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How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

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Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#61

Post by samsolomon »

kelnos wrote: post #52
danjayh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what scares me about the current attitude (nationally) towards gun control. The right to bear arms is a basic civil right, unambiguously encoded in the Bill of Rights alongside speech, assembly, religion, due process, etc. Throughout history, taking away weapons has always been an early step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism and stripping the populous of their other rights. Just because it's unlikely…

Let's talk in practical terms for a second, though. Do you truly believe that gun ownership in the US could result in a bunch of citizens overthrowing the US government should it become tyrannical? I just don't see it happening. The US military is far too well-trained and -armed, and of course a hypothetical tyrannical US government would turn the military against its citizens if there was an armed uprising. And they…

> The US military is far too well-trained and -armed, and of course a hypothetical tyrannical US government would turn the military against its citizens if there was an armed uprising. And they would win so laughably easily.

I doubt it. The US failed in Vietnam and has been struggling in Afghanistan since 2001. Tanks and planes do not win wars. Small arms do.

EDIT: Dystopian follow-on thought. I wonder if this paradigm changes as drones improve? Would civilians have any defense? Perhaps history just repeats itself.

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#62

Post by bitwize »

skookumchuck wrote: post #22
exabrial wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On their defense, people mean well, but 'the road to hell did paved with good intentions' as they say. 1st Amendment is being attacked by liberals, with pronoun laws, hate speech regulations, equal opportunity laws, forced cake baking, many other things. The 2nd is also being attacked from a variety of ways by liberals, which as said before, is well intentioned, but ultimately destructive. Thank goodness the 3rd isn'…

> I like all of the amendments. I'm not an NRA member, but the idea of repealing the 2nd Amendment, or worse, interpreting it out of existence has bothered me in ways I couldn't quite put my finger on. I finally realized what it was. If we decide one of the rights is "archaic", "obsolete", "insane", or any of the epithets routinely leveled at it, we set a terrible precedent. How long will it be before the rest fall w…

This is what I, as a pro-gun-control person, keep saying.

By all means, agitate for gun control. But in order to do so you need to successfully present a case for Second Amendment repeal. Anything less -- such as the collective-rights argument -- means that you've empowered the courts to interpret away the force of the Second Amendment. And once you've unleashed that beast, you won't be able to control it. The courts will interpret away the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, and then we're in really deep shit.

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#63

Post by toomanybeersies »

notMick wrote: post #32
toomanybeersies wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first is being attacked by conservatives. Attacking the Bill of Rights isn't exclusive to one end of the political spectrum.

Seriously? The only people keeping the first amendment there are the conservatives! The left are trying to remove it with their various 'hate speech' laws (already done in many countries, say the 'wrong thing' on Facebook in the UK and you have the police coming to arrest you in hours) which can be applied to anything the left simply don't want you to say - and silencing you is fundamental to far left ideology.

You have Donald Trump trying to undermine the news media, attacking people for expressing their opinions by refusing to stand for the anthem, calling for stripping the citizenship from those who burn the US flag, and wanting a ban on Muslims entering the country.

Attacks on individual liberties are not limited to a particular political ideology.

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#64

Post by bitwize »

nraynaud wrote: post #33
arwhatever wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scott Greenfield covered your exact point pretty well over at his "Simple Justice" law blog https://blog.simplejustice.us/2015/10/06/ten-favs-from-the-b...

This amendment feels so random, tho. Why firearms and not other weapons? Why not general means of defense? There are also consistency issues, the prohibition was an amendment, what made that thing negociable? Other fundamental rules are completely inconsistent like being 21 to drink while the majority is 18.

> Why firearms and not other weapons?

Something something bringing a knife to a gun fight...

The amendment doesn't specify firearms; it just so happens that firearms are the most contentious weapons protected under it, for obvious reasons: firearms are among the most deadly weapons in common use, but hoplophilic citizens do not want to be denied access to weapons their enemies have access to. Nevertheless, there was a Second Amendment case brought to the Supremes (Caetano v. Massachusetts) about a woman's right to buy a stun gun, which was illegal in Massachusetts. The Supremes found in her favor.

As for why the Second is considered "special" -- it's part of the Bill of Rights. There's nothing stopping anybody from repealing it, but the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights are considered special in American legal tradition because the promise of their passage was essential to the ratification of the Constitution itself. So it would take much more effort to gather support for repeal of a Bill of Rights amendment than the Eighteenth Amendment (which was largely passed because of the temporary political vogue of the temperance movement).

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#65

Post by rvo »

rgbrenner wrote: post #58
kelnos wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's talk in practical terms for a second, though. Do you truly believe that gun ownership in the US could result in a bunch of citizens overthrowing the US government should it become tyrannical? I just don't see it happening. The US military is far too well-trained and -armed, and of course a hypothetical tyrannical US government would turn the military against its citizens if there was an armed uprising. And they…

Afghanistan. 16 years, still haven't won. And us citizens have more weapons than the taliban; longer harder to protect borders than Afghanistan; and a population that would be sympathetic to the cause. I wouldn’t be so sure the us military would win. According to current military doctrine[0], counterinsurgency requires a minimum of 1 counterinsurgent per 50 people in the population. If you assume ALL us military pers…

Also, 99 percent of the US military will defect to protect their own country against a rogue federal government. These are normal, good people who signed up to protect us.

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#66

Post by krapp »

danjayh wrote: post #41
Meekro wrote: post #6

Reading the Soviet Bill of Rights is pretty instructive because it'll show you how much such a thing is worth on its own. Here is just a subset of the rights guaranteed by the USSR Constitution: speech; press; religion (both to profess and refuse to profess); assembly (including a specific right to demonstrate); participation in lawmaking; inviolability of the person (from warrantless arrest) and of the home (from un…

This is what scares me about the current attitude (nationally) towards gun control. The right to bear arms is a basic civil right, unambiguously encoded in the Bill of Rights alongside speech, assembly, religion, due process, etc. Throughout history, taking away weapons has always been an early step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism and stripping the populous of their other rights. Just because it's unlikely…

>This is what scares me about the current attitude (nationally) towards gun control.

The current attitude stems from a desire for civility and public safety. Why would that scare you?

>The right to bear arms is a basic civil right, unambiguously encoded in the Bill of Rights alongside speech, assembly, religion, due process, etc.

It's not unambiguously encoded. If it were, there would not be entire debates over the meaning of the punctuation. People are unambiguous in their interpretations because of political ideology.

>Throughout history, taking away weapons has always been an early step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism and stripping the populous of their other rights.

Yes, but regulation is not confiscation, and the commonly held assumption on the part of many gun owners that the former inevitably leads to the latter (or is merely a knowing pretense towards the latter) is an uncharitable interpretation of the opposing point of view. Americans maintain the right to keep and bear arms even if that right doesn't extend to all possible arms under all possible circumstances.

"All political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party." -- Mao Zedong"

The anti gun-control argument is, ironically, also that all political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, but that power is liberty when the guns are pointed at the state and tyranny when the guns are pointed by the state. And yet anyone who simply doesn't want themselves or their children getting shot by psychopaths are considered unreasonable, because it's also liberty by proxy when those guns are pointed by the people at the people, and Americans are expected not only to tolerate and accept it, but be wary to question it.

Is it not possible that there is a reasonable middle ground between the NRA and Stalinist gulags?

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#67

Post by the_trapper »

kelnos wrote: post #52
danjayh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what scares me about the current attitude (nationally) towards gun control. The right to bear arms is a basic civil right, unambiguously encoded in the Bill of Rights alongside speech, assembly, religion, due process, etc. Throughout history, taking away weapons has always been an early step down the slippery slope to totalitarianism and stripping the populous of their other rights. Just because it's unlikely…

Let's talk in practical terms for a second, though. Do you truly believe that gun ownership in the US could result in a bunch of citizens overthrowing the US government should it become tyrannical? I just don't see it happening. The US military is far too well-trained and -armed, and of course a hypothetical tyrannical US government would turn the military against its citizens if there was an armed uprising. And they…

I wouldn't count on the US military necessarily siding with a tyrannical government that has stripped its populace of its Constitutional rights.

Here's the Oath of Enlistment with a few points of emphasis:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#68

Post by seren »

stdbrouw wrote: post #60
skookumchuck wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like all of the amendments. I'm not an NRA member, but the idea of repealing the 2nd Amendment, or worse, interpreting it out of existence has bothered me in ways I couldn't quite put my finger on. I finally realized what it was. If we decide one of the rights is "archaic", "obsolete", "insane", or any of the epithets routinely leveled at it, we set a terrible precedent. How long will it be before the rest fall w…

In Europe, democratic countries regularly amend their constitution because parts of it have become archaic, obsolete or insane. We have yet to descend into chaos or tyranny.

As a fellow European, I am also regularly surprised by the absolute reverence to the US Constitution. Sure, it is a fundamental law and it cannot be changed lightly, but like any other piece of legislation it seems normal to update it regularly.

Edit : after looking at the actual list of amendments, at least one was repelled after being introduced (regarding the Prohibition) so it seems they are not as immutable as I believed.

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#69

Post by akkat »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #63
notMick wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? The only people keeping the first amendment there are the conservatives! The left are trying to remove it with their various 'hate speech' laws (already done in many countries, say the 'wrong thing' on Facebook in the UK and you have the police coming to arrest you in hours) which can be applied to anything the left simply don't want you to say - and silencing you is fundamental to far left ideology.

You have Donald Trump trying to undermine the news media, attacking people for expressing their opinions by refusing to stand for the anthem, calling for stripping the citizenship from those who burn the US flag, and wanting a ban on Muslims entering the country. Attacks on individual liberties are not limited to a particular political ideology.

By "attacking" you mean calling some news fake news and criticizing other people's political statements. Those things are within the law. Jailing people for their political opinion, like they do in UK, China and Iran, is a violation.

Anyone trying to make laws allowing those things would be attacking the first.

Re: How We Learned to Love the Bill of Rights

#70

Post by pixl97 »

ben_w wrote: post #56
skookumchuck wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know. You accept that when you accept free speech. Besides, propaganda vs truth is like porn vs art. It's impossible to define, and there's no human I'd trust to make such decisions (not even myself).

There is only one truth, there are many possible propagandas. If the truth cannot be known, then we don’t have democracy, we have government by highest advertising budget.

Sorry, the truth can't be known.

There are likely some physics laws that can explain this better than I can, but the farther in time you get from a physical event, the more information is lost (entropy leaving your light cone). This leads to 'evidence' that allows multiple valid interpretations.

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