Everybody who looks at the second amendment is wrong.
I’m on mobile here so you will have to forgive the formatting and lack of links.
With the most recent school shooting and the NRA having a convention, guns are once again a hot topic in the US.
On the left side of the political spectrum we hear a lot about banning guns in various forms. Some say background checks. Some say certain types of guns should be banned. And so on.
On the right we have people pointing to the second amendment to the US Constitution.
For our foreign friends it reads like this:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The guys who wrote the first iterations of the constitution were actually pretty smart when it comes to governance. One of the issues they realized was that a disarmed populace doesn’t have much power against power grabs by politicians. How true they stayed to this sentiment is certainly a topic for other discussion. But in the ~230 years since we have seen plenty of murderous governments come to power around the world and almost always they outlaw their subjects/victims from being armed. So the logic of the guarantee was accurate.
So these days you have people screaming on Twitter SHALL NOT BE INFRIGNED. And you have others saying this isn’t the militia (you dumbass).
And as usual they are both wrong.
People get hung up on the shall not be infringed part and ignore the rest of the statement.
Back in those days there was no standing army. States would call up the militia which was basically every able bodied man of fighting age. So that part is basically saying that our people should have guns available to them if they are needed.
But what being well regulated? Here we run into the problem of linguistic drift changing meanings and contexts over time. Today “regulate” means to make a rule. Back then, “regulate” meant “to make regular” aka consistent. So everybody had the same system in which to operate. It’s a slight but important difference. You can check prior editions of blacks law dictionary to see how this has changed over the years.
So, we put it all together and we get that a well regulated militia having arms basically meant a somewhat standard kit of weapons. So if you were called up from your farm to fight you would show up with guns, ammo, and so on that more or less matched what everyone else had.
In order to make that system work, people had to have access to weapons. And in order for that to be assured throughout different political regimes, the law had to be made such that the government of any given time couldn’t restrict the access to those weapons. Thus we get the security of a Free State - which is security against becoming an enslaved State or a conquered State.
So now here we are all these years later. We do have a standing army. Militias are pretty much never called either publicly or privately. And last I checked America had more guns than the rest of the world combined. Given that situation, what are we to do? There are psychopaths out there. Some of them do intend harm. A lot of them do have weapons.
Seems to me the best course of action is to move towards distributed defense since centralized authorities will never be able to be where and when you need them, even if they are acting in good faith. And then you have the issues of corruption that come with any centralized power, and we are seeing that play out in real time with this Uvale police department.
Distributed defense means having the capability to defend at the you-and-me level. And that means having weapons at the you-and-me level.
So yes, be capable. Be armed. Be trained in how to use those arms. Whether you are defending yourself from a run of the mill burglar, an 18 year old having a psychotic break, or a government that has lots its way the actions and preparation are the same. Who knows, someday it might be important to band together with your neighbors and form a militia. At that point it’ll be too late to get supplies.
European civilization consists of a core, which is, by and large, Europe, and fringes, which are America and Russia(*). I guess life is rougher in the fringes. In Europe, gun violence or violence in general is rare enough that making everyone a well armed militiaman ready to use deadly force to defend themselves would be a complete overkill and pretty much only introduce the downside of every psycho being armed to the teeth. Few people can be expected bother to carry around military grade firearms or any firearms for that batter let alone be trained well enough to use them effectively and lawfully. That is not really even necessary.
*) Russians can buy weapons for hunting, self-defense, target practice and to collect them after taking mandatory gun safety classes and passing a test as well as a background check but Russians in general are not particularly crazy about guns despite the fact that Russia has a homicide rate that is twice that of the USA.
Yeah the comparisons between the US and Europe are always a stretch just because of the size and heterogeneity of the US. You can't compare the US to the UK because you also have to include Bosnia and other places that are poorer and where life is cheaper.
The vast majority of gun violence in the US is domestic (where it doesn't particularly matter if a gun is used or not) and gang violence. The random shootings like we hear about in the news are statistically rare in a population of 330 million people but get huge amounts of attention.
You're right. Because of the bosnias of Europe I added the modifier "by and large". And it's probably also true that some parts of the USA are much more violent than others.
was there any age limit imposed on gun holders? i.e can all kids have guns :)
Edit: Or i guess my real question is what changes have happened since they made the law. Is it still possible for everyone to more or less match everyone else?
Laws vary by state. In a lot of places you may have to be 18 to buy, but lots of kids get their first .22 rifle when they turn 12 or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_by_state
Dear @nealmcspadden, we need your help!
The Hivebuzz proposal already got important support from the community. However, it lost its funding a few days ago and only needs a few more HP to get funded again.
May we ask you to support it so our team can continue its work this year?
You can do it on Peakd, ecency,
https://peakd.com/me/proposals/199
Your support would be really helpful and you could make a difference.
Thank you!
good brother