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Wow, thank you for the clearest response I've ever seen on the 2A puzzle! Yes, exactly, you got it exactly right: whether the founding documents were ever use
by Frondo 12y ago
Wow, thank you for the clearest response I've ever seen on the 2A puzzle!
Yes, exactly, you got it exactly right: whether the founding documents were ever useful, what governing principles do we want to live with now?
We obviously constrain people's agency in lots of ways that are non-controversial, like requiring that people drive on one side of the street or the other, or requiring that people not dump toxic waste in public parks. How do guns fit into that picture? How does speech, for that matter?
These are good and important questions to think deeply about, and I'm so glad you raised the issue so articulately.
My background, by the way: not a gun owner now, but I've used them enough to have a pretty good familiarity with them (and was once licensed to do armed security work, even). I'd fully endorse gun ownership restrictions, background checks, etc. I have never seen any rational argument against such laws; to me, it just goes to show how the NRA has done an amazing job conning a lot of people into becoming their own private gun lobby army, heh heh.
- peteretep 12y ago> whether the founding documents were ever useful, what > governing principles do we want to live with now? My understanding is that if you can get 2/3 of Congress to agree with whatever governing principles you want to live with now, you can amend the constitution. It's far from clear to me (a bleeding heart liberal) that 2/3 of the people, let alone 2/3 of Congress, want to see the 2nd Amendment rights re-amended.
- FBT 12y agoWell, it needs 2/3 of Congress to propose it, and then 3/4 of the states to ratify it, so it's a bit harder than that, but your point stands. The constitution does indeed have provisions to change with the times, provided the nation agrees. Stability is also important of course, but a reasonable balance seems to have been struck. The constitution does indeed evolve with the times, while still remaining more or less the same document, upholding the same basic ideals.
- Frondo 12y agoI think you'd find very little informed support for that claim about a reasonable balance. The US is on the very far end of rigidity in its political system among the western nations. Heh, no less a progressive extremist than Antonin Scalia himself said that, if he could amend the constitution, it would be to make it easier to amend.
- Frondo 12y agoOh, yes, change happens veerrryyy slowly. Agreed, 100%. chroma's insight was that the question we should be asking is not "what do these centuries-old documents tell us to do?" but "how do we want to live, in the world we have now?"