Decius wrote:
I've been meaning to get back to this thread. Its been interesting. I want to interject some thoughts.

snip....

2. I think the means is a near total ban on federal firearms laws. The 14th amendment extends this ban to the states. Certain exceptions such as the case of felons or in certain locations are probably allowable given an over-riding government interest, but I don't think a ban on certain types of weapons is possible and I'm not sure I buy U.S. v. Miller. You can obviously use a sawed off shotgun in a war. Actual wars in the world today involving actual militias are actually fought with all kinds of fucked up weapons. Actual militias have things like RPGs. I think the second amendment cannot achieve its stated purpose if it allows for the federal regulations on the ownership of RPGs.

I'm somewhat in agreement here. If the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to provide the means to the people of counteracting against the State by balancing firepower, then you would need adequate firepower to do so. I just don't think that allowing people to own such high powered weaponry is a good idea. It creates an arms race, not just with the State, but within ourselves.

5. Militia of the sort envisioned by the Constitution are not obsolete from a technical standpoint. Generally, we refer to them as terrorist organizations. The closest modern equivalents are Sunni and Shia insurgent groups in Iraq, and Hezbollah. I think thats really what the founders were thinking. In fact, I recall Nanochick making a very insightful analogy between the founding of this Republic and the present bloodshed in Iraq. Looking at the situation there is the closest thing you can get to understanding the context that the Constitution was written in. I doubt very seriously that you'll see any party to any settlement in Iraq agreeing to lay down their arms. The 2nd amendment is an agreement that the federal government of the US would not disarm the militia. Its the same kind of thing.

This is a very profound point and one that has gotten totally lost in the dialog around the WoT. These "fundamentalist radicals" are of the same spirit which formed this country. The entire dynamic of allowing the Executive Branch to designate enemy combatants whether citizen or not basically gives the State power to nullify any organization that it deems annoying. Essentially the system has been circumvented and the US Government has become a monopoly. If there was ever a need to "rise up" and start over fresh, the systemic methods for doing that have been mostly eliminated. One of the things that I always admired the most about the US form of democracy was that it was extremely prescient and comprehensive about keeping itself relevant and driven by the populace. That is no longer the case. It's essentially been gentrified and the people are for the most part, clueless. So the entire argument about the 2nd Amendment is another case of arguing about the trees and not the forest. It really doesn't matter if we allow people to have any class of weaponry, because if they were to organize in any real manner as to lever that power, they'd just be eliminated without recourse or due process.

6. Almost no one in the US today is comfortable with the idea that armed terrorist organizations can rightfully exist here. The actual purpose of the 2nd amendment is therefore at odds with the interests of the people in this country, and a new amendment ought to be passed, striking it down. If people actually understood what the 2nd amendment meant, a 28th amendment eliminating it would pass readily with broad social consensus.

I disagree with this. I think if people really understood what this implies, they'd vote for their guns and the power to balance the State. This is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Why should we fear armed "terrorist" organizations on our soil? If the majority can live free and sleep well knowing that their government is in check and truly doing the work of the people, then there should be no reason why we'd need to live in fear. Sure, there might be some disruption or certainly extremist factions might use force to make their points. But this pushes us to reconcile those points of view and ultimately, force shouldn't be necessary to make those points. Maybe I'm being naive, but I think that an open and truthful dialog creates understanding and over time, this moves the "center" to where it needs to go. As the system works today, it's nothing but everyone trying to out-hack each other by stealing control over and over again, resulting in nothing getting done and a divided and jaded populace.

Often, the reason it isn't, is that the majority of the people in this country don't support the general right to be left alone. The only zones where one is free from onerous regulation in this society are zones that are tangent to constitutional amendments. Those are the only places that people generally respect individual liberty, and often only grudgingly. We need a new social contract that embodies this right, and in order to get it we have to build a broad social consensus for it, and we are far, far from that day.

8. EDIT: I think that there are circumstances where society cannot reasonably trust adults to act responsibly by default. An easy example is nukes. Society cannot trust adults to act responsibly with nukes. The aforementioned social consensus would work better as a general principal than as a strict rule.

But why is that? I think of the many things the Founding Fathers would be most horrified by is the lack of PROGRESS our society has made in generating responsible, socially conscious, educated, and dutiful people. Sure, we've generated power, wealth, health, and opportunity, but not with the demanding responsibility that goes along with all of that. The system is being dismantled and regressing because the people by which it is comprised are experiencing the same.

RE: Guns for Safety? Dream On, Scalia. - washingtonpost.com