Repeal the 2nd Amendment

[Revoltingest]

I am open to hear ideas about how we could safely repeal the 2nd amendment, but I don't think that we could do it right now. I feel like it is too idealistic to hope that the world can be without weapons any time soon. How could that be possible?

Get everyone else to disarm, & I'll consider the same.

 

[Brickjectivity]

Get everyone else to disarm, & I'll consider the same.

Maybe they are waiting for you to disarm first. Maybe they don't trust you, because you have so many guns?

 

[Revoltingest]

Maybe they are waiting for you to disarm first. Maybe they don't trust you, because you have so many guns?

They can trust me.
But you see what they look like....would you trust'm?

 

[Thanda]

Except that interpretation doesn't reflect the introductory segment of the sentence, namely "A well-regulated militia...". One simply cannot ignore that and just focus on the rest of the sentence, and this is exactly what some people are doing here. Again, the SCOTUS never has viewed this as being a personal right that is unconditional, and even Heller didn't fully cross that bridge.

But you keep pointing out something that is irrelevant, we know no right is unconditional. But what I disagree with is the assumption that some make that the condition for the right to bare arms is to be serving in a militia. The wording of the amendment simply does not say that. The wording implies the right already exists and it seeks to prevent that right from being taken away. It gives as its reason for seeking to protect the right the necessity of having a well-regulated militia.

I have something to say about rights. In a free society, everybody has a right to do anything unless otherwise stipulated. That means, the default position on any act or omission is that each person has a right to act or omit to act. The constitution and other laws are there to either limit those rights or to specifically protect them in order to have a well functioning society.

Therefore the right to posses a gun exists by the very fact that a person can posses the gun. There have to be laws that are enacted in order for it to cease to be a right to posses the gun. And there have to be good reasons why those laws are being enacted - otherwise the society ceases to be a free society. Therefore it makes complete sense that there will be some people who will not be allowed to have guns (like mentally unstable people) and there will be some guns that people are not allowed to have (bazookas for example).

But what we have to admit is that not only is there nothing the amendment that limits who can have a gun (not even the "A well-regulated militia.." clause) the amendment itself assumes, rightly, that the people already had a right to have arms/weapons/guns before the amendment was written.

 

[Curious George]

You are taking this off in all different directions, so I'm not going to waste our time getting into a tit-for-tat discussion on all these points. Plus I find the "LOL" really to be quite offensive in your context above, indicating that you'd much rather try and score points in a pissing match than to engage in any serious discussion based on the research. On top of that, you misrepresent what I was saying near the end, taking it to the point of absurdity that I did not state nor imply.

Therefore, I'm really not interested in pursuing this with you.

Then I will gladly alter the post as I did not mean offense. In the context of what we were discussing regarding those statistics, you said "exactly" at a post that specifically ignored my point after asking me to cite my source. If your exactly was merely meant to denote that you agreed with the statistics and not the users sentiments then I can understand that how you are taken aback.

But please explain the relevance of those statistics in light of the fact that lawful self defense can and does occur. Specifically, explain how those statistics given the existence of actual self defense justify taking away the second amendment.

 

[metis]

But you keep pointing out something that is irrelevant, we know no right is unconditional. But what I disagree with is the assumption that some make that the condition for the right to bare arms is to be serving in a militia. The wording of the amendment simply does not say that. The wording implies the right already exists and it seeks to prevent that right from being taken away. It gives as its reason for seeking to protect the right the necessity of having a well-regulated militia.

I have something to say about rights. In a free society, everybody has a right to do anything unless otherwise stipulated. That means, the default position on any act or omission is that each person has a right to act or omit to act. The constitution and other laws are there to either limit those rights or to specifically protect them in order to have a well functioning society.

Therefore the right to posses a gun exists by the very fact that a person can posses the gun. There have to be laws that are enacted in order for it to cease to be a right to posses the gun. And there have to be good reasons why those laws are being enacted - otherwise the society ceases to be a free society. Therefore it makes complete sense that there will be some people who will not be allowed to have guns (like mentally unstable people) and there will be some guns that people are not allowed to have (bazookas for example).

But what we have to admit is that not only is there nothing the amendment that limits who can have a gun (not even the "A well-regulated militia.." clause) the amendment itself assumes, rightly, that the people already had a right to have arms/weapons/guns before the amendment was written.

All we are doing is spinning our wheels, and the main point, namely that certain weapons and access by certain people can be and have been restricted, is moot because that process has repeatedly been upheld as being constitutional. Therefore, the only serious question from this point on is which weapons and which people are going to be restricted, and that we know is subject to both laws passed and court decisions rendered, both present and future.

 

[metis]

Then I will gladly alter the post as I did not mean offense. In the context of what we were discussing regarding those statistics, you said "exactly" at a post that specifically ignored my point after asking me to cite my source. If your exactly was merely meant to denote that you agreed with the statistics and not the users sentiments then I can understand that how you are taken aback.

But please explain the relevance of those statistics in light of the fact that lawful self defense can and does occur. Specifically, explain how those statistics given the existence of actual self defense justify taking away the second amendment.

First of all, thanks for the correction.

"Exactly" was in reference to the basic conclusions the study cited, which coincides with some other such studies I've seen over the years. My reference wasn't in regards to that which may or may not be "lawful" but was in reference to outcomes based on such studies, plus what officers repeatedly told my students for the roughly 25 years that I taught political science.

Finally, I have stated at least two times on this thread, if my memory is correct, that I have no interest whatsoever in repealing the 2nd Amendment, so you may be confusing me with someone else.

Take care, and thanks again.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The fallacy here is the word "promise".

I was referring to those who speak of guns as if they are the keys to our salvation; they'll stop the bad guys with the guns, they'll stop the invading forces, and they'll be there to defend us whenever we need them. Having a car is a mode of transportation, but having one doesn't guarantee or promise you'll reach your destination. You could be in a wreck while en route, or it may just not even start. With guns, we have to realize, acknowledge, and accept that while they can make fighting back easier (or sometimes a more silent approach would be better), there is a very real possibility that during an emergency/shooting you'll be dead or seriously injured before you even have the chance to use it. Used unwisely, they can be turned against the owner, or even exacerbate a situation.

 

[Revoltingest]

I was referring to those who speak of guns as if they are the keys to our salvation; they'll stop the bad guys with the guns, they'll stop the invading forces, and they'll be there to defend us whenever we need them. Having a car is a mode of transportation, but having one doesn't guarantee or promise you'll reach your destination. You could be in a wreck while en route, or it may just not even start. With guns, we have to realize, acknowledge, and accept that while they can make fighting back easier (or sometimes a more silent approach would be better), there is a very real possibility that during an emergency/shooting you'll be dead or seriously injured before you even have the chance to use it. Used unwisely, they can be turned against the owner, or even exacerbate a situation.

Tis best to avoid focusing one's objections to the 2nd Amendment on a few people with weak arguments.
(This is just as we shouldn't paint everyone favoring more regulation as intending to ban all guns.)
No one can predict the course of war. This means there are multiple possible scenarios.
Neither fans or opponents of gun ownership can tell us what is inevitable.

 

[Nous]

Here's a better summary of the findings:

1-3 Guns are not used millions of times each year in self-defense

We use epidemiological theory to explain why the “false positive” problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid.

Hemenway, David. Survey research and self-defense gun use: An explanation of extreme overestimates. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. 1997; 87:1430-1445.

Hemenway, David. The myth of millions of annual self-defense gun uses: A case study of survey overestimates of rare events. Chance (American Statistical Association). 1997; 10:6-10.

Cook, Philip J; Ludwig, Jens; Hemenway, David. The gun debate’s new mythical number: How many defensive uses per year? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. 1997; 16:463-469.


4. Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments and are both socially undesirable and illegal

We analyzed data from two national random-digit-dial surveys conducted under the auspices of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Criminal court judges who read the self-reported accounts of the purported self-defense gun use rated a majority as being illegal, even assuming that the respondent had a permit to own and to carry a gun, and that the respondent had described the event honestly from his own perspective.

Hemenway, David; Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah. Gun use in the United States: Results from two national surveys. Injury Prevention. 2000; 6:263-267.


5. Firearms are used far more often to intimidate than in self-defense.

Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Center, we examined the extent and nature of offensive gun use. We found that firearms are used far more often to frighten and intimidate than they are used in self-defense. All reported cases of criminal gun use, as well as many of the so-called self-defense gun uses, appear to be socially undesirable.

Hemenway, David; Azrael, Deborah. The relative frequency of offensive and defensive gun use: Results of a national survey. Violence and Victims. 2000; 15:257-272.


6. Guns in the home are used more often to intimidate intimates than to thwart crime.

Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, we investigated how and when guns are used in the home. We found that guns in the home are used more often to frighten intimates than to thwart crime; other weapons are far more commonly used against intruders than are guns.

Publication: Azrael, Deborah R; Hemenway, David. In the safety of your own home: Results from a national survey of gun use at home. Social Science and Medicine. 2000; 50:285-91.


7. Adolescents are far more likely to be threatened with a gun than to use one in self-defense.

We analyzed data from a telephone survey of 5,800 California adolescents aged 12-17, which asked questions about gun threats against, and self-defense gun use by these young people. We found that these young people were far more likely to be threatened with a gun than to use a gun in self-defense, and most of the reported self-defense gun uses were hostile interactions between armed adolescents. Males, smokers, binge drinkers, those who threatened others and whose parents were less likely to know their whereabouts were more likely both to be threatened with a gun and to use a gun in self-defense.

Hemenway, David; Miller, Matthew. Gun threats against and self-defense gun use by California adolescents. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. 2004; 158:395-400.


8. Criminals who are shot are typically the victims of crime

Using data from a survey of detainees in a Washington D.C. jail, we worked with a prison physician to investigate the circumstances of gunshot wounds to these criminals.
We found that one in four of these detainees had been wounded, in events that appear unrelated to their incarceration. Most were shot when they were victims of robberies, assaults and crossfires. Virtually none report being wounded by a “law-abiding citizen.”

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Oen, Roger; Pitts, Khalid R. When criminals are shot: A survey of Washington DC jail detainees. Medscape General Medicine. 2000; June 28. www.medscape.com


9-10. Few criminals are shot by decent law abiding citizens

Using data from surveys of detainees in six jails from around the nation, we worked with a prison physician to determine whether criminals seek hospital medical care when they are shot. Criminals almost always go to the hospital when they are shot. To believe fully the claims of millions of self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abiding citizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals. But the data from emergency departments belie this claim, unless hundreds of thousands of wounded criminals are afraid to seek medical care. But virtually all criminals who have been shot went to the hospital, and can describe in detail what happened there.

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Oen, Roger; Pitts, Khalid R. Medical Care Solicitation by Criminals with Gunshot Wound Injuries: A Survey of Washington DC Jail Detainees. Journal of Trauma. 2000; 48:130-132.

May, John P; Hemenway, David. Do Criminals Go to the Hospital When They are Shot? Injury Prevention 2002: 8:236-238.​

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/

Read that already...But it doesn't negate anything I said.

In fact it is utterly irrelevant.

These findings are entirely relevant to the risk-benefit analysis of possessing and owning guns. I asked earlier for someone to specify the benefits of having a gun in the home, and you responded "self-defense". But study 6 in the above list found that guns in the home are more often used to intimidate intimate partners than to thwart crime (a finding that does not include the increased risk of suicide associated with a gun in the home). Study 5 found that "firearms are used far more often to intimidate than in self-defense." Study 4 found that most purported self-defensive gun use is in fact illegal.

To anyone who isn't blind, the risks of possessing and owning guns, and of a country saturated in guns, are obviously and well documented. It's only the benefits of possessing guns, and of a country saturated in guns, that are non-existent.

 

[Nous]

You are mistaken.

About what? You didn't show that anything I said is false. Quote whatever I said that you believe is false, and show that it is false.

 

[esmith]

The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. This would be the action required to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Then it takes 75% of the states to ratify the amendment, or 37.5 (round-up or down?) states. Now this is not the same as a presidential election where it only takes 270 electoral votes out of 538 votes possible. So in other words each state counts as only 1 vote. Now looking at the map of blue(democrat) and red(republican) in the last presidential election (see below). What do you think the possibilities of getting 3/4 of the states to vote for repealing the 2nd Amendment? Let's just say a snowball chance in hell!

 

[Nous]

Lewis v. United States (1996)

I completely agree that Lewis (1996) was a bad and unnecessary decision--though it wasn't without a degree of justification (namely, the fact that a prosecutor could prosecute each charge separately). The decision also presumably affects only a tiny number of defendants--I would guess less than 1 per year.

 

[Nous]

Obviously “the right of the people” cannot logically be interpreted as “the rights of all individuals” because many individuals are lawfully forbidden to purchase and possess guns--due to having been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor domestic violence; due to having been adjudicated as dangerous; due to being underage. Any individual can temporarily be lawfully forbidden to possess his/her guns when in “sensitive places” (e.g., a courtroom) or even when detained on suspicion of a committing a crime, without yet being charged.

The phrase “the right of the people” cannot logically be interpreted as “the rights of all individuals” to keep and bear arms for personal-use purposes because such interpretation unavoidably raises the conundrum of “which arms” individuals may keep and bear, a conundrum that Scalia was unable to resolve coherently. To interpret the Amendment as securing a right to maintain armed well-regulated militias does not provoke such a confounding question--we know that we want a well-regulated militia that is providing for the common defense to have access to all available weapons that can possibly be effective in providing for the common defense. We know that we don’t want, and don’t allow, individuals to have any and all kinds of weapons for personal-use purposes--individuals cannot keep and bear machine-guns, anti-aircraft guns, hand grenades, etc., etc. Here is California’s lengthy list of weapon that are prohibited for individuals to keep and bear for personal-use purposes:

short-barreled shotgun
short-barreled rifle
camouflaging firearm container
cane gun
wallet gun
undetectable firearm
flechette dart
zip gun
unconventional pistol
multiburst trigger activator
bullet containing or carrying an explosive agent
dirk or dagger
nunchaku
metal knuckle
hard plastic knuckles
ballistic knife
shuriken
belt buckle knife
lipstick case knife
cane sword
shobi-zue
leaded cane
air gauge knife
writing pen knife
metal military practice handgrenade or metal replica handgrenade
large capacity magazine
Machineguns
Assault Weapons
Armor-Piercing Bullets
Larger Caliber Weapons and Tracer Ammunition
Firearm Silencers
Sniperscopes
Boobytraps
Flamethrowers

http://ag.ca.gov/firearms/forms/pdf/Cfl2006.pdf

Justice Breyer points out that Scalia’s attempt to answer the “which guns” question is the product of circular reasoning, and notes that there is no rational reason to believe that the Framers wrote a provision that relied on such a fallacious thought process. Indeed, except for reliance on such circular reasoning, there is no way to justify excluding handguns from the list of prohibited “dangerous weapons”. Handguns are currently the most lethal type of firearm to American civilians.

These are among the reasons that “the right of the people” cannot logically be interpreted as “the rights of all individuals”.

What other rights of the people are you willing to discard as individual rights?

Do you still beat your wife?

Obviously my post that you quoted a sentence fragment from is about the interpretations of the Second Amendment that are not logically justifiable. If you find something that I've said that you believe is erroneous, then quote it and show that it is false.

 

[Nous]

Does the fourth amendment not secure a right of the individual?

Why do you ask?

 

[Nous]

Then it takes 75% of the states to ratify the amendment, or 37.5 (round-up or down?) states.

Round up.

What do you think the possibilities of getting 3/4 of the states to vote for repealing the 2nd Amendment?

I don't recall that anyone here has claimed that there is even the slightest possibility of repealing the Second Amendment anytime soon. As I noted earlier, I think what is more likely to happen sooner is that a different Supreme Court will recognize the error of Heller and overturn that holding about a right of handgun-armed self-defense in the home.

 

[esmith]

Round up.

I don't recall that anyone here has claimed that there is even the slightest possibility of repealing the Second Amendment anytime soon. As I noted earlier, I think what is more likely to happen sooner is that a different Supreme Court will recognize the error of Heller and overturn that holding about a right of handgun-armed self-defense in the home.

Seems like some do, the title of this thread is repeal the 2nd Amendment.
As far as the SCOUS. Yeah, I could see that if a bleeding heat liberal was elected. president and appointed another bleeding heart liberal to the Court. However, I do believe even if that happened it would only allow states and municipalities to write their own laws. Not give blanket power to the federal government to mandate a new federal law. Even then, when a conservative was elected they could just issue an executive order to nullify the law. (what comes around goes around)

 

[Nous]

As far as the SCOUS. Yeah, I could see that if a bleeding heat liberal was elected. president and appointed another bleeding heart liberal to the Court.

So only "bleeding heart liberals" are able to correctly interpret the Constitution?

However, I do believe even if that happened it would only allow states and municipalities to write their own laws.

Indeed, undoubtedly a number of states and municipalities would immediately outlaw handguns (and other dangerous firearms). Soon Americans would find themselves living in a less violent country.

 

[Revoltingest]

I completely agree that Lewis (1996) was a bad and unnecessary decision--though it wasn't without a degree of justification (namely, the fact that a prosecutor could prosecute each charge separately). The decision also presumably affects only a tiny number of defendants--I would guess less than 1 per year.

As I read the 6th Amendment, there is no threshold where one's right to a
jury trial in any criminal prosecution may be unilaterally waived by government.
But this is good that we both see the mischief in that decision.
I believe the Constitution should be difficult & time consuming to amend.
It should not be doable by governmental fiat.

As for it affecting one per year, I don't know.
But it poses the potential to affect far more if shifting political winds inspire government
to crack down upon some group, they can go after far more. Also, the current threshold
can be raised to multiple years in prison, since it's up to USSC fiat.

 

[esmith]

So only "bleeding heart liberals" are able to correctly interpret the Constitution?

Indeed, undoubtedly a number of states and municipalities would immediately outlaw handguns (and other dangerous firearms). Soon Americans would find themselves living in a less violent country.

As I have mentioned in another thread. I do not plan to visit any state east of the Mississippi and those states on the Pacific Coast unless I have to (probably will, wife's sister lives in North Carolina and we travel to East Oregon occasionally.)