8 ms·

What is with you Americans and the Constitution? If back then female circumcision would have been considered a good idea and somehow got wrote in the constituti

What is with you Americans and the Constitution? If back then female circumcision would have been considered a good idea and somehow got wrote in the constitution then you will be defending it now days because it is in the constitution? If the constitution is wrong, it needs to be changed, is just that simple.

angersock 14y ago
I don't believe anybody here would disagree with you--now, please explain to what degree you believe the 2nd amendment to be wrong, right, or outdated.
- mpweiher 14y ago
  Well... (a) the US seems to working its way to tyranny just fine with the 2nd amendment intact. (b) many other countries seem to do a pretty passable imitation of freedom without a 2nd amendment. Update: (c) on closer examination, it almost seems like an "opiate for the people" kind of thing: people being lulled into thinking they are free because they can kill innocent children with their high-powered weapons when the fact is that actual armed insurrection against the government is as ludicrously impossible with those weapons as it is without. At the same time, real freedoms have been largely eliminated, habeas corpus is gone, 4th amendment largely gone, freedom of speech going away, freedom of assembly AWOL, elections manipulated and legislators bought, the president can have anyone incarcerated indefinitely without charges and without a trial, or summarily executed by simply labeling them a "terrorist" (and those labels fly looser every day). Focusing on these issues will have a much larger impact on actual liberty than trying to prevent meaningful gun control. Yet, yay, we are "free" because we have our Glocks. Yeah, right.
  - angersock 14y ago
    Surely you see the irony in complaining about the erosion of these liberties while at the same time pushing for further subjugation of the populace?
    - mpweiher 14y ago
      Surely you see the irony of completely missing the point of what I wrote?
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  I was just answering to OP who talked like the fact that it is on the constitution is somehow a valid reason not to change the law. >Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. But ok; I am going to pile on the other hundreds of comments making noise and tell you what I think America should do. Decriminalize all drugs first (or at the same time). Then change the constitution and proclaim nobody should have guns except the police/military and some special cases (some bodyguards, bank guards); despite the popularity of "guns don't kill people" is pretty clear that where guns are the number of gunshot victims are always higher. Anyone who thinks they can overthrow the USA government from inside is delusional, before there is even 1000 people organized all forms of communication would be shout down; even internet. Your only hope to overthrow the USA government if such thing ever is required is that some generals and soldiers of the USA army itself revel. Obviously this change would need to happen gradually; first the high caliber guns and then progressively the others; the government should pay for the guns so citizens have one more incentive to give them away.
  - jff 14y ago
    Yes, boil that frog slowly, and drug him first so he really won't realize it's happening.
    - jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
      It isn't nice to pretend you could overthrow your government, yeah, is nice as "religion" nice, as "delusional but thankfully uncheckable" nice.
      - tsotha 14y ago
        I don't see any reason why we couldn't overthrow our government. It happens all over the world on a regular basis. Don't confuse "don't want to overthrow the government" with "can't overthrow the government".
        14y ago
- rmc 14y ago
  Lots of people are dying.
  - angersock 14y ago
    Every day, from heart disease, and car accidents, and lung cancer, and diabetes, and all manner of other things. As far as bang-for-your-buck legislation goes, we should look elsewhere if we want to decrease bodycounts.
    - rmc 14y ago
      Laws and public policy is being made to tackle those things. Should we not tackle the other deaths (being caused by guns) as well?
      - tsotha 14y ago
        Not if it means we have to give up freedoms. The problem just isn't that significant.
        jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
        "freedoms"; what a concept, freedom to what exactly? freedom to easily kill I am guessing... because that being the case you should allow the posetion and creation of nuclear weapons by any USA citizen; those things give a lot of freedom to kill.
        tsotha 14y ago
        Freedom to self defense is pretty fundamental in my book. As we like to say, when seconds count the police are only minutes away. It's probably different in your country, with no crime or violence or anything.
        jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
        Funny you mention my country; because just here in my City, the 3° biggest of South America, the amount of murders have reduced significantly since the ban of weapons in the streets; its called Bogota. And you can keep playing to the hypothesis that someday you will need a revolution and guns will be useful, in real life in the present there is just people dying because you have associated your national identity with abusing gunpowder.
aharrison 14y ago
The reason we Americans are so strongly tied to our Constitution is multifaceted, but one of the key tenets is that it is a so called "living document" and allows itself to be modified via an amendment. The criticism that it should not be made illegal is a criticism that we are directly in violation of a document with extremely clear language. Instead of doing so, we should do the "correct" thing and pass an amendment to correct the original language with our current up-to-date understanding. It is my personal opinion that the reason we don't is because enough people disagree with modifying it, and so it has to be curtailed slowly (rightly or wrongly.)
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  You hit on a good point, the Constitution is seen as invioble. You can tweak it, but you can't start striking pieces down.
  - rmc 14y ago
    What's funny is that many changes were pretty fundamental legal changes, such as the abolition of slavery, massively extending the right to vote, allowing a wide range of pornography & allowing abortion & contraception. To claim those as "merely updating our understanding of what the founding fathers wanted" is misleading, but eh, if it makes you sleep at night.
    - sliverstorm 14y ago
      I'm not sure how you could call those changes "fundamental". Some of them were pretty far-reaching in terms of resulting impact, but they did not fundamentally alter the Constitution.
      - rmc 14y ago
        They altered US society in some pretty massive ways, altered who controlled the government, and had large and fundamental impact on many people's lives.
tsotha 14y ago
>If the constitution is wrong, it needs to be changed, is just that simple. Yep. And there are two methods for doing just that. But they both require a fair degree of consensus, and in the US the consensus in recent years has shifted toward more freedom regarding firearms instead of less.
rmc 14y ago
The US has a peculiar attachment to its current constitution and it's founding fathers. There seems to be a semi religious adherence to that one document and those original people, as if the US constitution is the first and only document that can grantee liberty and freedom. Many arguments in the US seem to be around "what did the founding fathers really mean?" The hell what they meant, they were wrong!
- tsotha 14y ago
  >The US has a peculiar attachment to its current constitution and it's founding fathers. We have an attachment to the document because that's the blueprint for our government. A nation of laws and not men. The founding fathers some people are more attached to than others. Many people (like me) believe if you're going to have a written constitution the meaning of the document is fixed, so you have to use secondary sources to be clear on how it was understood when it was ratified. Thus the arguments about "what did the founding fathers really mean". >The hell what they meant, they were wrong! No, they weren't. They understood tyranny, having lived under it. You'd think after the 20th century people would be a little leery of investing too much power in their government, but I guess Santayana was right after all.
baddox 14y ago
You should be a bit clearer about what you mean. There's a big difference between advocating that the government ignore the Constitution, and advocating a constitutional amendment. Your last sentence hints at the latter, which is hopefully your position, but "obsession with the Constitution" would by definition include the willingness to amend it, since the amendment process is itself contained in the Constitution.

angersock 14y ago

I don't believe anybody here would disagree with you--now, please explain to what degree you believe the 2nd amendment to be wrong, right, or outdated.

mpweiher 14y ago
Well... (a) the US seems to working its way to tyranny just fine with the 2nd amendment intact. (b) many other countries seem to do a pretty passable imitation of freedom without a 2nd amendment. Update: (c) on closer examination, it almost seems like an "opiate for the people" kind of thing: people being lulled into thinking they are free because they can kill innocent children with their high-powered weapons when the fact is that actual armed insurrection against the government is as ludicrously impossible with those weapons as it is without. At the same time, real freedoms have been largely eliminated, habeas corpus is gone, 4th amendment largely gone, freedom of speech going away, freedom of assembly AWOL, elections manipulated and legislators bought, the president can have anyone incarcerated indefinitely without charges and without a trial, or summarily executed by simply labeling them a "terrorist" (and those labels fly looser every day). Focusing on these issues will have a much larger impact on actual liberty than trying to prevent meaningful gun control. Yet, yay, we are "free" because we have our Glocks. Yeah, right.
- angersock 14y ago
  Surely you see the irony in complaining about the erosion of these liberties while at the same time pushing for further subjugation of the populace?
  - mpweiher 14y ago
    Surely you see the irony of completely missing the point of what I wrote?
jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
I was just answering to OP who talked like the fact that it is on the constitution is somehow a valid reason not to change the law. >Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. But ok; I am going to pile on the other hundreds of comments making noise and tell you what I think America should do. Decriminalize all drugs first (or at the same time). Then change the constitution and proclaim nobody should have guns except the police/military and some special cases (some bodyguards, bank guards); despite the popularity of "guns don't kill people" is pretty clear that where guns are the number of gunshot victims are always higher. Anyone who thinks they can overthrow the USA government from inside is delusional, before there is even 1000 people organized all forms of communication would be shout down; even internet. Your only hope to overthrow the USA government if such thing ever is required is that some generals and soldiers of the USA army itself revel. Obviously this change would need to happen gradually; first the high caliber guns and then progressively the others; the government should pay for the guns so citizens have one more incentive to give them away.
- jff 14y ago
  Yes, boil that frog slowly, and drug him first so he really won't realize it's happening.
  - jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
    It isn't nice to pretend you could overthrow your government, yeah, is nice as "religion" nice, as "delusional but thankfully uncheckable" nice.
    - tsotha 14y ago
      I don't see any reason why we couldn't overthrow our government. It happens all over the world on a regular basis. Don't confuse "don't want to overthrow the government" with "can't overthrow the government".
      - 14y ago
rmc 14y ago
Lots of people are dying.
- angersock 14y ago
  Every day, from heart disease, and car accidents, and lung cancer, and diabetes, and all manner of other things. As far as bang-for-your-buck legislation goes, we should look elsewhere if we want to decrease bodycounts.
  - rmc 14y ago
    Laws and public policy is being made to tackle those things. Should we not tackle the other deaths (being caused by guns) as well?
    - tsotha 14y ago
      Not if it means we have to give up freedoms. The problem just isn't that significant.
      - jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
        "freedoms"; what a concept, freedom to what exactly? freedom to easily kill I am guessing... because that being the case you should allow the posetion and creation of nuclear weapons by any USA citizen; those things give a lot of freedom to kill.
        tsotha 14y ago
        Freedom to self defense is pretty fundamental in my book. As we like to say, when seconds count the police are only minutes away. It's probably different in your country, with no crime or violence or anything.
        jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
        Funny you mention my country; because just here in my City, the 3° biggest of South America, the amount of murders have reduced significantly since the ban of weapons in the streets; its called Bogota. And you can keep playing to the hypothesis that someday you will need a revolution and guns will be useful, in real life in the present there is just people dying because you have associated your national identity with abusing gunpowder.

aharrison 14y ago

The reason we Americans are so strongly tied to our Constitution is multifaceted, but one of the key tenets is that it is a so called "living document" and allows itself to be modified via an amendment. The criticism that it should not be made illegal is a criticism that we are directly in violation of a document with extremely clear language. Instead of doing so, we should do the "correct" thing and pass an amendment to correct the original language with our current up-to-date understanding. It is my personal opinion that the reason we don't is because enough people disagree with modifying it, and so it has to be curtailed slowly (rightly or wrongly.)

sliverstorm 14y ago
You hit on a good point, the Constitution is seen as invioble. You can tweak it, but you can't start striking pieces down.
- rmc 14y ago
  What's funny is that many changes were pretty fundamental legal changes, such as the abolition of slavery, massively extending the right to vote, allowing a wide range of pornography & allowing abortion & contraception. To claim those as "merely updating our understanding of what the founding fathers wanted" is misleading, but eh, if it makes you sleep at night.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    I'm not sure how you could call those changes "fundamental". Some of them were pretty far-reaching in terms of resulting impact, but they did not fundamentally alter the Constitution.
    - rmc 14y ago
      They altered US society in some pretty massive ways, altered who controlled the government, and had large and fundamental impact on many people's lives.

tsotha 14y ago

>If the constitution is wrong, it needs to be changed, is just that simple. Yep. And there are two methods for doing just that. But they both require a fair degree of consensus, and in the US the consensus in recent years has shifted toward more freedom regarding firearms instead of less.

rmc 14y ago

The US has a peculiar attachment to its current constitution and it's founding fathers. There seems to be a semi religious adherence to that one document and those original people, as if the US constitution is the first and only document that can grantee liberty and freedom. Many arguments in the US seem to be around "what did the founding fathers really mean?" The hell what they meant, they were wrong!

tsotha 14y ago
>The US has a peculiar attachment to its current constitution and it's founding fathers. We have an attachment to the document because that's the blueprint for our government. A nation of laws and not men. The founding fathers some people are more attached to than others. Many people (like me) believe if you're going to have a written constitution the meaning of the document is fixed, so you have to use secondary sources to be clear on how it was understood when it was ratified. Thus the arguments about "what did the founding fathers really mean". >The hell what they meant, they were wrong! No, they weren't. They understood tyranny, having lived under it. You'd think after the 20th century people would be a little leery of investing too much power in their government, but I guess Santayana was right after all.

baddox 14y ago

You should be a bit clearer about what you mean. There's a big difference between advocating that the government ignore the Constitution, and advocating a constitutional amendment. Your last sentence hints at the latter, which is hopefully your position, but "obsession with the Constitution" would by definition include the willingness to amend it, since the amendment process is itself contained in the Constitution.