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FirstFiveEighth
Guest
You watch your mouth, criminal. 
Machine gun fire into Las Vegas crowd at Route 91 music Festival
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Roseeurekacross
Guest
:new_zealand:
:guardswoman::guardsman:t6:rincess:t6:rincess:t3:
:angel:t3:
:man_dancing:t6:
:cricket_bat_and_ball:
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MonteRCMS
Guest
Bret Stephens wrote a column in the New York Times yesterday; he is a former columnist for the Wall Street Journal, who is thought to be a conservative.
After the column yesterday, a lot of conservatives began wondering whatās happened to Bret Stephens because thereās nothing conservative about the column. Actually, it was really kind of a loosely assembled almost like stream of consciousness rather than a crafted and prepared column. And it seemed something written in frustration.
He opens it up by admitting he is a conservative, heās never understood this fetish that conservatives have with the Second Amendment, and halfway through the piece he says repeal it, just repeal it. If everybody means what theyāre saying here about guns and control, just repeal the Second Amendment.
At National Review, Charles C. W. Cooke was greatly bothered by this piece and wrote a post at The Corner blog that is quoted from here. Not going to read whole thing. But there is some excellent history in this, some excellent history that I will guarantee most Americans do not know about the Second Amendment.
After the column yesterday, a lot of conservatives began wondering whatās happened to Bret Stephens because thereās nothing conservative about the column. Actually, it was really kind of a loosely assembled almost like stream of consciousness rather than a crafted and prepared column. And it seemed something written in frustration.
He opens it up by admitting he is a conservative, heās never understood this fetish that conservatives have with the Second Amendment, and halfway through the piece he says repeal it, just repeal it. If everybody means what theyāre saying here about guns and control, just repeal the Second Amendment.
At National Review, Charles C. W. Cooke was greatly bothered by this piece and wrote a post at The Corner blog that is quoted from here. Not going to read whole thing. But there is some excellent history in this, some excellent history that I will guarantee most Americans do not know about the Second Amendment.
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MonteRCMS
Guest
Charles C. W. Cooke and his piece at National Review:
He starts out by saying: āStephens is not a stupid man, and nor is he unaware of the reach that tyrannies have enjoyed. On the contrary, his is often a welcome voice in the fight for the liberty of all people. This being so, it is remarkable how blithely he elects to invoke Madison as a friend to his cause,ā of repealing the Second Amendment.
āIn truth āā and hereās where the history lesson begins, and tell me how many of you knew this when I finish. āIn truth, the Second Amendment was not an āamendmentā at all, for, unlike some of the subsequent alterations to the charter, it represented neither a change in policy nor a remedy for an error.ā
Sometimes amendments, by definition, are changes. Weāre going to amend this to make sure speech is guaranteed, weāre going to amend this, change it, add to it.
His point is the Second Amendment didnāt change anything, and it didnāt fix anything.
āAlong with the rest of the Bill of Rights it was the product of a disagreement as to how to best protect freedoms that were generally considered unalienable.ā
The founders believed that rights and liberty came from our Creation and not men, not government, not other people. And thatās what made them inalienable. Meaning, you canāt lose them. You can be deprived of them but you canāt lose them, theyāre there always.
āFor reasons outlined in The Federalist Papers, Madison believed that the power of the federal government would be constrained by its structure; if the central state had only a handful of carefully enumerated powers, he contended, it would not be able to exceed them.ā
And thatās in fact what the Constitution is.
It enumerates what the government cannot do.
It spells out what the powers are and none more.
Now, the anti-Federalists disagreed with that. āThey demanded,ā as itās written here, āa belt to add to the suspenders. The debate that followed was strictly structural ā not a fight over speech or due process or arms, but over how best to ensure the maintenance of ancient liberty.ā
This is what the Constitution is, a charter of liberty and how to maintain it.
So any time somebody starts talking about getting rid of that part of it or that part, youāve gotta really perk up and say, āNo way. Weāre not gonna sit here and let you chip away at our freedoms,ā which is what the anti-Second Amendment crowd wants to do.
āMadison acknowledged this when introducing the Bill of Rights in Congress. The rights he had included, he made clear to his peers, were those āagainst which I believe no serious objection has been made by any class of our constituents.āā
In other words, the Bill of Rights was a listing of things that were not controversial.
The Bill of Rights were things which he had heard no serious objection to by anybody ā freedom of speech, freedom of religion. Nobody objected to any of them. So he said: āLetās list them. Letās enumerate them.ā
He starts out by saying: āStephens is not a stupid man, and nor is he unaware of the reach that tyrannies have enjoyed. On the contrary, his is often a welcome voice in the fight for the liberty of all people. This being so, it is remarkable how blithely he elects to invoke Madison as a friend to his cause,ā of repealing the Second Amendment.
āIn truth āā and hereās where the history lesson begins, and tell me how many of you knew this when I finish. āIn truth, the Second Amendment was not an āamendmentā at all, for, unlike some of the subsequent alterations to the charter, it represented neither a change in policy nor a remedy for an error.ā
Sometimes amendments, by definition, are changes. Weāre going to amend this to make sure speech is guaranteed, weāre going to amend this, change it, add to it.
His point is the Second Amendment didnāt change anything, and it didnāt fix anything.
āAlong with the rest of the Bill of Rights it was the product of a disagreement as to how to best protect freedoms that were generally considered unalienable.ā
The founders believed that rights and liberty came from our Creation and not men, not government, not other people. And thatās what made them inalienable. Meaning, you canāt lose them. You can be deprived of them but you canāt lose them, theyāre there always.
āFor reasons outlined in The Federalist Papers, Madison believed that the power of the federal government would be constrained by its structure; if the central state had only a handful of carefully enumerated powers, he contended, it would not be able to exceed them.ā
And thatās in fact what the Constitution is.
It enumerates what the government cannot do.
It spells out what the powers are and none more.
Now, the anti-Federalists disagreed with that. āThey demanded,ā as itās written here, āa belt to add to the suspenders. The debate that followed was strictly structural ā not a fight over speech or due process or arms, but over how best to ensure the maintenance of ancient liberty.ā
This is what the Constitution is, a charter of liberty and how to maintain it.
So any time somebody starts talking about getting rid of that part of it or that part, youāve gotta really perk up and say, āNo way. Weāre not gonna sit here and let you chip away at our freedoms,ā which is what the anti-Second Amendment crowd wants to do.
āMadison acknowledged this when introducing the Bill of Rights in Congress. The rights he had included, he made clear to his peers, were those āagainst which I believe no serious objection has been made by any class of our constituents.āā
In other words, the Bill of Rights was a listing of things that were not controversial.
The Bill of Rights were things which he had heard no serious objection to by anybody ā freedom of speech, freedom of religion. Nobody objected to any of them. So he said: āLetās list them. Letās enumerate them.ā
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MonteRCMS
Guest
āIn encoding the right to bear arms among the set, neither Madison nor his opponents were innovating.ā
It was already the presumed natural way to live then at the time.
They werenāt innovating, they werenāt changing anything, they werenāt protecting or guarding.
They were just codifying the liberties and freedoms that were considered proper at the time.
āThey were channeling Justinian, Locke, and Blackstone, and ensuring that the people of the new country would enjoy a robust right to self-defense, and the auxiliary protections that enabled it,ā i.e., arms.
āSurely, Stephens insists, if Madison could see the modern world he would change his mind.
I must venture that the very opposite is true.
Were he to pick up a history book today, Madison would be shocked indeed.
But his surprise would be at the sheer scale and disgrace of the tyrannies that have scarred us since he died.
The American Revolution was a beautiful and necessary thing, and yet if one were to have read the litany of complaints to a man in the Warsaw Ghetto, or in Dachau, or in the Gulag ā¦ he would have laughed in your face.ā
In other words, there was real tyranny back in the day this country was founded, and to spell out these things would have made people in tyranny laugh because they were so simplistic.
But that was their value.
But his point, Madison would cringe if he saw the tyrannies that have come to exist in America.
āTyranniesā loosely defined.
That history lesson on the Second Amendment and in fact the whole Bill of Rights is crucial.
But the thing to note is that the Second Amendment was not a change, it was not an innovation, it was not abnormal, it was not unusual.
It was simply a codification, if you will, of the thinking at the time as it related to the preservation of liberty, which is what the Constitution is.
It is a document dedicated to defining and guaranteeing and protecting the freedom of the people of the United States of America.
It is not a document that tells the government what it can do.
Itās a document that proscribes the government from doing things that would chip away at liberty.
The Second Amendment people love to tell you that if the founders came back today they would be outraged at how many guns and they would demand that the Second Amendment being repealed.
It was already the presumed natural way to live then at the time.
They werenāt innovating, they werenāt changing anything, they werenāt protecting or guarding.
They were just codifying the liberties and freedoms that were considered proper at the time.
āThey were channeling Justinian, Locke, and Blackstone, and ensuring that the people of the new country would enjoy a robust right to self-defense, and the auxiliary protections that enabled it,ā i.e., arms.
āSurely, Stephens insists, if Madison could see the modern world he would change his mind.
I must venture that the very opposite is true.
Were he to pick up a history book today, Madison would be shocked indeed.
But his surprise would be at the sheer scale and disgrace of the tyrannies that have scarred us since he died.
The American Revolution was a beautiful and necessary thing, and yet if one were to have read the litany of complaints to a man in the Warsaw Ghetto, or in Dachau, or in the Gulag ā¦ he would have laughed in your face.ā
In other words, there was real tyranny back in the day this country was founded, and to spell out these things would have made people in tyranny laugh because they were so simplistic.
But that was their value.
But his point, Madison would cringe if he saw the tyrannies that have come to exist in America.
āTyranniesā loosely defined.
That history lesson on the Second Amendment and in fact the whole Bill of Rights is crucial.
But the thing to note is that the Second Amendment was not a change, it was not an innovation, it was not abnormal, it was not unusual.
It was simply a codification, if you will, of the thinking at the time as it related to the preservation of liberty, which is what the Constitution is.
It is a document dedicated to defining and guaranteeing and protecting the freedom of the people of the United States of America.
It is not a document that tells the government what it can do.
Itās a document that proscribes the government from doing things that would chip away at liberty.
The Second Amendment people love to tell you that if the founders came back today they would be outraged at how many guns and they would demand that the Second Amendment being repealed.
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MonteRCMS
Guest
And itās actually just the opposite.
What the founders would be stunned at ā they wouldnāt be stunned, actually.
They would be saddened.
They expect it because of history and because of human nature, they expected governments to grow, including ours, theirs.
They expected it to become oppressive.
This is what human history was: oppression of people, tyranny, dictatorship, poverty.
Thatās the uniqueness of the Constitution.
So the truth is James Madison and these other founders who had a direct hand in either the Declaration or the Constitution would be aghast at the size of the federal government.
They would be ā catch myself again.
They wouldnāt be surprised because they expected it.
Itās what they were trying to guard against.
They would be mad, angry, saddened, but not surprised.
The framers of the Constitution, their first thought, it would be clear that the Constitution was all the government could do and no more.
Others decided they had better make those limits more clear, and thatās what the Bill of Rights is, the Second Amendment, the 10th Amendment, the first, all 10 Amendments are constraints on the government specifying how the government is limited in those fields.
And the Second Amendment was not an innovation, it was not a change, it was not a reaction to something either popular or unpopular.
It was simply a natural, it was a given, as all the others were.
Now, this isnāt taught anymore. And one of the reasons why is that many leftists think the Constitution is a horrible document because it limits people who believe in government first, second, third, and always.
It is called a charter of negative liberties by many leftists because it doesnāt tell government what it can do; it tells government what it canāt do. And so from all the way back to on FDR weāve had this concept of a second Bill of Rights that could spell out what the government could do.
Obama has even publicly stated his frustrations with the Constitution in this regard, as has Cass Sunstein, the husband of the lovely and gracious Samantha Power, and thatās the argument.
Itās not true that the founders would freak out at the number of guns.
They would freak out at the size of government.
They would freak out at the reach of government, and I think theyād probably be shocked that the country remains somewhat similar to its founding, despite that.
What the founders would be stunned at ā they wouldnāt be stunned, actually.
They would be saddened.
They expect it because of history and because of human nature, they expected governments to grow, including ours, theirs.
They expected it to become oppressive.
This is what human history was: oppression of people, tyranny, dictatorship, poverty.
Thatās the uniqueness of the Constitution.
So the truth is James Madison and these other founders who had a direct hand in either the Declaration or the Constitution would be aghast at the size of the federal government.
They would be ā catch myself again.
They wouldnāt be surprised because they expected it.
Itās what they were trying to guard against.
They would be mad, angry, saddened, but not surprised.
The framers of the Constitution, their first thought, it would be clear that the Constitution was all the government could do and no more.
Others decided they had better make those limits more clear, and thatās what the Bill of Rights is, the Second Amendment, the 10th Amendment, the first, all 10 Amendments are constraints on the government specifying how the government is limited in those fields.
And the Second Amendment was not an innovation, it was not a change, it was not a reaction to something either popular or unpopular.
It was simply a natural, it was a given, as all the others were.
Now, this isnāt taught anymore. And one of the reasons why is that many leftists think the Constitution is a horrible document because it limits people who believe in government first, second, third, and always.
It is called a charter of negative liberties by many leftists because it doesnāt tell government what it can do; it tells government what it canāt do. And so from all the way back to on FDR weāve had this concept of a second Bill of Rights that could spell out what the government could do.
Obama has even publicly stated his frustrations with the Constitution in this regard, as has Cass Sunstein, the husband of the lovely and gracious Samantha Power, and thatās the argument.
Itās not true that the founders would freak out at the number of guns.
They would freak out at the size of government.
They would freak out at the reach of government, and I think theyād probably be shocked that the country remains somewhat similar to its founding, despite that.
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dvdjs
Guest
I note that you talk at some length about the thoughts of āsomeā. But not about the thoughts of anyone in particular.
I am not certain that the second amendment needs to be repealed in order to have some reasonable regulations regarding the ownership of weapons. It would be interesting to see how courts would rule on legislation. Has the ban against automatic weapons survived court challenge?
We rarely get there to that point; the rallying around certain interpretations of the second amendment inhibits progress in the consideration of most legislative proposals - all of which invariably fall far, far short of disarming law-abiding citizens.
But the idea persists: they will take away all of guns; their goal is to disarm law-abiding citizens. And the arguments is typically like yours: you speak for āthemā.
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dvdjs
Guest
If it is so easy, why not reference the statements attributed to no one in particular?
Just as it is possible on the internet people ranting about the earth being flat, or the moon landing faked, I am sure it is possible to find just about anything on the internet. But what proposal, what platform plank, what strategic plan, what statement has been made by any person of influence that the goal of those who have proposed legislation on ownership of weapons is to disarm law abiding citizens?
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dvdjs
Guest
Lest there be any confusionā¦
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dvdjs
Guest
Here is the Stephens editorial itself:
www.nytimes.com
Opinion | Repeal the Second Amendment (Published 2017)
It sounds like political Mission Impossible. But itās the only meaningful way to stop the killing.
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ucfengr
Guest
You canāt quantify the cost so you deflect by assuming one and saying Iām okay with stealing it. Nice try.
I wonder, do you think all cell phone owners bear a corporate responsibility for the death and injuries caused by texting while driving?
I wonder, do you think all cell phone owners bear a corporate responsibility for the death and injuries caused by texting while driving?
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ucfengr
Guest
What direct and quantifiable cost does that impose on you, and how am I, by virtue of owning firearms, responsible for it?
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
This is an attempt to place the bill of rights, and the second amendment in particular, beyond the reach of normal debate - to elevate it to the level of transcendent moral authority. The founding fathers may have actually believed this to be true. But they were just men. As such, their concept of a moral authority is not inherently better than anyone elseās.
Looking only at the second amendment, it is clear that it is not universally accepted as a transcendent moral truth, since the constitutions of other nations do not include it and their laws, in fact directly contradict it. 4% of the worldās population lives under a second amendment. 96% do not recognize the moral authority of that amendment. More importantly for this forum, the Catholic Church does not recognize the transcendent moral authority of the second amendment. As far as the Church is concerned, gun policy is a prudential judgment matter that the faithful may decide for themselves. The closest that Church teaching comes to this matter is an affirmation of the right and duty of self defense. But nowhere in that teaching is there any mention of the right to specific means of self defense. That is purely a matter for prudential judgment.
Getting back to US law, as long as the second amendment is the law of the land, and the Supreme Court - a legitimate authority for this nation - has interpreted it as it has, we are bound to follow it. But that does not mean it would be immoral to attempt to change the law of the land by legal means, such as repealing of the second amendment. Despite what your author says, It does not have transcendent moral authority. It a man-made legal document, just as open to challenges as any man-made document.
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josie_L
Guest
This question is moot if those that wish to repeal the 2nd amendment canāt even prove that greater gun ownership increases gun crime. From the sources Iāve used, which are as liberal as they come, the evidence shows that gun crime either remains static and/or decreases with an increase in gun ownership. In fact, in countries where gun crime was high, enacting extreme gun laws and/or bans as only increased gun crime and/or crime in general thereafter (Harvard article). Americans need not touch nor taint the constitution with ideological-based policies, when the facts/stats show that there is no correlation between greater gun ownership and increased gun crime, in other words, ādonāt fix what isnāt brokenā.
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dvdjs
Guest
Like everything else in politics, it does not really matter what is proved to be true, only what is believed by the majority of voters.
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rcwitness
Guest
When you can show me how people are routinely (or ever) being killed by religion, then you have a point with me.rcwitness:
Itās a right to freedom of religion. But its a privilege to qualify for that right. Just like a driverās license. I am simply proposing a better means to regulate religion in this country.
Iām not against the right to bear arms. Iām for more safety laws and believe some should lose the right. And more redflags be established to investigate or require special permits.
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josie_L
Guest
Then the majority of voters need to be told the facts regarding gun control, not propangandized to, by media, pundits and politicians who are swayed by their ideologies/agenda.
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dvdjs
Guest
I agree. But I know from past experience that I probably do not agree with you, not only on what the facts are, but on fundamental epistemology.
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rcwitness
Guest
I agree with finding answers to why Americans are routinely committing these awful crimes.
I donāt think anyone is saying that the ability to get guns is why some of these people choose to use them to commit mass murder.
They decide they want to commit mass murder because they have been deceived by demons. Then, they find out how to murder a bunch of people and themselves.
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josie_L
Guest
But how would you establish this? If someone with no prior record of mental illness and/or criminality wants to buy guns, and then later, much later becomes enraged/psychotic, how do you prevent such people from killing enmasse?FirstFiveEighth:
When you can show me how people are routinely (or ever) being killed by religion, then you have a point with me.rcwitness:
Itās a right to freedom of religion. But its a privilege to qualify for that right. Just like a driverās license. I am simply proposing a better means to regulate religion in this country.
Iām not against the right to bear arms. Iām for more safety laws and believe some should lose the right. And more redflags be established to investigate or require special permits.
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