See my carefully-worded comments above.[2]
Our system, for all its faults, naturally favors those who choose to excel in their field. By contrast, those who choose to steal from their neighbors by taking an easy route, whether by doing mediocre work, or by not studying, or by not working at all, will find themselves left out.
According to your first paragraph you realize there is not a dichotomy. It is not the case that everyone falls into the "excels in their field" and "steal from their neighbors" camps. Indeed your example demonstrates this. So our system is immoral in how it rations care. That is all I said.
You said the phrase, "steals from their neighbors". I guess this refers to welfare recipients and some sort of belief that taxation used to help loafers is theft. This is most disturbing to me. The one you follow has it written in his book that the love of money is the root of all evil. He said with regard to taxes pay unto Caesar what is Caesar's. He said to his disciples that at judgment he will divide people into his left and right and say to the one group you fed me when I was hungry, clothed me when I was naked and that they did this when they fed and clothed the least of their brethren. He mentioned the parable of the Good Samaritan.
You mention a brief passage in 2 Thessalonians 3:10. A passage clearly taken out of context. Yes the phrase, "if a man will not work, he shall not eat" is in the Bible. You should realize though that it was said to believers in Thessalonica. Your usage of the phrase and it's use by right wing Christians in the U.S. is completely out of context.
Given what Jesus said with regard to helping others vs. a passage taken out of context written by Paul I think you have your priorities wrong. I will paraphrase what H.L. Mencken said. The modern right leaning version of Christianity as practiced in the U.S. can best be described as people who have the haunting fear that someone, somewhere is getting something they don't deserve. This is quite ironic since the whole premise of Christianity is that some will be saved even though none deserve it.
I choose not to focus on possibility that someone will get healthcare even though they don't deserve it. I choose to focus on the possibility that everyone has value and is worthy of being cared for. I choose to focus on this because in my view it is the moral thing to do. I'm not a Christian.
No it doesn’t, as a more careful reading of my words would reveal. I’m not interested in discussing this with someone who won’t carefully read, so I wish you good day and God bless.
Hence my use of, "I guess...". I didn't know what exactly you were referring to with the phrase in question. However, the remainder of what I wrote remains on point and valid as that had to do with your selective reading of the Bible.
The space that is enclosed by a unit sphere in dimension 1 is the interval (-1, 1). In physics this is measured in meters. This is referred to as length. The space enclosed by the unit sphere in dimension 2 is measured in meters squared. This is referred to as area. In dimension 3 we call it volume and measure it in meters cubed.
In dimensions 4 through infinity we quickly come to a problem. Do we come up with unique names to refer to amount of space enclosed by a unit sphere? Mathematicians have decided to just use the word volume. We rely on context to make it clear what the dimension is. Similarly we use the word n-sphere to refer to the collection of points in n-dimensional space that are exactly 1 unit from the origin.
In my applied mathematics education the highest-dimensional unit of measurement of a given dimensionality was referred to generally as ‘content’: length is the content of 1D objects, area is the content of 2D objects, volume is the content of 3D objects, hypervolume is the content of 4D objects, and henceforth you just start numbering them...
