7 ms·

I agree with most of your post. One small quibble though: > There's something admirable about the idea that a government would not take away all the guns. The

by seneca 5y ago

I agree with most of your post. One small quibble though: > There's something admirable about the idea that a government would not take away all the guns. The whole point is that the government Can Not take away guns, not that they "would not". Inalienable rights preceed government, they are not granted by it. In fact, the government is supposed to exist to safe guard them. I think that's an important philosophical point that a lot of people, especially the anti-gun type, lose sight of. Not suggesting you're in that camp, but I think the distinction is important.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
AustinDev 5y ago
>The whole point is that the government Can Not take away guns, not that they "would not". Inalienable rights preceed government, they are not granted by it. In fact, the government is supposed to exist to safe guard them. The National Firearms Act would like to have a word it is unconstitutional on it's face despite what the Supreme Court says. 'Shall not be infringed' hasn't been the law of the land since the 1930's. Maybe we'll get lucky and this conservative supreme court will do one big thing right and declare all federal firearms regulations null and void thus ending this culture war and forcing the politicians to fix actual problems. However, that is highly unlikely.
- packetlost 5y ago
  > thus ending this culture war and forcing the politicians to fix actual problems You think guns are the core of the culture war? Even if the SCOTUS did make such a ruling, the culture war almost certainly would not end.
  - AustinDev 5y ago
    It's been shown that many people would side with democrats on the majority of social issues and vote for them if not for their stance on firearms. If the democrats lost their ability to use that as part of their culture war platform they'd likely gain a ton of people who don't vote or vote R simply to retain their rights.
    - bananabreakfast 5y ago
      This is silly, because Gun laws are a central part of the platform and can't be abandoned. This is like saying if Republicans just dropped anti-immigration from their platform they'd gain a ton of people who don't vote for them because they're Mexican. Any move like this fundamentally alienates the base.
      - oaktrout 5y ago
        What keeps a party's platform from changing? Would former republicans vote democrat if the republican party dropped its anti-immigration stance? Surely not, as there is still abortion, taxes, guns, etc.
      - zepto 5y ago
        It seems highly unlikely to me that many people would switch from D to R if the democrats stopped pursuing gun control. On the other hand I know many people who will hold their nose and vote R only because they don’t want to lose their gun rights.
    - ctrlp 5y ago
      You can't reduce the culture war to gun ownership. The Dems are doing just about everything they can to alienate traditionalists in the U.S., including gun owners. It's not even the most important wedge issue anymore. Rather, gun owners are concerned about defending themselves in a country organized by Democratic party policy. They'll need the guns when the police are defunded, or when the social workers come for their children.
      - germinalphrase 5y ago
        I’m asking genuinely, is this a real fear: “…when the social workers come for their children”.
        starbase 5y ago
        I don't know about fear, though it's certainly a concern. I have had police and social workers come to my home, and to my child's school, because I let her walk to the park alone. The park was less than 100 meters from my home. In my own childhood--an objectively more dangerous time--I explored an area of over 100 square kilometers, unsupervised and with no means of phoning home, yet suffered no problems more serious than a skinned knee.
- jvanderbot 5y ago
  Genuine legal interpretation question: Why does everyone quote "Shall not be infringed" but ignore "Well-regulated"? If the goal is a "well regulated militia", and therefore gun rights "shall not be infringed", why do we interpret that as "everybody should have largely unfettered access to weapons" rather than "If part of a well-regulated armed force, access to weapons should be allowed during militia activities"? or something similar.
  - AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
    Well-regulate here means well armed. So, theoretically, this means that the right of the people to keep and bear arms should include all weapons useful to a militia. So machine guns, mines, grenades, rocket launchers, tanks, helicopters, etc.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    The US Supreme Court held "The Amendment's prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause's text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms."[1] [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html
    - jvanderbot 5y ago
      Perfect answer. Thanks!
    - beerandt 5y ago
      Separately, "regulate" didn't mean the same thing then as it does today. Think about the phrase "well-regulated". When has modern regulation ever been described as "well"? And what would that even mean? The meaning was intended to be somewhere between well-supplied and well-prepared. Similar to how "regulate interstate commerce" was intended as to encourage and provide-for, not to limit or restrict.
      - Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
- majormajor 5y ago
  When the Supreme Court "ended the culture war" about abortion with Roe did it result in the right wing giving up and deciding to get other things done? Or did it get turned into a core issue for recruiting generations of Republicans to overturn it?
phendrenad2 5y ago
The US Constitution can be changed, never forget that.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  The Bill of Rights cannot be. This is the fundamental difference between the US and other Western democracies. Consent to be governed rests upon said government respecting those inalienable rights that we have. Those rights are not granted us by the government, they are the rights that we created a government to preserve. Any government violating those rights no longer has the consent of the governed and should be abolished.
  - bananabreakfast 5y ago
    That's absurd. The Bill of Rights is literally a list of changes to the constitution. Any one of them can be changed at any time by a majority of states. You're essentially saying that if the majority of the country votes to change one of the rights, then what? You'll no longer recognize the government as real?
    - blacktriangle 5y ago
      Take that argument to an extreme. If the majority of the country votes to suspend democracy, would you stick around? If not, then doesn't that imply that there exists a set of underlying principles that you believe are fundamental to a government? That's exactly what the Bill of Rights is, an enumeration of what were viewed as the fundamental rights for which the point of government is to preserve. The mistake so many people make is thinking that government is the lowest level. It is not, government is downstream of culture and is a reflection of that cultures values. Without a unified culture that agrees on certain prerequisits of government, for example from this case elected representation, there can be no functional government.
      - jmeister 5y ago
        Hayek’s “cosmos” and “taxis” dichotomy captures this well.
tantalor 5y ago
Semantics
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Or the single most important point to understand when it comes to government.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kelnos 5y ago
> Inalienable rights preceed government, they are not granted by it. That's a nice ideal, but in reality governments can do and take away whatever they want, and a guarantee that they won't take away your "inalienable" rights is only as good as the system built around that government, and the willingness of its people to fight (physically or legally) for their rights.
- marcusverus 5y ago
  Too true. The real problem here, in my humble opinion, is that the mechanism by which the citizens of the United States can fundamentally alter the government (via constitutional amendment) require sizable majorities and broad consensus (I realize that this is primarily a feature), while the mechanism by which the the United States government can alter fundamentally alter itself (via the extra-constitutional mechanism we call Judicial Review) requires a simple majority of 5/9 unelected "justices". We've seen this mechanism, over the course of ~230 years, bootstrap a pathetically weak federal government into a unitary behemoth which dominates our state and local governments. And the only way to get off the train is violent revolution! It's like a bad joke. We need to acknowledge that human beings have a right to self-governance, that this includes the right to form new governments via democratic referenda, and that governments that prevent this are engaged in something which, upon inspection, cannot be distinguished from imperialism.
- ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
  The right to freedom of speech in the US is almost truly uninhibited. Even the "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater" argument was actually revisited by the Supreme Court and thrown out. If there's an amendment to the constitution to ban owning a firearm, so be it. But if that right is severely limited without an amendment, it would be natural to fear for the rest. The verbiage on the first 10 amendments is incredibly simple. "shall not be infringed".
  - MagnumOpus 5y ago
    There is often a disconnect between what is the constitution/the law, and what the people in power actually order their cops/soldiers to do. The constitution of the USSR guaranteed the privacy of citizens' communications, freedom of religion, and doesn't just allow citizens to criticize public organizations but prohibits persecution of critics. You know what happened in reality. The US is by no means immune to that - we've seen last year that the President can easily send some of the millions of armed people he has under his direct control to crack down on protests and disappear some people -- while the constitutional legitimacy gets debated months later once the damage is done...
Hamuko 5y ago
Well, if the new Texas anti-abortion law is declared legal and constitutional in the courts, there's going to be a lot more laws that deny people their constitutional rights via similar "bounty hunter" systems. And the fact that it wasn't declared unconstitutional right off the bat makes the "can not" part not apply that well since Texas can currently very much take away constitutional rights from its citizens. Also, the "inalienable rights" in 1776 were not really inalienable since life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were afforded to a pretty select group of people.

by seneca 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

AustinDev 5y ago

>The whole point is that the government Can Not take away guns, not that they "would not". Inalienable rights preceed government, they are not granted by it. In fact, the government is supposed to exist to safe guard them. The National Firearms Act would like to have a word it is unconstitutional on it's face despite what the Supreme Court says. 'Shall not be infringed' hasn't been the law of the land since the 1930's. Maybe we'll get lucky and this conservative supreme court will do one big thing right and declare all federal firearms regulations null and void thus ending this culture war and forcing the politicians to fix actual problems. However, that is highly unlikely.

packetlost 5y ago
> thus ending this culture war and forcing the politicians to fix actual problems You think guns are the core of the culture war? Even if the SCOTUS did make such a ruling, the culture war almost certainly would not end.
- AustinDev 5y ago
  It's been shown that many people would side with democrats on the majority of social issues and vote for them if not for their stance on firearms. If the democrats lost their ability to use that as part of their culture war platform they'd likely gain a ton of people who don't vote or vote R simply to retain their rights.
  - bananabreakfast 5y ago
    This is silly, because Gun laws are a central part of the platform and can't be abandoned. This is like saying if Republicans just dropped anti-immigration from their platform they'd gain a ton of people who don't vote for them because they're Mexican. Any move like this fundamentally alienates the base.
    - oaktrout 5y ago
      What keeps a party's platform from changing? Would former republicans vote democrat if the republican party dropped its anti-immigration stance? Surely not, as there is still abortion, taxes, guns, etc.
    - zepto 5y ago
      It seems highly unlikely to me that many people would switch from D to R if the democrats stopped pursuing gun control. On the other hand I know many people who will hold their nose and vote R only because they don’t want to lose their gun rights.
  - ctrlp 5y ago
    You can't reduce the culture war to gun ownership. The Dems are doing just about everything they can to alienate traditionalists in the U.S., including gun owners. It's not even the most important wedge issue anymore. Rather, gun owners are concerned about defending themselves in a country organized by Democratic party policy. They'll need the guns when the police are defunded, or when the social workers come for their children.
    - germinalphrase 5y ago
      I’m asking genuinely, is this a real fear: “…when the social workers come for their children”.
      - starbase 5y ago
        I don't know about fear, though it's certainly a concern. I have had police and social workers come to my home, and to my child's school, because I let her walk to the park alone. The park was less than 100 meters from my home. In my own childhood--an objectively more dangerous time--I explored an area of over 100 square kilometers, unsupervised and with no means of phoning home, yet suffered no problems more serious than a skinned knee.
jvanderbot 5y ago
Genuine legal interpretation question: Why does everyone quote "Shall not be infringed" but ignore "Well-regulated"? If the goal is a "well regulated militia", and therefore gun rights "shall not be infringed", why do we interpret that as "everybody should have largely unfettered access to weapons" rather than "If part of a well-regulated armed force, access to weapons should be allowed during militia activities"? or something similar.
- AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
  Well-regulate here means well armed. So, theoretically, this means that the right of the people to keep and bear arms should include all weapons useful to a militia. So machine guns, mines, grenades, rocket launchers, tanks, helicopters, etc.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  The US Supreme Court held "The Amendment's prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause's text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms."[1] [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html
  - jvanderbot 5y ago
    Perfect answer. Thanks!
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Separately, "regulate" didn't mean the same thing then as it does today. Think about the phrase "well-regulated". When has modern regulation ever been described as "well"? And what would that even mean? The meaning was intended to be somewhere between well-supplied and well-prepared. Similar to how "regulate interstate commerce" was intended as to encourage and provide-for, not to limit or restrict.
    - Throwawayaerlei 5y ago
majormajor 5y ago
When the Supreme Court "ended the culture war" about abortion with Roe did it result in the right wing giving up and deciding to get other things done? Or did it get turned into a core issue for recruiting generations of Republicans to overturn it?

phendrenad2 5y ago

The US Constitution can be changed, never forget that.

blacktriangle 5y ago
The Bill of Rights cannot be. This is the fundamental difference between the US and other Western democracies. Consent to be governed rests upon said government respecting those inalienable rights that we have. Those rights are not granted us by the government, they are the rights that we created a government to preserve. Any government violating those rights no longer has the consent of the governed and should be abolished.
- bananabreakfast 5y ago
  That's absurd. The Bill of Rights is literally a list of changes to the constitution. Any one of them can be changed at any time by a majority of states. You're essentially saying that if the majority of the country votes to change one of the rights, then what? You'll no longer recognize the government as real?
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    Take that argument to an extreme. If the majority of the country votes to suspend democracy, would you stick around? If not, then doesn't that imply that there exists a set of underlying principles that you believe are fundamental to a government? That's exactly what the Bill of Rights is, an enumeration of what were viewed as the fundamental rights for which the point of government is to preserve. The mistake so many people make is thinking that government is the lowest level. It is not, government is downstream of culture and is a reflection of that cultures values. Without a unified culture that agrees on certain prerequisits of government, for example from this case elected representation, there can be no functional government.
    - jmeister 5y ago
      Hayek’s “cosmos” and “taxis” dichotomy captures this well.

tantalor 5y ago

Semantics

blacktriangle 5y ago
Or the single most important point to understand when it comes to government.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kelnos 5y ago

> Inalienable rights preceed government, they are not granted by it. That's a nice ideal, but in reality governments can do and take away whatever they want, and a guarantee that they won't take away your "inalienable" rights is only as good as the system built around that government, and the willingness of its people to fight (physically or legally) for their rights.

marcusverus 5y ago
Too true. The real problem here, in my humble opinion, is that the mechanism by which the citizens of the United States can fundamentally alter the government (via constitutional amendment) require sizable majorities and broad consensus (I realize that this is primarily a feature), while the mechanism by which the the United States government can alter fundamentally alter itself (via the extra-constitutional mechanism we call Judicial Review) requires a simple majority of 5/9 unelected "justices". We've seen this mechanism, over the course of ~230 years, bootstrap a pathetically weak federal government into a unitary behemoth which dominates our state and local governments. And the only way to get off the train is violent revolution! It's like a bad joke. We need to acknowledge that human beings have a right to self-governance, that this includes the right to form new governments via democratic referenda, and that governments that prevent this are engaged in something which, upon inspection, cannot be distinguished from imperialism.
ApolloFortyNine 5y ago
The right to freedom of speech in the US is almost truly uninhibited. Even the "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater" argument was actually revisited by the Supreme Court and thrown out. If there's an amendment to the constitution to ban owning a firearm, so be it. But if that right is severely limited without an amendment, it would be natural to fear for the rest. The verbiage on the first 10 amendments is incredibly simple. "shall not be infringed".
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  There is often a disconnect between what is the constitution/the law, and what the people in power actually order their cops/soldiers to do. The constitution of the USSR guaranteed the privacy of citizens' communications, freedom of religion, and doesn't just allow citizens to criticize public organizations but prohibits persecution of critics. You know what happened in reality. The US is by no means immune to that - we've seen last year that the President can easily send some of the millions of armed people he has under his direct control to crack down on protests and disappear some people -- while the constitutional legitimacy gets debated months later once the damage is done...

Hamuko 5y ago

Well, if the new Texas anti-abortion law is declared legal and constitutional in the courts, there's going to be a lot more laws that deny people their constitutional rights via similar "bounty hunter" systems. And the fact that it wasn't declared unconstitutional right off the bat makes the "can not" part not apply that well since Texas can currently very much take away constitutional rights from its citizens. Also, the "inalienable rights" in 1776 were not really inalienable since life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were afforded to a pretty select group of people.