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Alternatively, you can just repeal the second amendment. I’m unsure why anti-gun advocates don’t just argue this. The constitution can be changed. Justice Steve

Alternatively, you can just repeal the second amendment. I’m unsure why anti-gun advocates don’t just argue this. The constitution can be changed. Justice Stevens argued this in an op-ed: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens-repeal-second-amendment.amp.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opin...

pnako 7y ago
You can certainly try to do that.
melling 7y ago
“In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated militia.” During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
- rayiner 7y ago
  Blaming the NRA is popular, but people leave out that the academic tide turned against the 1960s view as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html > There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias. That consensus no longer exists — thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns. See also: http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/common.htm http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/common.htm. If you look at what the Framers contemporaneously wrote about guns and the militia, it’s almost impossible to deny that the purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that able-bodied men would have access to fire arms in order to form militias, to not only combat foreign enemies but potentially domestic ones. Any sort of gun control that undermines that purpose cannot be squared with the second amendment, and we are slowly but surely rediscovering that understanding.
  - melling 7y ago
    There’s more in the Atlantic version of the article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-stevens-court-failed-gun-control/587272/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-... “ Colonial history contains many examples of firearm regulations in urban areas that imposed obstacles to their use for protection of the home. Boston, Philadelphia, and New York—the three largest cities in America at that time—all imposed restrictions on the firing of guns in the city limits. Boston enacted a law in 1746 prohibiting the “discharge” of any gun or pistol that was later revived in 1778; ” “ Boston’s gunpowder law imposed a 10-pound fine on any person who took any loaded firearm into any dwelling house or barn within the town. Most, if not all, of those regulations would violate the Second Amendment as it was construed in the 5–4 decision that Justice Antonin Scalia ” During colonial times we did not have a large standing army and relied on state militias. https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-congress-officially-creates-the-u-s-army https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-congress-off...
    - Turing_Machine 7y ago
      > Colonial history contains many examples of firearm regulations in urban areas that imposed obstacles to their use for protection of the home. None of the Bill of Rights applied to the states until the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, after which it was held to be "incorporated to the states". State and local laws from the colonial period are not relevant. During the same period, several states had established churches, but I see no one arguing that the First Amendment still permits that.
      - melling 7y ago
        It’s surprising that Justice Stevens didn’t understand that when he wrote it in May of this year. Is it possible that he did and you’re missing something?
        Turing_Machine 7y ago
        Justice Stevens is the outlier here. The majority of the court agrees with me, not him.
jki275 7y ago
you should definitely try that. For the record, it's impossible under our current system and political reality. The process to repeal an amendment requires more than three population centers on the east and west coast, and the rest of the country isn't going to roll over for you.
glenstein 7y ago
Gun advocates should clear up confusion by lobbying for an amendment that redefines militia to encompass a wider age range. Or we can acknowledge that passing constitutional amendments in the 21st century requires amount of political capital that it is no longer possible to attain in our system. Insisting that we interpret the status quo as favoring one's preferred ideology, and that one's ideological opponents must seek reform through an for-all-practical-purposes impossible mechanism is just a different way of expressing routine ideological preferences.
- ryeights 7y ago
  >Or we can acknowledge that passing constitutional amendments in the 21st century requires amount of political capital that it is no longer possible to attain in our system. Why is this? What, concretely, has changed? Note that Constitutional amendments are supposed to be difficult to pass.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Your second point is backward. The Constitution is a compromise between various ideological preferences. If it’s impossible to achieve sufficient consensus to change the bargain by amending the Constitution, that means you can’t change the bargain. You can’t subvert the requirement of a strong consensus for amendment by way of mechanisms (legislation, judicial interpretation) that require lower levels of consensus.
  - glenstein 7y ago
    That artificially constrains the entirety of gun control to the question of constitutional amendments, and confusedly insists that other constitutionally valid reforms (e.g. congressional and state legislation, court rulings) would be 'subverting' that process. Which is deeply confused for reasons I certainly hope I don't have to explain out loud in a serious conversation. Congress has drifted from the institutional norm of resorting to constitutional amendments for reasons that have nothing to do with the merits of gun control. Insisting that an extremely difficult channel for reform is the only valid way to seek reform begs the question in favor of a deeply disputed interpretation of the second amendment, and disingenuously insists that other channels of reform aren't on the table, for reasons that have yet to be explained.

pnako 7y ago

You can certainly try to do that.

melling 7y ago

“In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency of a “well regulated militia.” During the years when Warren Burger was our chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment. When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice Burger publicly characterized the N.R.A. as perpetrating “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

rayiner 7y ago
Blaming the NRA is popular, but people leave out that the academic tide turned against the 1960s view as well: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html > There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias. That consensus no longer exists — thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns. See also: http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/common.htm http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/common.htm. If you look at what the Framers contemporaneously wrote about guns and the militia, it’s almost impossible to deny that the purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that able-bodied men would have access to fire arms in order to form militias, to not only combat foreign enemies but potentially domestic ones. Any sort of gun control that undermines that purpose cannot be squared with the second amendment, and we are slowly but surely rediscovering that understanding.
- melling 7y ago
  There’s more in the Atlantic version of the article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-stevens-court-failed-gun-control/587272/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-... “ Colonial history contains many examples of firearm regulations in urban areas that imposed obstacles to their use for protection of the home. Boston, Philadelphia, and New York—the three largest cities in America at that time—all imposed restrictions on the firing of guns in the city limits. Boston enacted a law in 1746 prohibiting the “discharge” of any gun or pistol that was later revived in 1778; ” “ Boston’s gunpowder law imposed a 10-pound fine on any person who took any loaded firearm into any dwelling house or barn within the town. Most, if not all, of those regulations would violate the Second Amendment as it was construed in the 5–4 decision that Justice Antonin Scalia ” During colonial times we did not have a large standing army and relied on state militias. https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-congress-officially-creates-the-u-s-army https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-congress-off...
  - Turing_Machine 7y ago
    > Colonial history contains many examples of firearm regulations in urban areas that imposed obstacles to their use for protection of the home. None of the Bill of Rights applied to the states until the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, after which it was held to be "incorporated to the states". State and local laws from the colonial period are not relevant. During the same period, several states had established churches, but I see no one arguing that the First Amendment still permits that.
    - melling 7y ago
      It’s surprising that Justice Stevens didn’t understand that when he wrote it in May of this year. Is it possible that he did and you’re missing something?
      - Turing_Machine 7y ago
        Justice Stevens is the outlier here. The majority of the court agrees with me, not him.

jki275 7y ago

you should definitely try that. For the record, it's impossible under our current system and political reality. The process to repeal an amendment requires more than three population centers on the east and west coast, and the rest of the country isn't going to roll over for you.

glenstein 7y ago

Gun advocates should clear up confusion by lobbying for an amendment that redefines militia to encompass a wider age range. Or we can acknowledge that passing constitutional amendments in the 21st century requires amount of political capital that it is no longer possible to attain in our system. Insisting that we interpret the status quo as favoring one's preferred ideology, and that one's ideological opponents must seek reform through an for-all-practical-purposes impossible mechanism is just a different way of expressing routine ideological preferences.

ryeights 7y ago
>Or we can acknowledge that passing constitutional amendments in the 21st century requires amount of political capital that it is no longer possible to attain in our system. Why is this? What, concretely, has changed? Note that Constitutional amendments are supposed to be difficult to pass.
rayiner 7y ago
Your second point is backward. The Constitution is a compromise between various ideological preferences. If it’s impossible to achieve sufficient consensus to change the bargain by amending the Constitution, that means you can’t change the bargain. You can’t subvert the requirement of a strong consensus for amendment by way of mechanisms (legislation, judicial interpretation) that require lower levels of consensus.
- glenstein 7y ago
  That artificially constrains the entirety of gun control to the question of constitutional amendments, and confusedly insists that other constitutionally valid reforms (e.g. congressional and state legislation, court rulings) would be 'subverting' that process. Which is deeply confused for reasons I certainly hope I don't have to explain out loud in a serious conversation. Congress has drifted from the institutional norm of resorting to constitutional amendments for reasons that have nothing to do with the merits of gun control. Insisting that an extremely difficult channel for reform is the only valid way to seek reform begs the question in favor of a deeply disputed interpretation of the second amendment, and disingenuously insists that other channels of reform aren't on the table, for reasons that have yet to be explained.