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Seems pretty clear to me, want to place limits on it, get support for a new amendment.
@freemo right on. And before someone posts the "well regulated militia" argument, the militia at that time was the able-bodied male population. The 2a is definitely about the general public being armed and trained to repel either invasion or tyranny.
If the Federal government wanted to take the 2a seriously, they should be expanding the Civilian Marksmanship Program and offering free rifle lessons in high school.
@mike805 @freemo even if that were the case (it's isn't), you still have them "well-regulated" bit. Also, if the first part is to be taken for sacred, by your interpretation then only white men should have the right to bear arms?
The reification of an old document is a choice. One that is killing our children. Guns are the number one cause of death for children in America! Our life expectancy is way lower than all other advanced countries. Choosing this mortality for an interpretation of an old text is the definition of a death cult. One that is imposed on a majority of Americans who do not want it.
@lmrocha @freemo then change it The Founders put in a procedure to change the Constitution. If a strong majority really does oppose the public ownership of guns, then you should have no trouble getting an amendment passed, right? A previous generation of progressive activists actually managed to get a ban on alcohol passed as an amendment, so it's not impossible.
I don't agree with you, but campaigning for an amendment would be the honest approach.
@mike805 @freemo if we had a democracy that would work, but we have an oligarchy where the lobby of the gun manufacturers out votes the people. Just see what the supreme court did recently to my state of New York. Our democratically enacted gun controls were wiped.
And if you don't believe we are in an oligarchy, see the news about Clarence Thomas. That is why I take issue with this reification of the founding fathers. That is all a smoke screen to face that there is no democracy on this issue. It's the rule of the lobby, which I very much doubt the founding fathers intended. Indeed, a century later Lincoln called the death penalty for profiteers, which is what the gun manufacturers who profit from there daily assassination of American children are.
@mike805 @freemo you have changed the interpretation of only the bits you like: guns for all, when it was meant for well regulated militia of white men. There was no need for amendments to change that interpretation. But if we want to set the limits clearly specified by the "well regulated" bit (the point @freemo was commenting with meme, incorrectly in my view) then we need an amendment. Isn't that convenient? Of course it is all a matter of interpretation, which depends on the supreme court, which depends on money---or a president with the balls to pack it.
The only hope it's that this conservative overreach (as in Tennessee and recent supreme court rulings) will result in a youth backlash that has not been seen since 1969.
Well no argument that the justices will abuse their reach by misinterpriting the constitution... luckily with the right lean in the supreme court we are likely to see stronger defense of the #2A, though I'd much rather this be done by the way the constitution is designed to work rather than to be at the whims of a supreme court.
@freemo @mike805 This is a case of manufacturers who profiteer from the murder of the citizenry, convincing a minority that wanting to keep their toys has a higher, almost divine reason and it's worth assassinating children for. Again, the number one cause of death for children in the USA is guns. That does not happen in countries not at war. You are siding with the profiteers, not the people, and certainly not the children who are scared and tired of fearing for their lives daily in schools and at home.
Yea thats complete nonsense... the data is quite clear.. at best banning guns does nothing to help improve the violent, rape, and homicide rates... though at best it significantly reduces it (and the data leans towards the latter)
The number one death for children means nothing if you dont compare it to the number of children's lives saved by guns as well, or correct for kids killed in gun free zones.
Again this is like the anti-vaxxers argument "If you ban vaccines we will significantly reduce the deaths caused by vaccines"... while true its an intellectually dishonest argument.
@freemo @mike805 that is just false. It is completely false. All data shows, quite clearly, over and over again, that greater gun control leads to fewer deaths. Why do you think the gun lobby made it illegal for the NIH to study the effect of guns on public health? If the data were what you say, they'd be the first to want to study the phenomenon. Instead they successfully lobbied to forbid such studies---speaking of "hardcore libertarians."
Nope, though I do understand why people who arent experts in data science can easily get mislead by the manipulation to try to sell that narrative... Sadly you will never see the data presented with good intellectually honest analysis (using granger causality rather than simple correlation whcih we all know is invalid when you cant control confounding variables)
Great then you should, at least in theory, be able to understand why sooften the data presented is intellectually dishonest. I myself am an expert/professional data scientist, so we shouldnt have any trouble having this conversation.
Doesnt change the fact, that as I said, most people fall for the intellectually dishonest analysis, and by the sounds of it, you might too. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
@freemo @mike805 I'm talking about analysis based on pseudo randomized trials, which you can do comparing the times of introduction of regulations in different locations. You are the one assuming that when we speak of data we mean simple correlations. But again, you cannot underestimate that the gun lobby prevents the gathering of relevant data in the usa. They are not interested in serious data analysis.
At the end of the day, your can justify your toys however you want. But American children are dying from guns much more than children in other rich countries. Taking my kids to school in the USA, everyday there was the ever present fear of a gun attack, with corresponding drills they had to be subjected to (you can only wonder the damage to mental health such insecurity caused them.) I am so happy they decided to go to college in Europe. We never worry about such a situation anymore. And that's how life should be.
The vast majority of arguments people make when I discuss gun control is around simple correlations. Yes I was talking of people in general, not you or scientists or anyone who is willing to address the fact that the question is nuanced and requires advanced analysis to really approach the question. If that describes you then just assume it doesnt apply what I said, to you, it still applies to the droning masses however, sadly.
> At the end of the day, your can justify your toys however you want. But American children are dying from guns much more than children in other rich countries.
This is technically true, but yea intellectually dishonest... It does not account for, or poorly accounts for, the numbers of violent crimes prevent, both from never happening, and from being stopped early on. Of course there are certain types of analysis that are more intellectually honest and sadly the data there leans strongly towards the opposite.
@mike805
@lmrocha @freemo you are arguing this from a statistics point of view. You may well have a point. If you want to debate with gun rights supporters, please understand: many of us believe in natural rights which existed before civilization and which civilization cannot legitimately take away. Personal defense is one of those.
People with that POV will not be swayed by numbers. Our response is, why was this not a problem 100 years ago? Personally, I suspect psychiatric drugs play a big role today.
@freemo @lmrocha kids don't generally get shot in Japan. Yes that is because the Japanese public has no guns. Nuts occasionally get stabby in Japan, but kill fewer victims.
But 100 years ago we had a society with guns everywhere (even kids owned them) and mass shootings were practically unknown. Gang violence yes. Personal revenge yes. Rage-fueled mass shootings, no.
SSRIs are known to produce a hypomanic rage-monster state in some males under the age of 25. Most mass shooters were on SSRIs.
Again, grossly intellectual-dishonest argument you just made.
It is the exact same equivelant of the anti-vaxx argument: "If you made vaccines illegal we could eliminate vaccine deaths!"... Sure its technically true, but it fails to look at the big picture and account for lives **saved** to contrast the lives taken.
And you are back to bad-faith arguments.
1) Toys are the last priority in the list of priorities. As I already explained the top priority is making the decision that results in the fewest people suffering. As I said the data in my review clearly shows this means not banning guns.
2) Beyond that any choices made to restrict guns **must** show a positive effect on the big picture (lowering violent act rates). Since automatic weapons have not shown to be harmful to violence rates I will support it even if the argument is so weak as to say "it is for fun."
So this guy with an automatic weapon shooting beer cans recorded himself committing a crime? Smart.
@lmrocha @freemo no automatic weapons 100 years ago? As I recall, there was a pretty big war in Europe that ended in 1918. Automatic weapons played a significant role in that war.
The modern self-loading pistol - which seems to be the main mass shooting weapon - was patented in 1911.
The restrictions on Evil Machine Guns started after Prohibition and corresponding mob violence became a problem.
@freemo @lmrocha oddly enough, machine guns are not entirely illegal. Those owned before 1986 are still legal and can even be resold, with a background check.Of course they have been lovingly maintained, and many are "grandfathers' axe" guns where most of the parts are replaced. They sell for prices comparable to cars since no new ones are available.
There were no mass shootings pre-1986 with legal automatic weapons. Yes we could go back to pre-86 NFA with no increase in mass shootings.
@lmrocha @freemo well most of the weapons used for mass shootings are either (a) pistols evolved from the 1911 patent, often with modern materials and additional safeties or (b) self loading rifles descended from the WW2 era M1 by way of the Vietnam era Armalite.
So both of those general types of weapons were available to the public by the 1940s. Kids got bullied then too. Why no rage monster shootings? That is the question the gun controllers ignore.
Again, this is the antivaxxer argument "If you make vaccines illegal there wont be any vaccine deaths"... True but grossly intellectually-dishonest to anyone who actually can look at the problem objectively, in which case you must talk about the effects on overall violent acts, and not on "mass shootings", and thats before we even get into how ridiculously rare they are when compared to other rare events like lightening.
@freemo @mike805 the dishonest argument is positing that guns prevent deaths at any reasonable rate, when you have no data whatsoever to show that is remotely true. Most gun deaths occur with guns from your own household. When was the last time you had to defend an attack with guns?
At the end of the day, what are you guys so afraid of that you need guns? The zombies?
I absolutely have data to show it. You can simply do a search for violent rates, murders and deaths and look at how they change in various countries when guns are banned or a ban revoked.. the correlation is quite obvious. Would you like me to post you some of these graphs, as I said I have tons of data to backup what I'm saying.
@freemo @lmrocha @mike805 People of different colors can hold this power and that is what truly has made many laws pass. The laws that take away freedoms are almost exclusively targeting undesirables and the poor. When one can live behind a gate with private security goons, they make these laws.
The 80s and 90s were the rise of the disco drug but not in the salt form. People with certain skin tones might have been more likely to use this drug. As with armored vehicles that hold currency, the currency generated by this trade has to be protected too.
Racism, hate and fear were the basis of these laws and it's not difficult to see that while they were allegedly to protect these people, arrests tell a better story. This is the equivalent of The White Man's Burden. A life sentence for possession and slavery were the respective solutions by those in power. Every new administration washes their hands while the people they rule don't need to be brainwashed. A nation divided by parties and full of hate doesn't need the CIA to change them. They will do horrible things.
Children see adults as models. How can we be so surprised when they follow our footsteps? Government needs to control us more as we are incapable of doing so ourselves? No, we need to change as a society to address our problems and much of that would need to begin with our own shortcomings.
@mike805 @freemo have you looked at the gun sale numbers since the 40s? The profiteers created a great market based on fear and the fiction of the second amendment. They have flooded society with guns at levels never seen before. More guns, more shootings; it is simple statistics.
There is also the element of race here we have not addressed. Reagan and so-called libertarians supported gun control when the fear was the Black Panthers. To this day, freedom of carry is in practice a white privilege. Try carrying a gun while black. It doesn't even have to be a real gun, just the imagination of one.
@lmrocha @mike805 @freemo There were fully automatic weapons a century ago. The Thomson SMG and the first version of the BAR were in existence. The latter wasn't used in the first World War due to fears of it falling into German hands.
There were international conventions that came together to make rules about how people can be killed and how war can be waged. Apparently anything other than a full metal jacket bullet was outlawed. So there's something odd about this. Countries agreed to not use certain rounds but not killing people was out of the question.
Numerous governments from around the world signed an agreement that made using prohibited ammunition a crime but killing another human being was morally right with a full metal jacket round.
We have defeated Small Pox, Polio and Syphilis among other diseases. There is so much good that is done but people don't seek these positive things out as the morbid fascination with death and destruction generates more money and furthers political goals.
@AmpBenzScientist @lmrocha @freemo the dum-dum rounds (and other things like triangle bayonets and poison gas) caused non-healing injuries WITHOUT being much more effective in terms of immediate combat stopping power.
Things get outlawed in war when (1) they are horrible and (2) they are not decisively effective.
Flamethrowers, phosphorous, and nuclear weapons are horrible, but very effective, so are not outlawed.
If a "prohibited" weapon or method wins wars, someone will use it anyway.
@mike805 @lmrocha @freemo Dying in one's youth to a machine that can peacefully agree to stop using their favorites in exchange for not stopping what caused them to be used. They essentially agreed to have another war but a humane war. Those were the terms for fighting in the future.
Perhaps they could have done something better.
@lmrocha @mike805 @freemo This isn't a perfect world. The fear goes away when there is no action. Everyone is different.
From Duck and Cover to now, there hasn't been a time where all children could feel safe. I remember the Anthrax, SARS and a forgotten scare The West Nile Virus. I was poking the dead birds with a stick as it occurred to me that with all of them around and some dying where I could see. Oh yeah it's here and I might die but that's not going to be caused by poking a fully dead bird with a stick.
I believe that the bird was a Robin. It was a beautiful bird with magnificent wings. I put the stick down, washed my hands and went with my friends to play football. After 9/11 and the Anthrax letters, it seems that everyone had adjusted. There were a few bomb threats at the school and evacuations.
Children are incredibly capable of adapting to many environments where adults might not make it. I only included the Robin because I could appreciate the beauty of the bird. We avoided the dead birds when we were playing football. That's the world we lived in and the news did what it always does. A child won't be kept down by fear. Abuse of various kinds will but only so much. They aren't unaffected but they will be okay. They might not react to graphic images because those are just dreams. They might die a painful death in their dreams and wake up alive.
The last one leads to some confusing times. It might require a shower and a moment to get fully back into reality. They will learn to not be afraid but it could take time. School shootings are not what they are sensationalized to be. There can be worse things and those will never leave the mind. It would be nice for kids to be safe but political parties still exist and accusations go ignored.
@freemo @mike805
Dude, for the founding fathers, "we the people" meant men with property. Voting was not universal. Everything about the second amendment, from gun technology to whom it applied to (it certainly did not apply to slaves), the concept of militia and regulation has changed, and so has its interpretation.
The way it characterizes "well regulated militia" for instance, is because they really had no concept of national army as we have today. The idea of serving in a national army did not exist until after the french revolution and Napoleon. Up to that point, soldiers were paid by kings to fight for the king's army in defense of his property and lands. Those were the days when people like the founding fathers were defining how armies, national and state guards should work.