Seems pretty clear to me, want to place limits on it, get support for a new amendment.

#2A

@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 @mike805 @freemo guns literally do nothing without a person. Blaming inanimate objects for the actions of people is low effort

@thatguyoverthere @mike805 @freemo @lmrocha

Bingo! You've got it!

Nobody wants to ban guns and nobody is coming for your guns. We just want to be sure that they don't end up as easily in the hands of a person that may start shooting indiscriminately in a school or other public place.

Even the founding fathers had some "well-regulated" criteria for who can and who cannot have a gun (white men with wigs yes, founding mothers and people with slightly dark complexion no).

The criteria arguably changed from then but the principle stands.

@pj

People have literally banned entire classes of guns such as handguns and imaginary "assault rifles".. not only arr thry coming for our guns, they are explicit about it...

@thatguyoverthere @mike805 @lmrocha

@pj @thatguyoverthere @mike805 @lmrocha

Also no, there was never a well regulated criteria. That was an exemplarly clause as is explicitly stated, not a qulifying clause. Thry have been quotes countless time saying as much.

@freemo

Yes, they don't explicitly state in the constitution who is and who isn't allowed to have guns, but I think it is pretty clear what would have happened if one of their slaves went for a gun.

You can't run a society without qualifying clauses.

@thatguyoverthere @mike805 @lmrocha

@pj @thatguyoverthere @mike805 @lmrocha

Surr thry do, thry explicitly state the right shall not be infringed. Pretty clear that means all people.

@freemo

I believe the definition of "people" at that time, as @lmrocha pointed out, might have been very narrow.

@thatguyoverthere @mike805

@pj @freemo @lmrocha @mike805 it's not now. move on

@pj @freemo @lmrocha @mike805 the point I'm making is that the definition of a person is not part of the 2nd Amendment. It's not part of the debate in gun control unless you are claiming that people you think are more likely to become violent are somehow not people. Then we need to figure out how we define that and maybe you have a case. Where we stand today all people are people, and natural rights apply to all people.

@thatguyoverthere @mike805 @freemo @pj that is not the point I made. I was pointing to the capriciousness that gun profiteering apologists use when interpretating the 2A. All concepts that it trades in have changed dramatically, but the apologists treat the inconvenient bits as, well 'it's not like that now”, and the bits they care about as immutable, reified text that only other amendments can adapt.

As I said, all this is legal interpretation that depends only on a few lackeys the profiteering oligarchy pays up to sit on the supreme court---in another profound constitutional blunder. It is very hard to fight oligarchy, but the youth whose lives it values less than profit may yet have the power to change things.

@lmrocha @mike805 @freemo @pj what inconvenient bits? Shall not be infringed seems pretty straight forward. If you are referring to the militia portion we're back in a loop.

Where I think we may differ is that I see these rights as natural god given rights of man. Government doesn't give us our rights, and allowing them to take your rights away and calling any rights preservation oligarchy hurts my brain. If every supreme court justice tomorrow said oh we've change how we interpret the 2a that changes nothing as far as "rights" go. 2A is protection against infringement (weak as it may be) not granting you the right to bear arms.

@thatguyoverthere @mike805 @freemo @pj God is besides the point here. The constitution is to establish a secular society for believers and unbelievers. Besides, I take take issue with equating guns at least with Christianity. The gospels are very clear about Jesus' thoughts on self -defense. You need to be diabolical (in the original sense of the word) to make a connection between "turn the other cheek” and the 2A. I think his surrender to crucifixion is quite clear on that note.

@lmrocha @thatguyoverthere @freemo @pj God is never beside the point. A person's position on that question reliably predicts most of his other views. There is a "root" or top level in everyone's mind, and what resides there decides everything else.

Jesus was advising a small group of traveling evangelists, for whom getting into a violent confrontation could not possibly help them in their mission. Thus "shake off the dust of that place." He was not referring to all people for all time.

@mike805 @thatguyoverthere @freemo @pj wow, so we do have the Gun-Jesus figure after all. Who needs the cross when you have the guns....

@lmrocha @mike805 @freemo @pj I guess that's a jab. No one is saying you should be able to use guns to convert people to Christianity, but to pick and choose the things he said (out of context) to support an argument he never made is not going to work. He did want the disciples to be peaceful and slow to anger. He also recognized the dangers of the world and told them to be prepared. These ideas can coexist, and in fact we have quotes from Jesus in the Bible that suggest they do.

@thatguyoverthere @mike805 @freemo @pj "be prepared" is not the same as "be armed". I was raised Catholic, and the idea of using a Christian conception of God to defend gun-based self-defense is, frankly, diabolical---especially when we know it leads to incident children being killed over and over again.

@lmrocha

Except we dont know that, all the data suggests the opposite, banning guns means people die en massem, including kids... But since you have no peer-reviewed data to show that (and neither do I) thats another matter.

@thatguyoverthere @mike805 @pj

@freemo @thatguyoverthere @mike805 @pj that is just patently false. All data points to the opposite. No evidence whatsoever (from all other similar countries) that regulating the use of guns leads to people dying en masse. That's just silly and totally false.

@lmrocha @freemo @mike805 @pj A study on gun violence __should__ make sure to separate suicide from homicide. Lumping gun suicides in with gun violence instead of with suicides is stacking the deck in your favor.

@lmrocha @freemo @mike805 @pj This actually highlights one of the problems with making decisions based on statistics. It's very easy to select data that fits a preformed bias. Some issues are too important to rely on statistics to make decisions on.