T. Belman. If you look at the graph I have posted from the article, it is very hard to support the second amendment. The strongest argument in favour of keeping it is to enable the people to defend themselves from government overreach. From my point of view, the only reason to support it is that the GOP depends on its supporters to win elections. Please tell me what you think.
Gun violence is a fixture in American life – but the issue is a highly political one, pitting gun control advocates against people who are fiercely protective of their right to bear arms.
We’ve looked into some of the numbers behind firearms in the US.
[…]
That’s a significantly larger proportion of homicides than is the case in Canada, Australia, England and Wales, and many other countries.
The “arms” that were most likely to lead to fatalities on old England were not firearms but swords. Only “gentlemen: of a certain class were allowed to carry them. The “common people” were forbidden to carry them. The only weapon they were permitted to carry were long staves. But if two upper-class men met on a road or street and had an argument about something they considered importan enough to fight about they would draw their swords and fight. Often one would be killed or seriously injured. It wasn’t until it ceased to be customary for “gentlemen” to carry swords at all times, in the late eightenth and early nineteenth century, that the carnage more or less ended. Commoners, who fought with their staves if they had a disagreement on a road, such as who had the right of way, would sometimes fight with their staves, and that also led to casualties at times. But the courts never challenged the right of men to carry weapons when travelling on a road, most of which were essentially overgrown paths, There were only some regulations as to who was allowed to wear swords , when travelling or even on other occasions.
A story that I read somewhere on the internt that illustrates the importance that Englishmen placed on the right to bear arms. Although in this particular case, the arms in question were bows and arrows, not firearms. A landowner made an appointment to see Queen Elizabeth I. The queen granted him an audience, He then appeared before dresses in green buckskin, at the time the customary hunting dress. He was accompanied by 24 professional huntsman, all his employees or “retainers,” who were also dressed in green buckskin. What he wanted was for the royal police (known as “poursuivants”) to be more active in protecting his lands from poachers. He was loosing a lot of deer, who were the source of living, to the poachers, But the queen was “not amused.” For one thing, having all those armed men so near posed a security risk for her. But there was a nother problem. Buckskin was not proper attire for someone in the royal court. This gentleman should acquire proper court attite, a very expensive suit and cloak, and then return to present his petition. He did return somedays later dressed in regulation court finery. But he was alone. When the queen asked where were his 24 huntsmen, he replied, “Madam, I have put them on my back.”
@Adam Actually, the typesetter was Hungarian so it came out backwards. But, the deadline for the Congress to recess was approaching so they just left It as is anssum everyone would know what they meant. The Founding Fathers got the idea to augment the existing militias which were composed of ordinary citizens bringing their guns from home and gathering in the town square when called, with trained bears and the PETA people were pushing back on the grounds of animal cruelty so they wanted to enshrine it in the Constitution in the same way that the Radical Republicans, aware that they were about to lose
power, enshrined the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments in the Constitution almost a hundred years later because it’s
Really hard to change it. . But, the bears objected so that was that. The text remains but everybody tacitly ignores it, or pretends it means something more
In consonance with the consensus of contemporary values, just like we do with most ancient religious texts, we not meaning Islamist Muslims, which is to say, most of them, of course.
But, seriously, I don’t see how the 9th and 10th Amendments apply. Gun control laws are local. The Bill of Rights merely restricts the right of the Federal government to interfere in the lives of individuals and all they do is underline that. It seems pretty clear that the 2nd Amendment, as well, intended to pass such regulatory authority on to the states.
I do think “the people” have the right to bear arms arms under the U.S. constitution. However, they have the wrong amendment to justify this right. It is actually protected not by the second, but by the ninth and tenth amendments to the constitution. I can’t quote them exactly from memory, but the jist of ninth amendment states that the enumeration of certain rights in this constitution does not cancel any other rights that the people possess. The tenth amendment reinforces this by stating that the enumeration of certain rights in the Federal constitution does not limit the rights of the “several states” and the people of these states to legislate other rights for themselves, or to list them in state constitutions. The working theory behind each of these amendments is that the powers of governments should be limited, but the rights of the people are unlimited, Whatever rights they have and/or think they should have are unlimited and sacred, beyond the touch of government. In the British colonies and in Britain itself, as well as in nearly all European countries, individuals certainly did have the right to bear arms, and always had them. Even the most repressive English governments and the English colonial government in the thirteen colonies had ever dared to take this right way from citizens or confiscate to their personalweapons, except if they were convicted of a felony. The right of individuals to possess and carry weapons and to the use them for self protection, say on the highways where robberies and assaults were common occurances, was never contested by the English and Scots courts, So was the right of people to use firearms for hunting, on their own land where they had they had the landowners permission to do so. (However, hunting on someone else’s land without permission was “poaching,” a serious felony under the law. And the anti-poaching laws were strictly enforced.), The need of citizens to bear arms was especially obvious in the thirteen colonies was especially “self-evident” in the colonies because of the need of fronteirsmen to protect themselves from Indian attacks, whether as individuals or in informal”unregulated” militias formed by groups of fronteirsmen in a particular area. The right of the official” state militias to protect their citizens on the fronteirs was also never questioned.
My opinion is therefore that, while the second amendment does not protect the right of every individual to keep and bear arms, the ninth and tenth amendments definitely do.
On the practical question as to whether the U.S. should stricter firearms control, my answer is yes, but with a certain caviat, Enforcing gun control laws in the United states is nearly impossible because so many people believe it is their sacred right to bear arms, and simply ignore gun control laws. Also, the present administration theSupreme Court and lobbying groups such as BLM have so eroded the authority of the police, prosecutors and courts of law to enforce any laws, that we have a country with complete lawlessness, This renders the debate about gun control meaningless.
My interpretation of the second amendment is that iits purpose wa s to permit the indicual states to maintain their own militias that were independent of the U.S. army and the President’s authority as commander in chief of the armed forces. The fear was that either the President might try to assume absolute power, or that the military might stage a coup and overthrow the President and everyone else. I don’t think the framers were thinking about the individual’s right to bear arms when they passed this amendment.
@Ted I forgot to mention what conservative pundits often cite which is places like Chicago, which have the most restrictive gun control laws in the country but also the worst homicide rate by guns. But then liberals will point to places that indicate the opposite.
So, I think the best solution is for me make a joke:
In half the country, gun control is popular while in the other half, gun owners’ rights are popular and both often cite the 2nd Amendment by emphasizing only part of it, often quibbles about the meaning of the word, “well-regulated.”
“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.”
Whichever faction is in the minority will need to raise funds in order to get their message out. Benefit concerts have always been one such tool and Bach has had enduring universal appeal ever since Mendelssohn revived and popularized his work.
So, either side can use the same name so as to be able to recirculate fliers and posters for future events, just changing the dates for concerts:
“The Well-Regulated Bach”
(as opposed to the “Well-Tempered Clavier” for the uninitiated)
[At the end of “Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Gloria Swanson famously says, “Mr. De Mille, I’m ready for my closeup.”
Well, in that spirit, I will just say,
“Edgar, I’m ready to be attacked.”
😀
@Ted On the one hand, but, how many of these shooters were stopped by legally armed shooters while the police delayed? At least a couple come readily to mind.
And how many of the guns shooters carried were illegal, in the first place, and therefore un-enforceable? Recall, the U.S. has a porous border and anything, including guns, can be 3D printed.
And, was it Chicago, during the Antifa/BLM riots, that a couple was put on trial for holding off a mob from invading their home by brandishing guns, that turned out to be fake?
And I recall reading about a town that mandated gun ownership which boasted zero homicides
On the other hand, When Mayor Bloomberg imposed the stop and frisk policy in New York City, the homicide by shooting rate plummeted and then a judge ruled it illegal and it went back up.
The devil is always in the details, or often, anyway 😀 So, sweeping generalizations – and laws – often backfire in many ways.
Plus, the U.S. isn’t one culture but many. That’s why there is a difference between state and federal law Even now. I recall learning in U.S. History that before the Civil War, people said the “United States are,” and after, “the United States Is.” But, even comparative centralization has not made us uniform which is why the electoral college is, far from the antiquated institution the Left makes it out to be, such a brilliant innovation for equalizing the political influence of sparsely populated farming and ranching states and densely populated urban centers.
For that matter, in Israel, I recall reading of a number of instances where it was legally armed citizens who eliminated terrorists, two that come to mind, are in which the victims were Ari Fuld and Hallel Yaffa. Mortally wounded Ari Fuld shot the terrorist, himself but poor 13 year old ballet prodigy Hallel Yaffa had already been stabbed to death in her bed by a 17 year old Arab who was shot by a resident afterward while trying to escape from the Jewish village he had snuck into in the middle of the night,
And did you read about the recent incident in which a band of Arabs attempted to lynch a Jew who shot one and guess who the IDF arrested? Even though his skull had been bashed in! And when the normally pro-Arab left-wing court ordered he be released to his home, at least, the, in this case, Judenrat-like army/police force put him under administrative detention!
Oh, and in the U.S., remember the case during the 2020-22 Antifa riots, the legally armed – by local laws – 17 year old who shot and killed the crazies who were trying to kill him and was acquitted while the Left bayed for his blood. And, he won a huge law suit against The View for defaming him?
Jews need to have the right to legally arm themselves is my conclusion.
New Mexico Governor bans carrying guns in Albuquerque after 11-year-old killed
So as the Leftists pursue their pro-crime agenda to turn their cities into crime dens run by cartels and gangs, they use the success of that agenda to fulfill another agenda, namely cancelling the Second Amendment.
But Ukraine will win with small arms, hope, and Robin Williams look-alikes according to the Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/15/ukraine-counteroffensive-success-us-officials/
The statistics in USA show that those states that have the strictest laws on gun possession, i.e. you are not allowed to own a firearm, are the worst hurt by mass shootings. Indeed, there are a number of articles out there that show that those areas where firearms are forbidden are the targets for criminals, and to back that up, please be advised that the cities with the strictest gun laws like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Houston and Baltimore are on the list.
Quite obviously, fir arms should be allowed to those who have been checked and denied to the criminals, who still manage to get them on the black market.
@AJ
The use of small arms would provide a deterrant of the govt actually executing the will of the tyrants without a consequence, but the Second Amendment was not initially limited to small arms. Indeed, when the Constitution was signed, there were citizens who privately owned battleships, the equivalent of which can not be privately owned today. One benefit was to defer govt costs to private citizens – the govt founded by the Founding Fathers was uniquely broke within American history, a consequence of but one of the failures of the Articles of the Confederation which came to be corrected by the Constitution – but another was to maintain the citizen’s control over the govt. As the govt has become more and more powerful, the govt has made it more and more difficult for the public to obtain the means of demonstrating a significant deterrance to any enacted govt tyranny against them. This was, however, not always the case.
AJ The Jews who fought in the The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising held off the German army for a month with small arms.
You are right, Ted. Thank you for saying so.
And by the way—no amount of small arms could prevent a government from imposing tyranny on the population.
@Michael
https://www.jns.org/israels-national-security-minister-seeks-fivefold-increase-in-gun-permits/
@Michael
What a stupid comment.
Should ownership of knives in Israel be tightly controlled? And cars? Rocks?
Ted, you are so logical! I’m glad you live in Israel, safely protected by young men and women toting Glocks and “assault rifles”. It seems that every other week lately, I read about a violent atrocity there, involving firearms. With your powerful voice there, I’m sure the Israeli government will take every citizen’s weapon away, and end this carnage!
Notice the colossal irony that the richest and strategically safest country on the planet is the most paranoid! ! !
Second irony – the trouble is caused by irresponsible or vengeful or deranged individuals; but the NRA excuse is the need for a well regulated militia. Having done some military (R)OTC training, warfare since WW I is a regulated coordinated team effort in small spaced out groups of a well trained comrades in which the average gun crime offender would be an “odd ball” & “own goal ” risk to his own side.