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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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There are also a lot of safety laws and rules for firearms. The thing is, it still requires people to follow them and not be a psychopath.
True but cars also have more laws and rules. Seems the matter of enforcement could be an issue. Driving on public roads allows law enforcement to check if you comply. How are laws enforced for guns once in the hands of private individuals? Or perhaps there are no laws and rules from that point onwards? I honestly do not know. But I can see huge issues to enforce rules and laws if this has to be checked on the regular on private property. Perhaps some laws and rules where you, the private individual, have to come to some checkpoint? Depends on what laws and rules of course and again, I have no clue yet on this. Seems guns slip through the cracks once bought.
But as uninformed as I am, it’s the militia part of the 2nd that could be an opening to get some regulations in place? If the 2nd can be read that, sure have guns but you have to be in a wel regulated militia to own them and storage is at designated places which can be checked for compliancy. Means no guns at home of course but the main point, you can own a gun and also be part of a militia, as noted in the 2nd, would be in place and should satisfy people?
Well, lets have the flood of posts telling me I don’t understand the 2nd properly and people could be very right about that one 😀
The main disconnect is that even with adding more laws, regulations, and enforcement; it still boils down to someone being of sound enough mind to not decide to haul ass down Main Street on Christmas Eve and crush several families with their SUV. You never see people blaming the car in those cases.
You had to take a drugs and alcohol course, pass a written test, pass a vision test, and pass a driving test to be allowed to drive, and then renew the license every x number of years. Then, if you want to drive a motorcycle, or drive a large commercial truck, you need to take additional written and driving tests and even drug tests. For the safety of all.
The system we have in place already has culpability focused on the individual who passed all that and takes part in a community/societal contract that the license represents, unless there is a defect in the vehicle that caused it.
Say there was a constitutional amendment about the right to drive a vehicle, the onus would be on car manufacturers to create and/or take a dutiful part in a system that builds in physical safety features and create a sales process that trained the buyers on safety, effectively providing a standardized safety 'licensing' for new drivers as an integral part of buying their vehicles.
Does that sound completely unreasonable? Or is Death Race 2000 the standard now?
I did not have to take a drug or alcohol class to get my license.
I understand. Could be the reason that because so many regulations are in place for cats that people stopped pointing at cars as the cause and started focussing on people? Lets not forget that when cars started to enter society people blamed cars for lots of bad things, same as when trains started to run. Regulations were applied and can be checked regularly. It made blaming cars and trains less of a thing, like you pointed out. So perhaps if we can create locations where guns can be stored and checked out? You would still have the legal right to own guns and you can access them to shoot at ranges and such. Would allow for interesting and new ways of checking and enforcing laws. You would still have crazy people shooting places up, I have no doubt, but perhaps society will see “enough is done to safeguard within reason, something else needs to be done apart from guns”?
So the issue there is that it directly conflicts with the right to privacy, presumption of innocence, and your right to practice your constitutional rights. The government and law enforcement, hell even your neighbors or your HOA, cannot just check you or your stuff out to make sure you're not doing bad things. We can't mandate that you can only practice your religion at designated churches. You aren't required to go get your free speech pass from City Hall that then allows you to go to approved places to discuss politics. What you are describing is not really a new and interesting way to check and enforce laws, secret police and dictators have been doing that for centuries. "If you don't have anything to hide" is one of the worst things you could hear from law enforcement.
Law enforcement only gets to check that you comply with driving laws and regulations if you break them in front of them. They don't just get to pull people over randomly and run checks on them because they feel like it because of the 4th amendment. There is also the difference between a privilege like driving, and a constitutional right. No other right requires that you allow law enforcement to keep tabs on you or your property. No one should live in a police state like that
As to your understanding of the 2nd, the "well regulated" part means operating smoothly and in good order. It's fallen out of every day parlance, but a well regulated clock or well regulated engine used to be in more common parlance and still is used in the military I believe. So a plain English reading would be "A fully functional and well operating militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the rights of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." This is backed up by the Militia Act passed 2 years following the ratification, that confirmed that to join a militia require the militia member to provide their own arms and minimum starting ammunition. Without an individual right to keep and bear arms, that would make it hard to form said militia.
Thanks for the reply. I’m clearly out of my depth on this one and struggle to make sense of it all. I’m not American so this all is so strange to me.
Personally I would say the constitution should not be so fixed in time as times and needs change. This would allow the 2nd to be adapted to modern times and needs.
But as I am not American I have 0 say in this and will step aside.
Sure, I agree with that as well. We have a process to amend the constitution, it just requires 75% of Congress and the State legislators to agree instead of a simple majority to change it so it is a stable source of law. If it could be changed every 4-8 years as power changes, it would wreck havoc across all levels of society.
While non-Americans may not have the standing or skin in the game, I think taking an interest in how other governments and cultures work and evolve is a worthwhile endeavor. I think we can all learn something from each other regardless of nationality. We Americans like to criticize other countries and societies for things we think are backwards or harmful like humanitarian issues in certain countries and regions, but freak out when we get the same in return. I hope we are strong enough to rise above that as a country, but there are a lot of thin skinned individuals and ideologues out here.
There are also arguments to be made about interpretations of 200 year old amendments, such as the current courts originalist interpretation. Under originalism, the court tries to rule based on what the founders and signatories intended, rather than change interpretations as vocabulary drifts and evolves. There are some supporting documents like the Federalist Papers and other first and second hand documents, but it's not exactly clear cut all the time and there is a lot of guesswork involved. I lean towards interpreting based on original intention for stability reasons and to avoid circumventing the legal processes by changing the meanings of words. Breaks the spirit of the law IMO. But that's just like, my opinion man.
I personally tend to agree that the intent of the 2nd was for private ownership of all contemporary weapons of war to protect the Republic from both foreign invasion and internal tyranny if the government becomes co-opted and no longer is "of the people". That probably needs to evolve and be updated as war has fundamentally changed, along with human society, and nukes are way to expensive for anyone to afford short of like the top 100 wealth list (who we shouldn't trust anyway on oligarchal principles). The original militias were forged into the National Guard and Reserves (and to a degree the police forces), and there isn't the same national drive for local/state militias for common protection and defense, but if we want to do away with the right of the people to do so then we need to come up with a modifying amendment that a super majority of the people and State governments can agree on and ratify.