flynn23 wrote:
I think that it's perfectly acceptable to own weapons in your home for sport, protection, or collection. Although I do have serious reservations about the TYPES of weapons owned. You can collect WW2 rifles or even historic machine guns, but there's no reason why someone should have an operational M2 or an AK47, both of which I know of several people who possess.

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

1. I think the second amendment consists of a purpose and a means to achieve that purpose.

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.

3. Self defense in the home is not the purpose, nor is hunting, nor is collecting. But the ownership of weapons for those purposes is a given considering the means employed by this amendment. Similarly, the purpose of the first amendment was not to protect porn videos from federal bans, but it does so anyway, due to the means employed (nearly total prohibition on regulation of speech.)

4. The purpose was to protect the right of the people to form armed militia groups capable of challenging the power of any other contemporary armed force. The original federalist structure of the U.S. Government may have put states in the position of regulating such militia, but the 14th amendment set that power aside.

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.

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.

7. All this nittering about guns for personal defense, as a hobby, etc is tangental to the issue of the 2nd amendment, and people's interest in them should not be used as a justification for continuing to prop up that amendment or twist its interpretation in ridiculous ways. (Furthermore, the concept of guns for personal defense may soon be technically obsolete.) The inherent interest that law abiding people have in being treated like adults and able to legally own guns if they want to exists in all kinds of other contexts that don't happen to be tangent to a constitutional amendment. Examples include the right to drive a car without wearing your seat belt, the right to eat hallucinogenic mushrooms, and the right to buy a beer on Sunday.

The fact that these rights are not tangental to a constitutional amendment does not make them any less or more important than the right to own a handgun, (unless you accept the idea that armed terrorist groups should be allowed in the US and the right to own handguns has to be preserved for the express purpose of protecting the ability of those terrorist groups to operate without constraint). If you're really concerned about handguns strictly for self defense, the basic question is whether government ought to regulate behavior in general that it considers dangerous but which can be engaged in responsibly. That is not a question about the second amendment. The conversation ought to be engaged in a general way.

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.

9. Second Edit: Those who believe in a limited right to own handguns and rifles for personal defense, or as a hobby, might reasonably consider supporting a constitutional amendment which strikes the second amendment and replaces it with new amendment protecting such a right. I recall that Madison proposed such an amendment originally, which specifically referred to hunting and self defense, although I don't have a reference at hand. It is somewhere in the recent Supreme Court decision.

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