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So when people talk about the founding fathers and what they had in mind when they wrote the constitution, typically in relation to gun laws, it should also be

So when people talk about the founding fathers and what they had in mind when they wrote the constitution, typically in relation to gun laws, it should also be pointed out that the constitution should have run out after 19 years? I actually quite like this. The US constitution has been elevated to some quasi religious document where everyone interprets it how they want to interpret it. A bi decadal debate on what it should actually say would be useful. Although it would take politicians longer than that to actually agree.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
I feel you are commingling negative rights with regulations . The constitution provided "negative" rights to the people and individual states. Negative rights are rights that exist unless someone acts to negate them. This means the constitution affirms that people and states get to keep all priviledges, unless specifically enumerated as priviledges of the federal government. So, if the Federal government starts with nothing, the right end state for the for the government to end with nothing. This is quite different from the inertia you see today in Federal government regulatory growth. Going back to the current discussion, negative rights dont lapse since they define the starting point. It is only regulations (I.e. anything that comes outside of the constitution) which is subject to reset.
- benj111 4y ago
  Negative rights, are rights to be free from something. Eg cruel and unusual punishment. Also the quote started "It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution" So I don't see what's wrong talking about the constitution.
harshreality 4y ago
Jefferson is speaking there of a political-philosophical hypothesis. It's not a statement of fact that laws do, or that the Constitution does, expire after 19 years. Clearly they don't by default. By all means, let's hold a constitutional convention periodically. Whether it's every 20 years or every 100, we're overdue. The founders even foresaw the potential need for that, and provided a procedure utilizing constitutional conventions to bypass state legislatures, a procedure which the country has not once utilized. Failure to go through the amendment procedure doesn't grant us the right to ignore the Constitution as written. It's very easy to say you don't like some part of the Constitution. It's very difficult to propose and pass an alternative.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  In addition, we could really use a mechanism for the judiciary to declare a law or amendment ambiguous. The legislature gets locked in and catered meals from a random local public school until the judiciary is happy that the new law isn't ambiguous. Apart from DC having the best school lunches in the country, we would also see less vitriolic polarizing arguments. The federal legislature should decide at what point a developing fetus or child gets what rights, and how those should be weighed against the rights of the mother to be free. Because human rights both to life and liberty are a federal thing. And the whether the 2nd amendment is ambiguous due to changes in language or intentional due to disagreement even back then, the judiciary could say "clean this thing up and come back when you have a supermajority, hope you like canned green beans".
  - tekknik 4y ago
    How is the second amendment ambiguous? It’s one of the more clear written rights we have.
    - jjk166 4y ago
      What counts as a militia, what does it mean to be well regulated, to what degree does the security of a free state matter, what counts as an arm, what actions counts as bearing them, and what infringes the right to do so? The amendment is clearly written, but ambiguously worded.
      - jfengel 4y ago
        It's not at all clearly written. As written it's simply ungrammatical: the comma after "militia" is a syntax error. Such nitpicking would ordinarily be unimportant, but given that the purpose of the entire prefatory clause is unclear, it completely undercuts any notion that the entire thing is "one of the more clear written" (as the GP said). It makes it impossible to tell whether it's intended to be a limitation or an explanation (which none of the other amendments have or require). As you say, many of the words are also ambiguous. But for a piece of law whose interpretation is a matter of tens of thousands of deaths per year, one would expect it to at least be grammatically valid.
baryphonic 4y ago
Keep in mind that Thomas Jefferson had no part in writing the Constitution (he was in France) and was a significant opponent of it. People like Alexander Hamilton thought that not only should the Constitution be permanent, but that it should also provide for an elected king.
- hasbot 4y ago
  Some interesting discussion here: https://www.quora.com/What-did-Thomas-Jefferson-oppose-about-the-constitution-Was-he-an-Anti-federalist?share=1 https://www.quora.com/What-did-Thomas-Jefferson-oppose-about...
ballenf 4y ago
As a sibling explains, it's important to understand the ground state. The ground state assumption is that citizens have all these rights (speech, arms, religion, etc). Narrowing or abrogating these rights is where laws come in. The opposition at the time to the Bill of Rights was that it would confuse people into thinking the rights came out of the constitution instead of from nature.
bena 4y ago
Jefferson was certainly of the mind that documents like the Constitution needed to be overhauled about once or twice a generation. People like to talk about "the founding fathers" as if they were of a singular mind about things. But they were very much not. They were so much not that the Vice President of the United States literally shot the former Secretary of Treasury over various disagreements. So, you know, they weren't exactly 100% with each other.
tekknik 4y ago
Why does this control discussion lead to guns more often than not? Why can the anti-gunners not accept that guns are not going anywhere anytime soon? You will not get 2/3’s of the states to listen to you inferring gun owners are criminals.
- AyyWS 4y ago
- kashunstva 4y ago
  > inferring gun owners are criminals. The comment to which you’re responding made no such inference.
  - tekknik 4y ago
    Oh sure they did. If the assumption that gun owners weren’t doing something wrong then the subject wouldn’t come up.
patrick451 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago

I feel you are commingling negative rights with regulations . The constitution provided "negative" rights to the people and individual states. Negative rights are rights that exist unless someone acts to negate them. This means the constitution affirms that people and states get to keep all priviledges, unless specifically enumerated as priviledges of the federal government. So, if the Federal government starts with nothing, the right end state for the for the government to end with nothing. This is quite different from the inertia you see today in Federal government regulatory growth. Going back to the current discussion, negative rights dont lapse since they define the starting point. It is only regulations (I.e. anything that comes outside of the constitution) which is subject to reset.

benj111 4y ago
Negative rights, are rights to be free from something. Eg cruel and unusual punishment. Also the quote started "It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution" So I don't see what's wrong talking about the constitution.

harshreality 4y ago

Jefferson is speaking there of a political-philosophical hypothesis. It's not a statement of fact that laws do, or that the Constitution does, expire after 19 years. Clearly they don't by default. By all means, let's hold a constitutional convention periodically. Whether it's every 20 years or every 100, we're overdue. The founders even foresaw the potential need for that, and provided a procedure utilizing constitutional conventions to bypass state legislatures, a procedure which the country has not once utilized. Failure to go through the amendment procedure doesn't grant us the right to ignore the Constitution as written. It's very easy to say you don't like some part of the Constitution. It's very difficult to propose and pass an alternative.

galangalalgol 4y ago
In addition, we could really use a mechanism for the judiciary to declare a law or amendment ambiguous. The legislature gets locked in and catered meals from a random local public school until the judiciary is happy that the new law isn't ambiguous. Apart from DC having the best school lunches in the country, we would also see less vitriolic polarizing arguments. The federal legislature should decide at what point a developing fetus or child gets what rights, and how those should be weighed against the rights of the mother to be free. Because human rights both to life and liberty are a federal thing. And the whether the 2nd amendment is ambiguous due to changes in language or intentional due to disagreement even back then, the judiciary could say "clean this thing up and come back when you have a supermajority, hope you like canned green beans".
- tekknik 4y ago
  How is the second amendment ambiguous? It’s one of the more clear written rights we have.
  - jjk166 4y ago
    What counts as a militia, what does it mean to be well regulated, to what degree does the security of a free state matter, what counts as an arm, what actions counts as bearing them, and what infringes the right to do so? The amendment is clearly written, but ambiguously worded.
    - jfengel 4y ago
      It's not at all clearly written. As written it's simply ungrammatical: the comma after "militia" is a syntax error. Such nitpicking would ordinarily be unimportant, but given that the purpose of the entire prefatory clause is unclear, it completely undercuts any notion that the entire thing is "one of the more clear written" (as the GP said). It makes it impossible to tell whether it's intended to be a limitation or an explanation (which none of the other amendments have or require). As you say, many of the words are also ambiguous. But for a piece of law whose interpretation is a matter of tens of thousands of deaths per year, one would expect it to at least be grammatically valid.

baryphonic 4y ago

Keep in mind that Thomas Jefferson had no part in writing the Constitution (he was in France) and was a significant opponent of it. People like Alexander Hamilton thought that not only should the Constitution be permanent, but that it should also provide for an elected king.

hasbot 4y ago
Some interesting discussion here: https://www.quora.com/What-did-Thomas-Jefferson-oppose-about-the-constitution-Was-he-an-Anti-federalist?share=1 https://www.quora.com/What-did-Thomas-Jefferson-oppose-about...

ballenf 4y ago

As a sibling explains, it's important to understand the ground state. The ground state assumption is that citizens have all these rights (speech, arms, religion, etc). Narrowing or abrogating these rights is where laws come in. The opposition at the time to the Bill of Rights was that it would confuse people into thinking the rights came out of the constitution instead of from nature.

bena 4y ago

Jefferson was certainly of the mind that documents like the Constitution needed to be overhauled about once or twice a generation. People like to talk about "the founding fathers" as if they were of a singular mind about things. But they were very much not. They were so much not that the Vice President of the United States literally shot the former Secretary of Treasury over various disagreements. So, you know, they weren't exactly 100% with each other.

tekknik 4y ago

Why does this control discussion lead to guns more often than not? Why can the anti-gunners not accept that guns are not going anywhere anytime soon? You will not get 2/3’s of the states to listen to you inferring gun owners are criminals.

AyyWS 4y ago
kashunstva 4y ago
> inferring gun owners are criminals. The comment to which you’re responding made no such inference.
- tekknik 4y ago
  Oh sure they did. If the assumption that gun owners weren’t doing something wrong then the subject wouldn’t come up.

patrick451 4y ago