Would you accept compromise on gun control?

I will stick with the thoughts, as the NRA see's um.
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...and "we" (our lobbyists in the NRA) have played into their hands.
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...they were passed by concensus of the US population...
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All of the bills legislating "Gun Control" at the Federal Level were compromises made with the NRA looking on, trying to (and sometimes successfully) tone down the language that THE ELECTED Representatives, NOT the "concensus of the US population" had offered up in a way to "fight crime". The 34 NFA would have made handguns another item either heavily regulated or outright banned (w/ the exception of the Police and military)... this was stricken thanks to the NRA(?).
The NRA HAS compromised, each and every time, in order to salvage what little right(s) we have left ala 2nd Amendment when Congress, typically led by the Democrats offers yet another bill to strip Americans of their arms.
Rather than shoot the bloody leaders (or those who did their bidding) as was done in 1775, we have compromised. Each and every time.
 
If the liberals could walk up to the the pres and ask: will you outlaw and confiscate all guns right now, and he said OK. They would!
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I'm pretty liberal on some issues, and there's no way I'd ask anyone to do such a thing.

Just like progressive taxation, a little at a time, until they have all of our money.
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Progressive taxation isn't the gradual increase of taxes for all. Progressive taxation is charging more tax to those who can afford more.
 
First, the BoR is a list of absolutes that contain absolutely no restrictions in their language.
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And do we believe that was an "oversight" by the Framers. I think not.

That said, in theory, I'd have to agree with you Handy. The pendulum may swing back and forth a bit, but the inevitable trend will be loss of our First thru Tenth Amendment rights. This is the life cycle of free nations. Therefore, if you could wave the Magic Handy-Wand today and freeze the status quo forever, I'd applaud the accomplishment.

In practice, we're in a struggle for our rights. Whether it's a loosing battle or not is immaterial. Standing up for Freedom is everything. And one does not gain ground in a struggle by waving a white flag to opponents who neither fight fairly (eg: Gun Maker Suits and outright Lies) nor has any vested interest in an armistice (Sarah Brady and Morris Dees would be broke within a year); one does not gain ground by agreeing to stand still.

"What if" is fun to play; but it's hardly worth getting lathered over. What if everyone could just get along? What if governments were never abusive of their power? What if the criminals agreed to play within the Law? All interesting thoughts; none are of much practical value to explore.

And that's the CheckMate, Handy.
Rich
 
I am reading the book the 500 Nations

It is about the dealing of the Americas and the indians, the various compromises and treaties that were put in place and broken.

You have thousands of soliders in the service who would love to enforce laws and take away the guns.

History is a good example of how to deal with the situation.

The NRA is the legal standard in my opinion. Rights are violated on a daily basis in the US.

The Great Generals of the "second world war" enforced laws on the citizens of the US and killed them by the hundreds. It is a scar on this nation, it is about broken promises. Compromise is another word for "losers".

The Generals of the civil war turned the troops loose on helpless people,
took there guns and treated um like chattle (Texas) these were persons who lost the war.

I could go on for hours telling you about the incidents, it does not matter if it was against the whites or the natives or the foreigners it was atrocity at its best/worst.

HQ
 
In practice, we're in a struggle for our rights. Whether it's a loosing battle or not is immaterial. Standing up for Freedom is everything.
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I couldn't disagree more. This is a fine attitude for a baseball team, not a war against oppression. We did not fight the Nazi's to demonstrate our fairness and love of freedom: We fought to destroy the Nazis, and used every means possible. Stopping oppression deserves whatever it takes to win. If that means deceit and cowardice are more effective, then those are the tools you choose.


And do we believe that was an "oversight" by the Framers. I think not.
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The Framers also made speech an absolute right, all while embracing English law with concepts like perjury and libel. How do you account for this inequity in the absolute right to speak as you will and the legal penalties for doing so that existed from the day the Constitution was drafted? Are they absolute, to the letter rights, or are they absolute principles that need the guideance of law to be realized?

You're also discounting the technological side of the 2A. While the Constitution is not "living" in terms of principles it decrees, it is subject to the limits of the language it was written in and the word "arms" had pretty been much unchanged in its scope for 400 previous years. While it might have been specific enough at the time, are you so certain the Framers were able to foresee guided missiles and all else that falls under the term? And did they really mean "all men", or was it obvious to them that those in jail at the time were a practical exception?


Despite the light you make of my proposal, it is actually much closer to an effective strategy than your all or nothing principle. This isn't a fight with Sarah Brady - this is a public debate about the limits of freedom in a society, and your opponent is the swing voter, not HCI. The polar crazies on either side can only influence. They can do nothing without the blessing, or at least apathy, of the middle road. Your absolute philosophy builds no bridges to those that actually have the power of change. Telling those on the fence that they MUST buy into an absolute demands a leap of faith that your average person is unwilling to make.


one does not gain ground by agreeing to stand still.
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What does one gain by sticking to principles as you lose ground? Pride? You already said that we can only lose more.

I guess we can all feel really great about ourselves as our numbers thin and rights disappear. After all, we fought the good fight, right? That will be a fine epitaph when we have nothing because we were unwilling to engage the debate on equal footing.

Gun control is not going away. If you want some control over what it says we're going to have to write it ourselves.
 
Handy-
I really don't understand where you're going with this. Are you really suggesting, as a practical solution, that we declare a civil armistice with the Gun Grabbers? That it would be "practical" to get every organization, every Municipal, State and Federal Legislator and Executive to sign off on a status quo policy toward Second Amendment rights? What would the language of the agreement look like? You're a bright, articulate guy....give us a draft.

Of course I'm "making light" of your "proposal"; because it's not a "proposal" at all. It's simply a "What If" scenario as practical as "What if we could stop world hunger". I'm sorry, but I just can't take it seriously. Perhaps you might contact Sarah and see if she finds any merit in the idea. Who knows, she might even sponsor a bill. I doubt it, but she might. :rolleyes:
Rich
 
I don't give a crap about Sarah Brady, and I don't understand why you do either. She is a talking head, not a majority vote. She represents nothing more than one extreme view, like the Michigan Militia represents the other. Your opponent and audience is the general public, who must support 2A to realize any change. Sarah Brady does not speak for every man and woman in America who might like to have a gun in the house, but doesn't understand what a banana clip has to do with anything.

Stop acting like this is the Confederate war. There are no lines, just a whole bunch of people who fall somewhere in the very wide spectrum of gun control perspectives and are looking for "reasonable".


I'm not going to take this thread off on some new tangent when the basic definitions of what has been discussed so far can't even be agreed upon.


Gun control is not a war because you can never completely win it. It is a negotiation to arrive at a public concensus that is as close as possible to the principles of the 2A without inviting anarchy. There is no point in discussing reality if you can't admit that it doesn't resemble a rumble in West Side Story. You can't "cure" gun control, just put it into remission.
 
Compromise my Aunt Fanny's hat box!

Hold on a minute. The gun owners have been the only side to give up anything! Since a compromise is an agreement in which all sides make concessions, gun control has not truly been a compromise, but a loss by only one side. I know this is simplistic, but the truth usually is.
 
Handy-
The air must be pretty thin in that Ivory Tower.

I repeat two very simple questions:
Are you really suggesting, as a practical solution, that we declare a civil armistice with the Gun Grabbers? That it would be "practical" to get every organization, every Municipal, State and Federal Legislator and Executive to sign off on a status quo policy toward Second Amendment rights?
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Kindly respond.
Rich
 
Handy,
The only legal compromise would look like this:

Section 1. The second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2. The right of the people to keep arms reasonable for hunting, sport, collecting, and personal defense shall not be infringed.

Section 3. Restrictions of arms must be found to be reasonable under Section 2 by a two-thirds vote of Congress in two consecutive sessions of Congress before they can be forwarded to the President for approval.

It would have to be ratified like any other amendment.

I wouldn't like it and thus would fight against it....but this is the only way such a compromise could be arrived at legally.
 
Are you really suggesting, as a practical solution, that we declare a civil armistice with the Gun Grabbers? That it would be "practical" to get every organization, every Municipal, State and Federal Legislator and Executive to sign off on a status quo policy toward Second Amendment rights?
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I wasn't asked, but....when has that stopped me before?

I think that it could be done basically by decree via federal law, just the way the current drug laws were constructed. Twist the constitution enough and you can effectively do what Handy's suggesting. Once that's done, there would be a way to further contort things and have a federal preemption clause, much like Florida's preemption clause that prevents counties or localities from making their own gun laws except for the length of the waiting period.

But the problem with that is that once it's done, it could all be repealed. So creating a twisted mess could freeze things, but who knows what would happen if the national mood became such that it all got dismantled, particularly dismantled piece by piece.

You could possibly win a battle, but I'm afraid the war will continue on.

There will always be people who claim guns are for a militia.

There will always be people who consider "the people" to be "the states".

I think the guys who wrote this were not dumbasses by any stretch. It is entirely possible that they DID have a premonition of the coming industrial revolution and realized they could not predict what weapons they might be authorizing every person to have, and thus wrote the 2nd in its odd wording intentionally so we'd not end up disarmed but not end up with weapons grade plutonium in every pot.
 
If that means deceit and cowardice are more effective, then those are the tools you choose.
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I don't see how this warrants WTF. Granted, it is hard for me to see using cowardice as a weapon. But imagine this ever happening.

"Hello, this is the President of the United States. In 48 hours, we are going to incinerate Hiroshima. I'm telling you this in the great spirit of our first President, George Washington and his cherry tree".

If deceit weren't an effective weapon, there'd be no CIA or NSA.
 
No compromise. The right to KEEP and BEAR arms is a God given fundamental right of self defense from individuals and from attacking armies. It is not a priviledge that the government can or should give or take away.:mad: ;)
 
strike hold2:

I wasn't offended, though I can't speak for anyone else. I hear that all the time.

I was just surprised you didn't appear to see deceit as a workable tool of war.
 
Compromise on the right to arms has always been a one way street - gun owners giving, antigun bigots taking. It is obvious that compromise does not work in our interests.

We may not get GCA '68 or NFA '34 repealed, but we can stop further encroachments on our right to arms. The next big battle will probably be a new and more onerous version of the "assault weapon" (:barf: :barf: ) ban.

Personally, I say no more "compromise," since we get nothing in return.
 
GoSlash27
I find the status quo unacceptable. What you propose is not compromise, it is an armistice. Both sides just stop in place. They get to keep everthing they have taken, we get nothing but "peace in our time".
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Damn... that's just beautiful!

The only legal compromise would look like this:
Section 1..........
Section 2. The right of the people to keep arms reasonable for hunting, sport, collecting, and personal defense shall not be infringed.
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The second ammendment already says this to any reasonable mind...
And the Congress has already voted on it...

And the liberal would not honor it before and thay would not honor it now...
Regardless the new words we couch it in...

This also is not a compromise... It is, as was stated above...
They get to keep everthing they have taken and we get nothing but "peace in our time".

Handy
What does one gain by sticking to principles as you lose ground? Pride? You already said that we can only lose more.
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The method used by the left, in order to strip gun rights... is to "erode" them away a thin layer at a time... like water flowing over sandy soil...

To compromise would require us to take down the deflectors and thus facilitate their erosion. :rolleyes:
 
Some of us live in the "real world." Would you rather compromise or lose what you have now?

Your choices in the "real world" are not much different. Things are not going back the other way unless every gun owner is an NRA member for life. Money talks . . . .
 
Some of us live in the "real world." Would you rather compromise or lose what you have now?
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Lose what I have now? Compromise?

If they can ask, nay demand that I forsake my rights granted from my Creator...shall I compromise for the sake of peace?

Should the selfsame threaten me with violence for my failure to compromise, then they have in fact crossed their own Rubicon.
 
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