Does the 2A really matter?

[zukiphile]

William Calley was tried by the United States. The fact that he was convicted of more murders than Jeffrey Dahmer and got off light, ...

He "got" a 20 year sentence. Karl Doenitz got half that.

...while all the other men involved got no punishment at all, speaks volumes about the degree to which selective prosecution insulates authority figures from accountability.

The others charged were acquitted. That doesn't suggest selective prosecution. Do you think the state should be free to punish a defendant acquitted of the charges brought against him?

Small wonder, then, why gun owners are at the mercy of the ATF and police.

That's a non sequitur. To the degree the ATF are irksome to most people, they do so with the aide of Congress and the people who elect Congress.

If you really want to undercut ATF capacity to make some mischief, contact your senator and congressman about pending bills that would decrease the regulatory scope of the ATF, SHUSH and SHARE. If those pass, you'll want those courts around in order to address any state or federal misconduct.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...I find that the behaviors of nearly all high level American politicians match closely the symptoms of sociopathy.....

So in context your use of the term "sociopath" is nothing more than an empty epithet reflecting your emotional reaction to public behaviors you don't like. and as such it is just a cheap, rhetorical trick.

Indeed, your comments in this thread are one cheap, rhetorical trick after another -- long on spleen and short on fact and documentation. Two examples:

1. From post 14:

   ...In theory, a policeman who murders a gun owner and his whole family in cold blood (there are well documented cases of this happening) may be prosecuted. In theory, he may be convicted. In theory, he may be sentenced to many years in prison for it. In really, he will probably never even be fired for it....

   But --
   
   
   • What "well documented cases"? Claiming the existence of evidence without providing it is a cheap, rhetorical trick.
     
     
   • Identify those cases, and supply the documentation. Demonstrate, based on the facts of those cases that your characterization of them is accurate.
     
     
   • And "one swallow does not a summer make." A few examples can't justify a sweeping generalization.
   
   
2. From post 16:

   ...Do you really think police who "detain people for the content of their speech" ever see the inside of a jail cell for it? No. Most likely, they will never even see the inside of a courtroom for it....

   
   
   • Again you provide no documentation.
     
     
   • When have police done so under circumstances which would actually justify tossing the cop in jail.

All of which bring to my mind MacBeth's, "...a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing."

...Freedom cannot exist in any meaningful way except in an environment of order and predictability.....

Isn't that the sort of thing we hear in totalitarian regimes all the time?

Order and predictability are not natural to human societies. It's been thus as long as we've been on this planet, and it's not going to change.

Humans will behave sometimes non-rationally and influenced in varying degrees by emotions, beliefs, hopes, fears, values, wants and needs. And each person's spectrum of emotions, beliefs, hopes, fears, values, wants and needs will be in some ways more or less different from that of everyone else.

Whether we like it or not, and whether or not we prefer the laws of physics to the ways of humans, that's the way the real life in the real world is. We can accept that, try to understand it as best we can, and look for ways to deal with reality. Or we can be frustrated when things don't work out the way we'd like them to because the world isn't constituted the way we think it should be.

Order and predictability are a chimera. We'll never see such a utopia; because it can't exist in the real world. I think that's just as well; because if it could exist and came into being, I doubt that it would be the sort of place in which anyone who values freedom and beauty would want to live.

 

[zukiphile]

TFM, I am following up on this because I can tell whether you disagree with, or don't understand the point.

I believe you've confused a constitutional protection with government prosecution of state agents. They aren't the same.

One depends on the other. Constitutional protections are hollow indeed without rule of law and accountability for officials.

Constitutional protections do not depend on prosecution of state agents. Constitutional protections do depend on courts denying conviction where charged people show state violations. Accountability routinely comes in the form of denying the state the influence of criminal conviction; that's the rule of law, and it plays out daily.

 

[zukiphile]

So in context your use of the term "sociopath" is nothing more than an empty epithet reflecting your emotional reaction to public behaviors you don't like. and as such it is just a cheap, rhetorical trick.

Indeed, your comments in this thread are one cheap, rhetorical trick after another -- long on spleen and short on fact and documentation.

***
All of which bring to my mind MacBeth's, "...a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing."

Which kind of rhetorical trick was that?

 

[Frank Ettin]

So in context your use of the term "sociopath" is nothing more than an empty epithet reflecting your emotional reaction to public behaviors you don't like. and as such it is just a cheap, rhetorical trick.

Indeed, your comments in this thread are one cheap, rhetorical trick after another -- long on spleen and short on fact and documentation.

***
All of which bring to my mind MacBeth's, "...a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing."

Which kind of rhetorical trick was that?

In at least one sense it's not a rhetorical trick at all. Reading TFM's posts actually does bring to my mind that line from MacBeth. I could perhaps edit my quotation from the play to read, "...full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing." That would be, in my opinion, an appropriate description of TFM's comments.

Certainly all the Strum und Drang in his posts, without any actual evidence, makes his views pretty meaningless -- the mere venting of bile and spleen and an emotional reaction to a world he doesn't like.

You're showing remarkable patience by seriously responding to his comments. I commend you for it. But I doubt that countering his hyperbole and vague expressions of dissatisfaction will have much effect. I strongly suspect that he is less interested in learning about reality than he is in rationalizing his unspecific anger.

Anyway, I don't see any point to making that edit now.

 

[ShootistPRS]

Back to the topic; The second amendment does not provide a right to keep and bear arms. That right existed before the declaration of independence, constitution and before the documents of confederation. The second amendment is a reminder to the government that it is on of our inherent rights that they are supposed to protect. It is just one of our enumerated rights of the constitution.
The constitution exists to limit the federal government from exceeding the power granted to it by the people. It doesn't grant us any rights, it only recognizes that we do in fact have rights as people.

Having said that, even without the bill of rights we would retain those rights. If the second amendment was repealed it would not diminish our rights unless we were not ready to defend them. Like muscles, if you don't exercise your rights they atrophy and are lost.

 

[zukiphile]

The second amendment does not provide a right to keep and bear arms. That right existed before the declaration of independence, constitution and before the documents of confederation.

Indeed.

Having said that, even without the bill of rights we would retain those rights.

The right described in the 2d Am. was a right of englishmen of a sort at the time. At the risk of oversimplfying the issue, we recognized the right in a written constitution while the english and other commonwealth peoples depended on the unwritten constitution of their societies and traditions of common law.

Which turned out better?

Of course, a written COTUS with BOR isn't the only difference, but it isn't as if we are the only english speaking country to shares many of our legal and social traditions, so comparison may bear on the point.

 

[ShootistPRS]

Actually England has the Magna Carta that states their right to keep and bear arms. It isn't the paper that matters, it's the determination of the individual.

 

[zukiphile]

We and England and the rest of the commonwealth countries have the Magna Carta in our common tradition, but in none of them is it a supreme governing document.

We use the COTUS as a governing document.

That isn't a discounting of the necessity of a willingness to be governed by its terms, or the determination to preserve those rights. The formality of the process by which changes are made lend a ballast that merely parliamentary systems lack. So, if we really want to abolish the senate as originally envisioned, we do it, but we pass the 17th Am. to do it. It isn't just a policy discussion followed by simple parliamentary vote.

But for people valuing the right described in the 2d Am., that could have been changed too. There have been people in the UK, Australia and Canada who valued that right too, but they lacked the benefit of a legal fixed point.

 

[Frank Ettin]

We and England and the rest of the commonwealth countries have the Magna Carta in our common tradition, but in none of them is it a supreme governing document....

And while England did have a long tradition of a right to keep and bear arms, the scope of that right as recognized waxed and waned. For an excellent discussion of that history see Joyce Lee Malcolm's Guns and Violence: The English Experience, Havard University Press, 2002.

 

[amprecon]

Laws or rights are only as good as they are enforced. When they quit being enforced, they become meaningless.

The Bill of Rights and Constitution are not laws per se', they are a declaration of rights endowed upon mankind by Almighty God. They are not subject to denial by other men, only men can decide to surrender them, which in itself is an affront.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...The Bill of Rights and Constitution are not laws per se', they are a declaration of rights endowed upon mankind by Almighty God. They are not subject to denial by other men, only men can decide to surrender them, which in itself is an affront.

People believe a lot of things that aren't true in real life, and the fact that they believe such things doesn't change reality. Reality is what actually goes on in the real world, not the private world that exists only in one's head.

Simply put, that sort of metaphysical "understanding" of the Constitution and Bill of Rights has no bearing on, nor does it reflect, what goes on from day-to-day in real life in the real world. Believe what you want, but the world is still going to be going on about its business without regard to what you believe.

 

[Pond James Pond]

The Bill of Rights and Constitution are not laws per se', they are a declaration of rights endowed upon mankind by Almighty God. They are not subject to denial by other men, only men can decide to surrender them, which in itself is an affront.

Those two were written by men. Wise men, but still just men....

They can be denied and repealed by men and/or women, if said men and/or women go through the correct judicial process for amending the Constitution....

 

[amprecon]

I disagree, the founders merely recognized the God-given rights and wrote them down as their declaration, from what they believed. They didn't give anybody anything, they merely acknowledged that we are naturally endowed by God with certain rights.

 

[Frank Ettin]

I disagree, the founders merely recognized the God-given rights and wrote them down as their declaration, from what they believed....

You have the right to disagree, and you also have the right to be wrong.

What you choose to believe does not change the fact that the Founding Fathers themselves understood the Constitution to be law and so stated in the Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2):

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

And by the way, you had previously in post 31 told us that you believed that the Constitution was not law but rather was:

... a declaration of rights endowed upon mankind by Almighty God.....

So I gather therefore that Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution providing that:

....No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due....

is a declaration that God has endowed slave owners with the right to recover their slaves who have escaped to free States. And so I guess that the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery was a result of God changing his mind.

 

[amprecon]

You are free to believe what you wish, I contend that I understand that I am endowed with the rights as writ in our Bill of Rights. These rights, written down or not are still natural rights of men and I will fight to defend and promote them. There is no wrong thing about them, so anyone that tries to deny them is essentially the enemy and works to enslave free men.

 

[cc-hangfire]

1st I admit I read the OP's opening post, & skipped straight to reply. So,

You have to be out of your stinking mond to believe that our 2nd Amendment doesn't matter. Are there ANY firearms friendly nations in the world other than in the US? In Canada, a gun owner must call and obtained a permit to take their gun to a shooting range, and many or the guns they are ALLOWED to own can only be used at a range. And the ranges are licensed as well. (Listen to the subject content on the Canadian "Slamfire" podcast; they never discuss carry for personal protection BECAUSE THEY CANT!).

What about Australia? No semiauto rifles allowed except by very restrictive license. Handguns there? Ha! United Kingdom? Their air rifle shooting is likely the best in the world, because their firearms laws are so restrictive.

The legal issues we fight, and the constant push for more restrictive gun laws that we oppose is only possible because we consider The Right to Keep And Bear Arms is a RIGHT, not a privilege that be granted or revoked by the will of the government.

 

[amprecon]

Originally Posted by cc-hangfire
The legal issues we fight, and the constant push for more restrictive gun laws that we oppose is only possible because we consider The Right to Keep And Bear Arms is a RIGHT, not a privilege that be granted or revoked by the will of the government.

Here! Here!

 

[44 AMP]

, I contend that I understand that I am endowed with the rights as writ in our Bill of Rights.

I can't and won't argue that you contend what you believe. And I believe I understand your point, but I believe your explanation is slightly flawed.

The body of the Constitution sets up the framework for our government, and mentions no rights. Indeed it was the lack of this mention that was the reason the original draft constitution was rejected.

The addition of the 10 amendments referred to as the Bill of Rights satisfied the opponents of the original constitution enough that the amended version was passed and ratified.

Somewhere along the line, many people somehow got the idea that the BOR grants rights. IT does NOT.

EVERY ONE of the first ten amendments is either a restriction on the Government in regard to certain (enumerated) rights, or a statement that there are rights NOT listed and to whom those rights belong.

 

[zukiphile]

I can't and won't argue that you contend what you believe. And I believe I understand your point, but I believe your explanation is slightly flawed.

Imprecision is a risk we all take when we write. Taking the sense of Amprecon's point might avoid an argument where in substance there isn't one.

Somewhere along the line, many people somehow got the idea that the BOR grants rights. IT does NOT.

Indeed, and that sense is reflected in the Declaration of Independence. It isn't a governing document, but it conveys a sense of the origins of the rights men hold.

Those two were written by men. Wise men, but still just men....

I don't believe anyone contends otherwise. Amprecon's observation pertained to the source of the right, not the scrivener.


None of that changes the utility of explicitly stating a right in the governing document, the COTUS. The COTUS may not grant a right to free englishmen, but it surely doesn't hurt an effort to preserve those rights to have them articulated for future reference. Given that these rights had been poorly observed by the crown over the prior century, it may have been thought that merely speaking the belief that God invested englishmen with these rights did not suffice.

Think of the many times so many of you have ridiculed arguments like it only covers arms of the time, so you are welcome to your flintlock, or times change, we don't need a militia anymore so that part of the document should be ignored, or despite what it says, it only covers state militias. Each of those were arguments people made because they had a written legally based right metaphorically staring them in the face and needed to address it. You ridiculed those arguments because they were ridiculous.

Can anyone deny the utility of forcing an opponent to make a ridiculous argument?