Dare I say it? Repealing the Second Amendment. Is this an idea worth exploring?

You can make a sport of them, but you can do that with anything, such as paper airplane contests, so it's beside the point. The issues of bows and arrows is irrelevant, because they will never be a problem, never result in deaths like guns do, and they would be very cumbersome to commit crimes with. This isn't an argument of principle, i's an argument of raw numbers.

2A is the reason we have more guns in this country than people. We have more gun deaths per capita than most countries. Only in out-of-control countries, such as Africa, El Salvador, Guatemala, Philippines, etc, are more gun deaths than America. Guns are a veritable fetish with some people, they are posting photos of their kids holding AR 15s, glorifying guns in the minds of young children. To me, this is a sickness.

Moreover, the OP isn't about banning guns. repealing 2A wouldn't stop states from allowing guns or regulating them as they see fit. It's about regulation. 2A makes regulation more difficult. I see no logical reason to make owning guns a right no more than we should make drinking milk a right, or owning a car a right. Lots of things are not rights, and we still have them no one is banning them. However, if a city wanted to ban them, I believe they should have that right. not possible with 2A. In the west, in many cities, during the 18th century, guns were banned and no one whined about the second amendment. There will be plenty of red cites, regious, and states, that won't ban guns. IF anything should be a 'right' is should be health care. However, they would still be considered a 'penumbra right' by SCOTUS, so banning them wouldn't be allowed. The idea of 'guns thwarting a tyrannical government' is a moot idea today. Try it and you will be rounded up, put in jail, prosecuted, etc. The Government is no way in hell going to allow insurrectionist to be 'legal' or 'just'. this is pure fantasy.

 

Where did you re there were more guns than people in the US? Last I heard it was about 300 millions guns and 330 million people. (Meaning we need to try harder.)
Most "gun deaths" are suicides and would happen by some other means anyway, so your figures are skewed.
Do you make the same argument about abortion that you do about guns? You know, that there will be plenty of states that won't ban abortion, so all is ok?
I someone out there suggesting we ban drinking milk? Is someone out there suggesting we should not be able to own a car? Sometimes your post gets hard to follow.)
Thwarting a tyrannical government may someday become a necessity, although I hope not in my lifetime. I would never attack anyone, but I sure would be willing to die in defense of freedom. I've already proved that in the Middle East. I can do no less in my own home.

 

In your OP you state: "First and foremost, it is important to note that a repeal of the Second Amendment would not automatically take away anyone's guns" Note the part underlined. You put that in for a reason. That reason being that you know that without the 2nd Amendment the Federal Government could then make laws that could ban guns. Rendering State Laws moot. And with the phrasing you know that bannings would start occurring the moment gun control nuts got any power to do so. Such as controlling the whole of Congress and the WH.

Pretending that the OP, YOUR OP is simply about "regulating the ownership and use of firearms" is dishonest. You admitted that already without saying it outright with that one line.

And yes, I did give suggestions in another post, which you responded to and I'll be responding to here shortly. In fact you responded to it before you made this post. So you do know that I gave suggestions already.

And yes, your argument does only address "gun violence" and it does ignore all other forms of crime.

 

Gun control plays no part in reducing over all crime. None. It might.... MIGHT play a role in reducing crimes committed with guns, but it in no way reduces over all crime. No study has proven that it does.

You say that its about finding a balance...how is your suggestion a "balance" when there is an alternative that doesn't affect liberty in the slightest but does do what you want accomplished (reducing "gun violence")...only better since it targets ALL crime and not just "gun violence".

 

Not having read any of the other posts after the OP, I will say that an outright repeal is probably not in the best interests, although technically what is in my head would probably be called such. I do not see the need to repeal it as much as amend the amendment, to turn a phrase. The new "2nd" would need to lay out a little more the concept of what arms a citizen has a right to. I would not have an objection to high end arms such as say cannons, or whatever, on the huge end. And I am not talking about, at least not as a default, not including automatic or "assault" (in quotes because too many anti-gun idiots misapply that label) weapons as constitutional to keep.

And this is what many fear and rightly so. One of the main ideas, besides having an armed militia (different from military) to defend against threats against the country, is the ability to defend against a country, or more specifically a government, that has gone too dictorial. <Mod Edit>

 

Yes...
...when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”

 

This is just a long-winded way of agreeing that your claim the the only purpose of a firearm is to kill is false.

 

Right...
The court says that to pass constitutional muster, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation

Democrats call for banning guns all the time.

Unsupportable nonsense.

 

I agree that any serious attempt to control guns in the US would have to start with repeal of or serious change to the 2A. I also think that every snowball in hell has a better chance than such an effort would have. But credit where it's due: you had the courage to take note of reality.

 

That's a valid concern, and my proposal is to replace the second amendment with a new amendment, repealing gun ownership as a right, but, at the same time, granting the right to regulation, specify the parameters of that regulation, limit gun bans only to cities that desire it, but disallow banning on any scale above municipalities. Currently, SCOTUS grants the right to regulate guns, but 2A gives orgs such as the NRA too much power to block sensible legislation, which they succeed at with conservative courts.

See, above.

 

The statement that "gun control plays no part in reducing overall crime" is not supported by research. In fact, numerous studies have shown that countries with stricter gun control laws have lower rates of overall crime and gun-related deaths.

For example, a study by the World Health Organization found that countries with higher levels of gun ownership also had higher rates of firearm-related deaths, and that stronger firearms legislation was associated with lower rates of such deaths.

Another study by the National Academy of Sciences analyzed the impact of various state gun laws and found that laws requiring background checks for firearm purchases were associated with lower rates of firearms deaths, and that "right-to-carry" laws were associated with higher rates of violent crime.

A third study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that countries with stricter gun laws tend to have lower rates of overall crime, including violent crime, than countries with more permissive laws.

In conclusion, there is significant evidence from multiple studies indicating that gun control measures can play a role in reducing overall crime rates, including firearm-related deaths.

the 'balance' has to be negotiated, of course.

I'll look for the links, get back to you on those.

 

The defense of a tyrannical government no longer is valid. There is no circumstance federal or state governments are going to grant insurrectionists legal status.

The fight against the colonial governments of the UK were fresh on the minds of the framers, but this is the climate of the late 18th century, and is a moot point today.

The beauty of the AMerican structure is that military personnel swear their allegiance to the constitution, not a man, or woman, and are required by the TMCJ to not follow unconstitutional orders. So, unless there is a coup, which isn't possible militarily, a dictatorship isn't possible, which renders your premise moot.

 

That ould make gun ownership a "privilege" to be regulated... like driving. That is a PRIVILEGE GRANTED BY THE STATE. The RIGHTS listed in the BILL OF RIGHTS are granted by nature or the Creator (whichever you prefer) and are NOT PRIVILEGES... THEY ARE RIGHTS.

 

That is correct. Thank you.

 

No, it's revealing that your point is to be filed in the 'distinction without significance' file.

 

My proposal is to replace the second amendment with a new amendment, repealing gun ownership as a right, but, at the same time, granting the right to regulation, specify the parameters of that regulation, limit gun bans only to cities that desire it, but disallow banning on any scale above municipalities. Currently, SCOTUS grants the right to regulate guns, but 2A gives orgs such as the NRA too much power to block sensible legislation, which they succeed at with conservative courts.

My OP's purpose isn't about defending what Democrats call for 'all the time' (if true). See my proposal, above.

Fully supportable:

https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/2020/10/why-heller-is-such-bad-history/

Why Heller Is Such Bad History
By Noah Shusterman on October 7, 2020Categories: History, Second Amendment, Supreme Court
When I began the research for my recent book, Armed Citizens: The Road from Ancient Rome to the Second Amendment, my goal was to understand the origins of American gun laws. I was hardly alone in this, of course; there is an enormous amount of contemporary research on the original goals of the Second Amendment, including Scalia’s 2008 decision in DC vs Heller, which still sets the framework for gun regulations today. But one thing that became clear, when reading that decision and reading the debates leading up to and surrounding the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, was just how different the concerns of the eighteenth-century were from the gun politics of today.

When the Supreme Court took up DC vs Heller, it had to answer the question of whether or not the Second Amendment protected an “individual” right to bear arms. By a 5-4 ruling, the court declared that it did. Such a ruling is, of course, within the purview of the Supreme Court. Given the nature of the question, it was also appropriate for it to come down to a 5-4 ruling for one side or the other. As the goal of this post is to show that Heller is “bad history,” I should say from the outset that my point is not that ruling in favor of DC’s gun laws would have been good history. Rather, it is to show that Justice Scalia’s justification of that decision, while rooted in an analysis of the amendment’s eighteenth-century context, was based on a fundamental misconception of the way that gun rights and militia service were understood and debated during the eighteenth century. It is not inherently bad history to say that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms; it is, however, bad history to declare that such a ruling was a return to the “original understanding” of the amendment. And it is especially bad history to claim that the protection of an individual right was the primary reason for the Second Amendment’s inclusion in the Bill of Rights.

Scalia’s decision combined two key elements: his originalist philosophy of constitutional interpretation, on the one hand; and an expansive view of gun rights, on the other. These elements are neither inherently consistent nor inconsistent with each other. They did not, however, link together in the way that Scalia claimed, because the eighteenth-century America he described was not one that most historians of the militia would recognize. Justice Scalia mischaracterized eighteenth-century society in two key ways. His claim that “The ‘militia’ comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense” whitewashed a history of not only excluding people of color from the militia – able-bodied or not – but of using that militia to police the actions of non-whites and especially of the enslaved population. His opinion also reads at portions as if unaware that the militia was an official government institution under state authority (and colonial authority before that), and under the command of those governments. Before, during, and after the Revolution, there was not one militia, but rather different militias for the different states. And while those militias were broken down into geographical subunits, they were all part of specific militias under government authority. Colonial and state laws about “all able-bodied men” being part of the militia were followed by noting that those men were required to register with their local officers, and the officers were required to maintain the lists of eligible men. Those men would be required to participate in the militia, including both training and musters during peacetime, and active duty when needed – under government command. By ignoring these aspects of the eighteenth-century militia, the Heller decision helped feed a common misperception that membership in the militia was a status that one might independently declare, as do the men in the modern militia movement.

To be sure, there were armed groups of men in the eighteenth century who declared themselves a militia, yet acted outside of – and in explicit opposition to – their colonial and state governments. That was the approach of the men who participated in Shays’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, most of whom had also been members of their state militias. But the governments at the time, both at the state and national level, explicitly rejected those claims. George Washington, then retired, thought that the actions of those “insurgents” would lead to “anarchy and confusion,” the antithesis of the “Bulwark of our Liberties and independence” that a “respectable and well established” militia would provide. Because the militia as it existed in the early republic was a state institution, in both senses of the word. To be legal – let alone “well-regulated” – its actions had to be done under the leadership of the colonial governments, until 1775; under the state governments, until the ratification of the Constitution; then, following that, under the command of either the state or national government, as specified by the Constitution’s Militia Clause and the Militia Acts of 1792. And while the militia’s participation in the American Revolution was an illegal activity according to British rule, those militias still acted under the command of newly constituted civil authorities, not as independent actions of the militia leaders and militiamen themselves. In his decision in Heller, Scalia missed the key role that civilian powers played in commanding the militia. Yet civilian control of military power was an enormously important issue for the founding generation, as shown by the language of the state-level predecessors to the Second Amendment.

In the interest of fairness, some passages in Heller showed a genuine understanding of the issues involved – where it indeed reads like good history. The decision recognized that England’s growing army during the 1680s helped spur the 1689 Bill of Rights. The decision also recognized that the militia was meant to render standing armies unnecessary. And at the end, Scalia acknowledged that it is “debatable” whether the Second Amendment as a whole is “outmoded” in a nation “where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem.” And while Stevens’ dissent was notably better history than the majority opinion, it is not perfect; nor is it entirely clear that, as Stevens claimed, the “’right to keep and bear arms’ protects only a right to possess and use firearms in connection with service in a state-organized militia” [emphasis added].

From an historian’s perspective, the problem is that the question the court had to address, “does the Second Amendment guarantee an individual right to bear arms?” was not an important question during the founding generation. If one starts by asking, not whether or not the amendment protected an individual right, but why the amendment was included in the first place, a very different set of concerns become paramount. Those concerns revolved around the militia. The men of the founding generation spent an inordinate amount of time debating the respective roles of citizens’ militias and professional armies – a discussion which had been a major topic of political debate in the Anglophone world since the 1690s, when John Trenchard and Walter Moyle published An Argument, Shewing that a Standing Army in Inconsistent with a Free Government. Those ideas, though never dominant in England itself, found a welcoming audience in British North America. They were key to complaints about British soldiers’ presence in the aftermath of the French and Indian War, then ramped up after the 1770 Boston Massacre and the fighting at Lexington and Concord, and were the source of Jefferson’s complaint in the Declaration of Independence that England “has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.”

That fear of standing armies – and therefore, the belief in the necessity of a citizens’ militia – remained strong in the Revolution’s aftermath. Everyone involved in the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights considered a large standing army to be an inherent threat to liberty. The debate between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists at the time played out not as whether there should be a standing army, but as a discussion of how best to avoid a large standing army; and while men like Washington and Hamilton were not against having any professional army, they were a) against having a large one, and b) by 1789, no longer attempting to argue for even a small one. The Constitution’s Militia Clause and the Second Amendment were the government’s way of providing the framework for an answer to those questions, while avoiding the problems caused by events like Shays’s Rebellion. Their answer was that for the United States to be both free and secure, the states’ citizens’ militias – and not standing armies – must be able to provide that security. Should an individual state’s militia’s fail to provide that security, the national government would be able to bring in the militias of other states. Those were the questions they asked and the answers they gave. Whether the amendment protected an individual right to bear arms is our question; it was not theirs.

Historians are not required to limit themselves to those questions that people in the past explicitly posed, but we do have to acknowledge the risks involved when we impose our own. In this case, the question of an individual right to bear arms did not make sense in a society where everyone eligible for militia duty was required to participate. Short of the kind of Rousseau-style abstract analysis of the individual which divides human males into both a private man and a public citizen, in a society with universal male militia participation it is impossible to separate the definitely-arms-bearing militia member from the possibly-but-not-definitely-arms-bearing private citizen.

And yet, the ruling in Heller required a decision on just this matter. This difficulty is why the ruling deserved to be answered 5-4 one way or the other. Heller is not bad history because it rules that individuals had the right to bear arms outside of participation in the militia. It is bad history because it viewed the individual right to bear arms as why the amendment was written in the first place; it is bad history in its claim that the Second Amendment protected “only individuals’ liberty to keep and carry arms.” [emphasis added]. With this approach, Scalia shifted the decision from a questionable but defensible answer to the question the court had been asked, to a mischaracterization of the nature of the amendment itself. That mischaracterization, rather than the decision itself, is what makes Heller such bad history.

 

Heller rests largely on the Standard Model interpretation of the 2A.

 

Interesting.
Pick one of those countries
-What was their rate of gun-related violent crime before they implemented their gun control laws?
-What was their rate of gun-related violent crime after they implemented their gun control laws?
-Demonstrate the necessary relationship between the implementation of those laws, and the change in gun-related violent crime rates.

Correlation does not prove causation.

 

It is always valid.

 

Your claim was proven wrong, so I can see what you'd want to avoid the point.

 

Thus far, you have failed to demonstrate:
-The necessity for doing so
-The efficacy of doing so
-The practicality of doing so

As such your proposal holds no merit.

You stated:
No one is suggesting banning guns.
The fact Democrats call for banning guns all the time proves your statement false.

Your opinion piece proves nothing, and hold no more water than an opinion piece to the contrary.

 

Heller relies on simple language:
"...The right of the people to keep and bear arms..."
Not the right of the militia
Not the right of the people in the militia
The right of the people.

A person cannot have a right to possess and use an item owned by another, so the right to keep and bear arms must include direct, personal ownership of said arms
There is no right to serve the militia, so the ownership and use of those arms cannot be tied to service in the militia

Heller, supported.

 

More than happy to educate.

So, what regulations do you believe are allowed by the court, as you said, and why would the court allow them?

 

not the point=-you posted a blatantly false claim that the only purpose of a gun is to kill something I was demonstrating that is a lie

 

and SCOTUS has held it is an individual right and firearms in common use are protected. which slaps the anti gun bullshit right upside its head with a cold wet pontoon of reality