Would you accept compromise on gun control?

Handy,

First of all, I did not attack your character.

As far as grenades and crew served machine guns being protected under the Second Amendment, you may be right about that - yes, I am open to changing my position on that issue. I am in the process of looking for some proof to that effect - I won't just blindly buy into it. But the term "arms" used in the Second Amendment would seem to include more than just handguns, shotguns and rifles.

As far as problems and inconsistencies - in my view, the problems and inconsistencies are not found in the Second Amendment. It is undeniably clear about what it says and means.

The problems and inconsistencies come when politicians and judges "interpret" the Second amendment. It does not need to be "interpreted" as what it says and means is obvious. None of the other nine amendments contained in the Bill of Rights needs to be "interpreted" - why only the Second?

Because that's the only way opponents of our right to arms can provide themselves an opportunity to twist and manipulate the meaning of the Second Amendment, that's why.
 
They all require interpretation. The First receives far more attention in this regard than any other, including the Second. The other eight to varying degrees because many of them only cover very specific situations, but to say that Freedom of Speech never gets discussed in court or by legislatures is highly inaccurate.


I heartily agree that very liberal (meaning creative and wide ranging) interpretation is bad. But so is incredibly narrow and inflexible interpretations that completely bind our hands against novel situations.
 
I heartily agree that very liberal (meaning creative and wide ranging) interpretation is bad. But so is incredibly narrow and inflexible interpretations that completely bind our hands against novel situations.
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I couldn't disagree more completely. You're basically advocating a "living" Constitution, but you don't want it to "live" too creatively, whatever that means. But once it lives it can become Frankenstein's monster in the wrong hands. It can and has been tortured to mean whatever the black-robed tyrants decide.

That's why the only valid mode of interpretation is the originalist one. Only with a common frame of reference, i.e., the Constitution The Founders thought they were originally enacting, can we have a common, uniform understanding of its contents. It's the only thing that makes any logical sense. If we don't like what they enacted because it's outmoded or outdated we can amend it, just as The Founders prescribed. Constitutional amendment=yes. Judicial/congressional/executive fiat=no.
 
Afansco,

You and others keep posting that, conveniently ignoring my posts demonstrating that the Founding Fathers weren't being all that strict even when they wrote it. Would you care to illustrate your point in light of my examples?



BTW, "living Constitution" is usually a term for the concept that the Constitution needs to change and evolve with society's needs and wants. That is not what I'm advocating when I suggest that a completely literal and strict interpretation is not accurate. What I'm talking about is how James Madison would have dealt with the specific difficulties in administrating the BoR. Some existed already in his time, others arose later. It is not a question of changing definitions but getting at the correct and useful part of what the Founders wrote.
 
Handy,
To properly consider your original scenario one would have to use a cost benefit analysis of continued battling on the gun issue. Voting for the Handy Plan requires that the costs of allowing continued legislating on the issue be greater than the rewards. Considering the history of gun control, the Handy Plan would probably be beneficial to the majority US gun owners in the long run. So in Handy Land, I'd vote for the Handy Plan.

That said, anywhere outside of the realm of the theoretical scenario of Handy Land which you've proposed, the Handy Plan is simply worthless. And as others have said, if you're going to play "What if ..." games, why settle for something as unsatisfactory as sticking with what we've got for eternity? The reality of the situation is that the struggle will not end by saying "This far, but no further!" That's an impossibility. As such, entertaining the idea is, as the Brits might say, just wanking. Rather unsatisfactory wanking at that.

I would be all for true compromise. I'd like to see violent crime of all sorts decrease and I'm not in favor of convicted murderers carrying nuclear weapons. For instance, I would be happy to concede things like a functional Instant Check system for retail purchases in exchange for deregulating manufacture, transfer and ownership of suppressors and machine guns. The problem here is that those who support gun regulation are not trying to decrease violent deaths or truly improve society. Their irrational hatred or fear of firearms (or of their fellow citizens) is not sated by rational compromise.

It is telling that the major successes on either side have been made by calling for an extreme change and then slowly "compromising" for something more minor. Others have noted the role of the NRA in moderating the sweeping effects of proposed laws down to what we have now. In the other direction, here in Indiana we recently passed a clarification of existing Castle Doctrine protections that extends and elaborates coverage significantly as well as provides for lifetime carry licenses.

This was not done by coming to the table saying "I think we should make these changes, what can we give up to convince you to make them?" An early bill proposed granted free or very low-cost upgrades to lifetime carry licenses, castle doctrine extensions as well as not allowing businesses to prohibit employees from having firearms in their cars while parked in business-owned parking lots. They settled on relatively low-cost lifetime licenses, spun the castle doctrine off into a separate bill (which passed) and sacrificed the language that protected employees in parking lots.

That is the kind of compromise that has a proven track record in the real world. That's how we lost ground and the only way we'll gain it back.
 
Sorry Handy,

I went back and skimmed all your posts and couldn't find the examples you cite where the Founders compromised on the BoR. Which posts?

+1 Bo. Ask for the moon and we might get something close to what we really want. Let them lose ground for a change. I'm tired of the gun grabbers always playing a "heads I win, tails you lose" game.
 
Try 42, 85 and 117.


Ben, the whole scenerio is a "for example", and I even provided a legal method of safeguarding it. But I also explained, more than once, that the point is not the example but the TYPE of situation it represents: A willingness to discuss the defense of the 2nd Amendment in something more flexible than absolute terms.
 
Ben, the whole scenerio is a "for example", and I even provided a legal method of safeguarding it.
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The scenario is not an example of a realistic solution. Your suggestion for safeguarding it is likewise implausible at best.
But, as you say ...
[...]the point is not the example but the TYPE of situation it represents: A willingness to discuss the defense of the 2nd Amendment in something more flexible than absolute terms.
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The problem is that at this point, anything less than total inflexibility results in continued losses.

If you examine the issue over a period greater than the last ten or fifteen years, the gun culture has been remarkably flexible. Certainly more flexible than journalists, authors, pornographers and so forth have been with regards to the First Amendment. The flexibility of the gun culture has been tested again and again as we have been forced to give up more and more, which has resulted in a collective "stiffening" and refusal to take further bending without a political fight. You are looking at where we are now and saying, "My, you folks are really opposed to coming to some middle ground!" and ignoring the fact that we were dragged over any semblance of a middle ground years ago.

Our opponents are not trying to reach any sort of rational middle ground. Each time we approach the issue with a flexible mindset, we lose. I'm not talking about The Way Things Should Be or the way things go in Handy Land, just the way things are.

Ideally, I would be happy to sit down with some anti-gunners and start from scratch with absolutely no gun laws and build in some reasonable limitations that would (try to) make it more difficult for bad people to have guns and easier for good people to have guns and come to a compromise in that fashion.

But now we're back to wanking.
 
I was not suggesting an accomodation, but a forced armistice. The creation of a situation where the opposition risks losing more than we do.

Another example would be the proposal of laws that appear to be gun control but grant wider powers to the guns or people that meet the criteria in the law.

Like a law against "junk guns" that establishes minimum engineering standards for weapons, and then goes on to say that weapons meeting those standards are acceptable for import. By creating such a law you have effectively erased the ATF's import standards ruling and replaced it with something that would allow more choice and less ATF control. But because it is bipartisan gun control, it would likely pass, even though it is actually a decrease in overall gun control.

I had also mentioned a licensing standard. You could create a special license and education that is necessary for the possession and handling of automatic weapons by non-military. It would appear to be a safety standard to reel in "police aggression and lack of training", but would actually serve as a back door through the NFA if it was written vaguely enough to allow anyone to take it and get the license.


Both of those proposals are examples of selling gun control and ending up with less effective control in return. It uses the gun-grabbers rhetoric against them, but requires a flexible view on our part to force the issue.
 
Handy, I read with great interest your comments. As in so many cases I try to find what is the root of a proffered position. I think in your case you have a degree of trust in government which I simply can not muster. Since I have no basis in trust in dealing with those who call themselves anti-gun, I can not agree to a compromise or a treaty in place. Why, because I assume ceasing conflict will allow the other side to rest, resupply, and reposition all in preparation for another offensive.

Do I like the constant conflict and the seemingly endless war gaming? No, but that is the cost of maintaining what we have. In my view the best defense against further losses to those who call themselves anti-gun is a good solid offense. I would prefer to have the initiative on the battlefield. I would much rather have them guess my axis of attack rather than me defend against their attack.

It has taken us a century to get in the mess we're in and it will take a long time to reverse it. I do not think a compromise will work to our advantage. I do not want to cease conflict. I want rollback and if the only way to get it is by conflict, then so be it. And by the way, my comments regarding the second amendment also apply to all of the first amendment, and fourth, etc. History demonstrates appeasement simply does not work
 
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I couldn't disagree more completely. You're basically advocating a "living" Constitution, but you don't want it to "live" too creatively, whatever that means. But once it lives it can become Frankenstein's monster in the wrong hands. It can and has been tortured to mean whatever the black-robed tyrants decide.

That's why the only valid mode of interpretation is the originalist one. Only with a common frame of reference, i.e., the Constitution The Founders thought they were originally enacting, can we have a common, uniform understanding of its contents. It's the only thing that makes any logical sense. If we don't like what they enacted because it's outmoded or outdated we can amend it, just as The Founders prescribed. Constitutional amendment=yes. Judicial/congressional/executive fiat=no.
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+1! AFSNCO has got it right.

"The concept of the Constitution of 1787 as a good first draft in need of in need of constant revision and updating - encapsulated in vague phrases such as "living Constitution" - merely turns the Constitution into an unwritten charter to be developed by the contemporary values of sitting judges."
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Is that what The Founders intended? Absolutely not. If it were, why even have a written Constitution?

"Written constitutionalism implies that those who make, interpret, and enforce the law ought to be guided by the meaning of the United States Constitution - the supreme law of the land - as it was originally written."
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-David F. Forte in The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, (c)2005 by Meese, Spalding & Forte.
 
"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
--Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... However, now there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it.
- Bill Clinton

Where some here see things in light of the first author's quote, others elecged into office will always continue to see things per the second author's point of view... so any freeze performed today, tomorrow, whenever, will always erode until ultimately someone will challenge...
 
Standing Guard by Wayne LaPierre. NRA

Hi all,
I was reading the new NRA monthly pub. Standing Guard... by the Executive Vice President, Wayne LaPierre, it is a good read.

Maybe one with a desire, might put it up for review, for the readers.
Has to do with the "Castle Doctrine". Well worth reading and maybe even throwing a few contributions to the the old NRA.

I would do it, but I feel one should, "seek and you shall find", attitude is better for this debate.

HQ
 
wrong way around

Isn't the whole root of the problem the fact that for the last century (and perhaps longer), we have been looking at things the wrong way around? Is it not the function of the Supreme Court to interpret the LAWS as they pertain to the Constitution, and not to interpret the Constitution as it pertains to laws?

Handy, I'm glad to see you admit to your proposal being an armistice, not a compromise as you originally stated. But I do not understand your argument as concerning rights. Are you stating that, because our Founders were not able/willing to make the rights entirely uninfringed, that they do not exist? Because the framers of the Constitution were unable to instantly create a utopia, that their principles are invalid?

I repeat my position, that our right exist independant of Government. Just because goevernment denies you a right does not mean it does not exist. You have free speech, even under oath. If the court does not like your answers, they will punish you, but that does not remove your right to say what you will. You have a right to be armed, even in prison. Government denies you that right, along with your right to travel freely. It does not render the right null and void. Just denied, by a physically stronger entity.

In practice, ALL our rights, even life itself, exist on government sufferance. But, in this country, Government exists on our sufferance. At least that is the principle to which we claim. Through the election process, we regularly prove that the people who make up our government serve at our sufferance.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, plus the other amendments, define the limits of government. Because portions of these documents have been ignored, abridged, reinterpreted, or misrepresented does not it any way invalidate the document, it simply illustrates the greed and corruption of man. That this has been allowed to happen, and for so long, is our shame.
 
44,
Is it not the function of the Supreme Court to interpret the LAWS as they pertain to the Constitution, and not to interpret the Constitution as it pertains to laws?
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You got it, but it *is* their job to interpret the Constitution in terms of intent. Hence all the 'founding fathers' arguments.

Ruger,
I thought he carried a Galiel and his apostles carried UZIs??
 
No. I was just trying to relate that the founders themselves viewed rights as ideals to be realized as much as possible, rather than absolutely rigid verbatim rules, and that a certain amount of law pertaining to them doesn't make them void.

In the other thread most people agreed that not every citizen necessarily qualifies for the right to bear. It logically follows that there would have to be some sort of method for telling those people from the rest. That's a background check - so is a background check an infringement, or a necessary tool for the proper care and feeding of a precious right?

A restriction isn't necessarily a bad thing if it better preserves what is fundamental.
 
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