What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

[thalassa]

I ran across a meme on FB Fri night that said "today is not the day to talk about gun control...yesterday was the day to talk about gun control"

Its an idea that I agree with--the debate over guns in the US shouldn't be a reaction to a mass shooting, because (as awful as they are in general and this one was specifically) they are a fairly consistent event with fairly consistent fatalities that represent a minute number of the casualties of gun violence...and, if you look historically at the perpetrators of mass shootings, the conversation should be less about gun control, and more about the accessibility of mental health care.

With that being said, I *do* think we should be having a discussion over guns and gun control...but that we should leave this latest tragedy out of it. So (since its my thread) there's an extra rule to this debate: leave the school shooting out of it.

And with this in mind...I figured we could have a good ole 2nd amendment discussion (its in debate in case it goes that way).

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.

~the 2nd amendment

Some stuff about the 2nd amendment & how its been interpreted

A history of the 2nd amendment

from the library of congress's law library website

[anunitu]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

Though I posted this in the school shooting thread,I think it has a place here also.

Here is a thing that people must understand,way to many people consider owning a gun a right,but here is the thing,in this country(US) driving is NOT a right and this is how it is defined,it is a privilege. One must go through a series of tests and then prove you can be trusted to to drive and can follow ALL the rules in order to be safe on the road. A car is as much a lethal weapon as a gun,and perhaps more so. As I see it owning a gun is also a privilege and you must earn the right to have one as with driving. A training course and a test of your knowledge on safety,and the knowledge that if you show disregard for these rules you may have your gun taken away. To me this does not seem unreasonable. We live in a different time than when gun ownership was a right,back then there were more dangers where a gun was mainly needed for safety. Wild animals, outlaws running pretty much wild, people living in isolation on farms,and of course simply to hunt for food. Today a gun is mainly to protect yourself,and to hunt(but not really needed because hunting is not a way to insure you have food) target shooting..But with ownership comes responsibility to insure the safety of anyone that might gain access to your gun. A license to own and perhaps a yearly re-certification of this license to insure you are complying with all safety rules. To me this seems a sensible approach to gun ownership. I know this might not prevent every bad act with guns,but many people own guns and have NO understanding of responsibility by owning them.

Just my two cents,I have owned guns and was trained in their safe use while in the service. Some would advocate arming EVERYONE but that is not really a solution,it just makes more chance for misuse or someone reacting from anger and instead of shouting shoot another person.

[MaskedOne]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

driving is also not explicitly as a right in the Bill of Rights, arms are. If weapons ownership should be a privilege rather than a right, then the nation as a whole should address it properly and arrange a Consitutional Amendment. So far, I normally see people using the commentary in the Amendment as an excuse to try and override the actual command and that annoys the hell out of me. With that said, Speech is also protected but it's not protected absolutely. Yelling fire in a theater is not protected for instance. Considering the lethality of firearms, I think a middle ground should be possible that protects the right of law-abiding citizens to access and own them but still takes steps to cut down on the body count. A required training course before purchase might help with accidental deaths. Other steps could also be appropriate.

[Ophidia]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

Though I posted this in the school shooting thread,I think it has a place here also.

Here is a thing that people must understand,way to many people consider owning a gun a right,but here is the thing,in this country(US) driving is NOT a right and this is how it is defined,it is a privilege.

Constitutionally speaking, gun ownership is a right of every American. I've been around guns my entire life. My first shooting lesson was when I was 5. To date, I haven't killed anyone with a gun (or anything else, for that matter). I was raised by people who used guns to procure food and to protect their homes. My mother and father shot game. My father was ex-military, so he probably shot a few humans at some point, but he was mostly emergency search & rescue. I and my husband own guns. The guns we own aren't automatic high-capacity killing machines, though - they're rifles and shotguns. Some are antiques & shouldn't be fired, but they still count in the US's per capita gun ownership numbers.

When the Bill of Rights was penned, it was still the day & age of black-powder single ball flintlocks. Gun ownership is a right here, but I do think there needs to be some updating to the law to account for technological advances. If you can't protect your home or take down some food without an AK-47 or a high-powered assault rifle filled with armor-piercing rounds, you're doing it wrong.

Today a gun is mainly to protect yourself,and to hunt(but not really needed because hunting is not a way to insure you have food)

We basically shaped our government as a way to right wrongs perpetrated by the British monarchical system.

Hunger is one of the greatest controllers a government can use against its own people. People will subject themselves to almost anything to stay fed.

In England, royalty kept game preserves. These were often large swathes of land that peasants and commoners were no longer allowed to use for food production - which included hunting and gathering. By controlling who owned major pieces of weaponry, the royalty/government did control who could hunt and feed themselves, especially in lean times or winter. A peasant's crops were subject to taxation, so if they were only growing enough for sustenance, they lost part of their crops to the taxman. Crops could fail for any number of reasons, and the peasants starved. Peasants were often depicted as lean and hungry, or suffering from malnutrition because they were lean, hungry and suffering from malnutrition. Trapping small game was a sketchy business - because you were leaving traps in place, other predators and scavengers could remove a trapped animals before you came back around. Other people took advantage of other people's traps as well, including those who laid in wait for a hunter to return to the location so they could take direct advantage of the hunter. If you were laying traps on a royal preserve, you were poaching and traps could be used to find you by the royal gamekeepers.

Bows, and later guns, meant that if you could aim true and shoot, you could usually procure game and had a ready-to-go meal right then and there. You didn't have to come back to a dangerous location to see if your trap or fish nets were full. Spear-hunting was deadly to the hunter more often than the hunted, and a bow or gun meant the hunter wasn't at close range to larger and more dangerous game, like elk, bear or boars.

In the US, our government does still control who can hunt large and more substantial game through hunting licenses. The system is in place to curb overhunting of certain species by trophy hunters, but it also means that those who depend on a deer or two to feed them through the year have to pay about $50 (licensing fees vary from state to state - a regular game license in Nevada starts at $33 & special licenses are granted through a raffle) for the chance to get a deer. An average whitetail buck runs about 150 - 200lbs, and about 60 - 70% of that weight is edible. So a hunter is paying about .50c a pound for that meat. Have you seen how much just about any meat goes for in a grocery store? Sometimes, here in Nevada, when the population is high, they sell mule deer tags for about $5. If you get 100lbs of mule deer meat, that brings it down to .05c a pound. Some game isn't controlled - you can hunt turkey & rabbit here all you want. For the record, our jackrabbits are huge & could easily feed 2 - 4 people (maybe more if you included their ears, lol).

[Maria de Luna]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

As far as guns go, I think in the U.S. there is a large lack of education and understanding. Guns are sensationalized by media and movies and even by parents who absolutely will not have them under their roof. Guns have a standing of these amazing machines which can do anything, and kill tons of people and even make good people do evil things, when that just is not the case. If you go out and buy armor piercing rounds so you can kill somebody wearing body armor if you have to, why is that one of the most important things to worry about? you can kill a deer, and most other things without too much power or difficulty, a high powered assault rifle doesn't seem nessecary. While a person may have the right to own a gun and ammunition, do they really need all of them?
Yes I understand that new shiny gun laws will not help keep these things out of the hands of criminals and pathological murderers, but they could make getting them slightly more difficult. Gun violence is a major problem in many places in the us and is just not well addressed, I do not see how some classes and training for any potential gun owner could really hurt? Especially in homes with young children, I little bit of knowledge would be better for a child, than trying to keep him from knowing that there is a gun in the house. Fear and ignorance breed fear and ignorance. I think gun control could start with training and education.

[MaskedOne]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

I grew up knowing where most of the guns in the house were. Grandma generally keeps them in plain sight. It's just understood that children don't touch them without supervision. It's also understood if you're bright that any weapon you can see is also empty. What children aren't told and won't find without a significant amount of effort is the gun that is kept loaded in case someone enters with hostile intent and doesn't either suffer a spontaneous heart attack*, get their head torn off by visiting relatives or get eaten by the dog.

* The Lord of Hosts likes Grandma and has acted on her behalf before. I don't expect fire and lightning but spontaneous heart failure, falling down staircases and a host of other fun things are on the table. Actually laying a hand on her may end up with the LoH deciding to make Final Destination's death look like a playground bully.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

A couple of funny things for those who know little about guns or gun violence in America-

1. So called "assault weapons" are not assault weapons. The term actually has no definition outside of military usage (where it always indicates a gun with auto fire capability). And no gun classed by a state as an "assault weapon" meets the military definition. Guns banned as "assault weapons" are banned only because they look mean.

2. Armor piercing rounds, incendiary rounds, "cop killer" bullets, all the exotica of ammunition you hear about - none of these are used by criminals. See if you can find a report of anybody - other than maybe a drug cartel - using these to commit a crime.

3. Legal guns aren't the problem. Places in the U.S. with the highest rate of legal gun ownership tend to have the lowest rates of gun violence. On the other hand, a place like Washington D.C., which has a total ban on guns - unless you happen to be a politico with body guards for yourself and family - has one of the highest rates of gun violence in the nation.

4. People should be trained to use firearms safely. Usually, they are. This, of course, won't do much to cut down crime...

5. I'm all in favor of gun control. I don't want people I don't like or trust to have guns. I have no problem with anyone else having them. As long as I stay armed, I don't care who gets disarmed.

[DanieMarie]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

I'm a bit biased, because I'm from a place and live in a place with different gun laws, and very different ideas of what a gun is for.

In my life experience, a gun is a tool used to kill deer and grouse. Yes, that's what it's for. Most people who have them keep them in a closet, unarmed. Both in Europe and in Canada, you're only allowed to have hunting guns, and you have to have a permit for the gun (which you have to wait for while they check to make sure you don't have a criminal record or history of mental instability) and a separate permit to carry it off your property. You can't transport it armed...you have to take the bullets out. In Germany (unlike Canada) you also have to be a member of a hunting association to own a gun (which I'm assuming also involves fees, courses, and licenses, if it's anything like fishing). In the UK, they go a step further. Since there is little chance to hunt in most of the UK (it's more densely populated with fewer animals), they're more restrictive with who gets to have a gun and for what reason. Even many of their police officers don't carry guns (here they do, as well as any security guard who deals with money, like in a bank or something). I'm ok with this. I don't really want to live in a place with more liberal laws regarding guns. Gun homocides per capita are a lot lower than in the US, especially in Europe where they end up here illegally less often. Accidental gun deaths are even lower still. I've never felt like I needed a gun to be safe or to protect myself, and I've never been in a situation where I thought it might be helpful. I don't hunt, so I don't see the reason to even own one at all. Most people feel the same.

I would actually feel rather unsafe living anywhere where you're allowed to easily acquire a small arsenal of fairly automatic weapons....because of this (and the health care issue), I'd likely never move to the US.

That being said, I think the US bringing in legislation like we have (at least if it were brought in quickly) would be a big problem, because there are too many guns in the country. You'd get honest people giving them up, and criminals keeping them. That being said, I think better GUN CONTROL is very important, not just for Americans but for their neighbours. A lot of illegal weapons end up leaving the US and going to other countries, especially Canada and Mexico. There was a move to have an international gun registration that a lot of Americans opposed but the rest of the world really wanted. We want this because we don't want your guns. You can keep them, but please register them....we don't want them in our country illegally!

[B. de Corbin]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

I would actually feel rather unsafe living anywhere where you're allowed to easily acquire a small arsenal of fairly automatic weapons....

Me too. That's why I don't live in Afghanistan.

With the exception of Switzerland, as far as I know, European countries don't let people have full auto guns laying around the house.

Neither do they allow it in North America - U.S. and Canada.

A person CAN get a full auto gun in the U.S. - if A) one can afford it - a legal full auto goes for around $25000 (in Afghanistan, you can get a AK for less than $100), and B) if you renew your license yearly - $200 per year.

Needless to say, nobody is legally acquiring an arsenal of these, small or otherwise, easily.

[DanieMarie]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

I'm not even ok with handguns, to be honest. There is absolutely no reason I can think of in my neck of the woods why anyone who isn't a police officer or a bank security guard to have a hand gun.

We had 3 hunting rifles (unarmed) in my house growing up, and that's 2 more guns that I feel most hunters need, and 3 more than most regular people need. I honestly don't know why my dad had them (I think he thought he might want to go hunting at some point in the 70s)....and he didn't really care that he had them.

As I said before though, I'm not bothered that you have them. I'd never want to live there, but I don't think it should change because of that (there are many reasons I wouldn't want to live in the US anyway....I grew up with different values and I share more values with people where I already am, and I'm fine with how things are here). I'm happy to live somewhere where people share similar ideas of what a gun is for (hunting). That being said, I never get why Americans are so offended by Europeans and Canadians saying that they like gun control in their OWN countries. Look, we don't see guns as protection devices. We see them as tools. So, we're not bothered about laws that keep it that way. I can see why people get defensive about people saying the US should ban everything other than hunting rifles and shotguns, but on the same end of that, it's not really fair to tell us that we should have them when we don't really want them.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

We had 3 hunting rifles (unarmed) in my house growing up, and that's 2 more guns that I feel most hunters need, and 3 more than most regular people need.

Most women have at least three pairs of shoes, which, IMHO, is about two pairs more than they really need.

Of course, I'm may be wrong about that... there are probably different shoes for different occasions, some go with one outfit, some go with another, some are for fun, some are for work, you know...

I'm thinking that people who don't know much about shoes (or shooting) probably aren't qualified to decide what is or what is not needed by those who do.

[DanieMarie]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

Please refer to the edited version of my post

[B. de Corbin]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

That being said, I never get why Americans are so offended by Europeans and Canadians saying that they like gun control in their OWN countries.

LOL - because it often precedes the statement "...and you should be more like us."

And a lot of us don't wanna be...

[DanieMarie]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

LOL - because it often precedes the statement "...and you should be more like us."

And a lot of us don't wanna be...

Yeah and if you read what I said AFTER that, you would know that I didn't mean people who are doing that. Some of us think it's perfectly fine for you to do what you want, but we expect the same attitude from you.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: What should the 2nd amendment mean in a modern society?

Don't get huffy.

Yes, it pisses me off as much as it does you, but since neither one of us it doing it to the other, nobody needs to get upset. Right?