Originally Posted by Tunescribe

It's weird how I feel myself being pushed to the right on this issue. I don't own a gun and have never considered myself "pro-gun," but the anti-gun hysteria and knee-jerk responses to Sandy Hook (including New York legislation) are an emotion-driven phenomenon that badly misses the point of what causes gun violence. Then again, I tend to find myself at odds with whatever is "popular," "exciting" and "fashionable."

Originally Posted by Drewski

Tunescribe spitting hot fire...nice post buddy.

EDIT: My POV: gun violence is an symptom of an underlying "disease" and not the disease itself. So "banning" guns isn't a cure for the disease...more like a bandaid.

We have a society and culture problem...which gun violence manifests itself from.

I do find it ironic that most of the recent shooter's (going back to the 90s) are all mostly younger people...who grew up in the last two generations of psych med proliferation (Ritalin, Prozac et al).

Originally Posted by Patters

As long as right argues that guns are needed as weapons, they will continue to awaken the gun control crowd. Weapons are dangerous no matter whose hands they are in. When the gun owners were simply a group of sportspeople and collectors, they weren't as dangerous. The right-wing is the worst enemy of gun owners in that way.

Originally Posted by Patters

I have a good understanding. It was created to preserve the militias in the southern states so that they could reign in the slaves. I think as white men lose their special privileges to women, minorities, gays, and others, they cling to this last area of power (and let's face it this is primarily a conservative white male issue) with desperation. I don't think they want a return to slavery, but the fight for extreme gun rights is a hysterical emotional response to their loss of superior rights. (At any rate, personally I do not support guns as weapons.)

To quote Patrick Henry:

"If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia."

Originally Posted by PatsFanInVa

Sort of the like the National Firearms Act of '34, which banned machine guns in private hands, with the help of... wait for it...

The National Rifle Association.

PFnV

Originally Posted by PatsFanInVa

Gunnails, I've looked at it from the point of view of the types of compromises written into it, to get an idea of the intent from the first version through to the ratified version (sorry, not from the point of view of perpetuating slavery, although that's implicit in some of what I found.)

Here's a bit of what I found:

Text as adopted by Congress:
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.

Text as ratified:
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.

- Hamilton in Federalist #29 talks about the Militia, and how it should be subordinated to national control in everything but training, which should be handled by the states

- The Militia is a big part of Article I, Section 8, on the armed forces. It's considered the basic unit of national defense, although Congress can appropriate a national army but not for more than 2 years at a time (by contrast, the Navy is a standing institution.) It follows Hamilton's prescriptions in part (training and organization is each state's concern, but the national government can call up state militias for national defense.)

- An interesting bit is that Militia and State started out capitalized, as passed by Congress, and ended up lower-case, as ratified by the states. Probably that was a states' rights/anti-federalist flourish. In other words, they wanted wiggle room to say it was about the militia of the free state of Delaware, rather than THE Militia, necessary to THE State, i.e., the Union.

- The capitalization controversy may well be part of the slavery link -- I don't know. However, if the guns/slaves argument is saying that the purpose of the second amendment was solely to perpetuate slavery, I have to disagree. But I do think it was their idea of how to form a citizen army, and had nothing to do with individuals having the right to carry around their AR-15s.

- Notwithstanding the above, there's lots of lofty rhetoric about "resistance to tyranny" as well (gun righties, you should be delighted with this). Jefferson openly scoffs at European nations who do not trust their populaces with arms, basically saying any government that doesn't trust its people to be armed really shouldn't be trusted anyway. Ha-ha, France, our own people are the source of our power.

The second amendment is the only one that states its purpose, in no uncertain terms. It took right-wing judicial activists to overturn that aspect from the bench, but it is now the law of the land that the amendment applies to individuals with no relationship to "the militia." It's no accident. Just for fun, here's Madison's first draft, before "markup."



It's pretty clear here that the goal is to make clear that the militia is the basic unit of defense (Reinforcing that side of the standing army/militia balance between the federalists and anti-federalists), but that its purpose was the defense of the country. The reference to compulsive service and conscientious objection clarifies that militia duty is considered otherwise compulsory.

George Mason argued that the whole of the people constituted the militia; they were the militia, at least in theory, so the universal right to keep/bear arms was as friendly to federalists as anti-federalists.

In countries like Switzerland and Israel, they do tie the right to bear arms to active service in the citizens' army/"militia," pretty much per the intent of the American principle. Go figger.

One more tidbit that should echo in a Massachusetts-centered crowd... Shay's Rebellion was fresh in the minds of the Federalists. They were not too happy that a tax revolt could have any success against the armed forces. I mean, that's just anarchy. It was the anti-federalists, the ideological forebears of the confederates, who were most concerned about the "tyranny" of a central government.

The arguments around and purpose of the second amendment in the 18th century have very little to do with the fetishists and hobbyists who most often parrot its practical application (but not its purpose statement) today. We have settled that it's not "tyranny" for the U.S. to have a one-way door to state entry; if you're in, you're in. No backsies, Johnny Reb. We have well established that you can't own machine guns, much less nuclear weapons to fight "the Union" from your backyard silos.

Yet we've somehow done the old switcheroo with this amendment, and reinterpreted it beyond the contemporaneous definitions.

No, you can't make your own laws because you have guns. Even at the time, within the Constitution, one of the enumerated purposes of the militia was to quash rebellions. No, you can't secede from the union because you have guns. Ice T says you have to own guns to resist the tyranny of the police. Although I disagree, that's the most cogent appeal I've seen to the original anti-tyranny arguments around the amendment.

::shrug:: but here we are. Nobody is trying to take away guns. Present provisions are intended to reduce ease of access and increase oversight, so we have a better idea of how to trace them. Me, I'd make gun owners responsible for their whereabouts at all times in addition.

But that's just cuz I'm serious about stopping the carnage. Electorally, that's a non-starter, cuz We The People like our guns... just not too many, and not with too many bullets in the mag, and not with too much firepower.

Sort of the like the National Firearms Act of '34, which banned machine guns in private hands, with the help of... wait for it...

The National Rifle Association.

PFnV

Originally Posted by RI Patriots fan

The Firearms Act of 1934 didn't ban automatic weapons. It regulated automatic weapons. Private citizens could still own automatic weapons.


"The NFA was originally enacted in 1934. Similar to the current NFA, the original Act imposed a tax on the making and transfer of firearms defined by the Act, as well as a special (occupational) tax on persons and entities engaged in the business of importing, manufacturing, and dealing in NFA firearms. The law also required the registration of all NFA firearms with the Secretary of the Treasury. Firearms subject to the 1934 Act included shotguns and rifles having barrels less than 18 inches in length, certain firearms described as “any other weapons,” machineguns, and firearm mufflers and silencers."

ATF Online - Firearms - National Firearms Act (NFA)