politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Actually it says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.* It says nothing about procuring them. Banning gun sales is totally on the table. Plus, "arms" is kinda a funny word. It doesn't mean just guns. Yet most people would agree that I shouldn't be allowed to build bombs in my basement. Isn't that a violation of the second amendment?
Not to mention that whole well regulated militia part.
A reasonable interpretation would at the very least take that to mean a requirement to be eligible for the national guard and to consistently pass training and inspection with each action class of weapon you want to buy.
Hence the asterix on my paraphrasing of the Second Amendment. Ultimately, I think the founding fathers laid out general principles of society that we should adhere to, but that they expected us to care more about the intent of the Constitution than the actual exact words.
The founding fathers were slave oligarchs, fuck their opinions on anything to do with our country today
Throw out the whole constitution then. Human history is rife with suffering and hypocrisy. My ancestors chased people off this land at the point of a sword. Right now, we're overlooking the horrible exploitation of other human beings in China, Africa, India and others, to make luxury goods. The lens of history should acknowledge the status quo at the time, but not excuse it, and celebrate those who worked to advance human rights and conditions before their time.
Man imagine going to bat for the opinions of slave oligarchs.
Imagine condemning nearly everyone who has ever existed because they didn't live up to modern society's current understanding of humanity.
Imagine being too scared to do that in spite of everyone they made suffer and everyone else who knew it was wrong even then, because you somehow want to make defending slave oligarchs your hill to die on.
Then stop wearing your clothes, eating the food you buy and enjoying the place you live in...go live in the woods, because you're a hypocrite.
"We should improve society somewhat"
"Yet you participate in it! Curious! I am very smart!"
The well regulated part means functional and effective.
The reasonable interpretation is that the founders didn't want a federal standing army because of the temptation towards tyranny such federal power would create, and instead expected the states to draft their citizens into militias in response to threats. These citizens were expected to arrive self-armed, knowing how to use their gun, with ammunition, and with initial rations. Citing the militia acts for this, you can verify that the government saw everyone of able body as members of the militia. The militias could then slot into a temporary federal army when needed, and then sent home after the threat has passed. The "shall not be infringed" was to prevent the federal and state governments from disarming their citizens, and the temptation of tyranny over a helpless population.
We have since become the world's largest military power through constitutional amendment and stretching of interpretation, but there has been no update to the 2nd. It doesn't matter that a citizen militia can't match the US military today like everyone likes to argue, we shouldn't selectively enforce constitutional rights. Full stop. If you want to change it, get a constitutional amendment passed modifying the 2nd. If you can't pass that threshold, then you don't have the support you think you do. If you want to guarantee people trained, offer free training and make it attractive to do this training or include it in our compulsory education system so everyone gets it by default. By the way, everyone is already eligible for the national guard, it is essentially the current active volunteer militia. What you can't do is make people join the national guard to be able to keep and bear arms.
If you want to just scrap the country like your later comments on this thread indicate, go find uninhabited land and found your own country that doesn't have a constitution and can be completely redesigned at your will. Or steal some from any current inhabitants if you can, and if you find that palatable or find a group you don't think deserve their country.
The article says guns should be ownable because they're necessary in a militia. The language never implies that guns should only be owned by militia members. The militia line is a justification not a requirement.
You seemed to have missed the part where that's the generous interpretation, the real interpretation is that since a militia is no longer necessary for the defense of our free state, civilian firearms ownership can just be banned entirely and that's perfectly constitutional.
Unless you want to argue that the strongest military in human history is insufficient defense of this free state.
Militias are still necessary for free states, especially since the Army is federal in nature, not a state organization. Now the militia helps ensure the security of the states from federal forces that would otherwise be left unchecked without so much as a means to stop a military dictatorship, which is the reason they didn't form a standing army when they wrote the constitution. The only thing that changed was who the militia would be fighting against, and that's a common interpretation. It very much aligns with the spirit of the law, preventing military dictatorship, for it to continue to exist.
That why right now independent militias are one of the greatest threats of domestic terrorism in this country, like that time those militias defended the free state by forming the more organized portions of the J6 riots that explicitly set out to end our free state and replace it with a militia dictatorship?
So called 'lone wolf' shooters do more terrorism than militias they just don't call it terrorism because they paint it as a personal issue despite them listening to the same media personalities, having the same theories, and going to the same online spaces. There are more mass shootings that qualify as terrorism, weather they're called as such or not, than there is militia violence. Also idk what lessons you wanna pull from J6 considering to my knowledge none of the insurrectionists shot a firearm. You're trying to tell me how dangerous militias are with guns yet it seems the most dangerous thing they did, they did without guns.
No it's not, everything the founders wrote about was directly designed to keep people armed and under no situation shall they be disarmed. Go read some of their papers. This has been chewed a million times and the anti-2a crowd still thinks regulated is the same meaning today as it was back then.
The founders were slave oligarchs, the tyranny they were keeping the citizens armed to defend against was Haiti.
What the fuck are you talking about....do you just make shit up in your head? They wanted everyone armed because they just fought and defeated the world's strongest military at the time...
If that was genuinely the reason a significant faction of them wouldn't have been arguing in favor of trade deals with them instead of France, the country that basically won the war for us at sea.
The fuck does having trade with other countries have anything to do with gun ownership?